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November 27, 2004

Crusading for common sense

Amin Saikal, professor of political science and director of the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, wrote a compelling and sobering opinion piece a few days ago in Australia's The Sydney Morning Herald. Provocatively titled Moderate Muslims hide when they see the cross Bush has to bear (registration required), he warns that relations between the West and the Islamic world are moving closer to collapse with the reelection of George Bush. Not merely because Bush was reelected. Rather, on the basis of Bush's foreign policy and his well known base of support among the Christian Right.

With the faith-driven Bush determined to change radical political Islam, the Middle East and, for that matter, the world according to America's shifting interests and within a broad Judeo-Christian moral framework, many Islamists - who believe in Islam as an ideology of political and social transformation - and many ordinary Muslims around the world are now bound to become more wary of US policy behaviour than ever before.

They are likely to take extreme exception to Bush's now well-known personal identification with Christian evangelism, his faith-based domestic and foreign policy priorities, his division of the world in terms of "good" and "evil", and his uncritical support of Israel.

To them, Bush's emphasis on forceful pacification and "democratisation" of Iraq as a beacon for spreading political change in the region, and on creating a "democratic" Palestinian state, amounts to little more than a metaphor for exalting Judeo-Christian values over those of Islam and perpetuating the subordination of the Arab-Muslim world to America's global interests as defined by Bush's religious preferences.

This report from Palestine is one small example which supports Saikal's assertion. But there is other evidence which supports it too. Consider the fact that none of the Christian minority groups in the Middle East have sided with Bush's policy. Syria, Palestine and Iraq all have noteworthy Christian communities. None of which are willing to risk being ostracized and scapegoated by supporting the Bush administration's policies in the region. At least some Iraqi Christians appear to be siding with with some of the most outspoken opponents of both the Bush administration and it's interum government in Iraq. And it appears to be a deliberate and pragmatic choice.

Many opinion surveys indicate that a majority of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world have already become far more receptive to al-Qaeda's messages and causes than to Bush's messianic zeal for democratisation.

Bush's agenda of building bridges to moderate Muslims has failed, because moderate Muslims do not want to be seen in his company.

I think that goes for moderate non-Muslim's in the Middle East too.

As Iraq sinks into chaos and destruction, with reportedly more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians having lost their lives, one wonders how Bush can possibly believe this to be helpful either to the cause of democratising and stabilising Iraq or to the success of the war on terrorism or to prompting many Muslims to be diverted away from radical Islamism to embrace Washington's impositions as a better alternative.

Indeed.

Posted by Kevin at November 27, 2004 09:02 AM