For Colin Powell, whose own reputation as a man of infinite moderation is extremely dear to him, the business of coalition-building in the Arab world is of much greater importance.
And, judging from the way things are going, he must have the support of Dick Cheney in order to be prevailing. I ran into one of the leading hawks at a television studio this week; he wasn't even trying to look happy. Of course, Powell was opposed even to moving some carriers into the Gulf on the warning of an invasion of Kuwait something his enemies never fail to bring up. And the idea of having Muslim allies is so crucial to the self-esteem of the Bushies that they would rather handle the Pakistanis and Saudis with tongs than run the risk of offending yesterday's and probably today's patrons of the Taliban.
I had to confess my worries to another administration person the other night. It makes me nervous I am keeping a list of things that don't make me feel any safer. Congressman Gary Condit, whose public woes more or less came to an end on September 11, was, at that point, in danger of losing his seat on the house intelligence committee. He is now a key member of the new special house committee on counter-terrorism. As they say, only in America. Meanwhile, I was asked to produce a photo-identification when buying a ticket for a train to New York.
It seemed odd that they would want my picture when I had gone to all the trouble of turning up in person, but once I had produced it I was allowed to carry my unsearched bags straight on to the express. And in the friendly skies, a friend, who flew business class, was given a plastic knife and a steel fork with his in-flight food.
Timed to coincide with morning news schedules across America, the attacks on the World Trade Center factored in a minute delay between the two aircraft hitting the buildings to help maximise drama and ensure that network camera crews had time to focus on events. In some cases, news networks reported non-stop for nearly hours to millions around the world.
And it did that in a way that hardly any other event had ever done before in my lifetime. It was staggering … watching the horror of what had happened, the number of people killed, and then watching the collapse of those iconic towers.
This was despite the fact that terrorist attacks in Europe and North America were much more common during the s and s. These were typically carried out by left- or right-wing nationalist organisations. A lot. Political communications scholarship has long noted the influence of powerful sources over the news agenda.
It has also been claimed that politicians adopt more emotive language when talking about terror threats, further increasing the news value of such information. The rise of the internet and the emergence of social media, meant that terrorist groups had far greater access to the news media than ever before. September 11 has sometimes been depicted as something that is justified by Muslims and Islam, as if all Muslims were somehow responsible for this horrible event.
But looking at it in historical perspective, we may recall that with the expansion of Islam the rules of warfare changed to prohibit scorched earth and killing of unarmed civilians. Islam radically changed the idea and practice of warfare, so that no killing of common people ever took place under Islamic rules and regulations.
Therefore it strikes Muslims as very, very bizarre to hear that the September 11 attacks are somehow representative of Islam. American Muslims have tried to show people here, those who will listen, that these attacks were not religious events, but expressions of some kind of frustration.
To raise the question of whether there is a radical difference between Islam and the West reflects the erroneous notion that Muslims are fundamentally different from people of other faiths.
There is a radical difference between those of us sitting here at this table: some of us were raised in Michigan, others in the South, others in Massachusetts, and we do have some cultural differences.
Muslims also have these kinds of differences among themselves. But it is not necessarily the case that a Muslim is altogether different from a Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Sikh. Islam has no central ecclesiastical authority to tell people what is right and wrong, or to make corrections if things go in a wrong direction. There can be and are differences of opinion. That's why Islam is suited to democracy but sometimes democracy is not allowed to grow in Islamic countries.
Colonialism and anticommunism have had unfortunate impacts on the historical development of Islam. The impact of colonization throughout the Muslim world meant that almost any idea associated with colonialism or the colonizers was rejected. Furthermore, for expedient purposes of fighting communism, people who were otherwise rational supported governments that were dictatorial. That is a tragedy, I think, in Islamic and Muslim countries. And our name as Americans, as the United States, has become associated with some of those dictatorial governments.
Recent events and the government's response have sent a chill through the Muslim community. Children are afraid to admit they are Muslims in school. Adults are reluctant to get involved in community activities, or even to talk on the phone, thinking it's tapped.
Some are afraid to attend Friday prayers. It is essential to promote dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, and our country, the United States, perhaps more than other countries, provides an environment where this can happen. For example, I recently attended a peace seder at a university in Towson, Maryland, where Jews and Muslims celebrated a seder together. I think most of the difficulties we have are because we think of each other as strangers.
We especially need to reach out to those who are most intolerant. After the attacks, Americans asked, Why do they hate us? Immediately we had a parade of people come on TV and tell us why they hated us. They hated us because of our values, we were told; they hated us because of our democracy, because of our very existence. Every one of those people who told us what to believe was a policymaker, and every one of them said it isn't because of our policies.
But if you look at Mohammed Atta's will and at bin Laden s statements, you will see that they identified three policies that are repugnant to them. One is our policy on Iraq. In the Arab world, they still remember when former Secretary of State Albright was asked about the , Iraqi children who die every year because of our policy of containment.
She said, Yes, it's tough, but it's worth it. Those three words, it's worth it, still reverberate throughout the Muslim world. Five hundred thousand children can die and we don't care. A second policy they identified is our policy in Palestine, which has become an issue for Muslims worldwide.
And the third policy is the presence of U. I am not justifying what happened on September Many Muslims throughout the world are not justifying what happened, but they are saying we need to look at U. Their question is, Why does America hate Islam?
There are 1, years of relationship between Muslims and Christians or the West. They include the Crusades, which were based on the idea that if you killed an infidel in this case, the infidel is the Muslim you go straight to heaven; you get an expiation.
The history includes the Inquisition in Spain, when Muslims were told to convert, leave, or die. It includes colonialism, when European powers, starting in the 16th century, expanded all over the Muslim world. Today, of the 56 Muslim countries in the world, only two have not been occupied by European countries.
Muslims are aware of this historical relationship and many believe that the West wants their resources, wants to keep them oppressed. President Bush's recent comment about mounting a crusade, and Secretary Powell's comments about we, the civilized world, reinforced that notion.
We don't know if the President's remark about a crusade was a slip of the tongue or a Freudian slip. But Muslims heard: Here they come again. They hate us; they want to destroy us. Arabs immigrating to the United States initially were not allowed to become citizens. The influx of new immigrants after has brought in many Arab professionals who are helping our economy doctors and computer scientists and others.
Do they feel at home in America? They did. But after September 11 it has become very, very difficult. Arab Americans have no access to policymaking and feel disenfranchised. Money they donate to candidates is returned because of the stigma. It's not just a question of assimilation. The March raids in Northern Virginia targeted people the U.
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