Don’t let a few evil men ghostwrite war script

In the one year since the world shook with the shock of America being attacked, much has changed. Civil liberties suffered a setback. Many Muslims in America live in terror of being hauled up on suspicion and taken away. Some Muslims shaved their beards and changed their attire to avoid hate crimes. Security, rather than fundamental rights, is the new message of the new era. Many Western nations seem willing to sacrifice constitutional civil rights and civil liberties to live in security.

The September 11 attacks shook the Muslim world as much as the West. Almost every Muslim country joined the war against terror. They sympathised with America and the American people. so many Muslims wonder why, given their solidarity with America, and their condemnation of Osama and his men, they are viewed with suspicion. The reality is, racial profiling points the finger of suspicion at Muslims. Muslims have suffered for the actions of Osama and Al Qaeda as a community.

This is the time to distinguish between those who commit crimes in the name of religion and those who belong to a community that wishes to live in peace and harmony with other religions. It would be a tragedy if suspicion towards Muslims led to a backlash that created a clash of civilisations.

Osama and his men used commercial airliners as bombs, creating a new global chessboard. All 19 of the hijackers that hit the World Trade Center were Arabs. Whether one likes it or not, Muslims in general, and Arab nations in particular, will be watched in the coming decades and contained as carefully as were the Communist countries in the days of the Cold War.

A change is clearly discernable since that fateful day one year ago. Then, the Muslim world rallied round the US in its war against terror. Now, many in the Muslim world are moving away from the new American objectives. One year ago, the Iraqi regime of President Saddam Hussain was isolated. Today, it has rejoined the Arab world at a summit held earlier this year in Lebanon. At the summit, embraces replaced distances.

Bush has repeatedly stated that his goal is to pre-empt danger to the world community through a regime change in Iraq. Most in the Muslim world remain unconvinced. Many see an attack on Iraq presaging a wider attack against an array of Muslim countries, including possibly, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and eventually Pakistan.

Today the intellectual opinion in the Muslim and non-Muslim world may be on a collision course. Many intellectuals in the US see Arab/Muslim countries as failed nations that gave birth to evil men who could plan the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 innocents in New York and Washington. And although most Muslim intellectuals condemn the WTC attacks, they believe that unaddressed political problems provided the atmosphere for evil to be born.

America emerged stronger from the day of tragedy when airliners crashed into skyscrapers. President Bush provided the leadership in a huge military response as well as domestic measures which saved the American people from further attacks. Muslims know that an attack by fanatics could easily increase their own vulnerability.

But a military response is only part of the solution. The concern is that the evil of some men now threatens to taint otherwise good men and women within the Muslim world. Terrorism is still to be defined collectively by the world community. Unless there is an agreement that terrorism knows no religion and no civilisation, we could be on the precipice of a much more dangerous world.

So far demonstrations in the Muslim world remained few and far between. Most Muslims recognised that America was wrongly targeted, and that it had a right to self defence, to pursuing the criminals that planned the bombings and trained and harboured the terrorists. The concern is that with a broader conflict within the Muslim world, mob fury could develop focusing on foreign targets. The attack on the American Embassy in Iran during the time of Ayotallah Khomeni when Americans were taken hostage is an example. The burning of the American Embassy in Islamabad under General Zia is another.

The righteousness of the American cause leads it down the tempting road of unilateral action. The concept of collective security was the anchor of a world when Communism was the great threat. It must continue to be the anchor now that the danger from Islamic countries seems to have replaced Communism.

Having tumbled from one age to another in the blink of an eye, the time has come to pause and reflect. Without a shared security mechanism and a definition of terrorism, the world could actually find itself in a holy war between Islam and the West. It’s a war that no one wants—except the extremists.