Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Publication: The New York Times
Date: November 6, 2001
Doha, Qatar -- If you want to know
why the U.S. is hated in the Arab street, read the recent editorial in
the semi-official Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, written by its editor, Ibrahim
Nafie. After saying that the U.S. was deliberately making humanitarian
food drops in areas of Afghanistan full of land mines, Mr. Nafie added:
"Similarly, there were several reports that the [U.S.] humanitarian materials
have been genetically treated, with the aim of affecting the health of
the Afghan people. If this is true, the U.S. is committing a crime against
humanity by giving the Afghan people hazardous humanitarian products."
This was an editorial written by
Egypt's leading editor, personally appointed by President Hosni Mubarak.
It basically accuses the U.S. of dropping poison food on Afghans - according
to unspecified "reports." So is it any wonder that people on the Egyptian
street hate us?
This is the game that produced bin
Ladenism: Arab regimes fail to build a real future for their people. This
triggers seething anger. Their young people who can get visas escape overseas.
Those who can't turn to the mosque and Islam to protest. The regimes crush
the violent Muslim protesters, but to avoid being accused of being anti-Muslim
the regimes give money and free rein to their most hard-line, but nonviolent,
Moslem clerics, while also redirecting their public's anger onto America
through their press. Result: America ends up being hated and Islam gets
handed over to the most anti-modern forces. Have a nice day.
What these Arab regimes still don't
get is that Sept. 11 has exposed their game. They think America is on trial
now, but in fact it is stale regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which
produced the hijackers, that are on trial. Will they continue to let Islam
be hijacked by anti-modernists, who will guarantee that the Arab world
falls further behind? Will they continue to blame others? Or will they
look in the mirror, take on intolerance, and open their societies to a
different future?
Here's the good news: Some Arab-Muslim
voices are popping up, rejecting the garbage peddled by the regimes. The
London-based newspaper Al Hayat just published a letter from an Egyptian
film critic, Samir Farid. It said: "I felt ashamed while reading most,
if not all, of the commentary [on Sept. 11], primarily in the Egyptian
press. . . . Most, if not all, of what I read proves that the poison of
the undemocratic, military Arab regimes has also entered the bloodstream
of the [intellectual] elite. These [people] no longer see . . . destruction
for its own sake as disgraceful. What murky future awaits this region?"
Here in Qatar, on the Persian Gulf,
Al Jazeera TV, the freest and most popular in the Arab world, recently
ran a debate featuring the liberal Kuwaiti political scientist Shafeeq
Ghabra versus an Islamist and a radical Arab nationalist. While the latter
two tried to excuse Osama bin Laden, Mr. Ghabra hammered back: "The Lebanese
civil war was not an American creation; neither was the Iran-Iraq war;
neither was bin Laden. These are our creations. We need to look inside.
We cannot be in this blame-others mode forever."
Dr. Abdelhameed al-Ansari, dean
of Qatar University's law school, wrote in Al Raya: "How does a terrorist
[bin Laden] become a hero? What is happening to the collective Arab outlook?
What is happening to our famous Islamic scholars? . . . We should solve
this problem from its roots. Education is the key."
While Arab leaders have refused
to acknowledge any Palestinian responsibility for the stalemate with Israel,
a few weeks ago the Jerusalem-based Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh had
the guts to criticize Palestinian strategy: "We're telling the Israelis
we want to kick you out: it's not that we want liberation, freedom and
independence in the West Bank and Gaza, we want to kick you out of your
home. And in order to make sure that the Israelis get the message, people
go out to a disco or restaurant and blow themselves up. The whole thing
is just crazy, ugly, totally counterproductive. The secret is to get Israelis
to side with you. We lost our allies."
The Bush team should tell our Arab
partners: Look, we don't need your bases or armies. We just need you to
open your societies so the voices of those who want a different Arab future
can really be heard. We'll take care of bin Laden - but you have to take
care of bin Ladenism.