THE WEST AND ISLAM

By Mario Soares Reprint | | Print |

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LISBON, Dec 12 2006 (IPS) - The scourge of global terrorism is calling into question what remains of the world order, writes Mario Soares, ex-president and ex-prime minister of Portugal. In this article, Soares writes that because of its unpredictability, no one knows when or where it will strike next. The fight against terrorism is therefore a moral and ethical imperative of the first order and must not be neglected by responsible governments. The fight against terrorism must not be seen as a \’\’war\’\’ –and certainly not a \’\’preventive war– between the West and Islam. Because the simplification of the concepts of West and Islam is reductive, dangerous, and ultimately false to the extent that it fails to take into account the complexity of the values they represent, it induces us to commit gross errors (many have already occurred) and would gradually drag us unwittingly into a religious war, which would be a colossal setback for civilization and the worst possible outcome.

But it cannot be a blind assault that risks punishing innocent populations or imposing excessive security measures that threaten the rights of citizens, human rights, and international law. Such an approach would jeopardise the essential values that underlie our democratic societies and give them political credibility and moral authority. Indeed, it would mean following the lead of terrorism, despite ourselves.

The fight against terrorism must not be seen as a ”war” –and certainly not a ”preventive war– between the West and Islam. Because the simplification of the concepts of West and Islam is reductive, dangerous, and ultimately false to the extent that it fails to take into account the complexity of the values they represent, it induces us to commit gross errors (many have already occurred) and to gradually drag us unwittingly into a religious war, which would be a colossal setback for civilization and the worst possible outcome.

It is possible that certain values of the so-called West are not as universal as they were thought to be at the end of the last century, after the collapse of the communist universe. Despite everything, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, unanimously approved by the United Nations in 1948 and complemented by various charters of rights in the following decades, still represents the greatest juridical and political contribution to what Leopold Senghor called the ”civilisation of the universal”.

The complexity of Islam, its exceptional history and civilisation, which made many extremely valuable contributions to the West before and after the moment of convergence and unique dialogue of Al-Andalus, as well as the irreducible variety of its different religious currents, should lead us to not confuse Islam with global fundamentalism or even with the so-called ”moderate” Arab governments, which, though apparently docile in relation to the West, remain ferocious dictatorships or unacceptable theocracies. Moreover, global fundamentalism is not unique to Islam. Christian, Jewish, and Hindu fundamentalism –to name a few– have all produced considerable levels of violence, some more, some less.

Global fundamentalism does not have exclusively religious roots but also geopolitical and sociological ones that are related to underdevelopment, massive unemployment, hunger, a culture of violence transmitted daily through TV screens, international organised crime, and the spectacular humiliation inflicted by the dizzying financial capitalism of the world’s fiscal paradises.

On the other hand, the West is neither homogeneous nor a coherent whole. The hegemony of the United States –the self-proclaimed benign empire– under the Bush administration, is rocketing towards a political, economic, and sociological disaster of unimaginable proportions. The European Union, incapable of defining for itself an autonomous position with respect to the US, lacks leadership with moral authority and a true political dimension. Latin America, the third pole of the West, is undergoing an accelerating transformation, undecided between populist radicalism (mixed or indigenous) and a moderate reformism of more or less socialdemocratic nature. We can only hope they will be able to understand each other.

But the world is far larger that the West and Islam, and it finds itself undergoing rapid change. The so-called emerging nations –China, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia– are waiting for the exact moment that will provide the best opportunities for advancement. This is natural.

Only deep reform of the United Nations that can help bring about a realignment of the world would be capable of successfully addressing the great global challenges: peace, the elimination of terrorism, the eradication of poverty, global environmental threats, and the establishment of new world order that grants all peoples of the earth greater equality, freedom, and solidarity and brings about a more just and human world. Anything else would be mere rhetoric destined to oblivion the very moment it was articulated in speeches. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)