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The
opening of military attacks on Afghanistan
follows careful analysis by President Bush
and his national security team of one of
the most difficult dilemmas in world affairs
that any Administration ever has had to
face.
Were
air and other strikes against the Taliban government
and the terrorist network of Osama bin Laden
the correct move in this complex situation?
That's devoutly to be hoped-but by no means
assured.
The
risk inherent in this response has already
been made evident
in the several charges heard
from Muslim authorities that the Bush Administration
has launched "a war on Islam."
That's
not what the President and his advisers say
or
believe, nor what they intend, and certainly
not what was called for by the terrorist attacks
of September 11 on the Pentagon and the World
Trade Center towers. "Islam" was
not responsible for those attacks, nor has
any American official suggested that it was.
Yet,
to the Muslim world, war against the Taliban
and
Osama bin Laden may well appear
to be "a war on Islam." As Mahfouz
Ramadan Salem of Egypt put it in a Boston Globe
report from Cairo: "I am a Muslim, Afghanistan
is a Muslim country, so of course I'm angry."
Nor
can the American food and medical packets
being dropped
for the Afghan people-many of
whom are thought to be anti Taliban-conceal
from Muslims the fact that bombs are falling,
too. "I give you food and I kill you?
It makes me crazy to think about that," another
Egyptian, Sayed Abdel-Ghani, told the Globe.
That's
the fundamental problem: Any response the
US
elected to make in retaliation for the
September 11 attacks-all too obviously carried
out by Muslims-was likely to appear to many
other Muslims as "a war on Islam." If
that proves to be the conviction of enough
people in specific nations like Pakistan, its
government-which has been supportive of the
Bush Administration-might well be toppled by
public outrage. Or, if that reaction is sufficiently
widespread throughout Islam, that heavily populated
world?strategically situated and containing
vital resources such as oil - could be turned
even more hotly against the US and the West
than it already is.
In
that regard, the Western unity shown so far,
though desirable,
as well as the "personalization" of
what the Administration does call a "war" against
Osama bin Laden, may not help matters. The
terrorist leader is something of a hero in
the Islamic world, and the cooperation of Britain,
Canada and other western nations with the US
may contribute to Muslim beliefs that the West
is "ganging up" on one heroic man
and continuing to try to exert dominance over
the non-Western world.
The
enmity of Muslims, pre-dating but probably
enhanced
by the attacks on Afghanistan, does
not result only from the Israeli Palestinian
conflict, though many deeply resent that the
West does not more actively support the Palestinians-or
Chechen and Bosnian Muslims, for that matter.
Nor does the hostility derive entirely from
the presence of US troops in the Middle East,
or from Western sanctions against the Saddam
Hussein regime in Iraq-though all of these
motives for Muslim anger were cited by Osama
bin Laden in his televised challenge to "America
and its people."
The
widespread Muslim resentment-not, of course,
shared
by all Muslims-seems, however, also
to be quasi-religious, quasi cultural, anti-modern
and not least focused on the status of women,
who are far more advanced and "liberated" in
the Western world and whose situation in some
Muslim countries-notably Afghanistan under
the Taliban-is in fact medieval.
This complex of hostile attitudes includes-but
may not be limited to-lamentation for a more
settled past, fear of the onrushing future,
dismay at the pace and seeming inevitability
of change-all of which seem to threaten not
only Islamic nations and individuals but their
customs, culture and religion-and anger at
the undeniable political and economic exploitation
suffered at the hands of apparently uncaring
and overbearing Western nations.
No
wonder, then, that US and Western attacks
on Afghanistan
appear to be "a war on
Islam." There's no question, however,
that the American people demanded a strong
response to the events of September 11 (a date
that will live not only "in infamy" but,
like December 7, 1941, in the memories of Americans
alive on either day). President Bush had no
political or moral choice but to respond to
that demand; nor would non-military action
have been acceptable to more than a few.
That he took nearly a month to order retaliatory
attacks is testament to how complicated the
problem was, to his understanding of that complexity,
and to his reluctance to accept any but the
least threatening, to the Islamic world, of
numerous possible responses. Whether he found
it remains to be seen-not in Afghanistan, or
Osama bin Laden's latest hideout, but in the
cafes of Cairo and Peshawar, and the crowded
streets and bazaars of Islam.
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