Ali Mazrui
7 October 2001
Much of the debate in the United States since September 11, 2001, has been about how to punish terrorism. There has been very little discussion about the causes of terrorism. Yet it is never enough to discuss how to punish crime without also addressing the causes of crime.
One of the central causes of terrorism against the United States is the perceived US alliance with Israel against the Palestinian people. United States' troops are not used against Palestinians, but American weapons are utilised and billions of dollars, provided by the United States, strengthen Israel's capacity to occupy and to suppress the West Bank and Gaza.
President George W. Bush is trying to construct a coalition against terrorism. At least as fundamental is a coalition to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. The Israelis and Palestinians on their own cannot find a solution. The United States is too pro-Israel to be an honest broker. What is needed is a coalition consisting of representatives of the European Union, the United States, the League of Arab States, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the African Union, Russia as well as the Palestinians and Israelis.
The world must make sure that the coalition against terrorism does not become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution. There is already anger, if not rage, against the United States among millions of people in the world. It is to be hoped that the anger against the US is not spread out into anger against the coalition.
In Africa, are we permitting our sympathy for the American people to become a cause of conflict among Africans themselves? In order to become partners with America, are we in danger of becoming adversaries towards each other?
Let us remember that President George W. Bush has been to a mosque since September 11 in order to assure American Muslims and the world that the war against terrorism is not a war against Islam.
Cause of prejudice and hate
Let me urge President Moi to go to the mosque in Nairobi (perhaps the Jamia Mosque) and assure Kenyan Muslims and the world that his government is not against Islam. Let us not permit our revulsion against terrorism to become a cause of prejudice and hate among Kenyans themselves.
Yet the problem of Israel and Zionist power against the Palestinian people has to be solved if we are serious about ending terrorism. Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is a political ideology; Judaism is a religion. Can we ever have a world without terrorism for as long as Zionist power is protected by the United States? The American veto in the Security Council of the United Nations makes it difficult even to reprimand Israel for wrong-headed policies.
Kenyans pay a price when Zionism is allowed to create anger and desperation. The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi was once bombed as a direct consequence of the tensions of the Middle East. On August 7, 1998, more than 200 Kenyans perished when the US Embassy in Nairobi was bombed. Twelve Americans died.
Zionism must not only be checked but disgraced. The lives which are at stake are not only those of Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans. There are Arabs held hostage. Kenyan lives are at risk.
Long before there was talk about an international coalition against terrorism, there was a de facto coalition of Muslim states and African states. One of their grand arenas of cooperation was the United Nations itself. They collaborated at those mega-conferences of the United Nations like the one in Durban, South Africa, this year.
It is true that the issue of Zionism captured disproportionate attention at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 to September 8. But one reason was the opposition of the United States at the highest level. Any high-profile threat of a walkout by the United States on any issue at such a conference was bound to raise that issue to great visibility and passion.
The good Afro-Islamic news from Durban was that the Muslim world and most of Africa were substantially united in support of the Palestinians. It would not have been necessary to fight for the Palestinians in Durban if the United Nations Security Council in New York took its responsibilities seriously to censure Israel for its brutal policies and to approve the stationing of independent observers in the West Bank and Gaza.
An angry Arab world
But the Muslims and the Arabs would not have needed to work and lobby so hard in Durban in 2001 if they had not let the General Assembly of the United Nations rescind 10 years earlier the UN's own resolution equating Zionism with racism. Just because half the Arab world was angry with Saddam Hussein in 1991 was no reason to forget the racism of Israeli policies against Palestinians.
The world has never had a coalition against terrorism. But it has had a coalition of African and Muslim states. The 1975 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism would not have been rescinded in 1991 if the Muslim world and African states were united and could distinguish between the short-term crisis over Kuwait from the longer-term crisis over Palestine.
The United Nations used to be one of the great arenas for the anti-colonial struggle waged by the peoples of Asia, Africa and the scattered islands of the seas. The anti-colonial role of the United Nations encompassed not only the Trusteeship Council but also the General Assembly, especially from the late 1950s onwards. This anti-colonial role was often a great service to Africa and the Muslim world. But the United Nations must now identify Israel as a latter-day imperial power, as brutal as European colonialists used to be.
The United Nations can be an ally of Africa and the Muslim world when it takes seriously the idea of prosecuting war criminals and those who have committed crimes against humanity. Perhaps one day a United Nations tribunal would prosecute the likes of Prime Minister Sharon.
Especially relevant for Africa and the Muslim world is the new prosecution of war criminals from Rwanda, Algeria, Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia. Crimes against humanity have been committed by India's security forces in Kashmir. When will the perpetrators be held accountable?
The United Nations has done well to appoint the Balkans tribunal for the Yugoslav task but has fallen far short of providing the resources even for this task. The Arusha tribunal on Rwanda is more directly African in its implications.
The United Nations has been an ally when the Muslim world and Africa were united. It has at times been possible to pass through the General Assembly highly contentious points of principle. The state of Israel is based on an ideology which says that a Russian who claims to be descended from Jews, and whose family has had no connection with the Middle East for the last two thousand years, has more right to go to settle in Israel than a Palestinian who ran away from Israel during the 1948 war. Was such discrimination racist?
When Muslims and Africans were united in 1975, they did manage to persuade the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution affirming that Zionism was a form of racism. But when Muslims and Africans were divided in 1991, that resolution was indeed repealed by an overwhelming majority.
When the Muslims and Africans were united they could persuade the General Assembly not only to defy the United States but move the Assembly itself out of New York in further defiance. Thus when in 1988 the United States refused to grant a visa to Yasser Arafat, thereby preventing him from coming to New York to address the UN General Assembly on his declaration of an independent Palestinian state, the General Assembly denounced Washington's action as a violation of the host country's legal obligations under the 1947 headquarters Agreement. The General Assembly then shifted this December 13-15 session to Geneva, Switzerland, to make it possible to listen to Chairman Arafat. It was the first and only such move in the history of the United Nations. The unity of the Muslim and African members of the UN helped to persuade others to join their ranks.
Finally, is the UN an ally or an adversary of Islamic and Third World values when the UN promotes such mega-conferences as the one in Beijing, China, in 1995 on the issue of women; the one in Copenhagen on the issues of poverty and development in 1994 and the one in Cairo, Egypt in 1994 on the issue of population and the one in Durban on the issue of racism and xenophobia?
Muslims in Africa are divided as to whether these UN mega-conferences lead on to the erosion of Islamic values or help Islamic values find a new historic setting in the 21st Century. For example, are Muslim women being helped by new global standards of gender equity which are promoted at these conferences? On the other hand, Islam has a lot to teach the world about race-mixture and racial cooperation.
When tension becomes creative
These mega-conferences have been global and have been part of the United Nations' universalism of nation-states. Some tension has at times been created with Islam's universalism of faith. African states and Muslim states overlap and are often in alliance.
But tension can itself be creative; it is a dialectic which can have a human face. Relations between races, genders as well as states need a new accommodation.
The world may need a coalition against terrorism. But no such coalition will work unless there is also a coalition between the Muslim world and African states. Such a coalition of Muslim and African states has been tried before. It needs to be reactivated in the fight against terrorism and its causes - including the causes of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Prof Mazrui is the Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, and Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Binghamton State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, USA
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