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The Arabic – Islamic
world in 2007: Borders of terrorism
and politics collide
By Riad Awwad
As we leave behind the year 2007, with its good and
bad parts, we must conclude that the Arabic Islamic world today is the
same as it was yesterday and will remain the same tomorrow.
The international situation is marked by conflicting
debates upon Islam, conflicting because of, in the first place, the
interference between the borders of politics and the terrorist
phenomenon in this Arabic Islamic world marked by political crisis and
territorial debates.
The Arabic economies pas a regressing process, while
the huge energetic and material resources from these territories are
controlled by dictatorial regimes who, not in a few cases, use them to
emaciate their own people and fund terrorist organizations and networks,
for the export of future martyrs who kill innocent civilians in the name
of Allah.
While the price of a barrel gets close to 100 dollars,
the economic state of Islamic regimes is far from stable and
progressive.
A short retrospective on the events that took place in
2007 will bring up the following:
1. The fall of the Palestinian government not more than
1 year after its birth because of the lack of representation for the
expectancies of the people and its “serving” towards Iran and Syria who,
frightened by the results of the international investigation regarding
the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al Hariri, try
to stop by any means the election of a new president in Lebanon.
2. In Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorist and destructive
manifestations continue uninterrupted, as if the Muslims are trying to
demonstrate to the occident that they are their own enemies.
3. The continuing of internal tensions and torment in
Pakistan, after the return of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Butho, and after
the proclamation of the “exceptional state”.
4. The tensions between Turkey and P.K.K, on the
background of the claims of Kurd ethnics in Syria, Iran and Turkey to
have their own country in this geographical area, claims considered a
natural fact.
5. The continuous degradation of the situation in the
Sudanese province Darfur, where the government in Khartoum, controlled
by Sudanese Arabs, denies the existence of African origin tribes and
imposes the canonic Islamic right by force on the provinces where non
Muslims live
6. On the gulf level, Iranian president Mahmud
Ahmadinejad has been invited, for the first time, at the reunion of the
Gulf Cooperation Council, participation which, far from offering the
occasion of conciliation between Iran and the surrounding Arab world,
has deepened even more the already existing hostility, mainly because of
the territorial debates upon the three islands in the Gulf, now under
the occupation of Teheran – Abu Mussa, Great and Small Tomb.
The American options for military interventions in Iran
linger from inefficiency to danger, and start to loose their “charisma”,
after the report of the American secret services stating that Iranian
nuclear programs have been stopped for four years now.
In his book “State of democracy”, Israeli writer Nathan
Sharansky underlines with no regret de paradoxes launched by Samuel
Huntington about the clash of civilizations, based on the idea that
underdevelopment in the Islamic world makes living with it impossible.
In an era of fast inter reasoning, politics and universal economics and
social matters, in an era of globalization, the Arabic Islamic world
lives, continuously, isolated within itself and in conflict with its own
identity, in a climate of civil conflicts and wars, of disorientation ,
anarchy and waiting. Moreover, this is happening while the importance of
the geographic and economic role of the Islamic Arabic world increases;
the hard competition for its oil resources becomes harder, Arabic brains
leave their countries for the occident. In the USA and Europe live,
today, over one million citizens holding a masters degree obtained in
the Occident, not to remind of the businesspersons, artists, experts and
workers in different areas, whom all come from this territory. Islamic
and Arabic capital placed abroad surpass 1 trillion dollars, while more
than one million Arabs are looking for work in Europe because of the
scarce situation in their home land.
In 2007 as well as in the past years, the Arabic
Islamic world is lead by totalitarian and overwhelming regimes, too
little interested in what is going on around them. Israel, the only
democratic state in the region, continues to be criticized by the Arabic
dictators and Jerusalem, city of peace, continues to be the main
obstacle in the way of this peace.
The Annapolis conference, held in November, brought to
light the existence of several differences: the lines of the future
borders of the Palestinian state to exist by the Israeli state, the
“breaking” of Jerusalem, the tearing of Israeli colonies, the return of
Palestinian refugees to their homes etc.
Where can it begin? We think the treatment of the
illnesses that the Arabic Islamic world suffers from, which brings it
every day closer to the unknown, and in which Islamic extremists, who do
not accept criticism or dialogue, are convinced that the only purpose of
human beings is to idolatrize God, that the earthly world is only a
pathway to paradise and to eternal allegiance to terrestrial dictatorial
regimes, to the conversion of sheep like people to the Islamic religion.
There are Muslims who believe themselves to be the holders of absolute
truth in the name of which they committed the acts of September 11th,
then the crimes in Madrid, London, daily crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Algeria, Kosovo. The freeing from political
totalitarism and the inherited traditions is the only way for the real
Muslim to overcome fear, because the fatidic allegiance to the will of
terrorism and dictatorship dehumanize him, mostly in the contemporary
world where the Arab governments lead a taught campaign to denigrate the
occident, in order to keep their own privileges and positions, to flush
away the “ghost” of democracy, freedom and peace. The Arabic Islamic
regimes cannot forgive the Americans for bringing down a power – the one
in Iraq – and for appealing for democracy and reform in the region, just
like the Taliban people cannot forgive them for bringing down the regime
in Afghanistan. This is mainly why we believe this kind of politics will
continue uninterrupted and with no perspective of some kind of change.
During the soviet missiles crisis in Cuba, president
Charles De Gaule refused to analyze the pictures taken by the
satellites, of the missile launching ramps in the country, stating he
needs no proof of such things to convince himself. “President Kennedy’s
word is enough for me”, he said at the time. Yes, in those times the
word of the American president was a sufficient warranty by itself.
Today, under president Bush’s administration, things differ on an
elementary basis and this is why, perhaps, the forces of extremism and
terrorism find space under the warm sun, and the danger of a third world
conflagration in the name of man and civilization lurks ever closer.
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