NP commentary from Pakistan

[Doug Millison]

BLACK TUESDAY: THE VIEW FROM ISLAMABAD
by Pervez Hoodbhoy

[...]

A bizarre new world awaits us, where old rules of
social and political
behavior have broken down and new ones are yet to
defined. Catapulted
into a situation of darkness and horror by the
extraordinary force of
events, as rational human beings we must urgently
formulate a response
that is moral, and not based upon considerations of
power and
practicality. This requires beginning with a clearly
defined moral
supposition - the fundamental equality of all human
beings. It also
requires that we must proceed according to a definite
sequence of steps,
the order of which is not interchangeable.


Before all else, Black Tuesday's mass murder must be
condemned in the
harshest possible terms without qualification or
condition, without
seeking causes or reasons that may even remotely be
used to justify it,
and without regard for the national identity of the
victims or the
perpetrators. The demented, suicidical, fury of the
attackers led to
heinous acts of indiscriminate and wholesale murder
that have changed
the world for the worse. A moral position must begin
with unequivocal
condemnation, the absence of which could eliminate
even the language by
which people can communicate.

Analysis comes second, but it is just as essential. No
"terrorist" gene
is known to exist or is likely to be found. Therefore,
surely the
attackers, and their supporters, who were all
presumably born normal,
were afflicted by something that caused their
metamorphosis from normal
human beings capable of gentleness and affection into
desperate,
maddened, fiends with nothing but murder in their
hearts and minds.
What was that?

Tragically, CNN and the US media have so far made
little attempt to
understand this affliction. The cost for this
omission, if it is to stay
this way, cannot be anything but terrible. What we
have seen is probably
the first of similar tragedies that may come to define
the 21st century
as the century of terror. There is much claptrap about
"fighting
terrorism" and billions are likely to be poured into
surveillance,
fortifications, and emergency plans, not to mention
the ridiculous idea
of missile defence systems. But, as a handful of
suicide bombers armed
with no more than knives and box-cutters have shown
with such
devastating effectiveness, all this means precisely
nothing. Modern
nations are far too vulnerable to be protected - a
suitcase nuclear
device could flatten not just a building or two, but
all of Manhattan.
Therefore, the simple logic of survival says that the
chances of
survival are best if one goes to the roots of terror.

Only a fool can believe that the services of a
suicidical terrorist can
be purchased, or that they can be bred at will
anywhere. Instead, their
breeding grounds are in refugee camps and in other
rubbish dumps of
humanity, abandoned by civilization and left to rot. A
global
superpower, indifferent to their plight, and
manifestly on the side of
their tormentors, has bred boundless hatred for its
policies. In supreme
arrogance, indifferent to world opinion, the US openly
sanctions daily
dispossession and torture of the Palestinians by
Israeli occupation
forces. The deafening silence over the massacres in
Qana, Sabra, and
Shatila refugee camps, and the video-gamed slaughter
by the Pentagon of
70,000 people in Iraq, has brought out the worst that
humans are capable
of. In the words of Robert Fisk, "those who claim to
represent a
crushed, humiliated population struck back with the
wickedness and
awesome cruelty of a doomed people".

It is stupid and cruel to derive satisfaction from
such revenge, or from
the indisputable fact that Osama and his kind are the
blowback of the
CIAs misadventures in Afghanistan.  Instead, the real
question is: where
do we, the inhabitants of this planet, go from here?
What is the lesson
to be learnt from the still smouldering ruins of the
World Trade Centre?

If the lesson is that America needs to assert its
military might, then
the future will be as grim as can be. Indeed,
Secretary Colin Powell,
has promised "more than a single reprisal raid". But
against whom? And
to what end? No one doubts that it is ridiculously
easy for the US to
unleash carnage. But the bodies of a few thousand dead
Afghans will not
bring peace, or reduce by one bit the chances of a
still worse terrorist
attack.

This not an argument for inaction: Osama and his gang,
as well as other
such gangs, if they can be found, must be brought to
justice. But
indiscriminate slaughter can do nothing except add
fuel to existing
hatreds. Today, the US is the victim but the
carpet-bombing of
Afghanistan will cause it to squander the huge swell
of sympathy in its
favour the world over. Instead, it will create nothing
but revulsion and
promote never-ending tit-for-tat killings.

Ultimately, the security of the United States lies in
its re-engaging
with the people of the world, especially with those
that it has
grieviously harmed. As a great country, possessing an
admirable
constitution that protects the life and liberty of its
citizens, it must
extend its definition of humanity to cover all peoples
of the world. It
must respect international treaties such as those on
greenhouse gases
and biological weapons, stop trying to force a new
Cold War by pushing
through NMD, pay its UN dues, and cease the
aggrandizement of wealth in
the name of globalization.

But it is not only the US that needs to learn new
modes of behaviour.
There are important lessons for Muslims too,
particularly those living
in the US, Canada, and Europe. Last year I heard the
arch-conservative
head of Pakistan's Jamat-i-Islami, Qazi Husain Ahmad,
begin his lecture
before an American audience in Washington with high
praise for a
"pluralist society where I can wear the clothes I
like, pray at a
mosque, and preach my religion".  Certainly, such
freedoms do not exist
for religious minorities in Pakistan, or in most
Muslim countries. One
hopes that the misplaced anger against innocent
Muslims dissipates soon
and such freedoms are not curtailed significantly.
Nevertheless, there
is a serious question as to whether this pluralism can
persist forever,
and if it does not, whose responsibility it will be.

The problem is that immigrant Muslim communities have,
by and large,
chosen isolation over integration. In the long run
this is a
fundamentally unhealthy situation because it creates
suspicion and
friction, and makes living together ever so much
harder. It also raises
serious ethical questions about drawing upon the
resources of what is
perceived to be another society, for which one has
hostile feelings.
This is not an argument for doing away with one's
Muslim identity. But,
without closer interaction with the mainstream,
pluralism will be
threatened.  Above all, survival of the community
depends upon strongly
emphasizing the difference between extremists and
ordinary Muslims, and
on purging from within jihadist elements committed to
violence. Any
member of the Muslim community who thinks that
ordinary people in the US
are fair game because of bad US government policies
has no business
being there.

To echo George W. Bush, "let there be no mistake". But
here the mistake
will be to let the heart rule the head in the
aftermath of utter horror,
to bomb a helpless Afghan people into an even earlier
period of the
Stone Age, or to take similar actions that originate
from the spine.
Instead, in deference to a billion years of patient
evolution, we need
to hand over charge to the cerebellum. Else, survival
of this particular
species is far from guaranteed. 

The author is professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam
University,
Islamabad.

(distributed by Znet, http://www.zmag.org)


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