• The "new Orientalism"  - Alastair Crooke
Since the "new barbarians" live outside of civilization, civilized rules no longer apply to them: if "they" win elections they can still not be part of "us".

• Racism and resistance define many West-Middle East encounters  - Rami G. Khouri
No other national or religious groups are repeatedly singled out by western leaders and associated with terror, violence and imminent threats to western civilization as are Arabs and Muslims.

• What of the famous British model of integration?  - Wendy Kristianasen
Blair has clouded progress with a perverse and disastrous foreign policy, as Bush's subaltern in conflict after conflict.

• The US should hold Arabs and Muslims to a universal standard  - Michael Rubin
In an Orwellian reversal of logic, those who demand that Arabs be held to the same standards of human rights are often labeled anti-Arab.

The "new Orientalism"
 Alastair Crooke

It's unconscious. It slips out almost inadvertently. It is not deliberate but, rather, a reflex: an Israeli commentator discusses options for clearing Hizballah from the area south of the Litani River in the context of the war in Lebanon. After reviewing the options he adds, in an almost despairing note, that probably whatever Israel does, almost certainly a "Hizballah terrorist will pop up somewhere on the back of a donkey with a rocket."

The imagery is clear, but paradoxical. Clear because his report implies a grudging and bemused respect for a foe that unexpectedly is not being crushed by the Israeli onslaught (as every western and Israeli analyst had assumed), paradoxical, because whatever the force that was frustrating this mighty military machine, it was certainly something more than "a man on a donkey". Why the donkey? Because this foremost proponent of modern asymmetrical guerrilla warfare--Hizballah--must nevertheless somehow be associated with obscurantism, with a reaction against western modernity and a desire for a return to a pre-modern age. It's just how we see things.

In the five years since 9/11, a most worrying and widespread political trend in western societies has been the broad identification of Islam with terrorism. The translation of that general perception into specific foreign policies by leading western powers has led to dangerous new confrontations in the predominantly Islamic Arab-Asian region. It has driven military interventions and "regime change" policies spearheaded by the United States, sometimes with Europeans and Israelis on board. These tensions have also dovetailed with the persistent Arab-Israel conflict, aggravating both simultaneously.

In response, a new coalition of forces has emerged in the Middle East, prompted by a growing collective will to defy and sometimes militarily resist western-Israeli policies. Such resistance includes the use of force in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, and pushing back politically against western-Israeli hegemony. Iran, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood groups and remnants of leftist and nationalist movements have all found themselves motivated by common fears of American-Israeli-driven policies. The recent fighting in Lebanon highlighted these new battle lines, whose origins can be traced back in part to aggressive post-9/11 American strategies to "drain the swamp" in the Arab-Islamic Middle East.

The problem as seen by many in the Middle East is three-fold. First, since the end of the Cold War, the US and the West in general have seemed to need a new defining global paradigm to regulate relations among states or groups of states. Many in the West seem to have opted for the "clash of civilizations" theory, which was quickly reduced to a West-Islam face-off. Incompatibilities and threats, rather than shared values and ethical-religious legacies, quickly defined the public discussion of Islam and the West in many parts of Europe and North America. 9/11 instantly propelled this dynamic to catastrophic new heights of anger and aggression.

Second, the American and British governments misdiagnosed and then over-reacted to 9/11 and other terror attacks, in London and Madrid particularly. They opted for an aggressive military and diplomatic strategy that seeks to defeat terror groups, but also to change regimes and modify governance systems, along with some basic social values, in Arab-Asian societies. The West is no longer just suggesting gradual policy reforms to Arab-Asian countries--it is sending in the Marines to do the job by force, often dictating the values and systems the target countries should adopt.

Third, George W. Bush and Tony Blair in particular have incessantly spoken of their fear that radical Islamic values and the acts of terror groups threaten the western way of life, and must be beaten with a robust display of western power and determination waged in a great civilizational "battle for hearts and minds". The most recent catch-all phrase to describe the bad guys in the Middle East-Asian region is "Islamo-fascists"--a stunningly simplistic convergence of a noble ancient religion from the Middle East with an evil modern political ideology that was born in Europe. When two leading figures like Bush and Blair repeatedly speak of Islamic values, radical terror groups and ideologies and threats to western lifestyles as one seamless set of ideas, the damage over years is devastating.

It is in the public mind and mass media throughout the West where the criminal terror acts of fringe groups like al-Qaeda or local copy-cats have been conflated with the religion and values of Islam as a whole. Serious social science research indicates that public perceptions of Islam, Arabs and Muslims in western societies are now routinely associated with concepts like religious extremism or fundamentalism, political violence, terrorism, anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments, incompatibilities with western values, and security threats to western societies.

The confrontational cycle since 9/11 between many in the West and the Middle East has been fuelled by specific policies and incidents that can be widely interpreted as reflecting a new form of political racism in the West against Arabs and Muslims. The main charge is that the American-led West applies a double standard when it comes to Arab-Islamic countries or groups. Four particular recent issues reflect this feeling: the Danish cartoons controversy last winter, reactions to Iran's nuclear technology development, the response to Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections, and the relaxed Anglo-American attitude to calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hizballah war, after initially giving Israel weeks to pursue its widespread devastation throughout Lebanon.

Each of these issues reflects distinct dynamics and concerns. But in the eyes of much of the Arab-Islamic world they also share a common thread: they manifest in practical policy terms a prevalent western sense that the rights of Arabs and Muslims are broadly contingent on their first unconditionally accepting American-Israeli demands. This trend has been aggravated by the trauma of 9/11 and other terror attacks in the West, which prompt the US, UK and Israel to feel they can use any combination of military force and threats of sanctions to change the policies of Middle Eastern governments (Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, etc.) or non-state actors like Hizballah. The same values and strategies behind such threats and attacks are not applied in the same way against others, such as the IRA, North Korea, Israel, or Pakistan and India.

No other national or religious groups are repeatedly singled out by western leaders and associated with terror, violence and imminent threats to western civilization as are Arabs and Muslims. That is widely seen in the Middle East as racism in its latest form, and like all incidents of racism it has generated it own counter-movement to fight back.- Published 31/8/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

Rami G. Khouri is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and a book author and syndicated columnist.

Coming just over a year after the July 7 London bombings, which killed 52 people along with four young British suicide bombers, the uncovering on August 10 of a plot to commit "mass murder on a scale never before witnessed in Britain", in the words of the British home secretary, John Reid, has again put the spotlight on the United Kingdom's Muslims.

With eleven people in custody on August 23 (eight charged with conspiracy to murder and intention of committing acts of terrorism and three charged with offences under the Terrorism Act 2024), what has been the reaction of the British public? In the first poll after the alert, published in The Spectator on August 17, 86 percent of respondents said they expected a terrorist attack within the next year; half thought most Muslims were "moderates" and half favored passenger profiling. All quite predictable.

But there have been strange blips. Two men were taken off a holiday flight from Malaga to Manchester after passengers became suspicious of their appearance (catching sight of one of them on TV, I wondered why)--an incident that Khalid Mahmood, a Muslim MP, rightly dismissed as "hugely irrational". On the other hand, The Guardian reported on August 16 that, "broadcasters and newspapers were barraged with a wave of skeptical views from listeners and readers.... The mood of many seemed to be one of profound caution, even skepticism, over the allegations of a murderous scheme in which 50 people would try to bring down up to 20 planes between Britain and America."

What surprised and shocked the population, regardless of creed, last year and this, was that this could be the work of British-born-and-bred Muslims. How was it possible? What of the famous British model of integration? What is going on in Britain's Muslim community?

I turned to Ehsan Masood, a journalist and Muslim of Indian descent. Was Britain guilty of Islamophobia? He saw no real evidence of it in terms of abuse, physical or verbal: "just spikes after 9/11 and 7/7. Perhaps there'll be further spikes after the recent alert." What about in terms of attitude? There had been no real research, just newspaper surveys that he thought too small to be meaningful.

There are close to two million British Muslims, some three percent of the population. The majority is of Asian descent (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi). The highest concentration of Muslims, three-quarters of a million, lives in and around London (and speaks more than 50 languages). Of non-Asian communities, Iraqis, Turks, etc., have more recently been joined by Algerians, Somalis and others. There is the dazzling diversity of Londonistan and then there are parts of the UK that resemble virtual ghettos.

The formative events, according to the British Council's "British Muslims", which Masood authored, were the events following the publication of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" in 1989; the election of a Labor government in 1997; and the rise of al-Qaeda and 9/11 followed by the attacks in London and Madrid.

The columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown described the row over the Satanic Verses as the point at which British Muslims started to identify themselves specifically as such, rather than as members of their ethnic minorities: a cause for regret in her book. However, out of the turmoil came the formation of the Muslim Council of Britain, then, with Labor in power under Tony Blair, the first Muslims in parliament (elected to the Commons, appointed to the Lords), state funding for Muslim schools and, after Muslim lobbying, the appearance of religion in the nation's 2024 census. What irony then that Blair has clouded this fine progress with a perverse and disastrous foreign policy, as Bush's subaltern in conflict after conflict--Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine--angering Muslims across the world with duplicitous double standards.

British Muslims are surprisingly tolerant. But we cannot count on the present level of integration or dismiss the potential for anger and alienation. That is why the government would do well to heed the open letter to Tony Blair signed by 38 Muslim associations, three Muslim MPs and three peers after this latest alert. The letter said: "The debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all."- Published 31/8/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

Wendy Kristianasen is a journalist specialized in Middle East affairs and editor of Le Monde diplomatique's English language edition.

Is the West racist toward Arabs and Muslims? In the United States, the answer is both no and yes. The United States is about the best place any Muslim, Christian or Jew can live. They can speak freely and worship freely. Despite the rhetoric of some groups that claim to represent American Muslims, there is very little discrimination. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's hate crimes report, in 2024, the last year for which statistics are available, there were 1,374 religious hate crimes. Of these, 954 were anti-Jewish, 95 anti-Christian and 156 anti-Muslim. All of these are still too many but, in a country of almost 300 million people, such figures underscore the safety of American society and the tolerance of the American public.

Whether Muslims are born in the United States or immigrate to it, there is little impediment to their full participation in society. Indeed, Muslims in the United States are more affluent than the average American. They enter the best schools, build successful businesses or practices and experience little if any glass ceiling.

Why, then, can the United States be considered racist toward Arabs and Muslims? Simply put, because Washington policymakers and the foreign policy elite do not hold Arab and Muslim governments to the same standards to which they hold countries like Denmark and Sweden. Why should US or European policymakers react any differently to the Iranian government's abuses against striking Vahed bus drivers than we would to striking Gdansk shipyard workers? Are Iranian laborers any less deserving of justice than European workers? Are Tunisians any less deserving of free speech than Frenchmen?

This hypocrisy is most often apparent in western policy toward the Arab world. To summarize what eminent historian Bernard Lewis said regarding the question of democracy in the Arab world, there are two points of view, one of which holds that "Arabs are incapable of democratic government.... Arabs are different from us and we must be more, shall we say, reasonable both in what we expect from them and in what they may expect from us. Whatever we do, these countries will be ruled by corrupt tyrants. The aim of foreign policy, therefore, should be to make sure that they are friendly tyrants." This, he said, is the traditional "pro-Arab" view. In an Orwellian reversal of logic, those who demand that Arabs and other Muslims be held to the same standards of human rights are often labeled anti-Arab.

Many pundits argue that the US government cannot impose democracy upon the Middle East. True. Democracy is not possible without civil society, political accountability and the buy-in of local citizens. This does not mean that democracy cannot take root. According to The Guardian, a paper seldom accused of sympathy to US foreign policy, more than one-in-six Iraqis fled their country during the rule of Saddam Hussein. When they settled in the West, they experienced no cultural impediments to democracy. This suggests that the problem in much of the Middle East is not democracy, but rather rule-of-law. That many professional diplomats and elite commentators belittle even the concept of democracy taking root in the Arab world and majority Muslim nations is a sign of the condescension and contempt with which so many treat Arabs. These officials would let terrorists win by excusing their atrocities or, worse yet, forcing compromises upon those suffering from but resisting terrorist violence.

Some put a scholarly patina on their condescension. They try to differentiate between democracy and Islamic democracy, or human rights and Islamic human rights. They equivocate about the importance of religious freedom. But qualification of such concepts as democracy, justice, or human rights with an adjective never expands rights; it only restricts them.

Within policymaking circles, fear of stigma becomes an excuse to hold Arabs, Iranians and Muslims to a lower standard. Too often, policymakers and academics argue that to fund civil society, assist organized labor or speak out on behalf of dissidents could undercut reform. Most recently, many have condemned the allocation of $75 million to support democracy and civil society in Iran. True, the Iranian government may still brand civil society activists traitors. And many oppositionists are charlatans, eager to defraud Uncle Sam of a buck. But that is what quality control is for. The US should not judge what is in the best interests of dissidents or activists bold enough to ignore such stigma. Arabs, Iranians, and other Muslim civil society activists are perfectly capable of deciding what is in their best interest; the State Department should not presuppose to do it for them.

The United States may still be a multicultural haven of equality. It is too bad, then, that US policymakers still embrace a doctrine of condescension and inequality when it comes to demanding the same human rights standards for Arabs and Muslims and behavior from their governments that they do for European, Latin American and many Asian nations.- Published 31/8/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.