The great victim of the neo-conservative ascendancy will be liberal political systems everywhere, writes Hassan Nafaa* During the final week of September news agencies carried stories of two apparently unrelated incidents that took place in two different and distant countries. The first news item concerned the British journalist Robert Fisk being denied entry to the US, the second the conviction and imprisonment of media personality Taysir Allouni by a Spanish court. Allouni is of Syrian origin but holds Spanish citizenship and works for Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite channel. While the news about Fisk caused little stir the item about Allouni elicited widespread reaction that is likely to grow when his file is re-opened and examined in the court of appeal. At the time of the incident Robert Fisk was on his way to the American city of Santa Fe to participate in the Lannan Foundation's readings and conversations series. As he was preparing to board the plane that was supposed to take him from Toronto to Denver he was stopped by an immigration official and barred from travelling on the pretext that his paperwork was incomplete. The programme organisers were forced to set up a satellite conference with Fisk. Many of the news agencies that carried the item interpreted the incident as punishment for Fisk's political stance. One of the best known journalists working for one of the most balanced and respectable British papers, The Independent, Fisk has an extensive and deep understanding of the Middle East. His writing is characterised by balance, objectivity and a high degree of professionalism, and he is consistently critical of US policy in the region. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the article Fisk published in the Independent immediately prior to this incident began thus: "We have long ago lost our moral compass, so how can we lecture the Islamic World?" (19 September 2005). Most commentators see denying Fisk entry to the US as punishment for his broad condemnation of Western policy. Allouni's case is very different. An Arab Muslim who settled in Spain and obtained Spanish citizenship, Allouni is one of millions of young people who have emigrated, and continue to do so, in search of a better life or in flight from despotism. When he began to work as a correspondent for Qatar's Al-Jazeera channel it was the liberal West that taught him the fundamentals of modern media practice -- to be unbiased, investigate the truth at any price, present the views of all parties and separate between personal beliefs and the objectivity the profession demands. When he became the director of Al-Jazeera's Kabul office his star rose and he was able to transmit to the world a clearer picture of what was happening in Afghanistan, particularly during the American invasion. Because this picture was the opposite of the one Washington wanted to portray the US was angered to the point of working to silence him for good. His office was shelled and destroyed and he was the target of an assassination attempt. As soon as Allouni returned to Spain his name began to appear on lists of suspects in what became known as the "Spanish-Syrian cell", a group said to be linked to Al-Qaeda. Following the Madrid bombings and the attempt by the Spanish right -- then in power -- to exploit the incident to serve its own interests the case assumed clear political overtones. The case continued to mix the legal with the political, ending with the sentencing of Allouni to seven years in prison. The ruling came as a shock to many, including those with reservations about the performance of Al-Jazeera and Allouni himself, not least because Allouni was acquitted on all counts of having any actual affiliation with Al-Qaeda. Many thought the court's final verdict revealed gaping flaws. Allouni ostensibly received his sentence for delivering a small sum of money to a Syrian citizen who was later shown to be an Al-Qaeda member. The prosecution did not prove that Allouni knew his colleague was an Al-Qaeda member, or that he sought to deliver this paltry sum to assist the organisation in carrying out terrorist operations. It appears that the judge considered the fact that Allouni had conducted a filmed interview with Osama Bin Laden as sufficient evidence of sympathy with the aims and methods of Al-Qaeda, and had been swayed by the public prosecutor's description of this meeting as one in which Allouni "sat like a student before his master". (Fisk, incidentally, conducted an interview with Bin Laden several years earlier). Both Fisk and Allouni are examples of the kind of media professionals whose performance no longer pleases the West. As an expression of this displeasure the authorities used their powers to restrict Robert Fisk's freedom of movement, an act that deserves condemnation. The implications of the Allouni case are even more serious since they tarnish the reputation of the Spanish judiciary and raise doubts about its objectivity and independence. Tie all this to the actions of the United States and Britain, who deliberately misled the world in order to justify attacking Iraq, and the actions of their armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq including torture and the systematic violation of human rights in prisons such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and we can fairly raise questions as to the fate of the whole Western liberal mission. For centuries the West has boasted that it is the cradle of political liberalism, priding itself on being the liberalism's guardian and defender. Political liberalism and the West are viewed by the collective contemporary consciousness as Siamese twins. No one can deny the West's contribution to political liberalism has been definitive. Most of the greatest liberal thinkers, from Montesquieu and Rousseau in the 17th and 18th centuries till now have come from the West. The most important revolutions and political movements to raise liberal banners did so in the West. Yet despite this the West's proprietary claims over liberalism must be examined in light of several facts. Firstly, the seeds of liberal thought, which is based on freedom and tolerance of the "other", are to be found in all cultures and civilisations. The West's definitive contribution was made possible through its ability to form and develop political systems and mechanisms capable of embodying such thought and protecting it on the ground. The real dilemma here is that Western political systems, which were the first to embody the essence of liberal thought and have been most representative of it, have not always developed in an ascending linear manner. They still remain vulnerable to setbacks. The West, which created political systems that appeared the very embodiment of liberalism, has also produced Nazism, Fascism, racism and totalitarian political regimes of all stripes and colours. Nor is it true that, following the defeat of Fascism in World War II, it was liberal political systems that emerged victorious. The alliance that won the war had been formed on a geo-strategic basis, not on the basis of shared ideological orientation. It included liberal systems such as Britain, France and the US alongside the totalitarian regime of the USSR, which later became the Empire of Evil. The stabilisation of liberal systems in the West following World War II can, to a large extent, be traced to the presence of an outside threat represented by a super power which embraced totalitarian thought and a despotic political system. Liberalism began to be defined in terms of its difference to the totalitarianism that it increasingly posited as its opposite, leading to the ironic situation in which it was the very reach of communism that helped the West become more liberal and democratic. It is possible to argue that communism was more effective in protecting liberalism from its internal enemies than liberal ideology. The collapse of the USSR opened the path for the right in America, particularly its extreme Christian fundamentalist wing. This wing has local and international ambitions at the core of which is a discriminatory and racist agenda that poses a greater danger to political liberalism than communism and, perhaps, even Nazism. The Arab and Islamic world has so far focussed its attention on the foreign agenda of the neo- conservative project for the 21st century. Insufficient attention has been paid to the American right's domestic agenda, particularly that espoused by the fundamentalist religious wing. Their attacks on gay rights and abortion in the last presidential elections will now, predict many, expand to include attempts to regulate the behaviour of women more generally, and particularly their rights to join the workforce, and to govern the relationship between blacks and whites. The religious right will not rest until the United States is once again dominated by white Protestant males. Given the neo-conservative currents feeding America's attempts to secure its global dominance it can be argued that the US is currently embarked on a racist mission that has no relation at all to liberalism. It is no overstatement to suggest that US success in this endeavour will signal the end of liberal thought and political systems worldwide. * The writer is professor of political science, Cairo University.
