A hard look in the mirror

The West urges Muslims to engage in serious introspection. But Islamic thinkers speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly say soul-searching should happen on both sides. Omayma Abdel-Latif reports
Following 11 September, relations between the Muslim world and the West have reached their most crucial phase in recent times. Many Muslims have grown increasingly disquieted by the demands, peddled by a chorus of Western voices, which insist that Muslims should engage in serious introspection and try to produce a version of Islam (inevitably labelled "moderate") that is less hostile to the West. "Muslims and Arabs should stop blaming America and Israel for all their failings and should ask themselves why have they failed to produce a viable cultural model," urged one US writer.
While many Muslims admit that 11 September requires a sense of intellectual responsibility and criticism, they dismiss Western assumptions about Islam's "failings" as based on simplistic renderings of the issues facing the Islamic world.
Several Muslim thinkers believe that the reasons for any Islamic "failure" to deal with "modernity" are deeply embedded in a century of continuous Western meddling in the region. Tariq El-Bishri, former head of Egypt's State Council, and author of numerous works on Islamic political thought, admits that there has been failure to develop an effective modern cultural model based on Islam, but that this line of argument ignores the drastic impact of the colonial era. "It is not simply blaming the West for the sake of it. It has to be understood that the colonisation period was not just about military occupation or political hegemony. It struck at the very basis of the social structure and imposed a value system that was not a product of our own culture," he said. El- Bishri also argues that it is equally important to remember that certain elements of the "Western model" were imposed, not chosen. "We are not against the Western model as a whole, but the problem is that politics was at the heart of what was given to us. We were not left to select what suited our own needs as developing nations and our value system, and therefore we were not able to formulate a cultural model in which we could employ our own legacies."
Other Arab thinkers point to the draining of national resources by internal conflicts, many precipitated by the West. Munir Shafiq, writing in the London- based Al-Hayat newspaper this week, argues that even now, the Islamic world, its land, people, civilisation and sacred places are attacked and humiliated. "This proves that we are not finished with the liberation phase. We are still fighting our battles for independence, and what goes on in Palestine sums it up," he wrote.
While some may find it mere casuistry to blame history rather than the politics and culture of the day for the failure to develop an indigenous model of progress, Islamic thinkers have abundant evidence to suggest they have thought deeply about reform. Writings, ideas and researches on the issue abound. A recent effort to draw from Islam's intellectual legacy and provide a model of governance is that written by Rafiq Habib, a Protestant, and a staunch believer in political solutions rooted in Islamic civilisation. In his book, The Liberation Manifesto of Al-Ummah, published this year, Habib looks, from a nationalist perspective, at the salience of developing a socio- political model which does not ignore people's cultural and religious sensitivities -- something many Western models are guilty of. Habib also asks the important question: why have Arabs and Muslims lagged in evolving a modern Islamic political model? Development and progress at the turn of the century, wrote Habib, only meant one thing: adopting a Western perspective. "So it was rather a process of transferring a certain model to our land, never a process of learning," he wrote.
Some, though, reject entirely a discourse which tries to assess whole cultural formations as if they are all isolated from each other, and monolithic. They point out, for example, that Islam and the West have been involved in a fertile cultural exchange for centuries, and continue to be so. With almost 15 million Muslim living in Europe and almost six million in the United States, it becomes absurd to talk of them as being members of separate, isolated civilisations.
Some, though, do look to the region for cultural and political failures. Fahmi Howeidy, an Al-Ahram columnist who writes on Islamic affairs, blames shortcomings on the ruling secular elites who have been at the helm of power since independence and who he blames entirely. "These elites," observes Howeidy, "have worked hard to abort any natural development of an Islamic model. The only time when Muslims will be able to introduce an Islamic model," says Howeidy, "will be in a free democratic context, and I say free [rather than Western], so that they won't be concerned with copying the Western model," he explains.
But for most observers, while the battle has been lost at elite level, popular feeling offers more grounds for hope. Many speak of the conspicuous signs of what political analyst Wahid Abdel-Maguid of Al-Ahram's Centre for Strategic and Political studies terms 'Islamisation from below.' Both El-Bishri and Howeidy think that the battle between Egypt's secular and religious elites for the support of the masses, which was launched at the turn of the century, has now tilted in favour of the Islamic project, (however vague this is as a label). At the turn of the century, argues El-Bishri, people were not sure which model they wanted to adopt; the traditional Islamic platform or Western "modernity." Now, says El-Bishri, the picture could not be clearer. Those impressed by the Western model, and those who want to stick with static traditions have become a clear minority. "Now, mainstream Islam, which is more concerned with an Islamic enlightenment project, reigns supreme and the 'Islamic mechanism' remains society's ultimate point of reference," he argues.
Such conclusions, though, run counter to the picture portrayed in some post- 11 September writings, which suggest that the end of political Islam is imminent. Hazem Saghyia, a prominent Arab nationalist thinker, writing in Al- Hayat newspaper earlier this month, likened the impact of 11 September on Islamist ideology with the impact of 1967 on Arab nationalism.
Islamist thinkers and political Islam experts reject the analogy. They even refute the link drawn between political Islam and the attacks of 11 September. "Who said that Osama Bin Laden is political Islam?" Howeidy asks, angrily. He believes that Al-Qa'eda is not a product of the Islamist movement, but a natural product of authoritarian and oppressive ruling systems. "Why does the West want Islam to be another copy of Christianity? Why should we be associated with what Al-Qa'eda has done?" Howeidy asks.
It is not likely that answers will come. Instead, a tightening of security measures is surely on the way. Nabil Abdel-Fattah, an expert on political Islam, thinks that radical Islamist movements will be further besieged and that even official religious establishments will be the target of state reform and efforts to neuter them. "Those who stand in the face of... the establishment will be ostracised," says Abdel-Fattah. He further believes that reform should be led by the establishment, rather than outside powers, or it risks being seen as yet another expression of Euro-American hegemony, and will be violently resisted.
Muslim thinkers have a final thought: introspection by the West. "The West has drastically failed to understand and even accept that Muslims could have a different vision of the world [to them]," says Howeidy. "They have excised the idea of God from their system, whereas this idea is at the heart of what we stand for. We simply have a different vision and they have to listen to it and accept it as it is," Howeidy told the Weekly. While Howeidy's request may fall on deaf ears, it suggests that if both Muslims and Westerners are keen to recover the crisis into which their relationship has plunged, serious introspection is warranted: on both sides.
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