A Muslim's
Shame and Outrage
By Dr Shireen M. Mazari
The angry helplessness
keeps growing as one watches the murder of the Lebanese
people by the Israeli state, aided and abetted by
the US. Clearly, the will of the international community
has been effectively thwarted by the US, at the
UN Security Council, which wants Israel to continue
to kill Lebanese and Palestinians till its murderous
appetite is sated.
How much blood of these hapless peoples will have
to be spilled before the Israelis are satisfied?
The world will only know when the US, supported
by its continuing faithful sidekick Blair of Britain
(this is what Brittania has been reduced to!), allows
a ceasefire resolution to go through in the UNSC.
Of course, judging by the past record, this satiation
of the Israeli appetite for Arab blood will only
be temporary, but it will allow some breathing space,
literally, to the Lebanese and Palestinian people.
That one powerful state can prevent the whole world
from providing some succor to the victims of a rogue
state and can reduce international law to nought
shows the fragility of an international system premised
on law and basic rules of conduct in peacetime and
in war. But of course, post-9/11 Muslim and Arab
blood has become cheap and the US itself has shown
its penchant for depriving Muslims of even the most
basic of human dignity –be it in Qila Jhangi,
Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib or Bagram.
So the rage continues to build across the world,
but especially in Muslim civil societies. As a Muslim
I am angry not only at the US and Israel but also
at the Muslim states which have shown a total lack
of courage and will to challenge the lawlessness
of the Israeli-US combine which is resulting in
the murder of countless innocents in Palestine and
Lebanon. With all its combined economic and military
potential and capabilities, the Muslim World has
shown an amazing degree of haplessness in the face
of the Israeli military aggression. A lack of unity
and parochial interests has made the OIC, for all
intents and purposes, the Organization for Immobilised
Countries. One by one each can be victimized at
will it would appear -- especially within the Arab
World. Yet Article II (A:4&6 and B:4) of the
OIC Charter provides its members with legitimate
grounds for intervention in Lebanon.
An emergency meeting of the executive committee
of this ineffectual body will take place in Malaysia
on August 3, but it would have been more appropriate
if an OIC envoy had paid a visit to Beirut at least
two weeks earlier. Even in symbolic terms it would
have given a feeling to the Lebanese that they had
not been abandoned by the Muslim World. As it is,
as a Muslim I watched in vain to see a timely high
profile visit from a Muslim leader to Beirut even
as representatives of European countries arrived
in that besieged capital. And as a Muslim I have
been reduced to shame to see the damning silence
of the Muslim World in the face of the continuing
killings of Arabs by the Israelis and in the face
of the impassioned pleas of the Lebanese leadership.
Earlier, in Rome, Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime
minister, in a voice trembling with emotion, listed
the unending record of Israeli aggression against
the Lebanese state as Condoleezza Rice stood unmoved
and determined to indulge Israel's killing spree,
and Kofi Annan showed his bureaucratic mindset which
circumscribed his condemnation of Israeli aggression
in Lebanon. This should be one reason why a UN bureaucrat
should never be made Secretary General of the organization.
Watching this Rome press conference was a source
of pain and anger not only at the impunity of the
US -- which continued to rationalize Israel's aggression
against innocent civilians -- but also at the absence
of the Muslim states' voices of protest. A few whimpers
is all one continues to hear but no challenge to
the Israeli killing spree.
Are the Muslim states' really so helpless in the
face of Israeli aggression and killing? We, who
are so ready to kill each other, have been frozen
into inaction as the brave nation of Lebanon faces
the might of a murderous Israel. Or is it our internal
differences that prevent us from unifying into a
source of power and strength? Is this what the Ummah
has been reduced to? I also wonder whether the civil
societies in Europe felt the same rage and frustration
as Hitler proceeded unhindered in his murderous
designs and leaders like Britain's Chamberlain acquiesced
at Munich?
As a so-called moderate or "westernized"
Muslim I resent the unhindered targeting of Muslim
states by the powerful and their allies -- especially
the US and Israel. And, in this context, I cannot
help but admire those amongst us who have the courage
to fight for the just cause of Palestine and the
battle against Zionist aggression. But as an ordinary
Muslim who has never seen the need to wear my religion
on my sleeve, I am also frustrated at the continuing
loss of political and social space to the extremists
in our midst, because of the sheer ineffectiveness
of the mainstream Muslim political leadership to
defend the rights of the Muslims and to protect
the Muslims from the killings at the hands of rogue
and criminal states.
The force of the Bush Administration's unilateralism
is all-pervasive. In the Middle East it is allowing
a bloodbath of the Arabs. Closer to home it is giving
cover to India's proliferation record and seeking
to provide India with a legitimate cover for its
LIC operations against Pakistan by seeking to give
Indian forces legal access into Afghanistan under
the guise of "international peacekeepers".
It seems there are no limits to the US pursuing
its unilateralist agenda just as there are no effective
limits on Israel's murderous designs within its
own neighborhood.
The Muslim states of the Middle East are being ripped
asunder and Rice has the nerve to proclaim that
these are the birth pangs of a "new Middle
East"! The foundations of a subjugated Arab
world are being built on Arab blood, especially
that of its future generations --given what seems
to be the special targeting of children in Lebanon
and Palestine. I suppose the US logic in allowing
Israel its killing spree, and obstructing international
calls for an immediate ceasefire is to let as many
of the next generation of Lebanese and Palestinians
be killed as is possible so that eventually there
are few left to fight the tyranny of Israel and
its expanding occupation of Arab lands.
The voice of the Muslim states has been muted effectively.
But the voice of the Muslim people cries out loudly.
As a Muslim, I see us besieged from without and
from within and as the carnage continues against
the Palestinians and Lebanese my sense of outrage
at Israel and the US is juxtaposed by my shame as
part of the Muslim Ummah.
(The writer is director general of the Institute
of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Courtesy The
News)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
