June 30, 2006

Close to Home

1400 years ago, the Caliph Hazrat Omar had said that, even if a cur went hungry in his realm, he would hold himself accountable. The Caliph recognized that the roots of terror were hunger and injustice.
1400 years later, in search of terror, the real terror may be much closer to home.
The time may have come to broaden today’s definition of terrorism. For the hungry, hunger is terrorism. Poor health for the infirm and the elderly is terrorism. Homelessness is terrorism for those without shelter. Crime is terrorism for the unprotected. Joblessness is terrorism for those unemployed. Drugs are terrorism for those addicted and for families bearing the brunt. And so, too, perhaps, is hopelessness which by itself is self-destructive.
All or some of these exist aplenty, whether it is in New York or in New Delhi, near the White House, or next to the palaces of Mideast potentates.
Occupation, too, can be terrorism.
There is abundant evidence that the ‘war on terrorism’ is going nowhere. It is a train whose brakes have failed and whose engineers do not know when to stop it or how to prevent it from being derailed. The one thing this so-called ‘war on terrorism’ may have succeeded in doing is to splash the savagery and insanity of indiscriminate terror across the world.
It is time to pause, take stock of the situation, and re-examine results. Equally important is the need to take a closer look at the socio-political milieu of the Muslim world to ascertain why it is so vulnerable to external intervention and internal instability.
And why it is becoming increasingly easy to isolate Muslim nations in the global arena and to scapegoat Muslims before the international community.
The prevailing political culture of the Muslim world has become a fertile ground for breeding skilled sycophants and inept managers. It is also producing far more informers than performers. Energies which could be better focused on meeting hard challenges instead are squandered in the pursuit of gimmickry and marketing new brands of dubious value, like ‘soft image’ and ‘pragmatism’. Pragmatism is sometimes a mask for hypocrisy.
Leadership failures have fed and fueled extreme fury and frustrations. Exploiting the misdeeds of the few and extrapolating from it to tarnish the many is a diversionary tactic and a trap to keep the Muslim world on the back-foot. This imposed categorization of collective guilt on the innocent majority can entrap and lure the unsuspecting into a defeatist quagmire.
What to do? There are no easy answers. If there were, they would have been long discovered. But some preliminary steps are basic and unavoidable: talk straight and stand up for what matters.
The political culture of false praise and vicious backbiting, along with the misuse of positions of public trust for private benefit, has wreaked havoc on character and development. How to make all of this less politically rewarding is a key challenge. The real fight is close to home.