By Jumana Al Tamimi

Gulf News
GCC & Middle East Editor

Five years after 9/11, there is a lot of mistrust between America and Muslims.

Five years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, analysts and experts differ on the width of the chasm between the Americans on one side and the Arabs and Muslims on the other.

Analysts believe a basic level of mutual trust is needed before any dialogue or negotiations between the two parties, which has, nevertheless, started over the past couple of years with several meetings between intellectuals from both the sides.

Experts are still debating whether it is time for Washington to change its foreign policy or to be actively engaged in public diplomacy to make Arabs and Muslims “like America” in response to the US President’s question “why do they hate us”.

In the Arab and Muslim countries, American foreign policy, seen to be biased towards Israel in the Arab-Israel conflict, was believed to be one of the reasons for the attacks. The US-led war on Iraq, and earlier in Afghanistan, to punish Al Qaida – which claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks – has widened the gap between the two sides.

“I agree that policy is more important than public diplomacy,” said Shibley Telhami, a writer and non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Anwar Sadat, professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland, felt the same.

In an interview with Gulf News on the sidelines of a forum on America and the Islamic world held in Qatar in February, Telhami however added that “a lot of Americans don’t know it is about policy… sometimes Arabs themselves don’t know why America pursues a certain policy, what the reasons are, what the logic is”.

Telhami was a member of an official American commission formed to write recommendations about public diplomacy. One of the results “said it’s mostly about policy”.

“I think even if you have differences of opinion or conflict of interest, you have to have basic trust to be able to negotiate those differences, to be able to talk about the differences,” Telhami said.

“I think there are a lot of misconceptions about each other, even if policy accounts for 80 or 90 per cent of differences. The 10 or 20 per cent matter,” he added.

Apart from the perception that America is in the region for oil and to help Israel, many ordinary Arabs and Muslims have started believing the US is in the region to “weaken Muslims”.

In other words, there is no faith between the majorities on both sides. And this is because of interpretation of policies rather than the policies themselves, analysts say. Many American experts in the region are fully aware of the prisms through which the Arabs and the Muslim world looks at their country.

Important role

“In my view – that of a former American diplomat – the US has the most important outside role to help bring about an Arab-Israeli peace settlement because it can bring the parties to the table, and it can use its influence on both sides to come to a settlement,” said Edward Djerejian, former ambassador to Israel and Syria, and a former senior official at the US State Department.

“We have played that role in the past and I think we can play that role in the future,” he told Gulf News during an interview on the sidelines of the Doha Conference.

As for Iraq, the American troops were sent to put an end to the dictatorship of Saddam Hussain, he added. “We are not occupiers. We are not the British or French colonists of the 19th and early 20th centuries,” said Djerejian.

American experts stress the US administration “understands that it also has to work on the Arab-Israeli conflict” and they cite the trip of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Israel and the West Bank late last year, when she helped iron out the issue of opening the Rafah border crossing.

Barbara Slavin, a veteran American journalist and senior diplomatic reporter at USA Today, acknowledged the US administration is not popular in many parts of the world, but, she added, this is “including the US”.

However, on 9/11, a misty-eyed Slavin says, “I don’t think people in this part of the world ( Middle East) get it. It will take a generation in the US to forget it. Certainly, it causes a crisis in relations because the Americans were shocked.”

On the issue of the Palestinians, many in the region believe the issue “lost” some of its international support after 9/11 when the Palestinian resistance became part of the terrorist act.

“We have to get the Palestinian question out of the whole circle of terrorism … because violence is harmful and useless,” said Zeyad Assali, president of the American taskforce on Palestine.

Arabs and Palestinians should also seek “strategic” relations with the US, he said.

Assali said Arabs should work on changing American policy by explaining to Washington that its biased policy in the Middle East is damaging American interests in the region.

Another factor that could facilitate Washington’s efforts to improve its image in the region is education along with politics.

“After 9/11, there was a fear in the US about Arab students and scientists,” said Saad Hijazi, director of Amman-based Royal Scientific Society and former president of Jordanian Science and Technology University.

“This is a big mistake, and will widen the gap. Arabs who studied in the US will believe in its ideals of democracy and freedom. But keeping the Arabs away and opening American universities overseas would not serve the purpose,” Hijazi said. The purpose of being in the US is not just education, but also to be acquainted with the culture and way of life in the country, he explained.

But things are improving, he added.

Analysts stress people should not judge the US solely on its foreign policy.

“We may be wrong in policy, but it doesn’t mean our values and goals, and what we would like to see developed in other parts of the world are also wrong,” said Judith Kipper, director of Washington-based Middle East Forum.

A bridge across

Scholars say it is time Islam was explained to the West.

Many experts and religious scholars believe the time is ripe to explain Islam to the West, mainly the US, which is now extending a hand of friendship to Muslims after the relations between the two sides hit bottom during the past few years.

Religious figures and analysts, however, feel it is not just the Americans who need to change their perception of Muslims, the latter should change their attitude towards the former.

The deterioration in Muslim-American relations started with the 9/11 attacks, when the American perception of Muslims changed. Consequently, the attitude of Arabs and Muslims towards the US too changed. “Before 9/11, America was probably the freest, most welcoming society for Muslims,” Akbar Ahmad, professor of international relations at the American University in Washington, told Gulf News on the sidelines of a conference on America and Islamic countries held in Doha recently.

But the atmosphere has changed, and “unfortunately, after 9/11 there was an attempt to portray Islam as a monolith, as a religion of terrorism… Everything was taken off the boat and a new image of Islam began to form”, Ahmad added.

Comments by people who knew nothing, or very little, about Islam and Muslims in the American media only widened the gap, according to Ahmad, who is a former Pakistan High Commissioner to the UK, a prolific writer and a former visiting professor at some of the renowned international universities, including Harvard and Cambridge.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many Muslims and non-Muslims were attacked and abused in the US. Americans, who “didn’t know what Muslims look like”, attacked Sikhs and Hindus too, he noted.

The 19 hijackers who launched the 9/11 attacks were Muslims and Arabs.

“In the Muslim world, it was as bad. We too have similar stereotypes about America. We thought of America as a stereotype, a monolith,” added Ahmad.

Arabs and Muslims felt horrified and sorry for ordinary Americans because of the attacks. But very few actually realised the gravity of the situation.

Human tragedy

Muslims, who had a feeling of being victimised by the US, should also realise the attacks were actually a human tragedy, noted experts.

“During the past 50 years, we have got used to being under attack. [Our] culture, dignity and history are being attacked. The Palestinian problem has not been solved, the issue of Kashmir [between India and Pakistan] remains unresolved, the Chechens are under attack. Muslims have a sense of being under siege all the time,” said Ahmad.

However, the 9/11 attacks were “one of the most traumatic experiences for all Americans. We live in the age of globalisation, which meant that instantly, every American saw it on television and was seeing it again and again.”

Yet, from the attacks on the American mainland grew the need for dialogue.

“Americans are holding out a hand of friendship, this is a time for Muslims to respond. Muslims have to step forward and explain Islam,” said Ahmad. “There is a need for understanding and explaining Islam right now.”

Correcting the perception would be through explaining that Muslims have no problem with Americans, their values and way of life, but with their foreign policy.

Also, a dialogue would reveal there are many shared values, noted experts.

Edward Djerejian, a retired American diplomat said when he travelled through the Muslim world as the chairman of a US public diplomacy commission in 2003, he found “there are truly shared values, that Muslims look upon the American values, the Muslim values are basically very similar in terms of life, liberty, equality of opportunity, equality before the law, respect for American education, American scientific and economic achievement”. However, it is American foreign policy and the three “prisms” that Muslims and Arabs look at America through: the perceived US bias towards Israel, the war on Iraq and the support of autocratic regimes in the region.

While experts acknowledge the existence of groups which are “determined to reject Islam and misinform America”, they added it is more important for Muslims to explain what Islam is, at a time when the relations between the two have worsened.

“I want to stress that today the Muslim-West relationship is at the lowest level in recent history,” said Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Islamic Community of Bosnia-Herzegovina. “The reason is that, I think, the West is too arrogant” and looks down upon Muslims and the progress they have made in recent centuries, he believed.

The Danish cartoons were an example of the Western “arrogance”, Ceric told Gulf News during his visit to Doha to attend a conference on the US and Islamic countries.

However, the Muslims’ angry reaction did not help matters, nor did it give the true, bright image of Islam, said experts.
Note: http://archive.gulfnews.com/weekend/Special_Report/10025952.html

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