ACCORDING to some highly regarded scholars, there is a mighty clash between Islam and the West going on right before our eyes. It is believed that the clash is not a recent phenomenon, for it could be said to have been formalized in the year 1095 when Pope Urban II launched the first Crusade, and that it did not end when the eighth and the last Crusade ended in 1271.

The clash continued intermittently in the following centuries, but lost its focused fervour as a result of the more pressing preoccupations of the Christian powers, such as 400-year long quest for empires, always violent and often brutal, all over the world, the Hundred Years’ War, the Thirty Years’ War, the War of Jenkins’ Ear (clipped by Spaniards, not Arabs), the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and, of course, the cold war that twice brought the world on the verge of extinction. Samuel Huntington, the discoverer of the clash of civilizations, insists, however, that ‘Islam has bloody borders.’

Having said that, let me add that Huntington is not guilty of falsehood so much as of propagating a vicious half-truth. The whole truth is that both Muslims and Christians have fought more wars, killed more people, and caused more destruction than any other people in history, and that the Christians have proved more efficient and inventive in disposing of fellow human beings.

Now, after more than 700 years, there has begun, it is believed, another phase of direct and focused clash between the Muslim and the Christian peoples. Much has been written and spoken on the subject, especially since 1993, but despite enormous academic labour and media attention, there is no agreement on the precise nature and the cause of conflict. The ambiguities, evasiveness and dissimulations persist. No wonder, then, that the debate on the subject, in whatever way formulated, is now a muddle wrapped in confusion, for it is woven around categories (fundamentalists, militants, jihadis, terrorists) that conjure up shadowy figures, epitomized in the person of Osama bin Laden, brooding over the world they would rather destroy. The debate is, thus, concluded before it is begun.

One of the reasons why there is so much of theoretical confusion on the subject is the way the problem or the issue is formulated. ‘Islam and the West’, and other similar formulations, for example, imply that the clash is between the Islamic ideology (supposedly orthodox, militant, anti-West and intolerant) and the West that is supposed to be a distinct civilization representing the values of democracy, human rights, liberal moral code, tolerance and free-market economy. The clash is, thus, between two ideologies and, hence, global and eternal, unless one of the two ideologies fades away.

This view, despite much scholarly advocacy, remains clouded by dissimulation as it ignores or trivializes some very significant facts of the recent history that are still fresh in the minds of the people across the world. To mention only one such fact, all through the cold war there existed a strong bond between the Muslim nations and their orthodox religious parties, and the West, on the basis of ideological affinity, supported, promoted and accepted by western scholars.

There were, of course, some Muslim countries (Egypt, Iraq, Syria) that were anti-West, but they were the ones which were also secular states, and known for their persecution of the religious parties. This fact alone should be good enough reason to reject the thesis that the Islamic ideology, even as interpreted by the orthodox ulema, is inherently and irrevocably hostile to the West.

Some western scholars have put in enormous effort to ferret out verses, incidents, opinions and fatwas to prove that according to the Islamic faith, those who are not for Islam are against it, and should be put to the sword, whereafter they would for ever burn in hell. Here is an interesting thought for such scholars. According to verse 62 of Sura al-Baqarah “those who believe and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”

This verse has been a subject of much comment by Muslim theologians, but none more interesting or instructive (for Muslims and non-Muslims alike) than the one by Maulana Maudoodi, who was an ultra-orthodox scholar. According to him, the purpose of this verse was to refute the arrogant claim of the Jews that salvation has been promised for them alone.

The second flaw in the formulation ‘Islam and the West’ is that it implies that the conflict is with the West as a whole, not just with some western nations. The world of Islam as a whole is supposed to be arrayed against whole of the western-Christian world. This enables the authors of such formulations to globalize the conflict. But is there, in fact, a global conflict going on? All that we have to do to answer this question is to identify those conflicts that have agitated the minds of the people in the Muslim world, and see whether they add up to a clash with the entire western world.

The major areas of conflict, on-going or recently concluded, are well-known and well-documented. Excluding minor irritants, these are: the Middle East, Kashmir, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya. Looking at these conflicts in the context of ‘Islam and the West’, it is quite obvious that in four of the five areas of conflict (Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo) the fury of the alleged Islamic wrath is not directed against the West.

In fact, in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya (before 9/11), the West was supportive of the Muslim communities that were fighting for their right of self-determination which is a secular, even western, concept. The same is true of Kashmir where, again, the question is one of the right of self-determination, not of the establishment of an orthodox Islamic state. Thus, in four out of five major areas of conflict in the Muslim world, the West is not the target, nor Islamic orthodoxy the motivation.

This brings the focus on the Middle East. Now, how much of the West and how much of Islam is involved in the Middle East? First, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here the Palestinian militancy is directed, primarily, against the Israelis, who have occupied their lands and, next, against the US for having defended and supported the Israeli excesses. So the conflict is about land, and is between the Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian) and Israelis. The rest of the Muslim world, and the rest of the West, is not directly involved in the conflict, but some countries do support, or have sympathy for, one of the two parties on the basis of cultural or political affiliations, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Such being the fact, it is hard to see a mighty clash between Islam and the West going on in Judaea.

Finally the second level of conflict in the Middle East, that is, the conflict between the Arab aspirations and the US policies in the wider context of the Middle East. The present discontent among the Arabs dates from the Gulf War that led to the stationing of American, and some British, ground, air and naval forces in the Gulf states. The war itself had nothing to do with Islam or the West. Iraq, a Muslim country, attacked and occupied Kuwait, another Muslim country, and was forced to withdraw by the coalition consisting of a number of western and Muslim countries, acting under the aegis of the United Nations. The US military played a major role in the conduct of war itself. This, in brief, is what happened. One can sniff about long and hard all over the Iraqi-Kuwaiti-Saudi battlefields without ever being refreshed by a single whiff of an ideological scent of any kind. There is, however, the aroma of oil all over the place.

Thus, what appears to be a clash between Islam and the West is confined to the Middle East, and arises out of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands, and the commercially strategic interest of the West in the Middle eastern oil. When President Nixon invited the foreign ministers of 13 industrialized countries to an emergency conference in February 1974 after the Arab oil embargo, Kissinger opened the discussion with the warning of a ‘collapse of the world economy’ unless collective measures were taken. Although no collective measures were taken, and the world economy did not collapse, it was a big crisis for the West. But that kind of crisis is not possible anymore.

The support for Israel as a western outpost, and control over the Middle Eastern oil, did make sense during the cold war when the power and influence of the Soviet Union could have seeped into the Middle Eastern politics. But today Israel, with an arsenal of about 200 nuclear warheads, cannot be threatened by its neighbours, and the Middle Eastern oil cannot go anywhere but to the buyers. Why should, then, the Israeli excesses be supported, condoned or overlooked by the West? And why play with the Arab sentiments by stationing US military forces in the Gulf states when its lethal and global reach cannot be defied?

But, our western friends may ask, how about those angry, suicidal fanatics who would not stop short of blowing up planes, demolishing buildings and killing innocent people? Well, they are being pursued and disowned, now that their potential for mindless destruction has so rudely impacted our consciousness. Pursue them by all means but also pursue the cause of a just world order, for injustice breeds that all-consuming passion to get even in death, if not in life.

Email: tvo@isb.comsats.net.pk