Handling of spat over island casts shadow on EU ambitions: DATELINE BRUSSELS

THE EUROPEAN Union’s muddled response to last week’s Spanish-Moroccan spat over the disputed Gibraltar Strait island of Perejil has cast a grim shadow over long-standing EU ambitions of rivalling the United States as global peacemaker.

Spain and Morocco turned to the US for mediation in ending the ten-day long crisis despite an offer by European Commission President Romano Prodi to facilitate discussions.

Prodi’s promise to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Spain despite Madrid’s use of military force to occupy the rocky isle also dented the credibility of Europe’s appeals to other feuding nations to resolve their differences through dialogue, not military action.

America’s intervention to end the Madrid-Rabat squabble reflected the reality of international politics where the US remains the only effective peace-broker, Spain’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ramon de Miguel admitted at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

Asked why as EU member Spain had turned to the US for help in dealing with a neighbour in the Mediterranean, de Miguel insisted: “This is not a sign of weakness of the EU, it is realpolitiks and practical politics.”

US Secretary of State Colin Powell helped Madrid and Rabat to finalise a peace deal on July 20 allowing Spain to withdraw the last of 75 elite Spanish soldiers who occupied the tiny island on July 16 after evicting a handful of Moroccan troops. The Spanish troops returned to their base in Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta, with both sides agreeing to return Perejil to the status that existed before the crisis.

Europe’s mishandling of the Spanish-Morocco conflict is expected to leave a long-lasting impact on EU efforts to forge a common foreign and security policy and speak with one voice on international issues, admit EU diplomats.

“It is clearly abnormal that such a situation has taken place between two countries like Spain and Morocco,” warned a French diplomat reflecting President Jacques Chirac’s ill-disguised irritation at Spain’s unilateral action against Morocco.

Striving to avert further diplomatic gaffes by Europe, France which has strong relations with Morocco, stopped the bloc’s Danish presidency from issuing a planned second EU statement supporting Spain last week.

Such a declaration could “do more harm than good,” warned a French diplomat, pointing to Morocco’s key role in the Mediterranean and in wider efforts to forge peace in the Middle East.

The European Commission has also come out looking the worse for wear. While EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten struck the right note by calling on both sides to “cool down,” Prodi repeatedly stressed Europe’s solidarity with Spain, warning Rabat that its actions were endangering a further deepening of relations with the EU.

Clearly unaware of the disputed status of Perejil, EU spokesmen also repeatedly referred to the isle as part of Spain.

Spain’s 500-year presence along the North African coast, including the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, has been a historical source of tension with Morocco.

Long-standing issues between the two countries also include Moroccan’s illegally migrating to Spain and the status of the Western Sahara region.

Aussies, Kiwi’s security concerns flimsy: SWINGING DRIVES

THE NEWS that the Sri Lanka ‘A’ cricket team will tour Pakistan next month, on its own, is not significant. But against the backdrop of the refusal of Australia and New Zealand to tour Pakistan because of security concerns for its players, shows up these concerns as being somewhat flimsy. Nairobi is deemed safe enough by the Australians but as far as New Zealand is concerned, they fear a player burn-out.

So be it New Zealand first toured Pakistan in 1956. Henry Cave was its captain and it included Bert Sutcliffe and John Reid, the same John Reid who became a match-referee and was all but declared persona non grata by Pakistan. That New Zealand team comprised mainly of gentleman-farmers and they played cricket for the love of the game.

The 1956 New Zealand team lost the series but won the hearts of the Pakistani cricket public for its show of sportsmanship. In the Lahore Test match, Pakistan was not chasing a target but were also chasing the clock. There was not the slightest attempt by New Zealand to slow things down. Indeed, they appeared to be hurrying in between overs. This gesture was not lost on the Lahore crowd nor on the two commentators, Jamshed Marker and me. Ask an old Lahori, and he will say that that New Zealand team was the most sporting to ever visit Pakistan.

There was also a bonding between the players of the two teams. Times have changed, not for the better, I fear. The New Zealand team is no longer made up of gentleman-farmers and its cricket board has become bureaucratic. When the outgoing PCB Director Brigadier Rana met Snedden, the CEO of the New Zealand Cricket Board in London, Martin Snedden claimed that all that Brigadier Rana and he had was a “conversation.” New Zealand had not agreed in principle to play in Kenya. This is, of course, nit-picking. To give Snedden the benefit of the doubt, the lines may have been badly crossed. But if Snedden did not fear a burn-out of his players, he should not have agreed to the triangular in the first place for he also says: “When we agreed to a shortened re-scheduled tour after the September-October tour had been cancelled, I saw this tri-series as one way of making up some of the cricket Pakistan missed as a result of the tour’s postponement.

The prospect of a pre-tournament appealed because it was in Asian conditions against good quality conditions.” So New Zealand had agreed in principle to play in the tri-series! There seems to be a smack of doublespeak here.

I have been one of those who has written a lot about too much cricket being played. The cricket captains who met in London have complained about player burn-out. I did not have player burn-out in mind. I was concerned about spectator or television viewer burn-out. A player can always opt out if he feels that he needs rest and unless a cricket board is bloody-minded, the player will be rested. But there are a lot of cricket matches or tournaments being arranged by private persons and there is the allure of good money to attract players. It is this private enterprise that needs to be looked at. I am not against it because if a player can pick up some extra money, good luck to him. But what concerns me is a fear of injury to a player.

These private tournaments are often played on grounds that are not meant for cricket and one does not know the condition of the pitch. Thus, the risk of injury is that much greater. Since the Pakistan players are not under contract to the PCB, they are free agents. But I would have thought that a player like Wasim Akram would be extra careful before trotting off to Houston. I don’t know anything about Houston beyond it being in Texas and a city where the family of the late Farooq Mazhar is settled. I was also of the view that Wasim Akram needed to be rested, every now and then, for he was injury-prone.

The decision to go to Houston was his own. Had he asked me, I would have advised against it. At the same time, I don’t believe it is for the captains to decide whether too much cricket is being played or not. It is for the cricket boards. Other games are being played all the year round, soccer, tennis, golf. Tiger Woods doesn’t play in all the tournaments. He is selective and the best judge of his burn-out.

The statement of a high-ranking Sri Lankan official, Mr Chandra Schaffter that match-fixing was still going on is dismaying. Mr Schaffter was Sri Lanka’s manager on the England tour. He was sacked midway but was reinstated, only to be fired again. He says that he can’t elaborate on his allegation but that the Sri Lankan team is “absolutely clean.” Who then is not “absolutely clean?” he does not say.

It is precisely these vague kind of allegations that have given cricket a black eye. I think he needs to be made to be more specific. Otherwise, he will just be another loud mouth and we have had enough of them, or at best, loose cannon, and we have also had enough of them.

Plato and mystical tradition of Islam

PLATO is the most acceptable Greek philosopher for Muslim mystics and almost all the great mystics believing in Wahdat-ul- Wujood have had a soft corner for him. His influence was considered to be baneful by those who were opposed to the very concept of the personal — not formal — experience of God.

It was at a meeting of the literary organization Zehn-i- Jadeed that Plato and Islamic mysticism came under discussion following the presentation of a paper, titled Islami Tasawwuf aur Hakim Aflatoon. The author was Prof Ehsan Sabir from Quetta, Balochistan. The learned professor went to great lengths to prove that the Platonic concept of religious experience was not different from the Vedantic philosophy. I believe there is no ambiguity in the proposition once the two opposite views are accepted as one and the same. The moment one comes round to believing that they are poles apart the whole edifice falls like a pack of cards.

Even Allama Iqbal, while denouncing the Iranian mysticism — it was long before denounced by the Safawi rulers — in Asrar-i-Khudi (1915) has confused Plato with a kind of an advocate of mysticism he dubs as world-weary and self- abnegating. Prof Yusuf Salim Chishti, perhaps the only companion of Allama Iqbal — though a junior one — is emphatic that Iqbal was a believer in Wahdat-ul-Wujood and all he wanted was to cleanse it of the Vedantic concept of Maya, i.e., the world as illusion. He coined the phrase Islami Wahdat-ul-Wujood to support his contention. Believing Rumi to be the ideal mentor of Iqbal — which he was — Prof Chishti doesn’t appear to be stretching the argument too far. There is no doubt that Rumi’s advocacy of Ibn Arabi and Shah Waliullah’s defence of Wahdat-ul-Wujood do not embarrass anyone who believes in Wahdat-ul-Wujood as the most liberal stream of thought in the Islamic world, and even some Marxist ideologues have upheld it as the most humanistic creed.

Listening to the learned professor’s paper it was quite easy to surmise that he was not breaking any new ground. Rather it amounted to stating the obvious. Plato is Plato because he does not send reason on French leave in any of his formulations. He hated the idea that someone could live without believing in God and, at the same, time thought it below God’s dignity to be propitiated by prayers and sacrifice. He also believed that the concept of God was linked with reason. This Platonic insistence knocks the bottom out of the mystics’ belief in the pre-eminence of intuition as the highest form of learning. Plato didn’t believe in the capacity of certain privileged intelligences to perceive the truth before it could be reached by reason. Truth, not proved by reason, was unacceptable to Plato.

How can it be possible, then, that with so much emphasis on the primacy of reason, Plato can be taken as a reference point for a form of mysticism which deflates reason as Rumi does so conclusively in his Mathnavi and Iqbal follows suit. So what is surprising is mystics’ insistence on drawing support from Plato. It proves Iqbal right because reason for him is not a strong point. It could hope to be fractionally correct, at best.

There are quite a few half-truths which have found currency and Plato has been the main victim of such half-truths. I am glad that the speaker of the evening dwelt at length with many half- truths. I wish that our departments of philosophy invited some of those scholars who have studied philosophers not in the classrooms with a view to passing their examinations through arbitrarily selected portions of philosophers’ works but studied them as a labour of love. Possibly an independence of outlook could be developed about philosophers and their works. May be a segment of study pertaining to a philosopher does not cover the whole perspective about a thinker; for instance, Plato’s views about democracy. As we know the ideal population of Plato’s republic is 5,000. Even with a small population like this, Plato dreaded the wrongs which the majority of that society was capable of committing.

How is it possible that the majority can make the ideal choice, Plato averred. He predicated that the right choice is possible only when those responsible for making the choice are equipped with consciousness to reflect properly on the issue. Quite a daunting task. He proceeds from here to the argument that given the fact that the education of a whole people is not possible the only way out, then, is to put power in the hands of those who are truly enlightened. This stance makes Plato an elitist thinker to conclude that human salvation lies in recourse to one and only one principle: kings ought to be philosophers, or philosophers kings. Only when is this condition met the ideal state could exhibit in a visible embodiment, and so for the first time in a perfectly intelligible form, those virtues which the old inductive method had so utterly failed to define.

Prof Sabir’s paper did full justice to the fact that no school of Islamic mysticism could draw its sustenance from Plato’s thought because it emphasized the primacy of reason to the hilt. A part of his paper, however, evoked a great deal of laughter when he deduced that the failure of democracy in Muslim societies — bordering on a distrust of it — could owe its genesis to Plato’s thought. May be Muslim kings thought themselves to be philosophers but they also ensured that no philosopher assumed power anywhere. The way Prince Dara Shikoh’s chances of coming to power in 17th-century India were trampled down under foot speaks volumes for our trust in philosophers. Numerous such instances can be quoted to prove this point further. So far, so good.

The professor however, went a step further. He said that Plato’s distrust of womenfolk is also noticeable in mystical Islam. Few women have been accepted as saints. Here, too, Prof Sabir tried to drag in Plato to prove himself right. He said that Plato believed that, “Women are innately inferior to men.” Socrates had stopped a little short of him by stating that, “They are ridiculously inferior to men,” but it is often forgotten that what passes for Platonic thought is only a half-truth as well. He also thought that many women could be superior to men, and he was appreciative of their innate abilities — which surpassed men’s — and he thought that their services could be utilized to the best advantage of the state.

Now to the most interesting point which Prof Sabir made. It was about Plato’s views on God and godhead. I believe that there is no joy for our mystics if they go by Plato’s views on God. I believe that there is no joy for our mystics if they go by Plato’s words in The Laws, an important part of his Dialogues. It is ordained there that even perfectly well- conducted persons who do not believe in God and refuse to be convinced by his arguments are to be “imprisoned in a reformatory for five years at least. Whether they are to be liberated with or without a recantation is not clear; but, at any rate, in case of repeating the offence, they should be put to death. And the same penalty is to be inflicted on those who believe that the gods can be propitiated by prayer or sacrifice, as also on those who practise private devotion.”

I endorse Prof Sabir’s plea that Plato’s Dialogues should be prescribed for every student who is studying at the university level because they are rightly considered the best embodiment of civilized discourse. What we are lacking today is the use of language as the highest form of emotional culture, as Bradforth Smith has beautifully said in his book A Dangerous Freedom. Without a language’s capacity to have the required level of effectiveness nothing could be put across to persuade people to right conduct and right behaviour — a quality which the Dialogues excel in as their ultimate virtue.