| 19 November 2004 | Friday | 06 Shawwal 1425 |
Breaking the deadlock
The dangerous dollar
The legacy of Arafat
Islamic law comprises rules of conduct revealed by God to His Prophet, whereby the people are directed to lead their lives. Thus, unlike the western systems of law, the laws of Islam originate from revelation and the opinion of the Prophet is a part of revelation.
God has said: "Your companion (the Prophet) errs not, nor does he deviate, nor does he speak out of desire. It is naught but revelation that is revealed. One Mighty in power has taught him, the Lord of strength. So he attained perfection." (Al-Quran: Al-Najam; 2-6).
Revelation is available to us in the form of the Quran and the Traditions of the Prophet. The Quran comprises only those revelations that were made in the very words of God, while the rest form the corpus of the Traditions.
The rules of conduct provided by the Quran and the Traditions comprise: 1. Laws that regulate men's relations to and dealings among one another; 2. Laws that are concerned only with the spiritual aspect of individual life; and 3. Laws that not only concern the spiritual aspect of individual life, but also affect the Muslim society as a whole.
Another distinctive feature of Islamic Law is that it attributes the authority of making laws to God only. According to Islam, no man or body of men can ever be capable of or allowed to make laws for other men. Now the big question arises that as the last set of laws made by God was bestowed upon mankind centuries ago, and as much has changed in the world since then, so in the absence of new laws for the new circumstances, how Islam managed to survive?
In other words, as men cannot make new laws and as God has also not given any further laws, how can Islam cope and deal with the modern issues? It is an established fact that a legal system has to continuously adapt to the needs of the changing time; otherwise, it loses its applicability and gradually fades away.
To begin with, as the laws available in the form of revelation are concerned, in them God has explained the fundamental principles of behaviour pertaining to all the essential human transactions, dealings, and matters. He says: "... I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favour to you..." (Al-Quran: Al-Maidah; 3)
"... And We have revealed the Book to thee explaining all things..." (Al-Quran: Al-Nahl; 89)"And certainly We have set forth for men in this Quran similitudes of every sort that they may mind." (Al-Quran: Al-Zumar; 27)
"... If you quarrel about anything, refer it to Allah (i.e., the Quran) and the Messenger (i.e., the Traditions), if you believe in Allah and the Last Day..." (Al-Quran: Al-Nisa; 59)
The above-narrated verses tell us that: 1. Revelation is a complete set of guiding principles; and 2. Revelation is well capable of settling and dealing with all controversies, conflicts, and problems.
However, whereas there is no room for the making of new laws, there is also no prohibition on the re-interpretation of the existing laws. This very process - which is highly encouraged by God and His Messenger - of innovation, extension, and re-interpretation of laws given in the Quran and the Traditions, in order to explain and analyze the legality of latest issues, is denoted by Ijtehad. It is the method of Ijtehad by which God has enabled the Muslim jurists to: 1. Make provisions for the developing circumstances; and 2. Prove Islam as a system of life practical for all times.
When a single jurist conducts Ijtehad, it is called 'Ijma.' If a Qiyas and an Ijma, both conducted at the same time regarding the same thing, come into conflict with each other, then Ijma is preferred over Qiyas. This is done due to the presumption that the jurists acting in a body are less likely to err than a jurist acting alone.
Let us see some examples of how the law is innovated and developed by way of Ijtehad. The Quran (al-Maidah; 90, 91) has forbidden the drinking of alcohol. The ban has been put due to its being an intoxicant. By using Ijtehad this ban on the non-medical use of alcohol is applied to the non-medical use of all substances that have the property of intoxication. Heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, etc, which are recent discoveries, are also prohibited for the same reason.
The Quran enjoins honouring of contracts and honesty in trade. These centuries old commandments are also applied to the present-day online contracts and e-business. Similarly, whether a person steals money by using the conventional methods, or by drawing cash on a stolen credit card, or by transferring sums to his account by manipulating the computer system of a bank, he will remain a thief and will be dealt with in accordance with the laws given in the Quran and the Traditions.
The law developed by way of Ijtehad may or may not be good for all times. The whole universe is in transition. Consequently, a rule that is suitable for a certain matter under the present circumstances may not remain so in future, if the facts governing the matter undergo a change. This explains the necessity for continuous exercise of Ijtehad.To put it differently, whereas the law given in the form of revelation cannot be altered, amended, or annulled by the Muslim jurists, the law obtained by practising Ijtehad can be and must be modified, replaced, or cancelled according to the demands of the latest facts and developments in the society.
Breaking the deadlock
India's decision to withdraw a part of its security forces from occupied Kashmir should help to mitigate the uncertainty which was beginning to undermine the prospects of the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan.
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the decision last week and the 'de-induction' has already begun. Pakistan as well as the Kashmiri freedom fighters have welcomed the move.
The slow pace of the dialogue was beginning to give rise to apprehensions that it could go on and on without any end in sight. The repeated affirmations by both sides to stay flexible rekindled hopes of some sort of normalization between the two countries. But then there were also reservations about their known positions on sensitive matters such as the future of Kashmir.
However, the prompt implementation of the promised withdrawal of forces has reinforced one's faith in Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh's will to bring about peace between India and Pakistan. There are also encouraging reports that he may soon announce a major economic package for the people of Kashmir and begin implementing the proposal for a bus service linking the two halves of the state.
It has been said that the governments in both India and Pakistan had become prisoners of their respective policy stances and attitudes and may find it difficult to break the barriers that divide them. However, the recent developments should go a long way to dispel the scepticism. There are now what have been called glimmers of hope.
It is nevertheless disconcerting that the interlocutors from the two sides appear to be almost dragging their feet on certain settled issues. Why should India keep on reminding its people that it would not give up even an inch of the territory (in Kashmir) when it should know that there can be no settlement of Kashmir without a tangible readjustment of the territory at present occupied by India and Pakistan. Likewise, Pakistan is fully aware that the UN resolutions on the Kashmir dispute are no longer relevant to the present state of affairs, a section of public opinion in Pakistan brings up the resolutions every now and then.
In the course of the ongoing composite dialogue a substantial measure of agreement has been reached between the two sides on several CBMs (confidence-building measures) which have been under discussion. Several of these do not involve any major change of policy in the event of the two sides agreeing to start implementing them.
If India and Pakistan have agreed to reopen their consulates in Karachi and Bombay why should there be any further delay in their doing so? Some time would, of course, be needed to re- establish the necessary infrastructure. But once that has been accomplished, the consulates should be reopened without undue delay.
Since the reopening of the consulates would mainly provide certain travel facilities to the peoples on the two sides of the divide, it would make a substantial difference to the atmosphere in which people from one side of the divide have to travel to the other. It will also relieve the people of the tensions under which the cross-border travel has to be undertaken by them.
There is also a general agreement that cultural exchanges between the two countries would help people on the two sides of the border to develop a better understanding about each other and rid themselves of the misunderstandings and misbeliefs about life on the other side of the border.
Easy availability of books, magazines and other reading material would help to create a more realistic understanding of the quality of life across the border. There is no reason why this should not be done straightaway. It is preposterous that the reading material is at present acquired by those who an interested at astronomical prices in the black market.
Cultural exchanges free of hassle would make it possible for the average Indian and Pakistani to keep in touch with the literary, artistic and other creative activity in the other half of the subcontinent. There seems to be no reason why the hurdles in the way of such exchanges should continue to be there. There is also a fair measure of understanding on facilitating easy travel between the two countries and on doing away with many of the pointless restrictions which are there on the people planning to undertake visits to places of cultural and religious interest.
While through a series of fairly simple and easy-to-manage administrative measures, as suggested above, it should be possible for India and Pakistan to create a largely hassle-free, congenial atmosphere for facilitating contacts between the peoples of their two countries. It should then psychologically be possible for them to start tackling some of the more sensitive and complex problems confronting their two countries.
Siachen has been the cause of much tension between the two countries for more than a decade, despite frequent bilateral efforts at resolving the issue. Curiously, retired Lieutenant General M.L. Chibber of the Indian army, who was head of India's Northern Command in 1984 when India seized Siachen has been quoted as saying that the Indian and Pakistani armies had "stumbled" into the Siachen dispute and that the Pakistanis have "no grand strategic design on the glacier and were not acting in collusion with China."
However, the two sides have had a number of bilateral meetings to resolve the issue but without success. Gen Chibber also once contributed an article to The Hindu in June 1989 arguing that demilitarization of the glacier would benefit both India and Pakistan. The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan discussed the issue at length in 1989 and nearly came to an agreement. The effort fizzled out at the last minute. It should not be too difficult to revive the talks at the stage where they broke down in 1989. Kargil is of course a much more complicated matter and would inevitably require a much more strenuous effort.
President Gen Pervez Musharraf has suggested that the Kashmir issue should be reviewed region by region before a plebiscite is held to determine its future identity. He has also proposed that the various options on Kashmir should be the subject of an intensive public debate.
The well known American specialist of South Asian affairs, Prof. Robert G. Wirsing, has proposed the following at the end of his lengthy (330-page) study of the Kashmir issue and India- Pakistan relations: "If there has to be a relationship (between the two countries) promised on peace and cooperation, it will have to be secured through the dogged efforts of the leaders of these two countries. Among their efforts settling the Kashmir dispute will necessarily demand high priority. Their first step should be to break the current deadlock. One hopes they succeed."
The dangerous dollar
George Bush hasn't much discussed what could be his biggest economic problem. It's not budget deficits or jobs. It's the possible crash of the dollar on foreign exchange markets.
Even if Bush understood it, he would be hard-pressed to explain it to the public. Worse, there are no obvious ways to prevent it. Nor is it certain how big the threat is. Little wonder Bush hasn't said much. If John Kerry had won, the situation would have been the same.
But a dollar crash, if it occurred, could trigger a terrifying global slump. The dollar lubricates the world economy, having replaced gold as the major international currency. Huge amounts of trade and cross-border investment are conducted in dollars. In some form, a "dollar problem" has long existed.
After World War II there was a "dollar gap": Europe and Japan didn't have enough dollars to import the food and machinery needed for recovery.
The United States filled the gap with foreign aid and policies encouraging multinational American firms to invest abroad. These policies provided dollars, although the United States still ran big trade surpluses. Actually, foreigners often used the dollars to buy American goods.
The problem now is similar and different. As in the 1950s, today's outflow of dollars stimulates the global economy. Unlike the 1950s, it involves huge U.S. trade and current account deficits. (The "current account" includes trade plus other "current" overseas payments, such as travel, freight costs and dividend payments.)
In 1990 the U.S. current account deficit was $79 billion, or 1.4 percent of gross domestic product. In 2004, it's expected to hit an unprecedented $665 billion, or 5.6 percent of GDP, says economist Nariman Behravesh of Global Insight.
The ballooning deficit has two basic causes. First, the American economy has grown faster than other advanced economies. Since 1990 U.S. economic growth has averaged 3 percent annually, compared with 2 percent for the European Union and 1.7 percent for Japan. America's higher growth sucks in imports; Europe's and Japan's slower growth hurts U.S. exports.
Second, the global demand for dollars props up its exchange rate, making U.S. exports more expensive and U.S. imports cheaper. Indeed, many countries, particularly in Asia, fix their currencies to keep their exports competitive in the U.S. market.
Instead of allowing surplus dollars to be sold on foreign exchange markets - lowering the dollar's value - government central banks in Japan, China and other Asian countries have purchased more than $1 trillion of U.S. Treasury securities.
Private investors have also bought lots of U.S. stocks and bonds. All told, foreigners own about 13 percent of U.S. stocks, 24 percent of corporate bonds and 43 percent of U.S. Treasury securities. Up to a point, this arrangement benefits everyone.
The world gets needed dollars; Americans get more imports, from cars to clothes. But we may now have passed that point. Hazards may outweigh benefits. The world may be receiving more dollars than it wants.
A sell-off could spill over into the stock and bond markets and cause a deep global recession. Here's how. Foreign traders and investors sell dollars on foreign exchange markets. The dollar declines in relation to the euro, the yen and other currencies.
The dollar's decline means that the value of foreigners' investments in U.S. stocks and bonds - measured in their own currencies - is also dropping. So foreigners stop buying U.S. stocks and start selling what they have.
The stock market drops sharply. Presto: the makings of a global recession. The stock market slide causes American consumer confidence and spending to weaken. If foreigners also flee the bond market, long-term interest rates on bonds and mortgages might rise.
Higher currencies make Europe's and Japan's exports less competitive. Their industries stagnate. The United States, Europe and Japan constitute about half the global economy. Their recessions would hurt the Asian, Latin American and African countries that export to them.
Markets interconnect; weakness spreads. It's grim. Note, however, that the dollar's vulnerability is a symptom of something else: the addiction of Europe and Asia to exporting to the United States. If their economies grew faster on their own, the massive U.S. payments deficits wouldn't have emerged.- Dawn/ Washington Post Service
The legacy of Arafat
With Yasser Arafat's death the last of the Arab titans has passed into the twilight of history. The man whose name and appearance aroused extreme passions of reverence in most as well as revulsion in some quarters has proceeded on his last journey, never to return. However, the legend of Arafat will survive, perhaps forever, irrespective of how history eventually evaluates him.
For nearly four decades, Arafat, the peripatetic political showman without a country stalked the world stage and dazzled friends and foes alike with his mastery of his role of a revolutionary leader of a disenfranchized and disinherited people.
Arafat acquitted himself with remarkable dexterity and finesse in that unenviable role. He was unique and absolutely peerless in his character of a refugee political leader and revolutionary. He had no country and yet managed to get a vast majority of the 192 member states of the UN to accept him as the head of a state yet to be born.
He etched the concept of a Palestine for the Palestinians on their minds. Even those who dismissed him as a rabble rouser and 'terrorist' grudgingly conceded that he was the only leader known to his people and entitled to speak on their behalf. Not even Sharon and, at his behest, Bush disputed that Arafat was the man who excited the Palestinian imagination, even if such an imagination was anathema to the likes of them.
It is no exaggeration that Arafat singularly epitomized his people, those incarcerated in the vast prison that the occupied territories are under brutal Israeli occupation, as well as those scattered the world over in the Palestinian diaspora. A leader is usually known by the country producing him. But Arafat was unique that his country came to be known by him. That is his most enduring legacy.
The Palestinians were a faceless people until Arafat gave them an identity. They were known, especially in the West under intense Israeli propaganda, only as refugees fed on the western countries' largesse. Arafat changed that humiliating caricature by first infusing in them a sense of purpose and a mission, and then by leading them as a coherent force on the global scene.
It was Arafat who, with his drab olive green military fatigues, his silver plated magnum revolver neatly tucked into a holster, and his trade mark Kaffiyeh - the checkered head gear - implanted an indelible image of the Palestinian on the minds of the world, leaders and laymen alike.
It was his esoteric style of wearing his ubiquitous kaffiyeh that intrigued many, including this scribe. He not only wore it all the time in his public appearances but wore it on his head neatly folded in an elongated shape. Many were intrigued and perplexed by the shape of it. 'Was he trying to convey a message?' the question was frequently asked.
That was also my question to him when I met him for the first time, in Kuwait in 1978.
Arafat was a frequent visitor to Kuwait, as he was to so many other countries; few leaders would have travelled as much as he did in all the years that he stayed at the helm of the PLO and eventually the Palestinian Liberation Authority. But Kuwait had a very special place in his life.
Few outsiders would know that Fatah, Arafat's brain-child and the first organized Palestinian body devoted to an armed struggle for the realization of Palestinian national rights, was born in Kuwait, in 1959.
In a sense, the only period of his dramatic life that could be described as 'normal' was spent in the tiny Kuwait where he first landed in 1957 as a young civil engineer, armed with a degree from Cairo University. He was employed by the Public Works Department (PWD). Arafat prospered in Kuwait where he later started his own construction company and, in his own words, came close to becoming a young millionaire.
But the born revolutionary in him egged him on to move to the nobler task of leading his deeply wounded, uprooted and traumatized people scattered over the expanse of the Arab world, and beyond, like the desert sand. He was like the modern-day Moses entrusted with the mission to lead his bewildered followers to the 'Promised Land'.
So I asked him if he really meant to convey a message by wearing his kaffiyeh elongated over his head like a diamond. He smiled at my inquisitive temerity but gave me a most convincing explanation. He said it wasn't a diamond but the shape of the original Palestine from where he and his people had been forcibly expelled to make room for the Jews of Israel.
He said he wore the kaffiyeh all the time on his head out of respect for the land robbed from his people. His kaffiyeh reminded him all the time, he said, that his mission was sacred and must be accomplished at all cost.
But did he accomplish his mission? No, perhaps not, to a casual observer. Like Moses he, too, didn't enter the 'Promised Land' and only saw it from a distance. He came close to it, within touching distance, but in the end death cheated him out of it. Or was it his 'monumental mistakes', according to his critics, that did him in and robbed him of a chance to see his Palestine born in his own times?
To his detractors and legions of critics in the West, Arafat was himself responsible for the tragic fact that his destiny eluded him. They blame him for missing many opportunities. They deride him for having no vision, no strategy, and surviving all those years by his wits alone and by a canny, tactical, sense of a born gambler. Indeed he made mistakes, some more glaring and costly than others.
His biggest, Himalayan, blunder was to side with Saddam Hussein in his invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990. To the Shaikhs of Kuwait, and others of their ilk in the oil-rich Gulf principalities and kingdoms, he bit the hands that had fed him and his people for so long. In return, they exacted a very heavy price from the Palestinians who'd been there, in the Gulf, for two generations and expelled them by droves from their homes.
Arafat disputed that he had sided with Saddam. His mission, he said, was to bridge the gulf between Saddam and his quarries. It was the 'outsiders' who jumped into the fray and exploited the breach to serve their own ends; his mediation was dealt a premature death.
Relentless propaganda, especially American, also holds him responsible for failure to seize the final, 'munificent', offer from Ehud Barak, the then Israeli prime minister, at the Clinton-brokered Camp David negotiations in the twilight of his presidency in January, 2001. Clinton himself spread the myth and the enemies of Arafat seized on it to malign Arafat. They said Arafat blew the 'generous' offer that would've given him 94 per cent of the occupied territories in the West Bank and the whole of Gaza.
But what they don't say is that that 94 per cent was only 27 per cent of the original Palestine. And that 94 per cent would've been criss-crossed by dozens of Israeli settlements, making it more smitten than a Swiss cheese. Besides, it gave no right of return to the Palestinians expelled from their homes, something sacrosanct to Arafat.
Perhaps Arafat was too much of a romantic or visionary to settle for anything less than what he thought rightfully and historically belonged to his people. But he was also a realist who knew exactly when and where in his epic struggle to compromise with the adversary and draw a line.
That is precisely what he did in November, 1988, when the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the Palestinian Parliament-in-Exile, met in Algiers to proclaim the Palestinian State and recognize Israel's right to exist. He took that bold step in the teeth of bitter opposition from the likes of Syria's Hafez Al-Assad, leading the 'Rejectionist Front'. I was, then, ambassador to Algeria and witnessed that historic event.
Arafat loved Algeria and the Algerians loved him. In all those years of Arafat virtually living on a flying carpet and shuttling world capitals, he did so on the courtesy of the Algerians who'd placed an Algerian executive jet, with its crew and paraphernalia, entirely at his disposal. There was a great camaraderie between the Algerian leadership and Arafat; both honoured each other's revolutionary credentials and great sacrifices made for the sake of their causes.
Arafat also loved Pakistan and the Pakistanis. At that historic Algiers meeting, he came straight to me after proclaiming his two-state vision for the disputed land, and commiserated over the tragic death of Ziaul Haq three months before.
I was happily surprised by his magnanimous gesture. Here was this 'father' of the Palestinian people regretting the demise of the man said to be universally reviled as the architect of the ghastly 'Black September' in Jordan in 1970; at least 20,000 Palestinians had been butchered in that onslaught by the Jordanian army, with Brigadier Ziaul Haq as its master-mind.
Arafat's detractors fault him for failing to nurture a successor. But which revolutionary has ever done so in history? A revolution is an all-time passion that consumes its proponent to the point where the man and his mission become one. Arafat simply didn't have time for it. In fact, he didn't have time for anything else in his life except for his all-consuming pursuit to take his people to the land of their origins and ancestors.
What Arafat has left as his bequest is far more resilient than a successor. His steely determination to lead his people to their roots, in the face of most daunting odds, should be sufficient inspiration for those to come after him. His greatest legacy, in the words of a Palestinian historian, Saeed Aburish, is that he never, for a moment, wilted or wavered in his mission.
Few in our times could aspire to reach those heights he scaled so easily.
The writer is a former ambassador.