These irresponsible threats

GIVEN the mess in which one finds the Bush administration’s foreign policy, it is highly unlikely that a Republican will be in the White House next year. But even if a Republican were to make it, it is improbable that it will be Mr Tom Tancredo. Speaking at a town hall meeting of 20 people in the Iowa state, Mr Tancredo, a Republican hopeful for the party ticket, said that the best way he could think of to deter a terrorist nuclear attack on the US was to bomb Makkah and Madina. He said a terrorist attack on America was “imminent”. One does not know where the Colorado Congressman got his information from, but no American intelligence agency has given an indication of a threat of this sort being “imminent”. And even in Britain, where the intelligence agencies periodically discover a terror plot involving, mostly, Britons of Pakistani origin, no one has come up with such a preposterous claim. When Muslim groups in America protested against the Tancredo balderdash, his campaign manager said that Congressman Tancredo stood by his statement. This is not the first time that Mr Tancredo has made such a threat. In 2005 also, in a radio talk, he called for striking at the Islamic holy sites.

Does Congressman Tancredo realise what a statement like this does? It undermines the war on terror, adds to America’s enemies and vindicates the extremists’ hate philosophy that portrays America as Islam’s enemy number one. The extremists in the Muslim world are guided by America’s support to Israel’s killing of the Palestinian people, its tacit approval of Israel’s usurpation of Jerusalem, its invasion of Iraq without a valid reason, and its occupation of that country resulting in the death of civilians whose number ranges between 200,000 and 600,000. Nearer home, thousands of civilians have been killed in Afghanistan as part of collateral damage and there is no sign yet that the Taliban are on the retreat. In addition, characters like Mr Barack Obama call for striking at Taliban targets inside Pakistan. Such talk strengthens the hands of those elements in this country who seldom bother to look at Islamabad’s relations with Washington from the point of view of its benefits to Pakistan but are guided by America’s policy towards the Muslim world generally.

Fortunately, not all American leaders are afflicted with the kind of paranoia demonstrated by Congressman Tancredo and Senator Obama. While the reaction to the Tancredo speech is not yet available, Senator Obama has been severely criticised by several leading Congressional leaders, including Senator Joseph Biden, who is Senator Obama’s rival for the Democratic ticket. Mr Biden said that Senator Obama’s invasion talk showed his inexperience. “The last thing you want to do,” said the senator from Delaware, “is telegraph the folks in Pakistan plans that threaten their sovereignty.” Congressman Tancredo should know that he has not only weakened his chances for a presidential ticket, he has also done incalculable harm to the Muslim-Christian relationship. It is time church leaders in the West took notice of such loose talk. While Senator Obama’s was a political statement, Congressman Tancredo has threatened a war against the entire Muslim world. Pope Benedict XVI could perhaps pick up the late Pope John Paul II’s crusade for forging a greater understanding between the West and the Muslim world. This will undo the damage Pope Benedict did to himself by making some unfortunate remarks last year.

Outlawing kidney sales

THERE is a sense of relief that the federal cabinet has approved the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance, 2007, after deciding to delete a controversial clause and to improve on other provisions as recommended by eminent doctors. However, a final version of the draft ordinance incorporating the changes is awaited for a clearer picture as only the end-product can convey how effective the organ law will be. The deleted clause related to the donation of an organ by a non-relative in return for compensation. This was strongly criticised for going against the spirit of voluntary donation and for promoting, instead of deterring, kidney sales. However, it is sad to note that there were voices in the federal cabinet that supported the recommendation of Law Minister Wasi Zafar and adviser to the prime minister Sharifuddin Pirzada to include the clause. This is a clear indication of the strong influence of the lobby that has vested interests in promoting the sale of kidneys. Otherwise, there could have been no objection to striking down such a provision and no reason to incorporate it in the first place.

An enlarged committee has now been entrusted with the task of ‘fine-tuning’ the bill to be promulgated by the president. It is only when this has been done that the debate on the pros and cons of the revised draft would be more meaningful. Meanwhile, efforts should be made to educate society on organ donation and remove misconceptions and fears so that the idea of voluntary donation by a relative and cadaver donation gains wider acceptance. The kidney trade is a booming business in Pakistan, and the absence of a law so far has given unscrupulous elements a free hand in extracting the organs of the poor who sell their kidneys for money they badly need. But outlawing such transactions can only be effective when public opinion is mobilised against it so that more people are willing to donate a kidney without claiming compensation, thus bringing down the demand for such sales.

Rise in crime in Sindh

IT IS hard to believe government officials who say the law and order situation in Sindh is under control when every month statistics show an increase in all crimes. A report by the Aurat Foundation on figures for July shows that 44 women and 158 men were killed in the province in July, making it the bloodiest month so far. This belies the official claims, and the actual situation needs to be addressed in all seriousness or else the crime situation will continue to deteriorate. For example, why, despite stricter laws and efforts to raise awareness of the problem, were 13 women and 11 men killed in acts of karo-kari in July alone? The 24 deaths reported this month brings the total number of honour killings this year to 198, of which 123 were women. This is horrifying and calls for more concerted efforts at crime prevention than what we have seen so far. Laws alone cannot bring about a change; societies need to be enlightened on the evils of old customs and practices. There are some indications of change, albeit small ones: more people protest against violent crimes like rapes. Or that only four jirgas were held this month in Sindh, the lowest this year. That 31 couples married of their own free will at courts also shows that there are people who will not simply accept the way of their elders and are aware of their rights. These are small but positive developments which show that communities can be galvanised into changing their thinking.

But the government has to concentrate on improving the law and order situation and making people feel safer. It can do this by changing its strategy on combating crime. It requires, for example, ensuring that more police officers are deployed to fight crime. It needs to secure more convictions against offenders. Such measures will ensure people’s safety.

Lessons from Turkish elections

I HAVE never been to Turkey. Although the country is seen as part of the greater Middle East by its western neighbours, it’s a little out of the way for most of us in the region. Which is perhaps why Turkey is seldom seen as part of the neighbourhood by its Arab and Muslim neighbours in the south.

However, the Muslims around the world share a special and emotional bond with Turkey. After all, it had been home to the caliphate until the last century. This despite the fact that the caliphate headed by Ottoman emperors was as close to the original model of Islamic caliphate as J.K. Rowling is to William Shakespeare.

Nonetheless, there is great power in symbolism. And the impossibly sentimental folks that Muslims are, they looked to Istanbul for centuries for emotional guidance until the Ottoman empire’s dismemberment at the hands of the West.

The people in South Asia, too, have had a close relationship with Turkey. The subcontinent saw most Muslims as the Turks, even though they came from all over the Middle East and Central Asia. In Telugu, a South Indian language, the slang for Muslims is the Turks.

The nizams, the rulers of erstwhile Hyderabad state, enjoyed close ties with the Ottoman emperors of Turkey despite the distance of thousands of miles that separated them. The last link between the two dynasties was Princess Durreshahwar, the daughter in-law of the last nizam Mir Usman Ali Khan.

Turkey had a role to play in India’s independence movement as well. The protest movement demanding the restoration of the caliphate after Britain and its First World War allies removed the Ottoman emperor, revered as the caliph by the rest of the Muslim world, was not a wholly Muslim affair in British-ruled India. The leading lights of Congress joined hands with Muslim leaders to lead the agitation called the Khilafat movement.

In fact, it was the first major political campaign that Mahatma Gandhi joined after his return from South Africa. Today, in a hopelessly divided world all this sounds so inexorably improbable. Few of us are aware of these historical bonds that bind Turkey with the subcontinent and the rest of the Muslim world.

Watching the Turks go to the polls recently with an almost infectious enthusiasm, I was reminded of this historical role of Turkey and standing in the Muslim world.

This was easily the most critical election in post-Ataturk Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdogan had put his political career and the future of the governing AK (Justice and Development) Party on the line by taking this huge gamble of an election.

The prime minister had run into a blind wall of resistance by the country’s secular opposition and the all-powerful army in his attempts to get Abdullah Gul, the veteran Islamist and former foreign minister, elected as president. Which is why Erdogan decided to go back to the people.

So it was a one-point election. The question that confronted the voters was whether the country should come to terms with its proud Islamic identity and legacy or remain handcuffed to the secular extremism of the Turkish army.

The secular and modern state that was envisioned by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk might have helped the Turks face the challenges of the 20th century and the peculiar dilemmas of a modern nation-state. However, by banishing Islam and everything associated with it, Turkey’s generals imposed a superficial way of life that suppressed the Turkish people’s deep and natural affinity with their faith. God and Islam had no place in the secular, western utopia created by Ataturk.

So it’s indeed a watershed development in Turkey’s history that the people have gifted a clear and resounding mandate to the Islamists. In doing so, they have chosen an all-embracing Islam over secular extremism of the kind championed by Turkey’s Kemalist establishment.

Erdogan had decided to take a new mandate at a time when there was relentless speculation in and outside Turkey about the generals taking over the reins of power. After all, the army has done it in the past, whenever it saw the so-called Kemalist legacy under threat from the Islamists.

Now that the Turkish voters have made it abundantly clear what they want, one only hopes better sense prevails in the military establishment. However, the most important outcome of this election is the demolition of the myth that Islam and democracy cannot go together. This election has trashed the fiction that Islam by nature is intolerant of democracy. By choosing the Islamists over their secular rivals, the Turks have emphatically rejected the so-called dichotomy between Islam and democracy.

The western media, true to their tradition, had turned this election into a do-or-die battle between the good old, pro-western secular, democratic liberals and hordes of ignorant, fanatic mullahs who wanted to force an obscurantist Sharia down the throat of a country that could soon be part of the European Union.

The reality is vastly different. As this poll has demonstrated, Erdogan’s Islamists enjoy the support of Turkey’s majority who believe in democracy and a modern, forward-looking Turkey. At the same time, they also believe in a faith that is their way of life. And they see no conflict between their religious beliefs and political convictions.

Turkey enjoyed the leadership of the Muslim world for centuries. It can once again show the way to fellow travellers. The Muslim world can learn from Turkey how you need not give up on your beliefs or religious traditions while negotiating the demands of a modern world. Faith and modernity and religion and democracy can exist in harmony with one another.

Despite the democratic origins of Islam — it’s the only religion that recognises no clergy and rejects all middlemen between God and the faithful — it’s a tragedy that it has always been portrayed as an ideology that has little patience for individual rights or the demands of a democratic state.

The fact that few Muslim countries today practise democracy as we understand it has only contributed to this perception. However, if many Arab and Muslim countries today do not enjoy the fruits of democracy and modernity, it’s unfair to blame the faith. Trust me, Islam has nothing to do with it.

It’s the tyranny of institutions and systems created by centuries of colonisation and imperialism that continues to deny a modern and democratic way of life to the Arab and wider Muslim world. In fact, whenever given a chance, it’s the Islamists who have embraced and introduced genuine democracy.

Pray, which version of democracy is more acceptable to us? The genuinely free and fair polls held in the Palestinian territories, Algeria and now in Turkey or the so-called referendums with ‘99 per cent voter turnout’ orchestrated by the West’s traditional friends and allies?

Turkey led by the Islamists also shows that secular political parties can live in harmony with rivals who advocate a more assertive role of Islam in public life. Right now, from Pakistan to Iran and from Egypt to Algeria, secular players and Islamic parties are caught in a mortal combat, little willing to understand and accommodate each other’s point of view.

Straddling Asia and Europe geographically, Turkey has for centuries been a bridge between the East and West and Europe and the Muslim world in more ways than one.

The Ottoman country, with its Islamic soul and European outlook, is a country that embraces the best of Muslim and western civilisations celebrating their fascinating confluence.

At a time when the yawning gulf between the West and Muslim world is at its widest, Turkey can indeed play a unique role in healing wounds inflicted by history. Turkey can also help Muslim countries in their attempts to harmonise the demands of their religion and challenges of an ever-changing world. Turkey must show the way.

The writer is a Dubai-based journalist. aijazsyed@khaleejtimes.com

Remembering Bolivar

MANY politicians dream of leaving a great legacy to be remembered in centuries to come. But reputations can be used in ways that their subjects never expected, which is surely the fate of Simón Bolívar, the anniversary of whose birth was celebrated across Spanish-speaking South America last week.

By any measure he was an extraordinary man who achieved extraordinary things: hailed as El Libertador, driving the Spanish out of six countries on the back of a military campaign fuelled by enlightenment philosophy, charisma and tremendous confidence and energy. Born in Caracas, now in Venezuela, into a rich Spanish family, he fought through the 1810s and 1820s to create a new republic, Gran Colombia, and for a moment succeeded.

His campaign, at least in intention, was as noble as the American war of independence against Britain: but Bolívar, unlike George Washington, could not control what he created. In place of a great liberal unified republic, South America fragmented into oligarchy, with white Spanish-speaking citizens mostly on top, exploiting and frequently oppressing all others.

That injustice has created pressure for a new South American revolution under Bolívar's name, especially in Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez presents himself as a modern-day Libertador. The parallel is perhaps more hoped for than real. Simón Bolívar was a great man. But he has given birth to a great myth, too. Modern leaders, eager for their own legacies, should remember how little they can control them.

—The Guardian, London