July 16, 2005

THE devastating bomb blasts of July 7 in London should be evidence enough, if any were still needed, to Tony Blair that he and his mentor George W. Bush are not winning the ‘war on terror.’ On the contrary, the terrorists are obviously becoming bolder and getting the upper hand in the psychological battle by their ruthless capability to strike at the heart of British establishment.

Repeated, though largely fatuous, assurances from both Bush and Blair that the war on terror is not a war against Islam or Muslims are not being backed up by measures that could instil confidence among 1. 3 billion Muslims of the world that what is claimed is not cosmetic and ersatz. Facts speak otherwise. Bush’s rhetoric in the initial heat of the moment that he was into a new “Crusade” hasn’t lost its bite despite frantic damage control by his spin-doctors. What he has done since that proclamation is a consistent reminder that he meant what he said.

In the latest instance of the London bombings no time was lost in pointing the finger at Islamic or Muslim terrorism though the jury is still out on the identity of the perpetrators. Blair raised the ante by talking of ‘our values’ versus ‘their values.’ He even went a notch higher by assuring his domestic audience that ‘our values’ will outlast ‘theirs’.

This ‘ours’ versus ‘theirs’ liturgy has been seared on the Muslim psyche by the purveyors of the ‘war on terror’ ever since they targeted Iraq for motives that have never had anything to do with the campaign against terrorism. The recently leaked Downing Street memo leaves no shred of doubt that intelligence was tailored to fit the war agenda drawn against Iraq on both sides of the Atlantic quick on the heels of 9/11.

To the abiding remorse and regret of the silent, moderate, Muslim majority all over the world, the Bush-Blair adventure has become a god-sent recruitment poster for Al Qaeda. The western intelligence agencies are at one in their assessment that the ranks of the terrorists have swelled continually since the terrible Iraqi detour in the war against terror. It doesn’t take a wizard to arrive at the conclusion that terrorist outfits will have no dearth of willing volunteers as long as the American military occupation of Iraq continues.

Another legitimate Muslim grouse, being obviously stonewalled, is that those now being hunted as beasts of prey were a creation of the West when it was locked in its war of wits with the communist world. It is not surprising at all that the Frankenstein monster has turned against its inventors. Osama bin Laden was not a product of a Muslim seminary or madressah; he was spawned by CIA and groomed as a mujahid against the Soviets in Afghanistan. There couldn’t be a greater injustice and disrespect to the collective intelligence of the Muslim world than name Osama as its representative or icon.

Another new injection into the sinews of the ‘us’ against ‘them’ syndrome is the Bush-Blair rhetoric that theirs is a struggle to save their ‘civilised’ way of life, as if others were semi-civilised or even savages. Bush is still justifying his strategy of “taking the war to the enemy” on this basis.

This is hauntingly reminiscent of the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that was used to devastating effect by the Roman Church to incite its followers to the Crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land of Palestine in the 11th century. Like the neocons and their ideologue, right wing, Evangelical twins now hooting for Bush, the clergy under the Roman church sanctified imposing a murderous war on the Muslims, and shedding their blood, because they were deemed as savages and infidels.

Pope Urban issued church edicts with great fervour and enthusiasm making it incumbent on the followers of Christ to cleanse the Holy Land of the ‘heathen presence’ of Muslims. Some senior generals, occupying sensitive positions in the Pentagon today, are on record pitching their ‘superior God’ against the ‘inferior’ Muslim God.

But there was one great exception to the then European princes and knights swayed by the venomous anti-Muslim diatribes of the church. That was the legendary English King Richard, better known by his honorific, ‘the Lion Heart.’

Richard, too, was egged on by the Christian clergy, just as Blair is being bamboozled by Bush, to avenge the loss of Jerusalem to the equally charismatic Salahuddin, or Salahuddin to his western detractors. Richard succumbed to the relentless barrage of church edicts to land on the coast of Palestine in the summer of 1190 to lead the Third Crusade, less than three years after Salahuddin had recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in October, 1187.

Richard initially showed the same kind of savagery for which the Crusaders had become known in Palestine. After the surrender of Acre to him by its Muslim defenders, on August 20, 1190, Richard had 2,700 Muslim residents of the city, including women and children, butchered in full view of Salahuddin’s army.

However, Richard soon understood that war wasn’t the answer to the problem triggered by the Roman church’s baptism of war as ‘holy’. Displaying the wisdom of a statesman, Richard concluded that endless war would only inflame more hatred between the followers of Abrahamic faiths. He opted, instead, for peace with Salahuddin who didn’t spurn the offer.

The peace of those two brave soldiers and courageous statesmen, signed and sealed in September, 1192, held for more than seven centuries. It was a remarkable initiative by two charismatic warriors who had the vision and courage to turn their swords into ploughshares. It was all the more sagacious on part of Richard as history tells us that his troops were within sight of making a lunge for Jerusalem when he halted their march and accepted Salahuddin’s offer for a truce.

Richard was apparently moved as much by his own statesmanship as by Salahuddin’s example of a noble enemy. History also tells us that Richard, after spending two years in combat with the Muslims under Salahuddin’s command, was convinced that his enemy wasn’t savage or uncivilized as earlier droned in his ear by the Christian clergy. Thenceforth, he took charge of his own strategy and held his own counsel rather than relying on the lies and fabrications of the church. There is a lesson in the example he set, nearly a thousand years ago, for the British leader of the day, Tony Blair.

It was a tribute to the spirit of peaceful co-existence enshrined in the Richard-Salahuddin peace that every succeeding Muslim ruler honoured its main provision by providing unhindered access to Jews and Christians to their holy sites in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. It was breached only when the Ottomans in Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula were laid upon by the western colonialists during World War I. Their intention was to re-establish their colonies in that area in the guise of delivering them from the alleged oppression of the Ottomans — shades, exactly, of what Bush is peddling in the garb of bringing democracy to the Arab world.

The memory of the Crusades was revived, then, by General Allenby who arrogantly bragged, after seizing Damascus from the Ottomans, at the tomb of Salahuddin: ‘Salahuddin, we’re back.’

The template for Blair, if he chooses to be statesman-like, shouldn’t be the hubris of Allenby but the wisdom of Richard who sued for peace even from a position of strength on the battlefield.

Of course, nobody is suggesting that Blair should talk to Osama and sue for peace with him. Osama is a slur on the great name of Salahuddin, as much as he is an insult to the collective dignity of world Muslims.

But Blair must appreciate the spirit of peaceful co-existence that Richard and Salahuddin ushered between the followers of two great revealed religions in crystal clarity. Peace will not prevail, and the war on terror will not be won, until and unless Muslims are shown the respect they deserve, no matter how grudgingly. The great mass of world Muslims cannot, and must not, be held culpable for the shenanigans of a handful of misguided zealots and terrorists. But cynics would, no doubt, say that it is easier said for Blair to have the vision and courage of Richard.

The mealy-mouthed British prime minister is no statesman if one goes by his record since he joined forces with Bush in the wake of 9/11 and used every devious trick of his trade to take Britain into the war against Iraq. One might be tempted to give Bush some benefit of the doubt — although he doesn’t deserve any — that he had a personal score to settle with Saddam because his dad had been targeted, in his words, by the Iraqi dictator. But what alibi did Blair have to sink his teeth into Iraq with such ferocity?

Realists and pundits of international relations would agree that Blair’s track record doesn’t hold any promise that he would be inclined to borrow a leaf from Richard’s book; his rhetoric of post-7/7 is as combative as Bush’s was vitriolic after 9/11. But the Richard model is always there, whenever Blair may have the courage to walk in the foot-steps of the 12th century hero.

The writer is a former ambassador and can be reached at K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

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