LI WEIJIAN

Middle East’s response to the September 11th incident is complicated and thought-provoking. Some extremist organizations attempted to take this opportunity to “drag the whole Islamic world into an all-round anti-Western war”. They held that the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan was a “surprise attack on poor Muslims”, aimed at “destroying Islam”. So Muslims throughout the world should unite to launch a holy war against the U.S. Other “universalized Muslim elites” stood up to “clarify their stance on Islamic fundamentalism”. They held that “all Muslims developing themselves in a multi-technological, multi-cultural and multi-belief world should defend an Islam advocating tolerance”.¹

When leaders of Middle Eastern countries condemned the terrorist act and expressed their support for the U.S. fight against terrorism, the anti-U.S. sentiments of the masses of people in these countries rose. Besides, almost all these countries held that while the incident occurred in the U.S., the long pending Middle East issue no doubt was one of the hotbeds of terrorism. This author holds that, in recent years, the indignant, despairing, anxious and helpless sentiments and feelings of insult which have long been accumulating in the Arab and Islamic world have been rapidly swelling. A socially extreme trend of thought has risen again, which is being used by terrorists because the region has long been treated unfairly. Western countries have seriously distorted the image of Islam and Arabs, while globalization has subjected it to various negative assaults.

THE SEPTEMBER 11^th INCIDENT AND THE ANTI-GLOBALIZATION TREND OF THOUGHT

The impact of the globalization process on Middle Eastern countries will not be discussed in a comprehensive way in this paper. Moreover, the September 11th incident has no direct relation to these countries’ response to globalization. This paper will attend mainly to the role of extreme social thought trends in the Middle East region resulting from the negative impact of globalization in the formation of terrorism. The reactions of Middle East countries to the globalization process reflect the analysis of humankind’s current stage of development by current Middle East political and social thinking in terms of Islamic values. They reflect also the effort to safeguard national characteristics in the face of the irresistible trend of globalization. This kind of social trend of thought and values exerts direct influences on the attitudes of Middle East countries and their countermeasures toward globalization.

Generally speaking, globalization is mainly an economic process pushed by market forces, but the practical situation is much more complicated. In the Middle East, globalization is still hard to grasp. Its importance lies not only in economic forces, but also in cultural experiences of the Islamic world, that is, the Muslims’ way of understanding daily life. Globalization involves nationality, national culture and nationalism; it may become a decisive factor in the fields of culture, politics and economic life and change the mechanism of a people’s daily life. Therefore, it poses an unprecedentedly great challenge to Islamic traditional culture and lifestyle.

Undoubtedly, many countries in the region have a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages globalization may bring to them. Some countries are making positive preparations for meeting the challenge of globalization in order to guard against any loss of national characteristics and cultural values. But, this cannot offset the dissatisfaction of the Islamic world with the current globalization with its various drawbacks and strong “tendency toward Westernization and Americanization,” nor can it impede the swell of socially extreme trends of thought resulting from this dissatisfaction. The criticism of globalization by the Islamic social elite is full of such worries. Hussain Kamal Bahaeddin, Egyptian Minister of Education, pointed out the undesirable reactions globalization may cause, for example, rise of stubbornly biased sentiments and extremism, increase of desire for revenge, and feelings of isolation.²

The radical anti-globalization social trend of thought emerging in Middle East has something to do with its weak position and unfair treatment in the global economic system of Middle East countries (except Israel). To many, the current world economic order is based on the unfair “world system”. This system’s structural features are that the prosperity of developed countries at the cost of the poverty of developing countries, and the prosperity of a few countries “depending” on the poverty of most countries. The superpower is working out the rules of globalization, unabashedly insisting on placing its own national interests above other considerations, while eulogizing the merits of globalization.³ Such rules of the game will weaken the national role of Middle Eastern countries and put them in an unfavorable position in global competition. Some countries will even be “marginalized” and in reality become victims of globalization.

Secondly, the rise of socially extreme trends of thought has a bearing on the attempt of the U.S. and the West at large to build a new international order, which represents the interests of the great powers and rich states while ignoring the interests of developing countries in the post-Cold War period. Many Arab countries think that this new international order may widen the gap between various members of the international community. This is because it disregards the interests of developing countries and poor societies, flaunts the banner of trade freedom while stifling the attempts of developing countries, and adopts a dual standard and a non-objective position on human rights. It does as it pleases, sometimes turning a blind eye, sometimes making trouble. This makes societies, organizations and countries belonging to the Third World, in the past and present, suffer grave oppression and difficulties and to be feared by many peoples.⁴ Thirdly, the rise of socially extreme trends of thought is related to the long-term distortion and mortification of the Islamic world and the masses of Arab people. Arab countries see the West’s view of them to be based on such “unorthodox” theories as “the end of history” and “the clash of civilizations” and other “improper” concepts. These wrong theories and irresponsible remarks have sowed seeds of suspicions in the international order and made the West unable fairly to coordinate and lead the world. Especially when it exerts non-objective impact on suspected international organizations, it often regards Islam and Muslims as formidable enemies, and then Arabs and people being inclined to support Arabs.⁵ For a long time, Islam has been misinterpreted and reprimanded as a backward and rigid religion by the West and Arabs and Muslims residing in the West also have often been discriminated against. After September 11th many incidents occurred, in which innocent Arabs and Muslims were attacked in the Western world. The practice of distorting and vilifying Arabs and describing them as terrorists has been long standing and even has become a fixed mode in the media and works of literature, film and television. Amr Moussa, former Egyptian Foreign Minister and current Secretary General of the League of Arab States, pointed out recently that Arabs are faced with unprecedentedly huge challenges. These result from the latest equipment made with advanced technology, the most dangerous theories put forward according to Western concepts, and the most severe distortions and slander.⁶

To sum up, the extreme social trend of thought in the Middle East results from many factors which have been brewing over the long-term. The assault of the negative impacts of globalization has added fuel to the flames in this trend of thought. A noteworthy phenomenon is that the extreme trend of thought in the anti-globalization movement has often merged with terrorism in recent years. Violence occurs in the anti-globalization movement not only in Middle East, but also in other parts of the world. The WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in December, 1999, was suspended due to violent demonstrations. Confusion appeared at the G-8 Summit in July 2001. The IMF and World Bank conference scheduled for September 2001 in Washington shortened its agenda by a wide margin due to an expected large-scale demonstration at that time; after the September 11th incident its date was forcibly delayed. Mohammad Malaek, Iranian Ambassador to China, stated that various passive consequences of globalization obviously are harmful to the spirit of freedom, cultural diversity and pluralism; they can easily incite turbulence and violence.⁷ Historical experience tells people that terrorism always looks for support from the socially extreme trends of thought.

Globalization has enlarged the distance between the rich and poor states. For a long time, the advantages of the transnational links contrasted sharply with the social inequality between them. Since the September 11th incident, the new anti-terrorism coalition composed of rich states may drive a wedge between developed and developing countries. This geopolitical wedge may enlarge the long bred economic disparity and further estrange the developing countries.⁸ All this may become the soil of terrorism.

Moreover, in a sense, terrorism benefits from globalization without effective management. This globalized flow with loopholes of such essential factors as fund, information and personnel has created material conditions for the worldwide operation of terrorism.⁹ Therefore, Wang Yingfan, Chinese Permanent Representative to the United Nations pointed out, when stating China’s position on fighting and eliminating international terrorism, we must look into its root causes and symptoms and make efforts to remove its source. The issue of development should be energetically resolved to make the people of all social strata in all the countries benefit from the globalization process.

THE SEPTEMBER 11^th INCIDENT AND EXTREME ISLAMIC THOUGHT TRENDS

It must be pointed out that Islam, as a worldwide religion, certainly is not the source of terrorism. But like other extreme religious trends, Islamic fundamentalist extremism often becomes a theory in support of terror and other violent activities. In recent years an Islamic force, politically and socially autocratic in color, has been rising and constitutes some armed gangs advocating a lopsided explanation of Islamic doctrine.¹⁰ Violent and terrorist activities plotted by these armed gangs tend to rise. At the same time, pan-Islamist thought is also reviving in Muslim society.

Ghali, former UN Secretary General, wrote in his memoir, Unvanquished, that issues in the Arab world are often interwoven with the pan-Islamic unity movement. Not only to fundamentalists but also to many Arabs, the sole Islamic community is Muslims -- Umma -- which must be placed above the Arab nation. Individuals should unreservedly support Muslims in Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechen, Cyprus and the Nagornyi Karabakh region.¹¹ This passage is in fact an annotation on the pan-Islamist thought active in the Arab world.

Pan-Islamism rose in the middle of the 19^th century, resulting from the invasion and enslavement of the Islamic world by Western colonialists and imperialists and responding to the challenges with which Muslims were faced. It stressed that people of all nationalities who believe in Islam should have common historical and cultural traditions and common interests and unite to safeguard and rejuvenate Islamic belief. Its ideological base originated from Islamic self-understanding as a universal religion without limitations of nationality, color, language or national boundary. It called on Muslims all over the world to unite, to form an extensive community on the basis of common belief, and to conduct a holy war against the invading European colonialists under the leadership of a caliph of noble character and high prestige till final victory.¹² The pan-Islamist thought created by Afghani (1838-1897) was strongly anti-imperialist in color and expressed the dissatisfaction of the lower strata with society because of the Western capitalist’s entry into Middle East.¹³This has exerted great impact on arousing the national consciousness of peoples of various Islamic countries; it is one of the most important social thought trends and movements in the modern and contemporary history of Islam.

Though as a movement, pan-Islamism ended in failure, this traditional religious social trend of thought still has extensive influence. This desire for recognition by the belief community of pan-Islamism led to the anti-U.S. sentiments and irrational sympathy for the Taliban and bin Laden by the masses of Muslims in the Islamic world after the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan.¹⁴

Strictly speaking, pan-Islamism is not an extreme trend of thought: it is a social trend of thought easily to be misinterpreted by the West and made use of by Islamic extremists. The reason is that it follows the banners of Islam, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, thus having broad influence on the masses of Muslims.

Though many people know that Islamic extremism does not represent Islam, the two are often mixed up wittingly or unwittingly, causing confusion in the judgement of ordinary people. After the September 11th incident, the U.S. Government stressed repeatedly that anti-terrorism was not anti-Islam. Henry Kissinger also warned that the U.S. and its allies must act with caution and cannot represent this new anti-terrorist policy as a clash of civilizations between the Western and Islamic civilizations; even Huntington came out to state that the incident was not a clash of civilizations. But some people still associated the two consciously or unconsciously. Recent polls show that 60 percent of Americans do not trust neighbors of Arab descent, and over 100 racial crimes targeting American citizens of Arab descent have occurred. This spontaneous racial discrimination is hard to control. President Bush made a slip of the tongue and referred to the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan as “a new crusade”. Though the U.S. Government itself remedied the mistake in time, many Arabs still considered that this wording reflected the true mentality of many Americans. Moreover, after the incident the mainstream world political words were only of condemnation of terrorism and paid no attention to its source.

Western definitions of terrorism are also questionable because they concern only the phenomenon of violence itself, especially individual retaliatory actions targeting developed countries. They seldom explore the in-depth source of the phenomenon of terrorism. Especially they ignore its cultural and religious meanings and the antagonism caused by the present international system, thus losing historical insight into terrorism.¹⁵ Such definitions certainly are incomplete; often they are mixed up with special interests and value judgments which easily create a misunderstanding of Islam in ordinary people unaware of the truth.

Conversely, careless stated words and deeds of some Americans, can enrage the broad masses of Muslims in the Islamic world. For example, someone named the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan as a “unlimited just action”. However, to Muslims, it is a blasphemy to attribute sacred power to humankind, because only Allah can ensure unlimited justice. Besides, after the September 11th incident, some angry Americans assaulted and censured Muslims indiscriminately. In so doing, they probably were not at all aware that they had, in fact, done a favor to those terrorists hoping to provoke a struggle between the Islamic and Western worlds.

THE IMPACT OF THE SEPTEMBER 11^th INCIDENT ON MIDDLE EASTERN TRENDS IN SOCIAL THOUGHT

The September 11th incident will no doubt exert great and deep impact on trends of Middle East social thought. But as the follow-up on this incident is far from over, the widespread and far-reaching influences it will bring to the Middle Eastern society are uncertain and will depend on the results of this incident. From the perspective of the current situation, the incident’s direct impact on Middle East social trends of thought may be manifested in the following two aspects. (a) With the development of the fight against terrorism, the international community has paid ever more attention to various issues in the Middle Eastern extremes of social thought. Various countries have gradually reached consensus on issues of improving the Middle East political and social situation and on removing the sources of international terrorism. (b) The incident has led the Arab and Islamic world to look into many of its issues and to make efforts to overcome the negative impacts of globalization and its own social maladies, thereby achieving peace and development together with the international community.

The above judgment is a mainly positive consideration with a more or less personal emotional coloring, but events may develop in an opposite direction, namely, the visible terrorists are defeated while the invisible extreme trends of thought continue to swell. In the Middle East, the statement that after bin Laden is destroyed many people may turn out to follow his example is not simply alarmist talk. All depends on the follow-up on the incident. This is a long and complicated process, in which the international community can play a positive role to push events in a favorable direction.

Firstly, the international community must help the Middle East root out the sources of terrorism, including attention to the unjust treatment suffered by the Islamic world, removal of poverty and more concern to promote a Middle East peace process while combating international terrorism. Bullying and oppression, compulsion, poverty, despair and life in the shadow of an occupation army can only cause indignation, violence, extermination and sacrifice.¹⁶

Arab scholars hold that the utmost value for Islamic culture is the pursuit of justice. Muslims can even tolerate limitation of their freedom, but absolutely cannot tolerate unjust treatment. They oppose the treatment of the similar people according to different standards. They consider that this unfair state must be changed, and see U.S. unfairness on the issue of Arabs and Israel to have led to a great extent to the attacks on the U.S.¹⁷ When talking about the U.S. position on the Arab-Israeli issue, Arabs often give the following example: no resolution of the UN Security Council recognizes occupation by force. After the outbreak of the Third Middle East War in 1967 and the Gulf War in 1990, the UN adopted respectively two important resolutions for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab territory and Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. But the former did not result in force to make Israel withdraw from the occupied territory while the latter resulted in the formation of a U.S.-led multinational force which applied military force. They see this as an unfair U.S. position. On this issue, a Japanese professor wrote after the September 11th incident that if this terror activity is an act of Islamic radicals it is not hard to imagine the following background. In the view of Islamic believers, many unfair events have taken place in quick succession in the past half century. From the angle of the world, fair countermeasures must be taken toward Muslim societies and hostility toward them as a source of terrorist activities must be reduced. If many Islamic believers think that fairness has been achieved, terrorist organizations will lose support and perish of themselves. However, if acts of war unfold aimed at non specific Islamic believers, hostility will evoke hostility and the possibilities of a clash of civilizations becoming a reality will increase.¹⁸

Secondly, the international community should redress the portrait of Arabs and Muslims in Western eyes and help improve relations between Western countries and the Islamic world. For historical reasons, the Islamic and Western worlds have had a long and fundamentally tense relationship. In the 18^th century, the West stepped up its infiltration into Middle East, first through trade ties and then with colonialist and aggressive imperialist political and economic policies, bringing bout a qualitative change in the earlier relations between Christian West and Muslim East. The equal relations between the Islamic society and the West were transferred into a relationship in which Islamic society was subordinated, ruled and exploited. Each Muslim social group in all walks of life was affected by the consequences of this change.

From the religious angle Muslims expressed their response to this politically subordinate and economically exploited position, as well as to the social and cultural alienation this caused. In the past half century the West, especially the U.S., has taken a position partial to Israel on Arab-Israeli relations, making its relations with the Islamic world more tense. In recent years, violent terrorist activities of Muslim “extreme organizations” have been aimed mainly at the U.S. and they regard West at large as “Satan”. Meanwhile some Western countries and Western public opinion have often linked terrorism with Islam indiscriminately, and some media have not hesitated to vilify Arabs and describe them as terrorists.

Alawi holds that as for the hatred incurred between the Islamic world and the West, the West of course should bear the responsibility, but “we can’t also shirk our own responsibility”. He thinks that most Muslims hope their religion can coexist peacefully with other beliefs and hope to benefit from the new opportunity offered by the modern world. They do not in the slightest want to force Muslim citizens and non-Muslims in a country to live according to a single way, or to declare war on the world for the sake of publicizing their own religion. The U.S. and the West at large should review their own policies to Arabs and the Islamic world.¹⁹ Alawi’s views are representative of the mainstream Arab society.

Thirdly, the international community must prevent further extension of such wars as Afghanistan, especially from evolving into a religious war. All the countries including Israel in Middle East hope not to extend the war into other Arab countries. They see extension of the war only as encouraging extreme Middle Eastern thought trends.

In Islamic countries, people’s awareness of Islam is stronger than that of the state. At present, anti-war sentiments of the broad masses of Muslims are closely linked with anti-U.S. sentiments. Though the Taliban terror regime is not attractive in the Islamic world and the Afghan holy warriors’ behavior in the name of Islam is everywhere despised, nonetheless they are Muslim brothers who believe in the same religion. To many Islamic countries, supporting a Western Christian anti-Muslim coalition is a risky action.²⁰ More and more people in Western countries have begun to suspect that terrorism cannot be destroyed by only military attacks. The Chicago Tribune published an article pointing out that, by declaring war on Islamic terrorism without clearly pointing out some particular country and even some particular target, the Bush administration had set foot in a region that was becoming particularly dangerous because of religious conflicts and the history of colonialism and economic exploitation. The long-standing hatreds have incited Islamic extremism; bombs and missiles can only intensify this extreme sentiment.²¹

NOTES

1. Abdullah Alawi, “Muslims and World Citizens,” Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2001.

2. Hussain Kamil Bahaeddin, Patriotism in A World without Identity -- Challenge of Globalization (Shanghai Foreign Language Education Publishing House, Sept. 2001), p. 66.

3. Ibid., pp. 61-62.

4. Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of League of Arab States, speech at the meeting celebrating the 10^th anniversary of the founding of Middle East Radio and TV Center, Sept. 20, 2001.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Mohammad Malaek, Speech at the 2001 seminar “21^st Century Forum---Dialogue among Civilizations” sponsored by CPPCC.

8. The Financial Times, September 27, 2001.

9. Yang Mingjie, “International Social Trends of Thought and the September 11th Incident”, Contemporary International Relations, No. 10, 2001.

10. Abdullah Alawi, “Muslims and World Citizens”, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2001.

11. Ghali, Unvanquished -- Ghali’s Memoir (World Knowledge Publishing House, January 2001), p. 190.

12. See Chinese Encyclopedia of Islam (Sichuan Dictionary Publishing House, March 1994), p. 148.

13. Contemporary Middle East Political and Social Thought (China Social Sciences Publishing House, February 1992), p. 137.

14. Die Welt, September 25, 2001.

15. Wang Yizhou, “How to Define Terrorism?”, Contemporary International Relations, No. 10, 2001.

16. Moussa.

17. Egyptian Consul General in Shanghai to SIIS scholars.

18. Tokyo Shimbun, September 25, 2001.

19. Alawi.

20. Dei Welt, September 25, 2001.

21. “Military Force Is not the Way of Winning the War against Islamic Terrorism”, Chicago Tribune, September 24,2001.