Blaming West won't solve Muslims' woes

By Husain Haqqani, Special to Gulf News

The world's 1.4 billion Muslims seem overwhelmingly enraged by the war in Iraq and the suffering caused by US military intervention. But there appears to be little, if any, outrage against the sectarian bloodletting that has led to more Iraqi casualties than war directly involving American troops.
Muslim leaders and intellectuals alike find it easier to criticise the outsiders (in this case the US) for the harm inflicted on fellow Muslims. When it comes to recognising the suffering caused by fellow believers, there is a tendency among Muslims to fudge the issue.
The lack of democratic space in much of the Muslim world has prevented the emergence of mass non-violent protest movements, especially when the protest needs to be aimed at the conduct of other Muslims.
It is common for demonstrators in Muslim countries to protest against the actions of Israel or the United States. But one seldom hears of protests against the wrongs committed by Muslim regimes or, in Iraq's case, sectarian militias. The violence perpetrated by Sudan's regime in Darfur, for example, has gone by and large unprotested in much of the Muslim world.
Since the emergence of Western nations as the world's dominant powers, Muslim thinkers and leaders have been preoccupied with the question, "how to reverse Muslim decline, especially in relation to the West."
The colonial experience, in particular, has had a deep-rooted impact on Muslim psyche. There is a rush to condemn the foreigners and the colonisers, coupled with a general unwillingness within the Muslim world to look inward and to identify where we may be going wrong ourselves. There is still little effort to recognise the real reasons for Muslim humiliation and backwardness.
Dominate
Islam's early generations produced knowledge and wealth that enabled Muslim empires to dominate much of the world. But now almost half the world's Muslim population is illiterate and the combined GDP of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) hovers near the GDP of France alone. More books are translated every year from other languages into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic over the past century. Fifteen million Greeks buy more books every year than almost 300 million Arabs.
In the year 2000, according to the World Bank, the average income in the advanced countries (at purchasing price parity) was $27,450, with the US income averaging $34,260.
Last year, the US income went up to $37,500. Israel's income per head stood at $19,320 in 2000 and was $19,200 last year. The average income of the Muslim world, however, stood at $3,700. The per capita income on PPP basis in 2003 of the only nuclear-armed Muslim majority country, Pakistan, was a meagre $2,060. Excluding the oil exporting countries, none of the Muslim countries of the world had per head incomes above the world average of $7,350.
National pride in the Muslim world is derived not from economic productivity, technological innovation or intellectual output but from the rhetoric of "destroying the enemy" and "making the nation invulnerable". Such rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilisations as much as specific Western policies. It also serves as an opiate that keeps Muslims riled up against external enemies with little attention paid to the internal causes of intellectual and economic decline.
Review
The Muslim world needs a broad movement to review the material and moral issues confronting the Umma (the community of believers). But so far calls for removing the vestiges of colonialism and setting right historic injustices have prevailed over a more realistic effort to combine condemnation of wrongs committed by others within introspection of Muslims' own collective mistakes.
Muslims must rise and peacefully mobilise against sectarianism and the violence and destruction in, say, Iraq. But before that can happen, Muslim discourse would have to shift away from the focus on Muslim victimhood and towards taking responsibility, as a community, for our own situation.
The Quran describes the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) as the prophet of mercy. Muslims begin all their acts, including worship, with the words, "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful."
The Quran also says "To you, your faith and to me, mine," which removes any theological basis for sectarian violence. But unfortunately these mercy-focused and peacemaking ideas are lost in the overall discourse in the Muslim world about reviving the lost glory and setting right the injustice of Western domination.
Once Muslims convince themselves that the sectarian violence is a Zionist or American conspiracy or that it is the result of American occupation, their rage gets diverted. There is little rage and resentment against fellow Muslims who are actually engaged in that meaningless violence and, therefore, little room for a Muslim Martin Luther King to stand up and say "We are responsible for this and we need to put an end to it."

Husain Haqqani is Director of Boston University's Centre for International Relations, and Co-Chair of the Islam and Democracy Project at Hudson Institute, Washington D.C. He is author of the book 'Pakistan between Mosque and Military'.

Bloger Comment: great article I do not know what the sectarian violence in Iraq would achieve to Muslims. The Muslims clergy did conferences and condemnations about this violence and I do not see why they continue to fight. Regarding the west the thing we could hope from them is to leave us alone. Their interests are the same oil, stability and Israel. We as Muslims have to solve our problems and our glory should by having prosperous, democratic and peaceful Arab/Muslims nations. Israel/Arab conflict should be solved. The hard thing is to have a Muslim Martin Luther King. First the west reaction is likely to be suspicious and unpredictable, though you never know the future. Second some of Muslim leaders would conspire against him. Third a lot of the Muslim elites would rather fight one another than gather around him. God is the only one who would save us from ourselves and guide us to the best to our people and the world.