Muslims and Liberals

San Francisco Chronicle
October 5, 2001

DURING WORLD WAR II, Winston Churchill told a group of Indian leaders about the Nazi threat to Britain’s “freedom and independence” and asked them to help recruit Indian soldiers for the war. The Indians said they would be glad to help. But could the prime minister just give them his “word of honor” that at some point the Indians themselves would be enjoying the freedom that they would fight to preserve in Britain? Many Indians never forgot the insult they felt from Churchill’s reply. British citizens had not elected him, said the arch-imperialist, “to preside over the downfall of the British Empire.”

The insensitivity to the nomenclature about Muslims currently being bandied about Washington conjures up the same response today as the European colonialists’ attitudes toward their subjects did in World War II.

The way it is taking shape, the anti-terrorist campaign the Bush administration has launched has the potential to degenerate into a clash between Islam and the West.

It could happen despite the Bush administration’s impressive success in rallying Muslim governments around the world behind the project. The reason: The whole enterprise betrays brazen insensitivity about Muslims.

It started with the name. When President Bush called the campaign a “crusade”, some Muslims believed he meant it. Others thought it was a Freudian slip. Then came the narcissistic exercise to give it a formal name. Its outcome is hardly any less offensive for Muslims, or any more reassuring about their fate in the enterprise.

Muslims had objected to calling it “Operation Infinite Justice” because their Scripture says only God’s justice can be infinite. Pentagon pundits wracked their brains for a week only to come up with “Operation Enduring Freedom.”

Most of the Arab and Muslim countries are ruled by autocrats against whom Muslims are fighting for their rights and freedom. Those autocrats routinely call rights activists “terrorists”, and they all have joined Bush’s anti- terrorism bandwagon.

The day the Pentagon announced the operation would be named “Freedom”, President Bush praised the repressive Saudi monarchy for its “strong statement” supporting it. When Saudi youths watched the news on TV about their king being recruited for a project about “freedom”, they fumed: “Whose freedom? “Billing it as a pursuit of “freedom” is also an irony for Western Muslims whose freedom is becoming its casualty. Vandalism, assaults, slurs and blazing stares have forced many of them to minimize their outdoor activities. More than 450 have been arrested for interrogation in the United States. New laws are being crafted to give the FBI sweeping powers to crack down on suspects, and they will be Muslims. In Europe, too, scores of Muslims are being detained, interrogated and thrown behind bars on “terrorism-related” grounds, among them a 23-year-old man in Clermont-Ferrand, France. He felt he was being harassed during at a security check and yelled “Long live bin Laden” to vent his anger. He received a six-month jail sentence for those four words. Many of those who would be targeted as “terrorists” outside the West are Islam’s minutemen and Nathan Hales. They have been fighting for freedom and autonomy against local tyranny. They are now pitted against a far greater adversary: the U.S.-led “Operation Enduring Freedom.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin is helping the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan and being paid with Chechen Muslim aspirations for freedom. The Bush administration, which had sharply criticized Russia for human rights abuses in Chechnya, has now demanded that Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov settle with Putin for whatever he can get. Bush has learned that there are “al Qaeda terrorists” in Chechnya who need to be “brought to justice.”

No wonder the Chinese, who denounce the Uighurs struggling for autonomy as “Islamic terrorists”, have joined the anti-terrorism coalition enthusiastically. So have the Indians, who have been trying to crush the Kashmiri Muslim independence struggle.

The only thing that Arab autocracies have to show for their participation in the coalition is U.S. pressure behind the new Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. During the Persian Gulf War, too, the Americans had promised a Palestinian-Israeli peace initiative. Since then, Palestine has seen more Jewish settlements and more Muslim graves.

Many Muslims, who denounced the United States for supporting their oppressors, will now probably see it as joining those oppressors. And President Bush could have his “crusade,” unless he can keep his anti-terrorism campaign from being used as a tool for state terrorism against freedom-loving Muslims.