Time to Match US Words with Action in the Muslim World [The National]
April 22, 2011
The US-Islamic World Forum, arranged and coordinated by the US-based Brookings Institution, has since its inception in 2004 been held in Doha, Qatar.
Not this year.
Always an engaging event - involving conversations with government, media and public intellectuals from across the Muslim world and the US - it has nonetheless been short on broad involvement from the highest levels of the United States government.
But this year was different. There was Arizona Sen John McCain (former Republican presidential candidate), Massachusetts Sen John Kerry (chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), and Hillary Rodham Clinton (Secretary of State), all giving speeches or participating in panels.
They were engaging with influential members of the Muslim world's political and religious establishments, as well as top intelligentsia. For three days this month the Muslim world's movers and shakers were welcomed to Washington DC with open arms and the government's full attention.
And yet, as heartening as it was to witness a renewed interest in dialogue from the West - enough to move the conference from the Gulf to Washington - it was equally clear that both sides continue to misunderstand each other.
A case in point: during the conference, one key American politician took it upon himself to essentially declare to all of those assembled from the Muslim world that they should be grateful that the US had learnt from the Iraq war fiasco, and that it had been more restrained in Libya.
"Is he looking for the region to thank the US for not invading Libya and causing more mayhem?" I asked one of the American delegates. She could only sigh and shake her head.
The US does deserve credit for preventing a massacre in Benghazi, but let's not thank Washington for not being stupid. The United States should have known better in Iraq - and it would be absurd if it had not learnt that lesson already.
On another occasion, we were subjected to having to listen, time and time again, to the idea that American ideals and American interests are now one and the same, and this is why US backed the protesters in Egypt and intervened in Libya.
It's a fine sentiment - and I suspect one that many Americans wish were true. The trouble comes when these ideals are put to the test. When Secretary Clinton visited Egypt recently, she was not welcomed with rallies of support, but by protesters who demanded an apology from the US for supporting the former president, Hosni Mubarak, for three decades.
When Ms Clinton gave her speech at the Brookings forum, she certainly received a standing ovation - but afterwards she had to answer the very direct antagonism expressed by a young Bahraini civil rights activist who demanded to know why American action in the Gulf was so meek.
None of that is entirely surprising. Frankly, it's the standard rule in international relations: those who lead a nation must put the interests of their nation first. Because of its size and stature, the US is criticised more often for pushing its own interests ahead of others. But every country does the same thing.
Where things get interesting, however, is when a country's interests are defined in a way that might converge with principle. Egypt's protesters received the support of the US because it became clear that the unsustainable situation of a police state in Egypt was, in fact, unsustainable.
The lack of sustainability leads to instability - and instability leads to a poor environment for trade and general prosperity, both internally and externally. As such, America's strategic interests lay with the people of Egypt - because it seemed they were the key to stability.
There are other unsustainable situations in the Arab world. Two of them stand out most of all - the lack of enfranchisement of Arab citizens in terms of how their countries are run, and the festering problem of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The first problem is being looked at very closely in Washington, as well as world-wide. I met a wide variety of public officials, inside and outside of the forum, where this was very clear. There was a sense of excitement, just on a human level, on what this meant for the people of the Arab world. But this was balanced by a fear of what may come to pass - because they were aware that their popular standing in the region is not the best.
The second problem is not being considered particularly at all - except through the prism of what it means for the security of Israel? Understandable, perhaps, but not a particularly long-sighted view. Israel's future is now in a region where people-power counts for more than it used to, and as such, is in a far more precarious situation than when the Mubaraks of the region were still in charge.
If nothing else, the US-Islamic World Forum is a place where such issues can be, often are and should continue to be interrogated.
This year, the forum's eighth, was different for many reasons, from location to level of American participation. More importantly, though, were the participants from this side of the world. This time, Arabs walked in with their heads held high, not because of what they achieved hundreds of years ago, but because of what they achieved in Tahrir Square a few weeks ago. It's definitely a new era in US-Islamic world relations.
Dr HA Hellyer is Fellow at the University of Warwick, and senior advisor to www.tahrirsquared.net.
Source: The National