The Story the Media Are Missing in the Middle East

“It is not police and intelligence community which defeat terrorism; it’s communities that beat terrorism,” remarked London’s police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair. But the Muslim community, argues David Gardner, is in the midst of “a war of ideas.” “If it’s a Muslim problem,” retorts Tom Friedman, “it needs a Muslim solution.” Indeed, he concludes, “the double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst.”

Friedman is right. The problem is that every ambitious young Muslim knows that the best way to gain “five minutes of fame” is to blow oneself up to murder others and the second best, to spout extremist slogans. The worse way to attract attention is to condemn terror and extremism. Indeed, the same Western media which keeps highlighting the “successes,” sophistication and supposed popularity of the extremists, willfully ignores the efforts of the moderates. You would not know it from reading the press, but Muslims feel under enormous pressure to save their own image as civilized human beings and the image of their religion as one to which a respectable human being can adhere.

Few Muslims still consider the attention 9/11 attracted to their world wholly benign. As Theodore Dalrymple wrote: "for tolerance to work, it must be reciprocal; tolerance appears to the intolerant jihadist as mere weakness and lack of belief in anything. Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality." No one understands that better than Muslim diasporas suffering from the suspicions of their neighbors; the Muslim’s elites whose access to the West has been seriously curtailed or the Muslim leaders whose very legitimacy not to mention the quality of their rule has come under serious question. Moreover, Muslim elites know that they must clear the Jihadist atmosphere polluting their lands if they are to have any chance of withstanding in tact the new wave of democratization evident around the world.

These are the pressures which led King Abdullah II of Jordan to organize what Friedman called “an impressive conference in Amman for moderate Muslim thinkers and clerics who want to take back their faith from those who have tried to hijack it." Just note that the topics the 180 scholars from around the Muslim world (some far from moderate) got together to discuss: “human rights, moderate Islam and reform priorities; behavior towards other Muslims, rights of minorities and citizenship, the position of woman, training of imams, the cohesion of Muslim society; the practice of accusing people of religious dissent (the murder of the Egyptian envoy to Iraq was preceded by a finding that he was guilty of apostasy), which has led to Muslims' blood being spilled in various countries, and unauthorized fatwas.”

If you assume that such a gathering would attract an army of Western reporters, you’d be wrong. The Middle East media covered the conference but the only Western paper to do so was theSun Herald, a paper published in Southern Mississippi. Nor is the experience of the Jordanian conference unique. Forget the extremist bravado and even the defensiveness demonstrated by some official spokespersons. Typically, when Muslims are accused of the crime of silence, they remonstrate that their repeated condemnations are often ignored as are their attempts to wrestle control of mosques from extremists. There cannot be a better case in point than that of the Finsbury Mosque. Just compare the number of articles written about the Jihadist cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri, to the ones written about the successful efforts made by moderates to reclaim the mosque, install a new board of trustees and bring in a new, moderate imam. Just as importantly, how many articles were written about the fact that the change dramatically increased mosque attendance. Clearly, it was community support which enabled the new Imam to call on his flock to cooperate with the police to apprehend those responsible for the London bombing.

“UK religious leaders have issued a rare joint statement condemning Thursday's 'evil terrorist' attacks in London” reports the BBC. That joint statement is the outcome of another phenomenon studiously ignored by the media, the serious Muslim efforts to engage in interfaith dialogue with Christians and Jews. After all, there is strength in numbers. Of course, mainstream (as opposed to radical leftist) Christians and Jews condition that help on an unconditional Muslim condemnation of terror and the acceptance of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Those were the accepted guidelines of a Christian, Jewish and Muslim interfaith group organized last year in South Jersey to which I belong. The first major undertaking of the group was an interfaith Prayer service for peace and against terror. We had no difficulty attracting clergy or participants. The local media was another matter. Some deigned to send correspondents but the stories (if they wrote any) never made it into the papers.

This regional experience is mirrored by the amazing lack of coverage received by the recent inter religious conference organized by the Emir of Qatar in Doha in late June. Mark R. Cohen, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a conference participant summarizes the importance of the conference thus: “There have been a couple of other such interreligious conferences in recent years, for instance, in Jordan (which has a Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, founded by Crown Prince Hassan, the brother of the late King Hussein) and in Morocco, but this one in Doha, as far as I know, was the first such meeting in a country whose official religion is Wahhabi Islam, let alone in a country that borders on Saudi Arabia.” Professor Cohen, along with J. Rolando Matalon, rabbi of B'nai Jeshurun in Manhattan, Rabbi Burton Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, associate professor of religious studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, was one of the American Jewish participants at the conference.

It should be noted that this was the third annual such conference. The previous two were organized by the Anglican and Catholic churches and were limited to Christians and Muslims (perhaps, as Christopher Hitchens argues about a similar post 7/7 exclusion, "Why do I think that there were some in both the Muslim and Christian leaderships who thought that, in their proud 'inclusiveness,' they didn't need to go quite that far?”).

However, the Third Doha Conference for Religious Dialogue, the one organized by the Faculty of Shari`ah at Qatar University at the urging of the Emir, who according to Rabbi Visotzky, possesses “a strong sense of self,” included Jews. Moreover, Israeli Rabbis were also invited and their invitation was advertised in the local press along with the news that the invitation of the Jews led Muslim Brotherhood affiliated scholar Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, who was given asylum in Qatar after being ousted from Egypt, to stay away (he participated at the Jordanian meeting!).

Interestingly, it was the absence of the Israeli rabbis rather than the absence of al-Qaradawi that the head of the organizing committee, Dr Aisha al-Mannai, had to explain repeatedly:

About the participation of Jewish representatives in the conference, al-Mannai said that invitations were extended to moderate Jewish personalities, as 'we have tried in the beginning to avoid inviting any one from Israel not to provoke neither the Christian nor the Muslim sides.' ” She said: “However, they have been later on invited but they did not come, claiming in press and other media means that the State of Qatar had invited them to attend the conference but not to participate with a word.” These remarks were untrue, she said, stressing that the State of Qatar would never invite people and prevent them from expressing their views in a conference specifically made for dialogue.

The first address to be made at the opening ceremony immediately after the inaugural address of HH the Emir was made by the Jewish side according to the chronological order of the three religions, she said. “We have no objection to dialogue with Jews for being Jews and we have nothing against them as followers of Judaism, as individuals or intuitions. And we have no prejudice or rejection of Judaism as a religion,” al-Mannai said. “We merely oppose the supporters of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and we disapprove the ongoing practices in Palestinian territories,” she said, stressing that such stances are well-known to everyone. [Click here for the news story.]

Of course, the question as to whether “the occupation of Palestine” refers only to the lands conquered in 1967 or includes Israel per se remains, though the relatively benign relationship between Israel and Qatar gives credence to Rabbi Matalon’s experience. “In my case,” he reports, “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was brought up constantly in interviews with the press and conversations with the participants.  People were surprised when I stated that I, just as the majority of Israelis and the majority of Jews in the world, oppose the occupation of west bank and Gaza and am in favor of a 2 state solution. They were surprised when I acknowledged the humiliation of the Palestinians and their suffering and were quite ready to listen when I would explain why the state of Israel has full right to exist.” In other words, much of Arab anti-Semitism and anti-Israel feelings are based on misinformation which the conference began to address. If things progress as expected, Israeli rabbis will participate in next year’s conference.

To follow up the conference, it was proposed that an international centre for religious dialogue will be set up in Doha to deepen knowledge among followers of the three faiths, and review negative inherited values and prejudices that hinder mutual understanding. The conferees also recommended that academic sections in Arab and Islamic universities to study the three monotheistic religions in a scientific way should be set up as well as councils for religious coexistence. There was even talk of permitting foreign workers to build a church in Qatar.

Finally, when I asked Professor Cohen what was the most surprising aspect of the conference, he retorted: “In this democratically aspiring Islamic country, in spite of the fact that the official religion is Wahhabi Islam, we heard unexpected voices of dissent from the 'party line.'  When a Muslim speaker excoriated both Christians and Jews and spoke about the Zionized West, the moderator, Dr. Al-Manai, demurred, saying: 'We must be frank. I would have hoped your talk could have included some criticism of Islam as well.' On my own panel, the former Dean of the same Faculty, and Professor of Law, Sheikh Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, said forcefully and surprisingly: 'If the Palestinian problem is solved will all our problems be over? No.   Muslims show hatred and opposition also among themselves….There is a culture of hatred… We need to address our own faults and failures, to be self-critical…if we want to have a fruitful dialogue.' ”  

In other words, the forces determined to avoid a vicious and counterproductive clash of civilizations are making progress. By failing to cover that progress, the Western media are not only failing to tell an important story but actually undermining it.