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December 20, 2002
No room for negotiation
Shove our values down Islam's throat: Muslim editor.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Palestinians should be pushed out of the West Bank and forced into
Arab countries like Jordan because appeasing them with an independent
Palestinian state will not end terror attacks. That was just one
of a series of rhetorical firecrackers let off by Fazil Mihlar,
an editorial writer for the Vancouver Sun and a Muslim originally
from Sri Lanka.
Mihlar was speaking Dec. 11 in the sanctuary of Har-El Synagogue
in West Vancouver. The talk, titled Islamic Terror: What is the
Long-Term Solution?, was sponsored by the congregation's men's group.
Mihlar offered little in the way of optimism, outlining some of
the history and foundations of Islamic terror. He traces the current
spate of violence directly to the development of the OPEC oil cartel
in 1973 and suggested that the Americans are deluded if they think
they can fight Islamic terror without taking on their ally, Saudi
Arabia. Mihlar passionately rejected the rationalizations that international
inequity breeds terror.
"Fifteen of the 19 terrorists [involved in the Sept. 11 attacks
on New York and Washington] came from middle- to high-income Saudi
families," said Mihlar. Similarly, a recent study from the
University of California at Berkeley debunked the idea that terrorists
were motivated by economic desperation, noting that most Hezbollah
activists come from high-income, educated families. Moreover, if
economic critiques were at the root of the terror, violence would
be waning, not increasing, according to Mihlar.
"Income inequality is not widening; it's narrowing," said
Mihlar, adding that, if economic inequality were the root of terrorism,
Latin America would be the centre of troubles, or some of the poverty-stricken
regions of Africa, but they're not.
"There's a simple answer: They're not fundamentalist Muslims,"
he said.
Rather than economic critiques, which some in the West have used
to try to make sense of the terrorists' zeal, Mihlar flatly blames
Islamic fundamentalism, which he said is bent on eliminating Jews
and Christians. He said North Americans have viewed the conflict
from an economic perspective because, since Sept. 11, 2001, they
have struggled with a context into which they can fit the irrationality
of suicidal zealots murdering thousands of people. The answer, according
to Mihlar, has more to do with their belief in the afterlife.
"Islamic fundamentalists, let's get this straight, are not
living for this world," he said. How does one negotiate the
nuances of international relations and religious pluralism with
people who have been indoctrinated to believe that this world is
a mere way-station on the way to a greater world? he asked.
While the Americans have carefully kept the Saudi Arabian leadership
on their side through the Gulf War and the intervening period of
peace, Mihlar warned that U.S. President George W. Bush and his
colleagues are foolish to think they can get to the root of terror
without rooting it out of Saudi Arabia. The history is fairly recent
and is entirely entwined in oil money, he said. When the money began
to flow into Saudi Arabia, much of it was used to export a brand
of religious fundamentalism that was, until then, fairly particular
to the Saudi peninsula, said Mihlar. Flush with money, the fundamentalists
invited Muslims, not just from the Arab world but from the farther
reaches of the Islamic realm, including Indonesia, Bosnia, Pakistan
and also North America and Western Europe, to study their particular
brand of Islam. In addition to this education, the Saudis, according
to Mihlar, then funded mosques all over the world where their strain
of Islam was preached and, over the intervening decades, succeeded
in turning mainstream Islamic societies into hotbeds of extremism.
"If you want to talk about regime change, I'll talk Saudi Arabia
anytime," he said.
Mihlar said that the Saudi leaders are particularly sensitive about
their public relations in the United States right now, which makes
it an opportune time to place pressure on the American ally to crack
down on the extreme elements in that country. But the short-term
solution, he warned, is violent and brutal. Muslim societies are
patriarchal and based on force, he argued. A "confrontational,
bloody approach" is needed to confront Islamic terror in the
short term, he stated. In the longer term, a complete revision of
the education system throughout the Islamic world is necessary,
he said.
"After all, where do you think all this hatred comes from?"
he asked. "Indoctrination is what passes for education in the
Arab world today."
Complex, intellectual solutions such as peace agreements and multilateralism
are not going to work, he warned.
"Look at what all your sophisticated plans have given you:
Just blood and tears," he said. "I'm tired of hearing
[about] sophistication."
Mihlar wants the western powers to force Islamic countries to adopt
western standards of education. This sounds like plain colonialism,
he acknowledged, and is not popular in a system of international
relations weaned on cultural relativism, but that should be no impediment,
said Mihlar.
"Whether we like it or not, we have to shove it down their
throats," he said.
On Middle East affairs, he warned, as long as the Palestinians are
in thrall to Islamic extremism, there is no room for negotiation.
"I'm convinced that any kind of appeasement is not going to
work," he said. "Their vision of a state is not 1967,
it's 1948. That means no Israel."
Mihlar rejects complicated analyses of the Middle East and world
reaction to Israel. He blames anti-Semitism and acknowledges a connection
between the origins of the Holocaust and current opinions about
Israel. After visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.,
Mihlar said he saw a direct parallel to current events, where Jews
are not free to live in peace in Israel.
His upbringing in Sri Lanka has given him a particular position
on terrorism, said Mihlar. When the Tamil Tigers were being funded
by offshore instigators in England, Canada and elsewhere, the government
of Sri Lanka implored western countries to move to turn off the
taps of cash funding terror in the island state. However, western
powers saw the Tamil Tigers sympathetically as oppressed people
seeking historical justice, rather than murdering terrorists.
A similar attitude toward Mideast violence was prevalent in North
America until that violence landed on home soil, said Mihlar. The
absence of a frame of reference for attacks such as that against
the World Trade Centres led some North Americans to blame our own
society's faults for the attack.
"No, dammit, it's not our fault," Mihlar exhorted. (His
passionate presentation was interspersed with occasional curses,
including an unconscious "Jesus Christ" which, coming
from a Muslim on the bimah of a synagogue seemed to strike some
audience members as particularly humorous.)
The Prophet Muhammed preached a live-and-let-live theology, said
Mihlar.
"That is not the face of Islam in the world today – anywhere,"
he said.
Moderate Muslims like Mihlar himself have to take some of the blame
for their co-religionists' lurch to the extreme, he acknowledged.
As extremism ascended in mosques around the world, moderates withdrew,
he said.
Fundamentalist Islam is led by "unthinking, illiterate imams,"
Mihlar stated. Conversation and critical thinking are not welcome
and many erstwhile mainstream Muslims are afraid to enter a mosque,
even in North America, because of the extreme rhetoric and fiery
political diatribes they are subjected to inside, he said.
"We have basically abdicated the religion.... It's controlled
by yahoos," he said. "People are scared to go into mosques
and talk to these guys.... I'm ashamed to be associated with these
[extremists]."
Though Mihlar's presentation was often inflammatory, he made a disclaimer,
stating that all Muslims do not hate Jews and the terrorist activities
are instigated by a small group of extremists.
"There is a sliver out there that does these things,"
he said.
Mihlar, who has a master's of business administration, is a self-proclaimed
observer of international affairs. His provocative presentation
was well received, though the congregation's leader, Rabbi Shmuel
Birnham, cautioned the audience against spontaneous applause, in
the interest of preventing the crowd from taking up sides.
Mihlar emphasized to the Bulletin that he was speaking at
Har-El as an individual, and not on behalf of his employer.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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