They Are At Peace Only When At War

Friday, June 28, 2002
By: Tashbih Sayyed

Yasser Arafat, according to a news report, is prepared to accept a Middle East peace plan put forward by former US President Bill Clinton in December 2000. According to the plan, the Palestinians would set up a state in 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza and would gain sovereignty over Arab quarters in Jerusalem and a hotly disputed holy site. Clinton had presented the plan after a July summit meeting between Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak broke down without an agreement.
The question right now is not how the Israelis are going to greet this acceptance, but how the common man on a Palestinian main street will react to it. And the answer is for every one to guess.

Yasser Arafat is supposed to be the leader of his people (Palestinians), and as such, a declaration of acceptance of a peace plan by him should have been a good sign as it would have been taken as an acceptance by his people too. But if the bloody events in the region are any indication of who has the authority over the Palestinians, even a blind person can see that it is not Yasser Arafat. The masses follow the instructions of HAMAS, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad leadership. These groups do not want any peace with Israel. They want its destruction.

The destruction of the state of Israel is the faith of the leadership of HAMAS, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Their lethal faith is the product of the way they have been taught their history as well as theology. To make a people change their faith is not an easy job. It takes a real enlightened leader to challenge the centuries old dogma and the resultant mind. A real leader.

So it is of no consequence what Arafat accepts or does not. He is only a ruler not a leader. And this explains why Palestinians, or for that matter any Muslim, does not listen to their rulers. It is a common story with all the rulers in the Muslim world. They do not command any respect among their people and as a consequence can survive only as a dictator. And dictators can never be leaders. They can never make their people change their ways. Only a true leader, believing in the welfare of its people can convince them about the necessity of changing for the better - for peace. But unfortunately the Muslim main street is controlled by Islamist clergy who sincerely do not believe in peace with anyone who is not one of them. In fact, they are only at peace when at war with others.

There are three rulers in the Arab world who are considered as main players in the game of finding a formula for a permanent peace in holy land, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Husni Mubarak of Egypt and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority. All of them, at one time or the other, have presented, propounded, agreed to, or accepted one kind of a peace plan or an other. But none of the agreements, acceptances, presentations or declarations could translate into a peace on the ground.

The reason is very simple. None of these leaders control the popular sentiment on the Arab street. The common man is guided, directed and controlled by groups and individuals who do not accept the existence of Jews at all. According to the interpretations of their "holy books", their salvation is in destroying the Jews and Christians and Hindus and all the non-Wahabis. This has been their faith for fifteen hundred years and no one, enjoying any political and moral authority in the Muslim world has ever tried to change it.

And there is a reason for this state of affairs.
In civilized societies, people are ruled by persons who represent civilized values and follow a system of social justice. They keep the interests of their people close to their heart. They do not compromise on principals and often prefer to leave their seat of power than submit to a situation that could endanger the welfare and future well-being of their people. Such rulers are in fact true leaders of their people.

When such leaders find that on certain issues, their people have a misguided or misinformed view, they challenge them. And as they command respect because of their selfless positions in life, they succeed in correcting the popular positions on issues and keep their nations on a course that ensures peace, stability and progress not just for themselves but for the whole world.

Selfish rulers, on the other hand, are only interested in staying in power. They do not care for the welfare of their people. And that's why, unless their own seat is threatened, they never take a stand against the popular trend. They, instead of leading, allow themselves to be led by the street sentiment, however misguided it may be. Such personalities do not command any respect among the people. They can never be leaders of their people. They are only rulers, dictators and autocrats.

In societies where they have rulers but no leaders, the masses often live a life of depravity and hopelessness. Tomorrows hold no silver lining for them and there is nothing in the future for them to look for. They start looking somewhere else for the answers. Religion in such cases often becomes the ultimate sanctuary. When this world fails the common man, life hereafter becomes more attractive for them. Extremist groups love these conditions. They move in with their own politico-religious agendas and do their beast to maintain the hopeless conditions.

Today's Muslim societies are the best examples of such a dreadful life. There is no democracy. There is no social justice. Muslim masses are living in a perpetual state of hopelessness. They have nowhere to go. They do not trust their rulers as none of them has been of their choice. They hate them. Taking advantage of this situation, extremist religious groups have moved in. It was very easy for the extremist religious leaders to win the confidence and trust of the poverty stricken masses. They only had to find someone to pin the blame of their miseries on. And they did not have to go very far - it was right there in their religious and history books.

Since, the early Muslim rulers are considered by the extremists (Islamists) as the "rightly guided ones", and some Islamist clerics go to the extent of saying that they were actually "divinely guided ones", all the decisions and actions taken by them during the political and territorial conflicts they were involved in 6th and 7th centuries, have come to be considered by literalist and dogmatists as sacred (divine) and true for all times to come. And by the same token, all the religions and faiths which were represented by the opposition leaders who fought against the early Muslim rulers have also been declared as enemies of "Islam" for all times to come.

This state of mind that refuses to move forward and is frozen in the 6th and 7th century has been a source of strength to the radical Islamist and dogmatic forces among Muslims today. Every wrong that is ever found in a Muslim society is invariably blamed on Christianity or Judaism. So much so that Hinduism has also been declared the enemy of Islam, although all the Hindu-Muslim conflicts were political and territorial and had nothing to do with religion. Because of this tendency of painting everything in religious colors, all the wars in the Muslim history have been a clash of faiths and never a dispute between two states, two countries or two kings or two leaders.

So now in this background, when after World War II, the Muslim countries under the rule of kings, sham democrats, dictators, autocrats and Ayatullahs, could not stop their downward slide in social, cultural and economic spheres, although around them, everywhere in the world, there was so much progress, the Islamist governments had to blame someone for their failures. And they reached for the age old recipe, the Judeo-Christian conspiracy against "Islam."

In this ploy to divert the attention of the exploited masses away from their misdeeds, the rulers, in many cases had the assistance of extremist Muslim (Islamist) clerics who had total control of the pulpits in millions of mosques around the world. From these pulpits, the Islamists declared that all the miseries in the Muslim world are because of the Judeo-Christian conspiracy against Islam. All the territorial conflicts and all political disputes were given the label of Judeo-Christian wars against Islam. From Indonesia to Indiana, China to Chechnya, Philippines to Pakistan, Afghanistan to America, every place became a battle front in a war between Judeo-Christian forces and Islam. The whole world was now a "House of War" (Dar-ul-Harb)

Until this mindset is corrected, the Muslim main street will always be controlled by Islamist radicals and the Muslim governments will be headed by people like Yasser Arafat, crown prince Abdullah and Hosni Mubarak who neither have the guts nor courage to challenge the centuries old bigotry that has pushed the Muslims in the darkest corner of the dark ages.