ROGER LIEBERMAN: DIALOGUE ON THE TWO WORLD SYSTEM
By Roger H. Lieberman
Palestine Chronicle, WA
Tuesday September 19, 2006
It is essential to reflect on this background before one can comprehend
the widespread outrage at Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks in Germany.
Imagine, for a moment, how much more enjoyable and tranquil our
lives might be today had the US government pursued a thoughtful,
prudent response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Such
a response would, I believe, have rested on two essential elements:
the formation of an international coalition to neutralize al-Qaeda
and bring its leadership to justice, and a sweeping reform of US
Middle East policy to redress the grievances that had kindled the
hatred which inspired 9-11. The paramount aspects of the latter would
have been ending the Clinton Administration’s pointlessly callous and
horribly destructive embargo against Iraq that had cost the lives of
hundreds of thousands of children, and reframing America’s stance on
the Israel-Palestine conflict to recognize the complete equality of
both peoples’ rights in the Holy Land.
There is no reason why any US administration, even a conservative
Republican one like that of George W. Bush, could not have pursued
such policies, given sufficient common sense and decency. But
these qualities, alas, were altogether lacking in the power-crazed
neoconservative ideologues that the President had most unwisely filled
his cabinet with.
Thus, the Bush Administration opted instead to exploit the public’s
anger and fear as a license to embark on a ruthless expansion of US
military power aimed at tightening control over the resources of the
Middle East and Central Asia – buttressed at home by a torrent of lies,
propaganda, and political mud-slinging. And so we find ourselves five
years later with America and the Muslim World more estranged than
ever, and with nearly 3000 US troops, thousands of Afghans, and at
least 100,000 Iraqis dead who would otherwise be among the living.
It is essential to reflect on this background before one can comprehend
the widespread outrage at Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks in Germany
concerning the alleged philosophical differences between Islam and
Christianity. This is the second time this year that unkind references
to Islam from a Western source have elicited violent Muslim protests –
the first being an offensive cartoon published in a Danish newspaper.
Many American observers, not predisposed to thoughtful reflection,
simply take such happenings as vindication of their prejudices.
But such self-congratulatory hubris ignores the unfortunate and
abiding reality that the depiction of Islam as "irrational" and
"violent" represents far more than a theological rumination. On the
contrary, it has been the singular ideological driving force behind
America’s vicious post-9/11 Middle East policy – the "clash of
civiliations" doctrine dispensed like snake oil by neoconservative
quacks, ever since the collapse of the Soviet bloc necessitated the
concoction of a new rationale for maintaining a military industrial
complex. Thus, when the Pope expounds on the "logical" underpinings
of the "Judeo-Christian" West in contrast with the Islamic world,
even as an aside, he is sending the message to all concerned that he
sympathizes with a conceited ideology that has engendered widespread
death, destruction, and misery on multiple occasions.
Benedict’s casual reference to the polemics of a late-14th century
Byzantine emperor engaged in a war with the Turks taps into a long
tradition of Orientalism – the pseudo-scholarly study of Asian
societies that rests on the premise that they are built on moral
and philosophical foundations radically different from those that
inform the cultures of Europe and their derivatives. Ever since the
Crusades of the Middle Ages, Western rulers have encouraged such
propaganda during conflicts with Asian nations as a means to squelch
self-reflection and promote unthinking patriotic obedience among
their subjects.
Yet, it would not take long for a good fifth-grade schoolmarm to
deconstruct this obtuse theory via a brief walk through history.
The Byzantine Empire, as any honest historian knows, was hardly
a paragon of religious tolerance and logical governance. From the
moment Constantine I ascended the throne and wed Christianity to the
remnants of Roman political power, Christians whose interpretation of
scripture did not conform to state-sponsored dogma were persecuted –
particularly the Gnostic sects, whose writings, such as the recently
discovered Judas Gospel, continue to fascinate historians. Jews
were subject to severe restrictions on their social status, and,
in Constantinople, were ostracized into a ghetto. In the political
realm, corruption, intrigue, and murder were commonplace.
Looking at the wider Western world of the late Middle Ages and early
Renaissance, one finds little evidence of morally-conscious rulers
seeking to reconcile faith and reason. Consider the trouble men like
Copernicus and Galileo encountered when they sought to challenge the
Church-sanctioned conception of a changeless universe centered on a
motionless Earth. An Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was burned
at the stake for teaching Copernican theory and speculating about life
on other planets. And, as astronomer Carl Sagan pointed out in one of
his wittiest books, Pope Calixtus III actually excommunicated Halley’s
Comet in 1456 because its appearance in the night sky coincided with
a major Turkish offensive in the Balkans – although, as Sagan points
out, its prior adherence to Catholicism was uncertain!
As for "conversion by the sword", it is difficult to think of worse
examples than those provided by Christian Spain in the 15th and 16th
Centuries. The subjugation of the Canary Islands and its indigenous
Guanches inaugurated this onslaught. Every high school student who pays
a modicum of attention in class knows about the ruthless expulsion of
Jews and Muslims in 1492 after the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella
unified Castille and Aragon. That year, of course, is also famous
for Columbus’ arrival in the Americas – initiating one of the most
rapid and destructive campaigns of conquest in history. Within fifty
years, the Arawaks of the West Indies were virtually extinct, the
ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru lay in ruins, and millions
of indigenous Americans had perished from disease, starvation, and
slave labor.
When the conquistadors of Francisco Coronado came upon pueblos in the
American Southwest, a decree was read aloud in every town demanding
the inhabitants embrace Christianity or be exterminated!
Now that we have examined some of the less admirable episodes in
the annals of Western civilization, let us pause to recall some of
the achievements of Muslim lands during the same period. It is a
well-known fact that Arab and Persian scholars not only preserved
and translated the learning of classical Greece, but also greatly
improved upon the Greeks’ understanding of mathematics, geography,
medicine, and astronomy. The golden age of Moorish Spain boasted
many esteemed Jewish, as well as Muslim, scholars – including Hasdai
ibn-Chaprut and Maimonides. When Constantinople fell to the Muslim
Turks in 1453, its Jews were emancipated, and many Sephardic Jews
fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in later years found refuge in the
Ottoman realm – including Palestine. The cities of the classical
Muslim world, from Cordoba to Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad, were
revered throughout Eurasia as centers of learning and commerce.
But before we rush to dismiss Pope Benedict’s recent homily outright,
we must also examine the acts of intolerance and violence which
important Muslim societies have unquestionably committed. Although
Moorish rule in Spain was generally characterized by respect for the
rights of Jews and Christians, it also witnessed episodes of severe
religious persecution – particularly under the fundamentalist Berber
Almoravids. The people of Nuristan, on the northeast Afghan frontier,
were indeed forcibly converted to Islam little more than a century
ago. There is little to praise in the Ottoman Empire’s oppressive
rule over predominantly Christian lands such as Greece, Serbia,
and Bulgaria, where teenage boys were regularly conscripted into the
Turkish army as janissaries.
Moreover, the violent collapse of Ottoman rule during the First World
War witnessed the genocidal massacre of Armenians – a crime against
humanity as grave as the Jewish Holocaust which modern Turkey,
a long-time US ally, continues to stubbornly deny in the face of
indisputable facts.
There is a lesson to be learned here by all humanity – that the
true dividing line in human affairs is not between East and West,
or whites and non-whites. It is between those who recognize that
all cultures – including their own, have the capacity for both the
profoundest enlightenment and the basest evil, and those who persist
in believing that some peoples have inherently superior cultures,
and thus superior human rights. Around the world one sees a veritable
epidemic of blind patriots – Americans who refuse to feel sorrow for
the slaughter of the First Nations, Chinese who harden their hearts
toward the Tibetans whose society they have mutilated, Japanese
who still celebrate the murderous exploits of their bygone empire,
Australians who plead innocent to the subjugation of the Aborigines,
Arabs who belittle the crisis in Darfur, Turks who persist in their
deluded denial of the Armenian genocide, and Israelis (and their
Western supporters) who work themselves into spasms whenever the
Palestinian Nakba of 1948, and the ongoing plight of the refugees,
is mentioned.
The greatest obstacle to constructive self-reflection by members of any
society is, of course, the ongoing experience of conflict. If it has
been difficult for Americans to recognize their societal failings in
the aftermath of 9-11, it is far more difficult for Arabs and Muslims
to come to terms with theirs while under incessant threat of economic
punishment and military assault from the US and its allies. Yet,
in spite of the grotesque disparity between the two sides in this
deepening conflict, thoughtful men and women must transcend national
and sectarian boundaries in the quest for reconciliation – even if,
at times, this means getting our feelings hurt.
-Roger H. Lieberman is a graduate of Rutgers University with a Masters’
Degree in Environmental Science.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
