Erstellt am: 4. 5. 2011 - 15:47 Uhr
Osama, Obama and the few new views
A week without a catastrophe or a revolution seems to be abnormal these days--this week it´s the death of Osama Bin Laden. Whether it is a catastrophe or a revolution depends on the point of view. The assassination was carried out by a bunch of American soldiers, but Bin Laden’s death sentence has been spoken about by large parts of western societies. No doubt, a proper ruling in a proper court would have been the more civilised way of dealing with the case, but which country, which cultural system would have provided the frame for a fair and legal case? Bin Laden is still a citizen of Saudi Arabia, and it is likely that the Saudis could have interfered with a legal case in the States. The international court in Den Haag already has more than enough problems dealing with cases like those of people like Liberia’s Charles Taylor. A case against Bin Laden, either way, would have very probably been ruled by a western judicial system and thus not respected by big parts of the radical Muslim world. So Bin Laden might have died as a martyr in the fight in their eyes.
Thus the ‘ruling’ administered by Obama is very universal: Kill a man who killed men. Is this just? This is a very short sighted question, because justice does not really adhere with regards to a super-power which has been setting the rules for moral and political behaviour over the last century.
Bin Laden an error?
Far more interesting is that the question about the legitimisation of the operation has been raised and discussed in the western media, and much less in the Arab papers. Looking into the Egyptian newspapers today, one can read that the Alzhar Sheiks condemn the sea-funeral for Bin Laden, not the assassination. People were quoted in Al-Ahram saying Bin Laden was wrong in what he did. Al Masry al Youm quotes Muslim leaders calling Bin Laden an error.
And this is where it all starts to get really striking. I´m pretty sure that some people somewhere in Palestine, Pakistan, Paris or Pittsburgh have burnt American Flags and images of Obama or praised Bin Laden for his “work” over the last decade BUT the western media has changed its characteristic style in covering the Arab world. The entire discourse on this region has been modified within half a year.
AP7KHALID THANVER
Let me give you some examples: First there was the talk of Islam, an old and dead-boring conversation on prejudice- ridden assumptions. Generally, there has been the reproduction of a uniform and homogeneous mass of information. Islam means Arab which means Iran and that means generally: a threat to us. If not a threat (at least in superficially more reflected parts of your society) there has been this feeling of being misunderstood by “The Arabs” (I also talk about my friends and myself when mentioning ‘superficially reflected’). The Arab world was one blurry mass with barely any contact point to the western societies. The thought that a strong, rigid, unjust dictator ruling these countries was the only way of protecting ourselves and the citizens of the dictatorships from worse was an idea many of us had made their peace with.
21 Deaths and Only Excuses
Reality is different from all that. Behind a brutal regime there is not a more brutal people waiting to slaughter non-believers. Let me give you a first example. I´ve been to Egypt, the country of my father, when the bombing of the Coptic Church on New Year’s Eve in Alexandria killing 21 innocent Egyptians, took place. In the days after this bombing, which totally came out of the blue, I heard people talking in the street about who was responsible for the blast. They offered all kinds of culprits: Israel (to harm Egypt stability), the government (to find another excuse for keeping up the emergency law), the Americans (to find an excuse to support Israel/ bomb another country), I was offered various explanations and conspiracy theories... I booked this under: denial of reality. But, upon scratching deeper under the surface, I found that the idea of violence is just non-existent in the minds of the majority of Egyptians. The fact that someone kills people without a reason, bombing families of religious Egyptians, setting fire to a house of God no matter if His name might be Allah, God or Jahve is absurd and repelling to most Muslims. I can speak of Egyptians only, because they are the people I know, I love, my people. However, looking beyond Egypt, I see the same in Maghreb, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria. There you will find peaceful, free, modest, reflected and smart men and women.
Do existing democracies have a patent on them?
On the other hand, there was this blurred theory being accepted by many journalists and politicians, civilians and priests which suggested that there might exist cultural structures where democracy will not have the chance to establish itself. Why? Tribal, age old and strong cleavages poisoning the soil on which democracy can grow. Really? Well... obviously there was the Arab Spring giving us westerners a notion of what the real populations felt in this part of the planet. Not only did they overthrow their fear and their dictators (at least in Tunisia and Egypt, with Libya and Syria being critical, Bahrain and Yemen being on the edge) they also showed that liberty is a far more universal good than previously thought.
Photo by John McNab. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.
Looking at Latin America nowadays, we see that democracies can evolve within 10 years. Ifwe compare Chile to Egypt, one has to say that Egypt took immediate steps in dealing with the old government, investigating the type of crimes Chile took almost 30 years to take care of.
There has been a moment of fraternisation between the West and the Near East as pictures of people taking to the streets in Tunis and Cairo, reminded many in the west that in Europe, not long ago, in cities like Berlin, Budapest and Prague, people demanded freedom, liberty and democracy. See the parallels now? See the perspectives now? Furthermore, societies which directly connect the possession of democracy to the duty of sharing it , offer a great future to a new democratic system.
If one of the most hated man by the west gets killed by American forces and the Arab world stays calm (as they mostly have been doing so far), one can see proof of the revision of perceptions of this region. We are on our way. In Europe and in the Arab world
الحم لله. Alhamdulillah.