[Nettime-bold] Islam Conference Emergency Summit

[Soenke Zehle <soenke.zehle@web.de>]

11 October 2001 08:35 GMT+1 Independent

No guilt, no responsibility at this perverse gathering of Islamic kings and
dictators

War against terrorism: Arab Summit

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent

11 October 2001

Listening to the speeches of the Muslim leaders at the Organisation of the
Islamic Conference emergency summit on Wednesday, it was possible to believe
that Osama bin Laden represented Arabs more faithfully than their tin-pot
dictators and kings.

Please give us more evidence about 11 September, asked the Emir of Qatar.
Please don't forget the Palestinians, pleaded Yasser Arafat. Islam is
innocent, insisted the Moroccan Foreign Minister.

Everyone  but everyone  wished to condemn the 11 September atrocities in the
United States. No one absolutely no one  wanted to explain how 19 Arabs
decided to fly planeloads of innocent people into buildings full of
civilians.

The very name of "bin Laden" did not sully the Qatar conference hall. Not
once. Not even the name "Taliban". Had a Martian landed in the Gulf  which
looks not unlike Mars he might have concluded that the World Trade Centre in
New York was destroyed by an earthquake or a typhoon.

Was it not President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who said, back in 1990, that the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would blow over "like a summer's breeze"? Thus
delegates condemned to a man the slaughter in America without for a moment
suggesting why this slaughter might have taken place.

Like the Americans, the Arabs didn't want to look for causes. Indeed, the
conference hall was a strangely perverse place, in which introspection
included neither guilt nor responsibility. Mr Arafat demanded an
international force  a good idea for a new Afghanistan  but it quickly
turned out that he was talking about an international force to protect
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza which, according to the map, is about
1,800 miles from Kabul.

Of course, he condemned the World Trade Centre massacre. So did Sheikh Hamad
al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, and Mohamed bin Issa, the Moroccan Foreign
Minister, and Abdul-Aziz Bilqazeez, the Islamic Conference's
secretary-general. But that was about it. Indeed, the collected speeches
amounted to a collected theme: please don't kill innocent Afghans, but
whatever happens  don't bomb Arab countries. Indeed, for much of the day,
Afghanistan appeared a far away country of which they knew little  a
mendacious thought, given that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were midwives to
the Taliban  and wanted to know even less.

Only Farouq al-Sharaa, the Syrian Foreign Minister, stated frankly that
attacking Muslim states was "forbidden". This meant, he said, "that all
Arabs and Muslims will stand with the country that is attacked". Which must
have made them shiver in their boots on board the US carriers in the Gulf.

There was the usual rhetoric bath from other conference delegates. The
communiqu from the 56 conference members claimed that they rejected "the
linking of terrorism to the Arab and Muslim people's rights, including the
Palestinian and Lebanese people's right to self-determination, self-defence
and resisting Israeli and foreign occupation and aggression". Translation:
please, America, don't take the Israeli side and bomb Hamas, Islamic Jihad,
the Lebanese Hizbollah, Damascus, Tehran et al. "Resistance is not
terrorism" has become as familiar a slogan in the Arab world as "war against
terrorism" has in the Western world.

There was little that George Bush or Tony Blair would have disagreed with.
Retaliation "should not extend to any but those who carried out those
attacks [which] requires conclusive evidence against the culprits," Sheikh
Hamad pronounced. "The Islamic world was the first tocall for the dialogue
of civilisation." This might have been scripted for Mr Blair.

But the Qatari Emir got off one quick biff at the Americans. The world
should not, he said, fall "into conflicting sects, camps and clashing
dichotomies based on the principle of 'If you are not on my side, then you
are against me'." Mr Bilqazeez made the point that Afghans had suffered two
decades of war and should suffer no more  and that they should decide the
future of their country for themselves. He neglected to mention that the
West seems set on doing the "deciding" bit for the Afghans and that the
Americans had funnelled almost as many weapons into Afghanistan as the
Russians had done.

The Islamic American organisations, represented by Jamal Bazranji, wanted it
known that they represented 2.5 per cent of the American population, that
their role was to "bridge civilisations" and that they were Americans "with
no other homeland"  an argument which Mr bin Laden would no doubt disagree
with.

Wasn't Israel the real problem, the delegates tried to ask? Principle among
them, of course, was our old friend Mr Arafat. Of course he condemned the
attacks in America. Of course he felt "solidarity" with the American people
the old socialist "solidarity" being put to an original new use. But Israel
was using these attacks as an excuse for its increased aggression against
Palestinians and there must be an international observer force in Palestine
to oversee the Mitchell report and there must be condemnation of Israel.

Money was to be had in a good cause. Qatar opened a fund for the Afghans and
the Saudis put in $10m (6.8m), the United Arab Emirates $3m, Oman $1m. But
what the delegates wanted was evidence  "conclusive evidence", according to
Sheikh Hamad  that Washington had identified the culprits of 11 September.

This at least allowed him to avoid the fatal words "bin Laden". Indeed, it
allowed everyone to duck this annoying, dangerous, frightening man who is
calling for the overthrow of almost every single one of the Islamic
delegates.

An interesting day, then, for the Islamic conference. We're sorry about 11
September, they said. Please don't bomb Afghanistan more than you have to.
Please don't kill the innocent. And please don't bomb us. You couldn't put
it simpler than that.

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