Listening to Arab voices

Just after the Gulf War I wrote in an article ("Beyond the 'storm' clouds," The Lutheran, February 1991): "A struggle for the Arab soul is taking place. If Western nations fail to account for this, the world will likely become a more dangerous place."

I think most would agree the world has become more dangerous for many reasons. Perhaps the one I suggested is not least among them. When the Gulf War disappeared from TV screens nearly 12 years ago, Arab Muslims faded from our memory. The fact that over half a million infants died in Iraq due to U.N. sanctions was either not widely known or, following our government's lead, blamed solely on Saddam Hussein, thereby ignoring our complicity or worse, our conscience.

Israeli military occupation and land usurpation continued unabated and was tolerated. When Palestinians resisted, sometimes violently, we too easily allowed Israel to cast the whole issue as "terrorism" instead of addressing it as one of human rights.

To be sure, many of us engaged in workshops and adult forums to share information and build bridges of understanding between Christians and Muslims, but these were sporadic and seldom followed up.

Only after 9/11 and now with our war with Iraq have the Arabs and Islam come back onto our screens. Although our president has called this a 'war of ideas,' it's hard to see how. There has been virtually no dialogue, no engagement of mind and heart, no exchange of those ideals and realities that mold our very beings. We've made only meager attempts to move beyond headlines into heart-lines. It's much easier, it seems, to fall in step with those who dehumanize, demonize and then bomb.

But these wars are pregnant with ideas and ideals, and when the guns are stilled they will cry out for attention. No military power can silence them or make them irrelevant. Nor are the ideas and ideals of those in the Arab world so different from ours. What always amazed me during my 25 years in the Middle East is how similar people are.

Like us, most Arabs want good health care, secure jobs that pay honest wages, good schools, safe neighborhoods, freedom of expression, a more equitable distribution of wealth, participatory government and political leaders who are honest and accountable to the public good. In short, they want a life lived with dignity. But, as with us, these ideals are often battered by reality.

Real differences exist, to be sure, some of which cluster around religious and individual freedom. While the Quran is clear about "no compulsion in religion," this is understood to mean no one can be forced to become a Muslim. But to opt out of Islam, for whatever reason, is strongly and sometimes forcibly rebuffed. The story of Christian converts from Islam in Muslim countries is filled with suffering and heroism. Consequently, Western concepts of "religious freedom" are resisted, even though most governments have signed the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Islam gives ample freedom to be who you are but little freedom to become other than who you are.

Common good trumps rights

In regard to the issue of liberty or "liberation," we in the West pride ourselves on individual freedom and insist on our rights. Arabs (Christian and Muslim) place more emphasis on corporate responsibility and individual duties. Their deep conviction is that individual rights shouldn't come at the expense of public welfare or the common good.

Historically this has given rise to the conviction that a repressive ruler is less destructive than civil strife. It also means that family ties and responsibility to the extended family are strongly cherished and defended. Illustrative of this is the proverb: "I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousin, we and our cousin against the outsider."

Broadly speaking, one gets the impression that if Arabs had to choose between individual freedom and social justice or communal tranquility, they would opt for the latter.

A struggle for justice

Two things become patently clear as events unfold: First, some people would label this a "religious war," as if the fundamentals of Islam are at enmity with Western civilization. In my judgment they are not. Driving Arab "anger," whether against the West or repressive local leaders, is not religion per se but issues of justice: economic, social and political. But as Western secularism, capitalism and militarism become excessive, the fundamentals of Islam would oppose them, as would those of Christianity and Prophetic Judaism. In that sense the struggle for justice is deeply religious.

Second, within Muslim communities there is tremendous ferment about how to attain the desired ideals. A real struggle exists between continuity and change. To use a biblical image, the struggle is between pouring new wine into old wineskins or into new ones-and if new, shaped and formed by whom or what? To use another metaphor, to whose drum-beat should Muslims march today? That of the "West," that of their rich heritage or a combination of both?

At the moment, radical groups are trying hard to impose their narrow definitions of Islam, mostly in reaction to Western domination. But historically such elements have never prevailed. A more likely scenario is that radical elements will continue only so long as Muslims experience the West to be flouting issues of peace and justice, fairness and equity, and so long as guns and weapons are seen as more convincing than a critical and reasoned exchange of the ideas and ideals we each, and perhaps all, cherish.

Will any force be needed to bring about such dialogue? Perhaps, but to assume that our only choice now is between neglect, or worse, domination, is to set the stage for continuous conflict. If this truly is a war about "liberating" people, then there is no better way than to listen, finally, to their voices, many of whom have sought our help in the past but to no avail. Our concern focused more on securing their wealth than on meeting their needs. As Christians it is incumbent upon us to take the necessary steps to have our government follow the better way.

Vogelaar is resident scholar of missions and world religions at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Between 1963 and 1988, he was a missionary in the Arabian Gulf and Egypt.

Copyright Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Jun 2003
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