The 21st century sees the growth of violence in many countries around the world. In developed and developing countries, violence remains a manifestation of political and economic disputes, a persistent expression of differences in identity and a tool of those opposing the rights of minorities.
The West has often faulted fragile governments in Africa, Asia and Europe for their inability to govern effectively while stable governments are guilty of ignoring brutality against groups identified by race, religion, poverty and ethnicity. In every region, rapid economic change and reform have been associated with rising levels of violence.
The scope and complexity of internal violence is a paradox because it is occurring in an era of unprecedented democratisation and economic growth. Western governments once anticipated that the growth of democratic regimes and economic prosperity would lead to civil peace. But reality turned out to be more complex. As more people begin to play a larger role in politics, ethnic conflicts within a country become more likely.
It is, therefore, surprising that the West has singled out Islam as the main perpetrator of violence while ignoring other contributing factors. In a direct response to Western governments’ thirst to demonise Islam, a small cottage industry has emerged in the academia whereby scholars have come up with pseudo-scientific theories to explain the relationship between Islam and violence.
Western governments and their partners are more than willing to fund forums, workshops and conferences that highlight the centrality of Islam in perpetrating violence. The bitter truth about these seminars and conferences is that they are used by the West, which has apparently been a very powerful force, enforcer and advertiser of itself over the couple of centuries, has created a vast corpus of knowledge about the world, about itself and about others.
This vast corpus does not hang in the air, but neither is it fixed by any thoroughgoing empiricism. It is rooted in certain assumptions. Assumptions are unprovable propositions. In the case of Islam, the assumption is that Muslims are by nature a violent lot.
When Muslim extremists flew aircraft into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the leaders of the “free world”, then United States president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair (both self-proclaimed Christians) led a coalition to invade Iraq, on one occasion even using the term “crusade” in what has been widely interpreted by their opponents as a Christian assault on Islam.
It should be pointed out that images of violence can be found throughout the various religious traditions of the world. In Hindu art, the gods are portrayed with symbols of violence — sword and discus; key events in are set in the midst of battles most obviously in the vision granted to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita within the context of violent conflict. Not just Christian history, but the Bible, in general, is replete with stories and parables of violence. Within the Quran, some verses call for violence against non-believers, other suras state one should only use violence when attacked — which sura abrogates, which is a matter of scholarly and religious debate.
The Western powers will, nevertheless, argue that Muslim societies are more prone to violence than others, and this alone is sufficient to say that there is a correlation between Islam and violence. It is this uneasiness about Islam which often translates into antagonism, and is responsible for the US’s foreign policy option on Islam.
Ever since the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran has been depicted as the world’s No. 1 terrorist state, as a terrible violator of human rights. The West has not been able to provide any concrete evidence of Iran’s so-called terrorist activities abroad. Even if there are human rights violations, there is no doubt at all that both the Western media and Western human rights groups have grossly exaggerated the score. That it is the fear of Islam, which is the main driver for the West’s portrayal of Islam as a violent religion, will be obvious if we examined some episodes in the West Asia/North Africa region.
One, when the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria was on the verge of an absolute victory in the January 1992 election, the Algerian ruling elite, backed by the military, cancelled the second round of voting in the election, banned FIS, detained thousands of FIS activists and established a dictatorship which has for all intents and purposes, destroyed the fledgling democratic experiment in that North African state. Western governments, notably the US, France, and Britain, have in oblique ways condoned this rape of electoral democracy. Certain mainstream Western newspapers had come out in support of the suppression of FIS and of the democratic process since it was the only way of dealing with Islamic fundamentalism.
This exposes the shallowness of the West’s commitment to democratic principles, such as electoral competition and the sanctity of the ballot. It also shows that mainstream Western elites and the Western media will do anything — support any dictator and smash any democratic effort just to curb Islam as a political and social force.
On Sept 13, 1993, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Israeli regime signed an accord granting the Palestinian limited self-rule in the Gaza strip and the West Bank town of Jericho as a first step towards a permanent peace settlement which would be negotiated by the two sides over the next five years. Western governments were euphoric about the accord. They hail it as a great historic agreement paving the way for eternal peace in West Asia. The ecstasy of the Western media was even more overwhelming.
The accord, they swooned, was one of the most momentous events of the century. And yet, the truth was something else. Weighted against the standards of democracy, the principles of human rights, which the West cherishes so much, the accord was a complete let-down.
As it stood, it gave the Palestinians limited, essentially municipal-type authority over about two per cent of the original Palestine. Even if the actual implementation of self-rule eventually bestows the Palestinians with more power, there is nothing in the accord which promises them independence. An independent Palestinian state covering both Gaza and the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital would have been the least that the accord could have done for a people who had already been robbed of 80 per cent of their original land and their dignity.
An unjust deal, incompetence and corrupt regime, and unjust distribution of resources are among the many causes of violence. Linking violence only to Islam is surely a simplistic way of addressing the issue of the root causes of violence.
Dr Azeem Fazwan Ahmad Farouk is Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Centre for Policy Research and International Studies director