Breeding Terror or An Uncivilised Clash Of Civlizatiions

By Nawal El Saadawi.
Monclair, New Jersey.
13 October 2001.

In Montclair and in New York which is only a short distance from where I live it is a beautiful,sunny day. It reminds me of the autumn sun,back home in Egypt.But when I look at the sky there is that empty space left by the twin towers of the World Trade Centre,a void which clutches at the heart with a dark foreboding.

On the front page of the New York Times I read an announcement today concerning the agreement reached which will give the American military"flexibility"in operating from bases in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan in return for assurances that the security of Uzbekistan will be proteccted by the United States.

The word"protection"echoes in my mind evoking memories.It was used by the British colonialists in 1882 to invade and occupy Egypt.In 1991 George Bush,the father,visited Egypt to convince Mobarak that Egypt needed "protection" against the Satanic Saddam Hussein.In return for this "protection"and for a reduction in the Egyptian foreign military debt owed to the United States soldiers recruited from the poor of the villages were sent off to participate in the Operation Desert Storm launched against Iraq in which quarter of a million people were pounded to death by bombs in a few weeks in order to ensure that oil, and the the Middle East remain under American control.The thirty allied countries in the Gulf War declared that their aim was to "liberate Kouait" and badges were distributed with these two words written in blue on a golden background .I used to see them shining in the lapels of some of the intellectuals whom I met.

I came to New York and New Jersey a few days before the terrrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the building of the Pentagon.I did not watch on the television screen as the buildings took fire and collapsed did not see the planes crashed into them,did not follow the trgedy being broadcast in detail hour after hour .I do not want to watch any more tragedies.Living in the Middle East as it is called I have seen enough of them,seen enough buildings collapse,enough people killed or maimed for life,enough massacres in Palestine,in Iraq,in Algeria,in the Soudan,in Somalia,in Iran and even in Egypt.

I believe in peace.I hate war,hate to see people killed,to see women and children die under bombs whether in Egypt,or in Japan or in the United States.I was surprised when journalists asked me whether I had felt pain for the thousands of civilians who had been killed in the 11 September terrorist attack.To me it was a strange question.for how can one not feel pain at knowing that thousands of innocent people were killed like that?.But what was even stranger to me was the fact that no journalist had ever asked me whether I had felt pain when hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's were being killed,or when half a million Iraqi children had died of malnutrition and disease because of the economic embargo,or when young Palestinians were being massacred every day by Israeli soldiers because they need a land on which to live.Could it be that there is a hierarchy of human life,that human life is valued according to its position in the hierarchy of money and nuclear power?

Unveiling the Mind:

Many professors in academia are fond of the term post-colonial,and it has become fashionable to say that we are living in the post-colonial era.But since I live in the so-called Middle East I know that it is a word which speaks a partial truth in order to hide,a more important truth,to hide the fact that we live in a new or neo-colonial era where colonialism is transnational led by the United States, and has taken on other more sophisticated economic,military,tecnological and cultural forms.Global neo-colonial powers like the previous colonial ones cannot continue to rule the world,to exercise their control over people unless they are able to divide them,or to throw fuel on whatever divisions exist already.Religion,patriotism,racism and other " absolute,infinite,enduring,eternal"values are used every day and often very effectively to divide people.The history of religions,of nationalism and patriotism is linked to rivers of blood.

After the 11 September terrorist attack the Pope clothed in his divine robes went on a tour to Kazakhstan,Armenia and other former Soviet Asdaian republics situated to the north of Afghanistan.He went there in the name of God just before Bush declared his "War on Terrorism". Once again we are facing the fundamentalist,absolutist dichotomy of God versus the Devil,and of Good versus Evil used to mystify people,to confuse them,to veil their minds.The language which George.W.Bush uses is no different from that of the pope,or that of Bin Laden.All three speak in the name of God against the enemy,against the Devil.The church and th mosque are not just spiritual bodies with a spiritual agenda,but also geopolitical ,economic and even military bodies,but their agendas here are clothed in spiritual robes.

The multitudes of flags,the myriads of signs and badges and shirts which say" God Bless America",the chorus of patriotic slogans chanted in America today cloud the thinking of people and move their attention away from the pressing economic and social problems which face them and the rest of the world.The massive mobilisation of the American war machine is too great to be directed only against Bin Laden and the Taliban,or against other terrorist groups dispersed in different countries of the world.It is meant to be used against all those who oppose the policies of the United States primarily in the Arab region but also in the rest of the world including the United States itself.It is being directed to deprive the American people of their freedom and their human rights.Bush has declared that he will take all the measures necessary to defend the "security" of the United States against the "enemies who hate American democracy and the American way of life,"and these measures include a whole range of incursions on individual and community freedom..This war on terrorism is being used to halt the rising wave of opposition to unbridled transnational exploitation of nature ,human resources and human life.

In the global patriarchal capitalist system war has been and remains the economic stimulus required to stave off recession and protect accumulation and profits.But I wonder how many bombs will be needed,and how many innocent people must die in order to ensure that the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq will begin to climb once more.

Two Faces Of The Same Coin:

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War the Military Industial Complex in the United States was eager to find a new enemy so that it could maintain an economy largely built on war,and the sale of arms.The Muslims and Arabs were quickly made to assume that role.The way was paved by some of the things that they did ,by the corruption of rulers and their narrow interests.Marx was replaced by the Prophet Muhammad and Huntington became the theoretician of a new war.Social and economic struggles according to him would be replaced by the "Clash Of Civilizations".The Christian Civilization of the United States had to face enemies,and these enemies were mainly the Muslims(Arabs)and the Confucians(Chinese).This meant that the war machine of the United States was to be maintained and developed further to meet the threat coming from the Muslim world.

Throughout the period of the Cold War the Muslim fundamentalist movements had remained closely allied to the United States.In Egypt the Muslim Brothers founded in 1928 were supported by the British and the King against the national movement ,and later aganst Nasser.After that the United States and Sadat encouraged and supported them and and supported some of their more radical offshoots to counterbalanc opposition against opening the door to American economic and political control of Egyptian affairs.In Indonesia the United States supported the right wing Shariat-il-Islam against Sukarno as part of the preparations for a military coup which ended in the massacre of half a million members of the Indonesian Communist Party.In Pakistan it supported the Jama'at Al Islam against Benazir Bhutto.Later in collaboration with Seoudi Arabia and Pakistan(the Pakistani Intelligence Services) the C.I.A. helped Osama Bin Laden to recruit and train a guerilla force of thirty thousand militants and to build up the Taliban which grew up in the Madrasat(Islamic Schools)founded by the Islamic fundamentalist movements in Pakistan close to the borders with Afghanistan.These operations cost the United States three billion dollars.

Wahabism the state religion in Seoudi Arabia since 1932 is one of the most virulent and ultra-puritannical sects of Islam.It is opposed to any form of modernisation and has exported itself to many parts of the world with the support of the United States and the wide use of Seoudi petro-dollars.It has funded fundamentalism all over the Muslim world including Afghanistan and Pakistan.The United States founded its strategies in the Middle East mainly on two fundamentalist states,one of them Muslim(Seoudi Arabia)and the other Jewish (Israel).

But now the former allies have become enemies,or at least have entered into a conflict.Bush and Bin Laden both use the "clash of civilizations"as a cover and have launched a religious war which is fraught with untold dangers.While the killing goes on the ideologists of global American capitalism are busy propagating their theories about the clash of cultures,identities and other things of the sort.According to them money,arms,opium and oil have nothing to do with what is going on. The other day while looking at my internet I spotted a coloured photograph of Bush.He was wearing a big brown and white turban and his beard had grown.He looked very much like Bin Laden except that he had a fair complexion and a rosy tint on his cheeks.This photograph was certainly meant to illustrate what I am saying.They are two faces of the same coin.Together they are helping to maintain a system which dehumanizes thousands of millions of people all over the world ,involves them in conflicts which prevent them from working together to face the problems on our earth.

Fighting For Peace:

Throughout my life I have fought against violence and racism for peace.Throughout my life I have suffered as a woman from religious fundamentalism of all kinds.After the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan at the hands of the Muslim Moujahidine,the Afghan Arabs of Bin Laden as they are often called transferred their operations to other parts of the world,and especially to the Arab Region.They too have started to operate globally but in dispersed clusters.In 1991 my name figured on a fundamentalist death list and I was obliged to leave Egypt and live in exile for five years.From March to July 2001 I faced another fundamentalist threat.I had given an interview to a weekly in Egypt in which I said that the veiling of women was not Islamic in origin and dated much further back to Judaism,and that the kissing of the Black Stone during the pilgrimage was a vestige of pagan pre-Islamic practices.Both of these are historically recorded facts but a lawyer named El Wahsh,which means the beast or monster filed a case against me in front of a religious Personal Law court demanding that I be separated from my husband on a charge of apostasy.He considered himself as a representative of God and of the nation of Islam and had risen in defense of their rights according to an old ,obscure Islamic law called Hisba.I and my husband Sherif Hetata to whom I have been married for thirty seven years publicly declared that we had no intention either of separating or of leaving the country even if the court issued a judgement of divorce .With the help of a wide solidarity campaign in Egypt,the Arab countries and abroad as well as legal support from a group of lawyers after five months we won the case.

I was brought up to believe in the basic human principles of the three monotheistic religions.But religions like any other ideologies or beliefs have negative as well as positive aspects and must be examined with a critical mind.Faith can lead to a blind belief,can lead people to kill others who do not believe in the same God or the same prophet ,or the same way of seeing things.The wars waged by Bush the father or Bush the son are not very different from those of Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.All of them claim higher ,eternal principles with strongly religious overtones,all of them lead to the killing of innocent people,all of them do not solve any of our problems or help to make the world a better place.State terrorism is the elder brother of individual terrorism except that it claims the legitimacy of laws upheld by a powerful few.

The world will change when people are able to globalise from below in the struggle for peace against racism and war,in the struggle for justice against all forms of discrimination.,when people cooperate together against those who divide and use attractive words to conceal what they are really doing,words like security,or patriotism,or civilization.We must struggle for what we have in common, for our humanity.We must fight to unveil our minds . These days people in the United States are being terrorized by another threat that of "anthrax" ,of a biological war.An American woman friend of mine phoned up to warn me against opening any mail coming from Egypt or any other Muslim country .I explained to her that the employee of the N.B.C.had been infected by a letter that had been mailed to her from New Jersey."My God"she exclaimed then it's right here at home" Fear is the greatest of our enemies.It can make us panic ,make us blind,force us to forgo the little but important freedom that we enjoy,make us accept almost anything in the name of security or of the war against terrorism.Fear can help the Big Brother to drive us with a big stick into an Orwellian world.