Author: Peter Bergen
Publication: The New York Times
Date: January 8, 2005
Around the Islamic world it is common
currency that Muslims are perpetual victims of Western and Zionist conspiracies.
The bill of particulars includes the handling of prisoners at Guantánamo
Bay, Israel's inequitable treatment of the Palestinians, and the deaths
of thousands of civilians in Iraq - as a result first of United Nations
sanctions after the Persian Gulf war, and more recently of the American
occupation. The most articulate spokesman of such views is, of course,
Osama bin Laden.
Yet when Muslims are suffering,
it is usually the West, and often the United States, that takes the lead
in helping. For instance, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in
1979, Washington mounted its largest covert aid program since Vietnam to
help the Afghan resistance; when Somalis were starving in the early 1990's,
President George H. W. Bush sent 25,000 American troops to help relief
efforts; when Serbs were massacring Bosnian Muslims in the mid-1990's President
Bill Clinton (belatedly) directed the United States Air Force to bomb Serbian
positions, which led to the Dayton accords.
More recently, it was the United
States that overthrew the tyrannical government of the Taliban, a regime
recognized only by three Muslim countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the
United Arab Emirates. Other than Turkey, no Muslim nation has sent troops
to Afghanistan to help stabilize the poorest country in the Islamic world
(a few Muslim states, including Jordan, offered token deployments but were
turned down).
Now the same pattern - action by
Western countries and inertia from Muslim states - can be seen in the efforts
to provide relief for those hardest hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami. While
100,000 of the victims are from Aceh, the most Islamic of Indonesia's provinces,
Muslim countries are contributing a relative pittance. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia
is contributing the most: a paltry $30 million, about the same as what
Netherlands is giving and less than one-tenth of the United States contribution.
And no Arab governments participated in the conference in Jakarta on Thursday
where major donors and aid organizations conferred over reconstruction
efforts.
This anemic effort on the part of
the richest countries is emblematic of a wider political problem in the
Islamic world. For all of the invocations by Muslim leaders of the ummah,
or the global community of believers, they typically do little to help
their fellow Muslims in times of crisis.
Arab leaders and their toothless
talking shops like the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic
Conference are excellent at denouncing problems in Palestine and Iraq,
but most stood silent as a million died in the war between Iraq and Iran
during the 1980's. When President Hafez al-Assad of Syria massacred some
20,000 people after an Islamist uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, there
were no expressions of outrage from the Islamic Conference. Egypt routinely
tortures political prisoners, untroubled by fears that other Arab leaders
will seriously condemn such actions.
Perhaps the generosity of Western
countries will spur Islamic states to recognize that invocations of religious
Muslim solidarity will do little to feed the millions of Muslims who remain
acutely vulnerable to disease and starvation in the aftermath of this enormous
natural catastrophe.
There have been a few positive signs
in recent days. Spurred by criticism, Saudi state-run television organized
a telethon this week that raised private pledges of more than $75 million,
and the Islamic Development Bank has pledged $500 million.
Much remains to be done, however.
The Persian Gulf countries that are reaping a bonanza from record oil prices
should send a meaningful percentage of those windfall profits to their
fellow Muslims devastated by the tsunami, rather than lining the pockets
of their ruling families. After all, zakat, the giving of charity, is one
of the five pillars of Islam.
Peter Bergen is a fellow of the
New America Foundation and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's
School of Advanced International Studies.