http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/asia_iraq/viewpoint.html
To justify armed conflict, both Islam and democracy are being perverted
By Mohsin Hamid
ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS/AP
Is the U.S. pointing guns to liberate Iraq’s people—or its oil?
One spring, when I was in Lahore, a strange smell settled into my bedroom. After much sniffing I traced its source to an air-conditioner emitting scrabbling sounds and from which pieces of straw occasionally fell onto the carpet. The air-conditioner repairman who arrived at my house placed a ladder against the wall and climbed up to take a look. “Your problem is simple,” he told me. “Birds are nesting inside.”
“What can we do?” I asked. “I could throw them out,” he said, stroking his henna-dyed beard. “But the chicks would not survive. They are helpless. It would be a sin to harm them.” He shrugged and smiled and left the decision to me. The Koran tells us, of course, that there shall be no compulsion in matters of religion. But after giving the matter some thought, I did what he wanted me to do: I waited, and a month later, when the chicks had flown, he cleaned out my air-conditioner.
I do not deny religion’s ability to nurture decency and compassion. As a secular Muslim, my disagreement is with those who pervert religion for power, not with religion itself. For the same reason, although I believe passionately in democracy, freedom and human rights, I object to the perversion of these values when they are used by George W. Bush as justifications for an attack on Iraq.
To me, democracy is not served by one nation, or a small group of nations, deciding to wage a “pre-emptive” war in the face of opposition from most of the countries of the world. While replacing the undemocratic regime of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. might think of itself as a champion of democracy. But in Pakistan, we have seen that American aid flows freely when our government is headed by men in uniform and slows to a trickle when fully elected leaderships are in power.
Nor, when I think of freedom, do I think primarily of the freedom of one nation with just 4% of the world’s population to satisfy its desire to consume a quarter of the world’s energy. Freedom must also include the freedom of citizens of countries that cannot spend a billion dollars a day on their militaries to go about their lives without the fear of being bombed. The residents of Baghdad are being denied this freedom. Iraqis have been bombed by the U.S. before, only a decade ago. Their grandparents were bombed by the British Empire. Surely they ought now to be free from further bombardment, no matter how noble sounding its justifications.
When it comes to human rights, the U.S. counts among its allies Saudi Arabia, where women cannot drive, and every other Arab state where a king sits on the throne. It supports, with more aid to Israel than to any other country, roadblocks that prevent pregnant mothers from reaching hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. is far from ex-hausting opportunities to improve the human rights of its allies. Let that task be completed before it fights wars to improve the human rights of its enemies.
Perhaps Washington is going to war to prevent the eventual use of weapons of mass destruction. But it is odd that the U.S., the only nation to have dropped atomic bombs on another, should see fit to appoint itself the world’s protector from this particular crime. Why, if deterrence is good enough for North Korea, is war the only answer for Iraq? It is true that North Korea has neither a Muslim population nor vast reserves of oil, but surely those things are not at the heart of the matter.
Or are they?
Claiming that democracy, freedom and human rights justify war with Iraq is as dangerous as claiming that Islam justifies killing American civilians. In both cases, ideals are perverted, and the task of championing those ideals becomes more difficult. Many Americans now reject the notion that Islam is a peaceful religion, just as many in the Islamic world are coming to look with increased suspicion on those who extol the virtues of democracy, freedom and human rights.
Those of us who see no contradiction between Islam on the one hand and democracy, freedom and human rights on the other, find ourselves in a doubly awkward position, forced to defend both our religious and political beliefs. We do not have the option of seizing the attention of the world through threats of terrorism or threats of war. It is difficult to express the merits of speaking softly when those around you are shouting, but people who fail to make headlines are often in the right.
The enemies of civilization are those who, this late in our shared history, continue to dream of armed conflict while the rest of us are preoccupied with more mundane issues—like disturbing birds that have nested in our air-conditioners. So I will keep my distance from both Osama bin Laden and Bush. My Islam and my democracy are different from theirs.
Mohsin Hamid, who grew up in Lahore and now lives in London, wrote the novel Moth Smoke (Granta Books, 2000)