Hichem Karoui
November 21, 2001 Palestine Chronicle ; Middle East News Online.
Some people among the elite in the West imagine that the average Muslims resent the Western civilization. In their eyes, this is an important reason – if not the main- explaining what happened on Sep.11 in America. Those who hold such pretensions actually ignore what Islam is about. Who among them has only read the Koran? And who, reading it, tried thoroughly and honestly to read such or such interpretation of its verses by a recognized scholar? We can indeed reverse the problem and say: Some Muslims think that the average Christians and Jews resent them. And that is an important reason – if not the main- explaining what happened since the expansion of colonization in the 19th century and its continuation in the 20th century with the implementation of the Zionist state in an Arab land and its unconditional support by all the Western States that never faltered.
Thus, if we start by blaming the “other” as responsible for our own misery, we may perhaps alleviate our bad conscience, but this behavior would hardly help us finding out the real causes of our problem.
Some other people take just the extreme position at the other pole. Instead of charging the “other” of all the evil that happens to us, we should first see how we cause it even without being aware. Thus, a Christian or a Jewish Westerner would say for example: America and Europe are hatching violence and terrorism as an egg hatches a monstrous reptile. And if it is a Muslim, he would say: Why! Terrorism is our internal problem. It is an Islamic problem.
While no one of these four theses is quite wrong in the absolute, none of them is quite accurate either. It reminds me of a puzzle we are trying to piece together. If we forget only a single element of the game, we will not be able to reach the right result.
We have here these 4 propositions:
1- A Westerner: – The Muslims hate us.
2- A Muslim: – The Westerners hate us.
3- A Westerner: – The West is the cause of terrorism.
4- A Muslim: – The Muslims are the cause of terrorism.
In this quadraphonic figure of communication, the most striking phenomenon we can observe is that there is no internal communication between its four elements. Each one is speaking as if the three others do not exist at all. Each one thinks that what he says is the truth. For if anyone of them imagines that there might be also another truth, he would reconsider his judgment as relative, and thus he would be more prepared to hear what the other is just saying in the same time.
Unfortunately, the greatest problem of our world is perhaps about communication. In spite of the boom that touched all the aspects of our contemporary means of communication, we just do not know how to communicate. We think that we talk, but we do not know that the “other” does not understand our hotchpotch. We think that we issue significant signs, and we are not even aware that in the “other’s” eyes we are just gesturing like a monkey! And thus goes an important part of our daily deals in communication, most of all when they are additionally complicated by international – insoluble! – problems.
So, what’s the fuss is about? What have we to do in order to make ourselves understood?
If we come back to the aforementioned figure, we will have the four elements making the following subsequent statements:
1- The Westerner: – They hate us = Let’s destroy them.
2- The Muslim: – They hate us = Let’s destroy them.
3- The Westerner: We caused our problems = Let’s correct ourselves.
4- The Muslim: We caused our problems = Let’s correct ourselves.
What we can state here is that while the two first propositions make an absolute no-win equation, since if we put them together we would have war, and war is not the best and unique way to tackle the problem of terrorism and the issues related to it, the third and fourth propositions are suggesting another way, more peaceful and serene, to handle our problems.
Now, how would any State behave if confronted with the problem of terrorism, is not only a matter of political decision, but well before that, a matter of lucidity and good comprehension of the problem of communication.
