The Muslim World Needs Friends, After All

By Farish A. Noor

Earlier this week the Malaysian Prime Minister
Abdullah Badawi was in Germany for a diplomatic and
goodwill visit. In the midst of talk of commerce and
improving business links – for indeed the trade ties
between Malaysia and Germany, along with other
European countries, is better than ever – the
Malaysian Premier gave a talk on Islam at the
Bertelsmann Foundation in Berlin.

Facing up to the sad realities of the times we live
in, the speech began on a note of caution against the
doomsayers who have been predicting the so-called
‘Clash of Civilisations’ between the Western and
Muslim worlds. These days it is almost impossible for
any Muslim head of state to say anything, save to
order a coffee in a restaurant perhaps, without having
to apologise for the actions of some radical Muslim
groups or having to assuage the troubled conscience of
the Occidental audience. So it came as no surprise
that when the Malaysian PM spoke of the need for
reform within the Muslim mindset, and his own vision
of a ‘civilisational Islam’, he was also forced to
state categorically that Islam does not in any way
condone terrorism or acts of violence.

Notwithstanding the sincerity of the Malaysian
Premier, there are two main obstacles that have to be
faced by any Muslim leader who wishes to embark on the
rocky road of internal reform:

Firstly there is the overbearing presence of Big
Brother USA to worry about. Any attempt to modernise,
reform or critically examine the internal workings of
Muslim society today has to be undertaken with the
knowledge that the prying eyes of Washington are there
to ensure that any form of normative Islam that
results is USA-friendly and does not in any way
threaten the economic, political and strategic needs
of the USA. America’s own double-standards when
dealing with Muslim countries is open knowledge by
now, as explicitly demonstrated by its relatively
quiet approach to the problems in Central Asia, where
repressive governments that have hopped on President
Bush’s anti-terror bandwagon have been granted a
licence to do whatever they wish to the opposition
movements in their own country. Thus from the outset
the reformist project is lumbered with the double
burden of having to appease Washington, and not
appearing too docile and domesticated to the Muslim
constituency. Prime Minister Badawi seemed cognisant
of this double-edged dilemma when he noted that his
reform measures were ‘not meant to appear appeasing to
the West’.

Secondly there is the practical need of Muslim
governments to note that there are indeed serious and
troubling problems in the Muslim world. Regardless of
the fact that some of these problems may be the
indirect result of Western machinations and
manipulation of Muslims – such as the CIA-funded
Taliban experiment that went disastrously wrong – it
is also the case that there are, indeed, very real
problems with Muslim societies too, from the lingering
culture of neo-feudalism, patriarchy, racism, sexism
and class differentials that have kept Muslims weak
and divided for decades if not centuries. Then there
is the very real concern about the growing levels of
intolerance in some Muslim societies, often directed
towards non-Muslims and fuelled by a Machiavellian
re-appropriation and re-interpretation of Islam to
suit the needs of a communitarian political agenda.
How does any Muslim country deal with these matters
without stirring the hornets nest?

Perhaps here is where and why Muslim states need to
recognise that in the face of such pressing dilemmas,
they need to reach out to friends who are at least
sympathetic to their plight. Prime Minister Badawi
pointed this out in his speech when he noted that:

“Malaysia sees Germany as a friendly country that has
shown that there is another way of doing things and
dealing with problems in the international arena.
Germany’s principled stand on issues such as the
invasion of Iraq showed us that the approach to such
issues need not be violent unilateralism but can also
be through passive dialogue and multilateralist
gestures. Yet many in the Muslim world still think of
the West as a united, singular entity and that the
West speaks with one voice, and has only one agenda.
Germany’s stand, like that of some Western European
countries, shows that there are other ways of dealing
with problems of conflict. Yet Germany’s role in all
this has been forgotten in the Muslim media.”

Coming at a time when the Muslim world feels itself
increasingly encircled and threatened, such a gesture
of reaching out is not only commendable, it is also a
matter of political survival. 

Muslim leaders and governments need to understand that
the internal reform of Muslim society is no longer
something that can be postponed. The breakdown of
state institutions and the steady erosion of public
trust thanks to the culture of authoritarianism, abuse
of power, repressive laws, the underfunding of
education and research, all point to the eventual
eclipse of Muslim countries and the day when the whole
Muslim world will be nothing more than an assembly of
beggar-states with pompous palaces and Parliaments but
little else. There is a clear relation between the
collapse of the state and the rise of increasingly
bellicose and violent oppositional movements who have
merely tapped into the collective angst and
frustration of the masses, and what follows next is
depressingly predictable: the rise of a politics of
excessive moralism and ritualism at the expense of
genuine nation-building and development.

But one of the underlying factors that have
contributed to this breakdown of the state is the
process of globalisation; and it is the same force of
globalisation that also happens to threaten the social
welfare system and state structures of developed
countries like Germany and France. From this simple,
practical and very real commonality of interest and
concerns, a new transnational alliance can be built:
One that brings together both the developed and
developing countries of East and West. Prime Minister
Badawi was quite right to note that Germany is a
country that should not ever fall off the map of the
Muslim world’s attention. The same could be said of
France and the other European nations where a
developed welfare state system is in place. Despite
the hysterical rantings of unseen ‘terror groups’
hiding under our beds, the real threat to global
security is the poverty, illiteracy and collapse of
state institutions that is being brought about by the
globalisation process. The reform of Muslim societies,
like the societies of the developed Western world, has
to be carried out against the backdrop of this new,
and very real, universal danger instead.