Being the Enemy Within

What do you feel, as a liberal muslim?" it's a question I have been asked repeatedly this week. Anguish, I reply, for the thousands who died and the several thousand others who loved and needed them. Then terror, fury, fear of the times to come, hatred for the perpetrators, vague guilt and, most of all, a kind of emotional homelessness. Western Muslims like me have become, yet again, the enemy within, for both sides. All Muslims are now seen as potential terrorists. People will shrink away from my son, who looks like a handsome Pathan. Abuse and attacks, already started, will get worse. We may have to hide our Muslim identities just as Jewish people had to hide theirs during the war. Fanatic Muslims here and elsewhere hate us too because we are "polluted" by ideas of liberty, fairness and justice. Both sides will demand blank checks of loyalty that we will not be able to give them. Because we know too much.

We know that we want these terrorists to be brought to justice, but that we cannot support indiscriminate violence against innocents who have been suffering under so-called Islamic regimes. A day before the attacks in the U.S., I wrote a scathing column in a London newspaper calling for moderate Muslims to denounce the Taliban and other "Islamic" rulers who make me ashamed to be a Muslim. I criticized British Muslims for failing to condemn militants, the oppressors of women and those who have developed such a joyless and oppressive Islam on our own shores. My e-mail system was jammed for two days by angry messages from supporters of the Taliban regime and other apologists.

Then came the terrible tragedy in the U.S., and I said both on TV and in my newspaper column that tough action against the terrorists was necessary but that right now there should be a period of reflection. The U.S. needs a deeper understanding of the causes of anti-American feeling among so many around the world. People despise the hubristic rhetoric, which has become markedly louder since the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the mildest of Muslims who support the right of Israel to exist, the punishment of the Iraqi people and the recent hard-line Israeli tactics are immoral and insupportable. Other foreign policies too are creating more enemies than friends for the superpower. Tyrants and undemocratic governments have been backed for reasons of self-interest with no regard for the people of these places. Globalization is seen by millions as yet another system that enriches the privileged and entraps the powerless. This is not simple envy but genuine outrage about inequality.

To win the war against this new terrorism, the U.S. will have to win over local Muslim communities who may be sheltering the men of hatred. They will not cooperate if they are being bombed and diminished daily by American policies or if there is no attention paid to their pain. Would you expect any Iraqi today to hand over unambiguous support for U.S. or British policies after what the sanctions have done to his life? Americans and other Westerners have not shown concern for ordinary suffering Muslims around the world. Just a few months ago Jemima Khan, the daughter of Britain

s late Sir James Goldsmith and the husband of Pakistani cricket hero turned politician Imran Khan, tried to tell the Western media about the terrible misery in the refugee camps where so many Afghans are forced to live. Nobody was interested. But they were very keen on a photo-shoot of beautiful, blond Jemima in her Pakistani clothes.

Unless this new awareness is in evidence it would be impossibly difficult for me and others to fall in line, in spite of growing pressure to stop all honest enquiry and to back unconditionally anything the U.S. may do. I have expressed these views this week and have faced a torrent of abuse from the right-wing British newspapers and some fanatical U.S. loyalists. "True" Muslims also hate me for saying I would support action against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and for being too damned Westernized.

But I am heartened by the hundreds of thoughtful people — both Muslims and non-Muslims — who agree that this new understanding is essential. I fear, though, that these conversations are already being drowned out by events, the movement of weapons and the torrent of rash words (such as "crusade" and "dead-or-alive") spoken by leaders who should know better.

In 1993, the American academic Samuel Huntington spoke of a coming "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West. It seemed a simplistic and dangerous dichotomy. Today more people believe this than ever before. Those of us who are caught in the middle must do all we can to stop the rush to mutual demonization, which will only lead to unspeakable wars, destroying everything that we all hold dear.