Dear Editor/Moderator,

Please publish the following write up. Thanks.

 

Gist of a (futile) argument

By Mohammad Asghar

 

In the concluding part of my essay “Muslims: Their past, present and future,” I had made the following remarks:

 

"In its own as well as mankind's interest, the West must also come forward to help Muslims out of their predicaments. Failure on its part would create more jihadis and more bloodshed in the world. To avoid a situation of uncontrollable magnitude, I hope the West would play the role history has placed on its shoulders, thus helping mankind survive in a world that is fast approaching a point where bloodbaths are likely to become a norm of their existence."

 

One of my readers, Syed M. Islam, felt irked by my above comment, without paying attention to the word that was there in my article. I have highlighted it this time for his convenience. He exchanged with me a number of emails, which contained arguments that oscillated from one point to another without having an end. In each of my replies, I tried to remain as close to his statement as was possible. For example, in my last response, I had asked him:

 

“Do you believe Saudi Arabia would help another Muslim country without expecting anything from it in return?

 

The West's 'impure intention' notwithstanding, can we declare that the Muslim world would be able to better its people's life without the West's cooperation? If the answer to the question comes in affirmative, then the next question that props up is this: why then Muslim countries worried about the sanctions that the West had imposed on them in the past, and which may be imposed on them in future as well?”

 

His response to it, posted on Mukto-Chinta, does not touch any of my questions; rather he took himself on a course that is not only winding but also unending.

 

Like other people who have some sense of perceptibility, I do not follow blindly what the West or others say are the gospel truth, or the right measures by adopting which, mankind would be able to make them better human beings. Neither do I believe in the Scriptural teachings, which are taken by a majority of people to be the beacon of their lives. For me, most of the scriptural teachings are either irrelevant or redundant for our present time.

 

Without relying on the Scriptures, or on what others have written about the time we are living in, I, like Mr. Islam, try, first, to understand their relevance to our lives and then, either accept what we have been told, or reject them after due consideration. In analyzing or considering what I see and read with my own eyes as well as what I hear from others, I always try to remain objective as far as my perceptibility allows me to do so.

 

Having stated the above, I now need to draw Mr. Islam’s attention to the broader aspect of my comment, quoted above.

 

By saying that “in its own as well as in the interest of mankind …” I did not mean or imply imposition by the West of its brand of democracy or values on, and the acceptance thereof by, the Muslim nations. My comment related to the realities of our present time, some of which are as follows:

 

1. Whether we like or not, the West is an important power, economically, politically and militarily, in our world today. How it acquired them is another question for us to discuss later. But the fact remains that by dint of its supremacy, the West has been impacting all other nations of the world. Let us consider a couple of examples:

 

A. Bangladesh (I quote it, because I am from this country) is one of the least developed countries of the world. Today, its main export is Ready-made garments. According to one statistics, 65% of its products are exported to the United States, and about 25% to other Western countries.

 

Recently, the United States made it known that unless Bangladesh allowed trade union activities in its Export Processing Zones (EPZ), Bangladesh would not be allowed to export its good to the United States. It was a serious matter, for had this threat become a reality, Bangladesh would have faced a great disaster not only in terms of its economic well being, but also in terms of its social order.

 

Closing down of a large number of garment manufacturing factories would have made a lot of people unemployed; the male employees would have turn, among others, to loot and terrorism and the female ones to anti-social activities.  

 

United States realized the above implications, in consequence whereof, it recently accepted a formula that allows trade unionism in a form that is different from the one it had originally envisioned. This compromise on the part of United Sates is going to help Bangladesh quite a lot. It, in the long run, is also going to be beneficial for the United States.

 

This is the Western and Muslim interest I had implied in my article.

 

B. Because the United States had been occupying a unique position in the world for a long time, many countries often looked, in the past, and they do so even now, to it for resolving their problems. Here are two examples:

 

(i). Pakistan has been having a problem with India over Kashmir. Because it did not or does not have the ability to solve this problem by itself, it has always looked to the United States to come to its aid. In the face of its regional interest, United States did not take an active part until recently in the solution of the Kashmir issue, thereby subjecting India to a number of terrorist attacks launched by the so-called “freedom Fighters” of Kashmir, allegedly supported by Pakistan.

 

Had India retaliated militarily against Pakistan, the world would, most probably, have confronted a nuclear holocaust in the Indian sub-continent with implications that would have reached other corners of the globe.

 

India and Pakistan were able to avoid the catastrophe with the American help. This is the Muslim and Western interest I spoke of in my article.

 

(ii). The question of a Palestinian State is one of the most burning problems of our time. Whether we like it or not, the solution of this problem depends largely on the United States. If it fails to discharge it responsibility in a responsible manner soon, the world would continue to witness the sufferings of a mass of humanity together with the destructions some Palestinians are willing to inflict on their “enemies.”

 

United States would eventually have to help the parties involved in the dispute to come to an amicable settlement. The “Road Map” proposed by it is one such step, which received approval from many nations, including the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It lost its momentum because the United States has not been pursuing it with the intensity it deserves.

 

Finding solution by the United States to the Palestinian problem is one of the Western interests that I had alluded to in my article. Of course, Mr. Islam missed it, as do most learned people, due to overwhelming pressures on their minds. I hope he would understand all the points this time, thus sparing him and me the trouble that both of us have unnecessarily gone through over a number of days.

 

March 19, 2004