Sir, you are the Founder of the Center for Dialogues. And the Center is called, if I get it right, Islam-US-the West?
Yes.
So, how old is the problem, I mean why did you decide to create this?
I decided to create it in consultation with the authorities of the University after September 11, because exactly that?s what happened ? this hijacking of the faith for political purposes and in this case for terrible political purposes, the most terrible ones and we have seen the results in the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Yes, true! If I?m not mistaken the whole problem, I think it is a little bit older, isn?t it?
It is older. But since you?ve mentioned this aspect, let me come back to the history of the US with regard to the Muslim and the Arab world because if we do not understand that history we would not understand what happened in September 11 and the implications, and then the aftermath and what happened later.
And this is very important.
Yes. World War II, the US comes out as the main winner of the game, the superpower and in 1945 and the world is in the hands of the US. More or less, there was a consensus of the division of the world, two superpowers, but the US was the power that stayed somehow untouched by what happened for instance in the Soviet Union?
The least destroyed.
The least destroyed and so on. And so there was a need for energy. Here you have this potential source of energy ? that is Saudi Arabia. A deal is struck between Roosevelt and the King of Saudi Arabia. And that is ? we provide you with oil, it is yours for eternity and you provide security for the royal family. So, that deal will go on untouched practically until 1967. And why 1967? As a result of that deal the only image the Americans had about Arabs, because they did not even know what Islam was. America is diverse, people never ask you ? what?s your religion, at least they rarely did. Now they do, but in the past, if you are an American ? you are an American and that?s it, with the exception if you are black, then it is a racial problem. But in terms of faith and spiritual values they cared less about that than about for instance race. And the image of the Arabs for the Americans was the Sheikh on the camel. As a matter of fact, if you recall the cigarette pack ? the image of the Sheikh with the turban on the camel ? in fact one of the brands is called the Camel. So to Americans, the Arabs were the Sheikh on the camel, the belly dancers and oil.
In 1967 was the Israeli-Arab war. And then suddenly there is the injection of the Palestinian issue in the game, in this imagination of the Americans. But that is also limited to the Israeli-Palestinian thing. Those who were interested were either for or against but the totality of the American public opinion didn?t care much in fact. There were as many anti-Semites as there were anti-Arabs, if you wish, they didn?t like the Jews but they didn?t like the Arabs either. So, the concern for this issue was limited to those who were really either pro-Arab or pro-Israeli, if you wish. The vast public opinion didn?t care much. Then, because of the hijacking of the Islamic faith by those Islamist manipulators, including Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and this of course comes after the Soviet ?Afghan War, and in fact those who later will strike at America on September 11 are precisely those who were nurtured by America to fight the Soviets at that time.
Yes, in Pakistan.
In Afghanistan. Mr. Bin Laden was a CIA agent. He was helped by the CIA, he was created by the CIA. And his colleagues, his fighters were people who were given arms by the CIA and all these security services to fight the Soviet Union at that time. You see, you have to be careful about who you help because you might create monsters who will turn against you one day.
Definitely! Because the ungodly combination of politics and religious values creates monsters, this is logical.
Absolutely! And so that takes us to September 11. Just a personal observation ? I was at home, in my apartment on the 34th floor.
New York?
Yes, in New York. And the view was a big one that I could see down to the World Trade Center. It is a beautiful sight, every day when I wake up and if I?m in the living room I see that beautiful sight, downtown Manhattan. And so, that morning I saw the second plane with my own eyes hit the second tower. And I was mesmerized for hours until the two towers fell as?
Did they just crumbled?
They crumbled completely. And I couldn?t believe what was happening. And I asked myself the question ? I?m a Muslim, I don?t have to advertise it, I have beliefs, everyone has their beliefs ? you are a Christian, you are a Jew, I?m a Muslim, you are Buddhist ? we are all first of all human beings, brothers and sisters in this world which is a marvelous thing to live in. And I saw that these people are monsters, they do this. And those who died that day, 40% of them were American Muslims. There were fathers, there were daughters, there were husbands who that day maybe had a quarrel with their wife and maybe at the end of the day they would come back and say ? please, excuse me, I was wrong; children who saw their fathers for the last time and were waiting to tell them the news about a new mark they got at school, they were happy and they expected their fathers to give them a gift or something etc. etc. tragedies in personal histories.
And there you have these monsters striking at all of that in the name of what? In the name their truth, their interpretation of the truth, their hijacking of that faith that was my faith and the faith of billions of people around the world. And so, how could this happen? That?s the first question. Second ? why now? Third question ? what to do so that this will never happen again? And the center I created was precisely to answer these questions. One is very academic ? to understand the background, to understand why there is a misunderstanding between the West and the Muslim world, what is the history of the relationship and how that history matters today, and how the misunderstandings can be confronted. But they can be confronted only on the basis of mutual respect.
Before 9/11 President Bush did not mention Islam or Muslims but in the 6 months afterwards he mentioned the religion 92 times. And at the time he mostly talked to them in a positive key, however he kept mentioning Islamic terrorists as evildoers.
I think he was right.
Well, why not. But my question would be the concept of Samuel Huntington appeared quite some time before the 9/11 and that was the concept of the clash of civilizations. If you talk about the dialog of civilizations that needs to be promoted ? is one thing, but you are talking directly about the clash of civilizations ? that certainly has its impact on the world and on those who are thinking about that. So, it takes two to tango. Wasn?t it actually that the idea to protect the Islamic civilization against the disrupting Western values has also been produced, at least partly, by the Western civilization?
Yes, to a certain extent yes. You see, as you said the whole notion, theory, whatever you call it, concept of the clash of civilizations developed by Samuel Huntington had two aspects to it. One was an academic research aspect. And that part, in fact I had a chance to be in a room at a seminar with Samuel Huntington, I think he was misunderstood because what he was saying at that time was that there are ingredients in some civilizations that if we do not somehow consider them as possible tools for manipulators, they could lead to a clash because of the misunderstanding. In fact that is what my center would produce in terms of studies and conferences and so on.
The sad part of the Samuel Huntington clash of civilizations theory is that he did not defend himself enough from manipulation by his own camp. And so, when September 11 strikes you have the new conservatives who were looking for a way to, they had other goals, they are too the extremists of the Western civilization, and their objective was to dominate Russia, the Muslim world. And they were also inspired by the extreme Evangelists?
Those who are now engaged in Quran burning.
Yes, exactly. And so they?ve found the theory of the clash of civilizations exactly what they needed in order to advance their goals.
But that is not exactly the theory by Huntington.
Yes, absolutely! And with the Bush Administration at that time was at loss as to what to do, and they were at the Government, some of them ? Cheney ? the Vice President, Perl ? one of the major advisors to both the Defense Department and to the White House, and others and others. So, they infiltrated the Government and they had this theory there. And we know it today, it?s a part of history. One thing in America is that nothing remains secret after a while, after a while everyone wants to write their memoirs and so on to make money because money is really the big thing. And so, all these guys who were in the Administration have spilled the beans, as we say, and they wrote their memoirs on how things happened. And we know today that in fact Bush was a little bit manipulated by his own people. Why to strike at Iraq? Iraq had nothing to with September 11.
Absolutely not! Neither did al-Qaeda.
Neither did al-Qaeda. And some of them, the usual participators of the inner meetings of the Bush Administration in the White House, are today saying ? we wanted to affirm to our colleagues that this is a fallacy and we should strike at al-Qaeda but not at Iraq. But these neoconservatives who were precisely after the big thing, after the big enchilada, as we say, the clash of civilizations, wanted to dominate the world according to their own faith and according to their own interpretation of Christian values and so on had other objectives. And they somehow found a way of convincing Bush and launching the war in Iraq. And the war in Iraq was simply the first war that they had in mind. In fact they had in mind after Iraq Syria, they had in mind Libya and etc. and eventually Russia at one point, to make Russia exactly what they wanted in terms of their own views and so on.
You are saying that they manipulated Bush. And remember when Obama came to power, his initial steps were reconciliatory vis-?-vis the Islam community. But it seems that he was not allowed to go as far as he would like to.
Let me introduce here a note of personal history. I was privileged to be a member of a high level group that was convened by two foundations to reflect as scholars precisely on the relationship between the Muslim world and the US. And this was two years before the presidential elections that brought Obama. As members of the group there were a number of former secretaries of state like Madeleine Albright, there were former officials of the Pentagon, there were scholars and so on in the American tradition of trying to think about problems in a detached way so as to see what to do. And we met for about two years every maybe month or so confidentially to think about these problems and to produce a report. And we?ve produced this report, it is now in the public domain. And it was issued at the time not knowing who will be elected as the President but as a roadmap to how to improve the relationship between the Muslim world and the West.
And one of the recommendations that we made was that the first thing that the new President, whether McCain or Obama, should do was to make a big speech in a major important Islamic capital to the Muslim world to say that now we have turn the page about the misunderstandings of the past and start a new page. And most of these recommendations were adopted by the Administration of that time, by Obama and his people. And one of the things that he did, and we had suggested them that this capital should be either Cairo or Jakarta, or one of the major symbolic Islamic capitals. And that speech in Cairo in June 2009 just in the first year. And there were few other recommendations, like improving the relationship with Hamas, trying to give more attention to the Muslim community in the US, improving the issue of visas because as scholars when we invite scholars from the Muslim world, we have problems of getting them visas and so on. And there were things that could be done to improve the situation.
Now, clearly, the major problem that Obama and the Administration faced was the Palestinian-Israeli problem. There was no progress whatsoever. And the disappointment I think started there from the both sides. And of course you have the other side waiting for the occasion to destroy whatever possibility for a better relationship between the US and the Muslim world and that is the Islamic extremists. And we have seen that blocking finally whatever attempts by the Obama Administration to make progress on this issue. But I?m confident that if Obama is reelected certainly I can imagine that he will make more efforts to improve the relationship and particularly to see to it that those who are working for the good of the countries are given a chance to govern and so on.
For instance, the Administration was very much for what is called today the Arab Spring. But of course today what we are seeing is also disappointment. And this is an American problem ? a lot of enthusiasm without being careful about whom you are dealing with, a lack of culture, lack knowledge of the local cultures, lack scholarly knowledge of the culture of the countries that the US deals with. And in the Arab-Islamic case the lack of knowledge, for instance, going to Iraq without knowing the Iraqi society, going now to Syria without knowing how diverse?
Going to Afghanistan without knowing.
Exactly! And this lack of knowledge leads to terrible decisions and mistakes. And what happened with the Arab Spring is the same thing ? with a lot of enthusiasm, with the historic naivety of America to get into situations without knowing it, giving full support to these Islamic regimes that came through the elections in Egypt or in Tunisia and so on and then discovering that these same people are hitting at the embassies, killing the American Ambassador in Egypt, burning the American Embassy in Tunisia and so on. And of course ? oh, what happened? We were on the side of the good people! Look, what they are doing! But the same thing happened in Afghanistan. They were on the side of ?the good people? during the Soviet-Afghan war and these ?good people?, as my colleague at Columbia University, became the bad guys.
And now the Shurami are remembered with kindness. But tell me Sir, suppose Romney wins the election. Is he going to be as bold as he pretends he is going to be in his policies vis-?-vis the Muslim world?
You know, American politics is a funny story. I guess in most democratic countries what you have in the election stage is not what you get when people are finally elected and they are in power. But in America it is even worse because politics is a spectacle, television is spectacle. In fact the French sociologist Baudrillard described it very well as a spectacle. And it is a spectacle. Everything is on TV. Whether you performed well on the debate and so on. And the extent of the attention that the average American pays to politics is seeing a debate maybe once every four years?
A TV show.
A TV show, it is a TV show, and who did better than the others and so on. Now, that being said, what Romney says today might not be what Romney will follow as a policy once he is elected.
But he?s got some hardcore advisors, like Bolton for instance.
Very true! Bolton, yes, absolutely! And he might be the Secretary of State. There is some talk that Bolton, I knew Bolton at the UN, this is the most extremist guy you would find on this planet in terms of his beliefs. But even someone like Bolton or the Romney Administration, you know, there are national interests, countries do not determine their politics according to whims. They make errors because they do not appreciate a situation but supposing that they know the situation, what dominates is national interests.
And just to remind you our guest speaker was Mustapha Tlili ? a writer and researcher, the Founder and Director of the Center for Dialogues: Islamic World ? US ? the West at the New York University and the UN Senior Advisor.
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