Session 8
Concluding Remarks
Discussion
Mr. Khaled Hroub:
My comment is on what has been mentioned regarding bringing democracy in the Middle East, which is somewhat related to our discussion on foreign policy and its impact on Muslim communities in Europe. Neither the American approach of imposing democracy by force nor the European approach by sneaking it in, sneaking democracy by calling it socially, cultural bribe, if you like, would be successful. Why? Because I think they come from the backdoor, not the front door. The front door is the Palestine conflict. Without having a just and fair solution of this conflict, I think, all efforts to democratise the Arab region will fail. Why I am saying this? It's not the Palestinian centred, but because without having this solution, everything coming from all the United States will be looked at with suspicion and less trust. Even worse, if you are successful in bringing in democracy, any surrounding countries, such as Iraq, for example at the present time, and after one year or two years and, according to the American desire and agenda, this 'democracy' without acknowledging Israel and start dealing with the situation as it is now, this will discredit the call for democracy. And Arab states will think everything is coming from abroad has got hidden agenda. The start of democratisation without forming a Palestine, I think, is harmful and it will even damage the call for sincere democracy. I say that in the mind of Arabs and maybe even Muslims, there is a Palestinian dictionary where everybody will take this action or even the statement coming from the states or any European country and will go for the interpretation, what is the meaning, what is the hidden agenda? Unless we put this Palestinian dictionary on the shelf, things will not go as we need to go.
Ms. Sara Ababneh:
I want to reiterate some of what Khaled just said, the idea of soft power. Using soft power, economic power, for security reasons. And a lot of postcolonial literature has been written on that as well. On the one hand the idea that soft power might be better than military power… I think so too, it is probably better than military power, but it is still power and still used. The idea of soft power is not just economic power by nation states or by nations or states, but firms, by NGOs and it is "we'll give you something, if you give us something in return" and its not an altruistic act of saying, you know, "we're doing this just for you" or "for you to get what you really want" rather its "we want something from you as well", so the outcome, without speaking about what is and not necessarily mean an altruistic outcome.
Mr Julian Simmonds:
I would like to pick up on a couple of points by Timothy Garton Ash. When you talk about virtual others and Europe as a generic label, I think that if you look at Europe and you talk about virtual others, we can look at a whole series of conflicts that certainly predate the Second World War and so Europe does not strictly speak with one voice. I also think that if you look at the situation vis-à-vis Iraq and the way that Britain and Spain supported very much the United States, I can't think of any major issue in recent years in which Europe has managed to speak with collective voice and I think the introduction of the new states from Eastern Europe could very well change the European dynamic and I suspect many of them will feel more sympathy on many issues towards the British and American point of view than maybe France or Germany and maybe one of the longer term implications is that the dynamic in Europe will change and, in fact, we'll see a weakening of the Franco-German presence within Europe. And another point I wanted to make very briefly is that, I also share the concerns, I get very nervous when we talk about any desire to change other nations by whatever means, and I think that if the United States wants to take the moral high ground I would suggest that getting involved in the Middle East conflict is of critical importance and the other point I'd say is that working as a true partner with Russia is very very important in all this. I think that the fact that Russia sided with France recently is a real failure of U.S. foreign policy.
Mr. Timothy Garton Ash:
Obviously my fourth point was put extremely briefly as a trial balloon to this audience because I wanted to hear your reactions to it, which I have now got. Let me say one thing for starters to Khaled Hroub. I take it absolutely as writ that a settlement on the Palestinian question is a sine qua non and before we can begin to talk about what I was talking about. But that's hardly an original thing to say, it's what Tony Blair has been saying to George W. Bush every time they meet in Camp David. This is a classic European position. American talks about, Perle and Wolfowitz talk about the grand project, about Iraq, about terrorism, about democratising the Middle East, and the Europeans say Palestine, Palestine, Palestine. And I'm saying to you that is not an adequate transatlantic dialogue on the wider Middle East, it's the kind of dialogue of the deaf. Of course it's a precondition, but beyond that Europe needs to be thinking more systematically about its own strategic relationship, to use a rather loaded phrase, its nearer world, which is the Islamic Arab world. And we don't do that. When you said, the lady at the back, that's there the American hard power approach to bring democracy and then there's the European approach of sneaking in democracy by economic bribes – there is no such European policy. There is no European policy of sneaking in democracy. There is no European policy. Period. Period! The gentleman is absolutely right. There is no European policy. And I'm suggesting to you and I go to the question of power, soft power or hard power, but the fact is that if you are a very rich continent next to relatively poor parts of the world, you do have soft power. Soft power's main quality is the quality of attraction rather than coercion. Joan Ayer's definition of power, it's an attractive power rather than coercive power. Now Europe clearly has that power, like it or not, and the evidence is that people from the Maghreb are trying to get into Europe by every possible means by boat and by bus and by tram. So Europe has that soft power, Europe has an integration policy, Europe has a policy about students, Europe has a policy of tariffs and protection, Europe has an aid policy, a much larger aid budget than the United States, no one in Europe has begun to think about putting those elements together in a strategic approach to the Middle East as was done after a long period of time when people started to think about détente policy in relation to Central and Eastern Europe. Now I take all the points that this cannot be done unless at least some people in the countries concerned want it to be done and are willing to be partners in this enterprise, but nonetheless I don't think it is a neo-colonial enterprise to try to think about how use, constructively, the soft power that you do have whether you like it or not.
Lord Ahmed:
I just wanted to respond to Khaled's point on democracy. There's no unified type of democracy in the world anywhere. Most democracy evolved, and it would be wrong for any country to impose a democracy for any of the Arab or Middle Eastern countries, or Muslim countries. I think there is a move and people like Samuel Huntingdon who talks about 'clash of civilisations' but then he fears of the fact that when there is democracy then Islamists might take over, there is also a warning for some who want to have quick democracy that in Pakistan the MMA have got the highest vote ever, maybe yes this might be anti-American vote and anti-British vote or whatever you want to say. In Morocco, where there have been elections after 9/11, the Islamic parties have got more vote, so you know, yes, democracy, but there needs to be democracy where all people can have their own form democracy because they want it in a very slow way rather than imposing on those countries.
Dr. Anita Singh:
It's an observation for Timothy Garton Ash. It seems to me that the European fear of Muslims or fear of the Muslim 'other' may reflect something more than prejudice against Muslims. Until 1945 the conqueror in Europe was usually another European. The Muslim invasions were the exception rather than the rule in Europe. It is quite possible that since 1945 Europeans have been getting to really like one another. That in turn may contribute to the development of the European civic identity that would be strengthened by the diversity of Europe.
Dr. Peter Mandaville:
Timothy Garton Ash: you were comparing and contrasting the immigrant experience in Europe and American and you cited the ways in which American identities hyphenate rather easily and European ones don't. What I'm wondering, as you look at the American immigrant experience, it's always been permeated this notion, this fantasy of the American Dream, the idea that you come from wherever you grow up and against the odds you can make it to the very top. And I have no disillusions about the extent to which immigrants are regulated, the odds are stacked against you, yet still, when you talk to immigrants to the United States this is still very much in the foreground for recently arrived immigrants and Americans who have been there for generations. So my question to you, simply and probably simplistic is "What is the European Dream?" and who gets do decide what that is?
Mr. Christian Hoffmann:
Timothy point four again: well as a German Muslims I'm in a very privileged position that my government uses me as a consultant when it deals with governments in Islamic countries, so I know that this soft approach is already under way. The German government embarked on a big project creating the Arab knowledge society. They are funding a big thing on North African institutions in some of the countries and so I'm very much in favour of this approach and my question to Timothy is now with the record of what Tony Blair has done in the past month, where do you see the government of your country and Tony Blair in the future? Do you think he will move in on the 'soft' process? Do you think he will risk telling Bush that is not the way and possibly even breaking away to joining the European forces in the 'soft' approach?
Mr. Timothy Garton Ash:
I think Anita, I'm not entirely sure I got the full thrust of your question. Could you just sharpen it for me. It was an observation? I have to say that out of the experience of the last six weeks I'm not sure that the statement "Europeans have been getting to like each other" is entirely borne out. What's amazing is how the British and the French have been getting to dislike each other again and both enjoying it considerably, which is not something one should say at a college founded by a Frenchman, but nonetheless it's extremely striking. I was trying to think if there was any continuous national antagonism which is older than that between England and France, which dates back at least to Agincourt, so it's been going 700 hundred years. It's very difficult to think of one actually. I can't off hand. The question, Professor Mandaville, is an excellent one. I was in Kansas City in December talking to a fundamentalist Christian. And he said, quite spontaneously, he suddenly started talking about local Muslims and they're quite a lot of Muslims in Kansas City and he said, "You know the thing you have to understand about them is they're living the American Dream." Now, admittedly it wasn't a Muslim in Kansas City saying that to me so I didn't get it from that, but it did make me think, could one imagine a Muslim immigrant to Europe or an immigrant to Europe altogether saying "I am living the European Dream". Answer: No. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist in that sense. And I think that is one of the crucial differences. That people, of course, would rather be in France than in Morocco, but when they come to France they don't say "I'm coming to live the European Dream." Whereas if you go to Kansas City maybe you do. On the other hand, that's a subjective reality. On the other hand, the objective reality is that you get from the state, in France or Germany or Britain, a helluva lot more than you get from the state or federal in Kansas City. So sure, you've got the right to live the American Dream, but you haven't got the welfare payments and you haven't got the free houses and the resentments of immigrants in Europe and precisely, directly to do with it, you see it in the tabloids everyday with the extraordinary welfare entitlements that come with the European notion of citizenship rather than the American notion of citizenship. And that's one of the reasons I think why immigration is so difficult in Europe. Final point to the impossibly large question whether Blair will join as sort of new 'Ost' policy of 'soft' power towards the Muslim world. I mean clearly what has happened so far as what Khaled suggested should be happening, namely Bush has talked about everything else and Blair has talked about what he calls the MEPP, he even abridges it in speeches as if his listeners know what the Middle East Peace Process is. So at the moment he's been insisting, it seems to me, on that one part of the agenda, but I'm sure that it's right that there are people who are thinking about it. I'm certain he would not see that as a choice for Europe against the United States. I mean that choice he's already made. Or he's going to refuse.
Mr. Mohamed Ben-Madani:
I want Lord Ahmed to tell me how Muslims have reacted to the Labour Party since the last war.
Dr. Jeroen Gunning:
I want to sort of somehow taking both speakers together thinking about democratisation and security or securitization. Because in some ways the way in which we've been talking in this session and before about democratisation in the Middle East as a security issue for Europe, that we need democracy there otherwise we'll have terrorist unrest. So if that is linked, and if you look at what Lord Ahmed justly says, democratisation is a very long and painful, internal process that you can't impose from the outside. That means you sort of get steps forward and steps backward. If democratisation leads to securitization then at the first sign of conflict suddenly the plug will be pulled from the project. That links me to my second point, which is as long as there is a taboo on the Islamist voice. Which would surprise America as it suddenly comes to liberate Iraq and then suddenly the Shiia come and want an Islamic state on sort of democratic rules. We don't understand this, we don't want that. I think that this links back to the idea of the virtual other of Europe, which goes back to another 30 years' war and that's the war of religion in the 15th century. I think that there's still a very rigid understanding in our societies of the role of religion in politics and on that we sort of allow in the Middle East a different type of religion and democracy to develop. So you might still have the religious authority, in terms of the framing of law, but a democratic person in terms of who actually runs the country if those people cannot be anti-American or anti-European. On that stuff that project might fail.
Mr. Anis Haggar:
I get the feeling as the word democratisation is used here today, yesterday and elsewhere that the word sterilisation comes to mind and I'm not quite sure whether it is in the hygienic sense or the necessarily in the secular sense. But it is an evolutionary process. You cannot impose, you might be able to engineer democracy, vast sums of money were offered a month or two ago for the democratisation and the liberalising of women in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Morocco. I wonder whether in a world where we talk about "you're either with us or against us" or where we have democratically elected governments whose opinion differs from the United States of America and they are labelled 'Old Europe', what guarantees do we have that if this democratisation process takes place in the Middle East they will actually be pro-the western perception of democracy or pro-America or what have you. What happens if we get more 'old Arabs' or 'old Europe' and then what have you got?
Lord Ahmed:
It's very easy. I know many Muslims in Birmingham that are still in the Labour Party, but they were canvassing for the Justice Party and they didn't leave the Labour Party. They elected three councillors from the Justice Party. This time, I think, there are many Muslims who have been feeling very strong, although you will see the results in the local government elections, although they don't have anything to do foreign policy, I think that there will be a lot of anti-Labour vote already some of the candidates have been telling me. But I have not see a single Muslim councillor that has resigned as a result of the government policy. I haven't seen anybody throwing their Labour Party cards.
Mr. Mohamed Ben-Madani:
Here is one!
Lord Ahmed:
You're my first one! And I'll quote you. But I haven't seen people in masses. I mean there are many people, white indigenous people who are not renewing their membership for various reasons. I'm sure that there are others elsewhere, but that's not a Muslim vote as such. I think this is a general, I mean this was the whole thing about the march on 15th of February, how all communities stood together. There was this opposition to war and that sort of filters through into the Labour Party as well. I know that in Sheffield, for instance, where David Blunkett was there and a few other ministers, 90 percent of the district Labour party told the party that they were wrong and they would oppose them. There are many many trade unions who are voting to withdraw funding to the Labour Party, but this is not a Muslim issue that Muslims are going to use their block vote. They're not like the Muslims in Florida who voted for George Bush. They will vote according to the policies I hope.
Mr. Timothy Garton Ash:
Just very briefly because I know that there are a lot of questions and hopefully comments. Three observations. Firstly I agree there're all sorts of problems with people talking about democracy, but I would still rather they talk about democracy than simply talking about stability, which would be the classic discourse of a security concern – friendly dictators are fine, they may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. So it's progress of a kind. Secondly, you're absolutely right and Lord Ahmed made this point, democracy does not simply mean elections. One of the great mistakes of sort of transition policies of the last 15 years was the assumption democracy starts with having an election. And what happens, as Lord Ahmed said, is that very often extremist nationalist or religious or other parties come to power without all the other things – a political culture, the rule of law, a free media, which make democracy stable so that I'm not pleading any naïve, one-dimensional notion of supporting democracy. The third point is that Europe has no strategy. That policy towards Turkey, policy towards Iraq and policy towards Morocco are considered in completely separate rooms in completely different terms. Policy on trade, policy on aid, policy on immigration and citizenship, policy on the use of military force, policy on CSSP are considered in completely separate rooms and it seems to me nonsensical and I'm pleading for some sort of coherent approach which starts with the question "What kind of societies do we want these to be in 10 or 20 years?" and "What kind of societies do these people in these countries want them to be in 10 or 20 years?" I don't prejudge the outcome I just plead for a strategic approach.
Mr. Dimitar Bechev:
I'm the Bulgarian spy. You mentioned that one of the larger questions is the question of Turkey. Do you have apart from Turkey, probably in the conceivable future Bosnia, probably Albania and Kosovo banging on the enlargement door. And all those countries have their chequered histories so secularisation, westernisation and rediscovering their Muslimness. And my question would be, according to you, would it make any difference to you for the North Africans in Paris to say your external policies towards the Islamic world, if we had a Bosnia or a Turkish commissioner sitting in Brussels one day.
Dr. Gilles Kepel:
I'm Gilles Kepel from Paris so here's your centuries-long antagonist. So three or four remarks. First, as a Frenchman I feel offended because the battle was set 1356 was in Poitiers not in Tours. The second thing is that you know when you say that Muslims, and I'll elaborate on that a little later, Muslims in Europe do not feel like the European Dream, I don't know. I mean my family came originally from Czechoslovakia and I'm sure they did it the French way and the woman I live with comes from Algeria and I can assure you that she lives the European and the French Dream – because of me.
[laughter]
So I don't think we have to take this American self-pride all the time too seriously. It's a matter of semantics and we have to deal with that a little more carefully. Something, which I hope will be more interesting, this issue of otherness – is there a Muslim 'other?' On the one hand the Muslim world is totally un-integrated. There is no such thing as a Muslim world… Maybe there is an Arabic speaking world now because of Al-Jazeera, but apart from that there is not much in common. I mean they share a language, because they do with it, there is almost no trade. It's not an economic region, they are not integrated politically, I mean the Arab League is just a sham. And so in terms of you want to be an other, you have to be something. And they are not much in terms of an entity. But there is something more important I think, you know, this so-called ‘other’ is very much part of ourself. Not only because we have Lord Ahmed, who epitomises the self, but Lord of the Ahmed, but or some sort of self, but also because in the so-called Muslim world, I mean, ideas, world views and the like are totally penetrated by dreams, by visions of the world and so on and so forth which partially come from Europe or from America. So you do not have a coherent idea. We came in colonial times, to some extent, the so-called Muslim world was perceived as part of the 'self', a submitted self, but still part of the self. Then there was independence and it became some sort of an other, but now through immigration trends and due to export of European or American culture to this part of the world, it also forms some part of self. I would be very careful with that. The former Eastern bloc was definitely an 'other' in the first sense because it was very well structured. I mean it was the COMINTERN. In the same time, it was part of the self also, because the Communist parties were so prevalent in such countries as mine, for instance. And last, but not least, you know, Muslims in Europe may not care about being labelled Muslims, I mean, people coming from wherever, Algeria, Turkey, or what have you, may consider that it is more important for them to be perceived as French or German than as Muslims and Muslim Algerian in France may have exactly the same prejudices against Pakistani in Britain that the normal prejudices that I have against the Brits. I agree with you in terms of those geographies, but I think you should be very carefully because these are representations which are build to some extent on the perpetuations of the cleavages of the past in terms of Richard Perle, whom you've mentioned, and Paul Wolfowitz, view the Middle East the same way that they viewed the Soviet Union when they were in power under Reagan II, because as you all know, what we see know is not Bush II, it's Reagan III.
Dr. Avi Shlaim:
I'd like to go back to the opening remark by Khaled Hroub, when he said that before democracy can come to the Arab world, the Palestine problem must first be solved. And I agree with you about the centrality of the Palestinian problem, I also agree that it's really and imperative that a solution be found to this problem, but I don't agree that the solution to the Palestinian problem will smoothly and easily lead to democracy in the rest of the Arab world, because there are many reasons for the lack of democracy in the Arab world, apart from the Arab-Israeli conflict. And the Arabs must accept responsibility for the lack of democracy and not look for scapegoats. I also agree that there is a link between the Palestine problem and the lack of democracy, in as much as this conflict makes it easy and labels military pirates and strongmen to capture power in the Arab world and to cling to power. So a solution to the Palestinian problem would ease the road to democracy. The other question is what can we in the West do to foster democracy in the Arab world? And the first thing is to say is that neither Britain nor America have done anything to promote democracy in the Arab world in the last century. Today we are at the crossroads and, as Tim pointed out, there are two ways of going about encouraging democracy in the Arab world. One is the American neo-conservative way of using military force to fit every country in the region, to impose democracy at the point of the bayonet – it surely wouldn't work. And the other is the more subtle, long-term European strategy of using economic and cultural instruments in order to foster democracy, in order to help the Arabs to democracy. What I don't know is where Tony Blair stands in this debate about the future of democracy. I don't know if he is with us or against us, maybe members of the panel can enlighten me.
Mr. Timothy Garton Ash:
To my Bulgarian spy. If there were in particular Bosnia, and if there were in particular a Turkey commissioner in Brussels, would it make a difference to the Maghreb? Absolutely it would. Morocco is, I think I'm right in saying, the only country to have been refused the right to apply to join the European Union on the grounds that it is not a European country. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that's correct. Now it seems to me if you have already accepted Turkey as a candidate in principle for membership of the European Union, it is quite difficult to explain why Turkey clearly, unambiguously, easily is a European country and Morocco, clearly, unambiguously, is not. So if Turkey were a member of the European Union, I think the whole definition of what it is to be a European country will be thrown wide open. I wouldn't dream of trying to argue in any sense with either Avi Shlaim or Gilles Kepel about the Middle East. You both know far far more about it than I do. But can I just come at it from a slightly different angle and make one comment to each. I do think, Gilles Kepel, and I'm sure that anyone who is living with Gilles Kepel is indeed living the European Dream, but I think you made the important point yourself in a sense against that when you said that we have to countenance the possibility that people would rather be identified not as Muslims, but as French or German or British, but I think that it is indeed the case that people over time identify themselves through their national identity rather than a European identity. There's a wonderful example in Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s book, I don't know if you know it, she has a quotation from the Daily Mail yesterday from someone called, his surname is Patel, I think it is Ali Patel, who is a gay Asian Briton and he's just back from Corfu and where he's had some problem because of the attitude of the locals to people who are gay and he says, "You know, those people." He said, "Those people, they're dreadful. They're not like us. If you're snogging on the beach they look at you as if you're terrible. We're not like that," he says, "we're an island people." So you can have a national identity, which is indeed an imagined community, like an island people, and similarly when you say that the Muslim world doesn't exist, well I defer to you on that in any coherent sense, but I don't think that's a necessary condition for being an effective other, because the 'other,' which is something imagined. People are 'other-ed', it's a construct. I mean actually the Soviet East was a construct. I mean if you read the Daily Express you would believe that Siberia began an Checkpoint Charlie – it was all the same. Those of us in this room like Archie Brown and Alex Pravda and I know that it was incredibly diverse, but that didn't prevent it from functioning as a kind of monolithic other. And I think Edward Said has made this point, so that would be my sort of, not a correction, but a response to what you've said. And to Avi, my only question would be, and first of all if there is such a European approach as an ideal type, the question to you would be "Can that approach be effective?", "Can it achieve its purposes?" if it is only a European approach and not a transatlantic approach. And I would imagine that would be Tony Blair's response to you. That if it is to be effective in achieving its own purposes, it has to be transatlantic policy and not simply European policy.
Mr. Roger Hardy:
I was considered an optimist yesterday, perhaps a starry-eyed optimist, I'll be considered, I think, an alarmist. If you look back at the events from September until now, I would suggest to the conference that it's plunged us all into a huge crisis with two dimensions, which convenience I'll direct first to Lord Ahmed. It seems to me, and I know colleagues disagree with this, but it's vastly complicated the task of multiculturalism and I use that term leaving the multicultural reality in the street, regardless of the multiculturalism is also a policy, but I say that regardless of whether countries follow the French approach, the British approach, the Swedish approach – I wish I had time to elaborate on that. But the second thing is that it seems to me that it has vastly complicated, indeed plunged us into a crisis over how we resolve what you have accurately described as the problem of the wider Middle East. Why do I say it in such strong terms? Let me put it this way, and I think it's better perhaps or more fitting that this comes from a British participant in this conference rather than from a French or German participant. I have my criticisms of France and Germany and their handling particularly of the Iraqi crisis, but I put it to you Timothy Garton Ash, Britain has paid a price for going along with America in the Iraqi affair. A price in Britain itself, the government has paid a price, how big we will see in the coming weeks and months, but it has clearly paid a price in Europe too. We too have contributed to the fragmentation of European policy. Whatever we may make of France and Germany and others, if we now take your advice and go along with whatever misgivings of what you have accurately described as the neo-imperial project of Perle and Wolfowitz, this would not, I think, be really as Europeans doing so. I suspect it would be Britain again feeling that reluctantly it must go along with America and it will be like the Iraqi war again and it will do us no good in Europe and we will pay if I'm right, I may be wrong, we will pay another price in Europe. Let me add a third one to the list, you haven't mentioned it, when you say there is no European foreign policy, I intend it to mean that there is no overarching policy in a formal sense. Okay. But oddly enough, we Europeans we're extraordinarily, extraordinarily lacking in self-confidence at the moment. We don't even see or acknowledge those areas of commonality that we actually have and they exist, surprise, surprise, in the Middle East. We want a Palestinian state and we want the road map. And the difference between us and America is that we believe in the road map. We also have a policy, strangely enough, on how to deal with Syria and Iraq – we favour dialogue. And America doesn’t. And so my final question to you, excuse me for putting it like a series of boxes, is if we go along with America in punishing perhaps, harshly punishing Syria and Iran, as well as perhaps going along, as you suggested, with the great democratisation project, what price then will we pay in Europe? Because that too will not be an European initiative. It will be Britain going along with whatever reasons and with whatever misgivings with an American policy, which seems to me and others deeply wrongheaded.
Ms. Liat Radcliffe:
My question is for you, Lord Ahmed, I hope you'll forgive me for putting you on the spot here. Two main things that have come up in the last two days is this notion of multiple identities and loyalties on one hand and on the other hand, leadership and participation and representation. And I was hoping that you could enlighten us on your perspective, of your role as a peer in the House of Lords and as a Muslim in relation to, what seems to me, at least four different categories of potential identities or loyalties. The first would be to British society as a whole, the second to the Labour Party….
Dr. Jocelyne Cesari:
I want to comment on Timothy Garton Ash, the difference between Europe and the U.S. concerning the legitimacy of Muslims and the legitimacy of religion. I do agree with you that the U.S. has more highly religious society than European societies have, but still the change for Muslims since 9/11 and I just wanted to highlight the difference. It's true that before 9/11 Muslim immigrants, I'm talking about Muslim immigrants only, have been welcome in developing and creating religious organisation and there was an emerging Muslim voice and I can quote lots of Muslim leaders very enthusiastic about freedom and capacity of the American society to make room for the religion of Islam. And there was a sort of schizophrenia, or at least a disconnection, between this recognition and legitimacy of Islam within the international agenda, because we are all talking about the demonisation of Islam, but America, the U.S. as the land of demonization in terms of literature and how Islam has been demonised at the international level, so there was a clear disconnection between outside and inside. And if you compare with Europe the difference was quite striking. Because in Europe we had, and I think that Europe is a conception in terms of it's not secularism in terms of the separation of church and state, but in terms of the secular mind, the illegitimacy of religious references in daily life, in social life, and if you look at this point of view then Muslims who are always look at incongruous agents, not to talk about citizenship and they were always seen as suspicious as soon as the question of religion was raised. Of course I'm talking about Zidane –Zidane is not going to make Islam the forefront of his identity when he talks to French or to Europeans. We have to keep this in mind, this is European exceptionalism, because Americans think they are exceptional. In terms of religion and secular mind I think that Europe, Western Europe, is an exception. But this has changed since 9/11 for Muslims in the U.S. and I can see a convergence in the treatment of Muslims now on both sides of the Atlantic meaning that since 9/11 there is a pattern that we know a lot in Europe, and particularly in France, linking Muslims from inside, at the domestic level, Islam is an international problem, terrorism, security issues. This is an old pattern that is seen as the only way in Europe and it's happening now to Muslims in the U.S. And the question now in America by scholars, by leaders and activists is "How is religion per se, and broadly also religion, that is going to be treated regard civil liberties issues?" which is a new question in American history.
Dr. Mai Yamani:
Much of what I was going to say is going to be very brief. I think it's the problems of the Middle East that we have to look at what is the politics of alienation of the most of the Algerians in the region who have emigrated their own people, marginalised large sections and these are the people and if we're looking at the hijackers of September 11th there is not coincidence that they come from one specific, from assiyi, from hijaz, they all come from what they perceive themselves as marginalised so that most of the problems we have are failures of the state or the nation in those regions and the failure to reform at the moment. So this question of democracy and change, and perhaps then, this link to the Palestinian crisis, and the last link of the sense of collective victimhood at a different level of their identity. Then maybe if we solved some of those problems, maybe the Muslims who come here could share in the European Union. And have less paranoia and more dialogue with the people here.
Dr. Ahmed Al-Shahi:
Last year we had in this room a conference on immigration from the Middle East and North Africa. And hopefully that the, most of the participants from Europe talking about European experience of Islam and Arabs in Europe, I hope that they will be published by the end of the year. After that conference, the only country, to my knowledge, to supervise the appointment of a mufti and supported by the educational clergy is Greece. No other European does this at the moment. Therefore my question for Lord Ahmed is, isn't it time that the likes of Abu Hamza would not appear if, not the state intervenes, but state would supervise the training of those clergy and perhaps they will have the run to administer the distribution of these funds. That's interesting that with the enlargement of Europe, this is absolutely urgent and necessary for Muslims.
Mr. Khaled Hroub:
I would like to disagree with Lord Ahmed. Partly I disagree with Lord Ahmed when you said that there is no single foreign democracy. My disagreement is that what I think this is amongst us Arabs and Muslims, this is a luxurious debate. This is the second debate. The first debate is just to bring about democratisation, then you will discuss the third, the form of democracy. Of course American democracy different from the British, the French, the Danish, whatever, the main components, political participation, freedom of speech, so many others, are basically the same. The last thing is that I did not say that solving the Palestinian problem will automatically lead to democratisation in the Middle East. What I said actually is that this will unleash the local democratic forces and they will make them more welcoming any foreign intervention whether it was soft power or other means that they can strike some sort of alliance against dictatorships and like that.
Lord Ahmed:
I'll be very brief. Liat Radcliffe asked a few questions and I think that I can answer those about my loyalty, about the loyalty of British Muslims. As far as the British society, the Labour Party and British Muslims and Muslims worldwide is concerned. We are very clear: our loyalty as British citizens is with Britain. We may differ on foreign policy like the rest of the British people. There were 60 percent of the public that were against war on Iraq, so we were part of that. But we were part of that British society that was opposed to the war with logical reasons and we were talking about hypocrisy and double standards, UN resolutions that are more valid on East Timor than on Kashmir, UN resolutions that are more valid on Iraq than on the massacre of Jenin and the rest of things. And I can go on with the list. But, as far as British society is concerned, I know this is my home, this is my country, but the rest of the people and it might be easy for me to say it because I'm a British member of the House of Lords, but those people who are talking on the Five Live radio, for instance, in the rest of the debate. You will have a fringe of people who talk from those groups that other people were mentioning in the last couple of days. But you know in British society we have football hooligans, we have paedophiles, does the whole community get blamed for their activities? Do we question the whole society, do you support paedophiles, do you support hooligans, do you support murderers and rapists? And the very fact that everybody has to answer for the wrongdoings of a few who comment. I mean I was in Peterborough two weeks ago and there was a young man who said "The only solution to the Muslims' problem in the Middle East is jihad". I got some money out of my pocket and I said go, please go and fight jihad. Leave this country, I don't want you to stay here. And as far as the Labour Party is concerned, the Labour Party like values that I believe in are part of Labour Party's policy. The Labour government's policy might be different from what the Labour Party policy, so my loyalty remains with the Labour Party. I have no problem with that and there are many people who may agree with the Labour Party has been weak, to demand from the government to follow the policy of the party and that debate has to come, but my loyalty for the party has not gone away. We've had a difference, we live in a democracy and we move on. As far as British Muslims are concerned, I don't have a constituency in the House of Lords, most of the issues that I've raised in the House of Lords are to do with British Muslims, because so often they are forgotten by their members of parliament. So often they are forgotten by major political parties. Because that's my community. They are British Muslims and they have issues, which I raise, so as far as loyalty they are part of British society. But you know I always remind people as well that British Muslims have contributed to British society in redeveloping and building this country to be the fourth richest country in the world. But more importantly, Muslims contributed during the Second World War. They have sacrificed for this country. We've been part of this society, there's no harm in that. As far as the Muslim world, I think that as Muslims we would feel for anything what happened in Rwanda, even though they were not Muslims, we all sympathised with the massacre that those who were victims of the massacre and those people who are oppressed, as it happens around the world, whether it be Chechnya or Bosnia, Kashmir, Palestine, happened to be Muslims. I didn't support Taliban, I opposed Taliban. In fact I issues statements when they demolished, or blew up the Buddhas and they way they practice Islam and their traditions. So, you know, there are times when I had meetings in the House of Lords about human rights in Saudi Arabia, women's rights, minority rights and particularly Asian immigrant workers rights in the whole Middle East. The Arabs treat them like third class citizens, meskeens, and whatever. As for the states supervising the Imams, I honestly don't think that the state has a duty, but what I do think is that the import of Imams from the Indian subcontinent needs to be stopped and I think we ought to train all our Imams in this country. And a lot of our problems come from the fact that sermons are delivered in Urdu and Punjabi, the young men cannot understand, so they look for somewhere to get the guidance and you get Abu Hamza, Omar Bakri and others with them in the universities and elsewhere. Very small percentage, but nevertheless that's what it is.
Mr. Timothy Garton Ash:
You know how sometimes you open a new book and you just smell it, read a few pages and know if it's good or not? And I have to say that I can tell that just from an hour and a half of this conference that it's been a remarkable conference, I can tell at once. And I've learned a great deal from it. And my own very parochial conclusion is we should try and do more in this college, in this university, to bring together the discourse about European politics and, at least, policy toward the Middle East. It's long overdue. As Gilles Kepel rightly said it's not 'other' and 'self', it's the two inextricably intertwined. I appreciate all the comments that have been made. I'm not going to respond to any except one, which is Roger Hardy's comment, because I think I would have been very much understood if you took me to be saying that what Britain should now do is go along with Perle and Wolfowitz in the peace as it has in the war. That is absolutely not what I think we should do. I think that Blair, and every other western leader, miscalculated, seriously in the Iraq war, his particular miscalculation was precisely about the Germans, was about Europe. He got America right, but Europe wrong. And I think that what he has to do now is not to start from Washington, but to start with Europe and, in particular, to start with France and Germany, because when you have the absurd situation, as it seems to me, that we are replicating the situation that we had, the tragedy of the Balkans in the early 1990s. The tragedy of the Balkans in the early 1990s was the major West European powers had different policies towards the Balkans, where they had no major differences of interest or even of analysis. They had similar interests, similar analyses, different policies. And I wonder if we are not reproducing that problem or in danger of reproducing that absurd situation in relation to the Middle East, where in fact it seems to me that probably the policy that the Foreign Office would like to pursue is not that different from the policy of the policy of the Auswärtige Amt or the Quai d’Orsay would like to pursue. So I hope that Gilles Kepel would be glad to hear this: my advice to Tony Blair would indeed be to get on the first plane to Berlin and then to Paris.
Sir Marrack Goulding:
Now I'm going to say I have a number of thank yous to say. This is nor a ritual, they are very important statements, thank yous. I think I will begin by thanking all of you for coming to this conference and contributing so much to it and even I think I can say I can thank you for your discipline at not going on at too great length when the successive chairs were asking you to be brief. Amongst you I would obviously want to thank those who were main speakers, those who were respondents to the main speakers. I would also like to thank the chairs especially and I would particular Lord Bhatia's talk about refereeing. Perhaps next time we'll have a sort of prize for best referee. But I think that the whole thing has gone very smoothly thanks to the patience and the discipline of the participants and to the hard work of the chairs and the speakers and the respondents. And we have covered a great deal of ground. It's been very different from the conference that we had, the first in the series, the one at Princeton. I think there were two main reasons why it was very different: one is, of course, that that was very much focused on the 11th of September whereas we are now just coming out of another event, a future shaking event, which raises major issues about relations Muslims and the west, which obviously impacts on relations between the, nice work that came up yesterday, the autochthonous people and the immigrants who come to our shores. I also want to say, in rather vague terms, that this conference, like it's predecessor in Princeton, has been due to the generosity of friends of Princeton who have now become friends of St. Antony's who wish to remain anonymous, but to whom you all have reasons to be very grateful indeed. And finally I would like to thank, as Eugene thanked at the beginning, Polly Friedhoff and her colleague Janet Collyer. And they deserve a special clap of their own, because they've put a huge amount of effort into organising this conference as well as doing the very many other things which they do in the college's public relations and development office. So thank you all very much, perhaps we'll have a third conference sometime in the future, but it's been a great pleasure to have you for the second conference and wish you all a safe journey home.
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