Avoiding a confrontation?
Arab intellectuals are gathering at the Cairo headquarters of the Arab League this week to plan a coordinated response to the negative image of Islam and the Middle East in the West.

by Tarek Atia

(cairolive.com, November 27, 2001) The stereotyping of Arabs is not new. "Hollywood has been doing it for decades," argued Khaled Turaani, director of the advocacy group, American Muslims for Jerusalem (AMJ). Since September 11, however, things have reached a fever pitch.

Ranging from pure hatred and rage to subtle innuendo and rumor, the attacks have been consistent only in their unfailing ability to convince. In other words, there's a willing audience ready to believe what they're being told.

It's not all malicious, and much of it stems from ignorance, but a great deal of it, believe many of the conference participants, does represent a coordinated and intentional campaign by the Zionist lobby.

In his opening remarks to the conference, Lebanese Foreign Minister Ghassan Salama said the Arab world had to draw the line between true criticism and orchestrated defamation. Agreeing that there is definitely a politically-motivated campaign against Arabs and Islam, Salama also made sure to make clear that "Not every criticism is part of a campaign of defamation."

Amr Moussa, the Arab League Secretary General, touched on much the same point in his opening address to the conference. Moussa said that while defending itself against propaganda was of vital importance at this time, the Arab world must also ask itself a very serious question. "Have we made an error? If so, what is it? Have we not kept up with modernity and its requirements?"

The two-day conference is headlined "Civilization: Dialogue not confrontation", and the first closed session did indeed concentrate on self-criticism.

"We have deficiencies in the Arab world that we need to solve," Moussa told reporters afterwards. "It's important to speak to each other frankly." An Arab League spokesman told cairolive.com that the discussion centered on education and democracy.

First, Moussa said in his opening remarks, "we must talk amongst ourselves, with complete honesty. This has never been done before. Once we do that, we will speak to the outside world."

When they do decide to speak to the outside world, it will be with the assistance of a to-be-established fund for that purpose. $1 million has already been promised to the fund by Emirati ruler, Sheikh Zayed.

The question is: what material will be produced or supported by this fund to help improve the Arab image in the West, and how effective will it be?

The AMJ's Turaani says that Arabs have no choice but to respond to the campaign against them. He expressed hopes that the intellectual, philosophical, and political bases for the response would come from conferences like this in the Arab world, but that implementation would be executed with Western expertise.

"We can't work on it using the thought process and discourse of the Muslim world," Turaani said. "The first step to counter this systemic campaign to distort our image is an implementable plan to deal with this from a Western point of view."

Go to cairolive.com's complete coverage of the terror aftermath

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