The Sunday classic in Riyadh
US presidents seem to have a predilection for dispensing homilies directed at the Muslim countries just before the month of Ramadan – pre-Ramadan speech if you like. Barack Obama made his in 2009 in Cairo at a gathering of Muslim heads of states and governments and so did Donald Trump last Sunday at the Arab-Islamic-American Summit. And while Obama's was put through the sieveby the critics for every word that was uttered, Trump is still going through the scrutiny.
While President Trump started by saying that it was not for America to tell others what to do, he did exactly that – tell the Muslim leaders what to do. And if Trump's intention was to bring together the "Muslim world" to work out a common and coherent strategy to defeat religious extremism his approach was misplaced. In fact he only managed to exacerbate the divide that characterises the Muslim world today. Regrettably, the so-called Muslim world stands divided, the hiatus initiated in the early 20th century, as a consequence of the efforts to assert the predominance, on the one hand, of Pan Islamism, and the on the other, of Pan Arabism. That clash, unfortunately, has transformed as the Shia–Sunni divide, the two camps now led respectively by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Regrettably, that divide was formalised by the US President at the very end of his speech when he singled out Iran as the sole sponsor and financer of terrorism. One wonders if all 55 participating heads of government and state endorsed his views or his policies.
Trump's position on Iran, a shift from that of his predecessor's, is meant to serve two purposes; while it will further deepen the schism in the so called Muslim world, much in conformity to the Zionist strategy to drive a wedge between the two camps, it is meant to also isolate Iran from the rest of the Islamic world by casting it as a patron of extremism and terrorism. First it was Iraq, and then Libya, and now the only Muslim country that has the gumption to stand up to the US, risks being neutered by the US.
However, neither history nor current developments in the Middle East and other parts of the world infested with religious extremism bears out the accusation that Iran is the only country responsible for what we are enduring today in the form of IS, Taliban or al-Qaeda. In fact the main accuser, the US, and its allies in the Arab world, must share the responsibility for the state of religious extremism, and terrorism fuelled by it, and the nearly irretrievable situation that the world has been thrust into as a result of the US policy over the last seventy years. And the consequence of which most of the Muslim countries, including Bangladesh, are having to endure.
The idea of isolating Iran cannot appeal to the right thinking person. Iran has to be engaged if extremism is to be effectively snuffed out. Given that the people of Iran has rejected a hardliner and chosen a reformist in the recently held presidential elections through the exercise of open franchise, an option not available to the people of the Middle Eastern countries allied to the US, isolation will alienate the Iranian people who vie for change and root for peace in the world.
That Trump would choose a Muslim country as the first country of his maiden foreign trip may have surprised many. They feel that Trump is perhaps the most unqualified person to talk to Muslim leaders about Islam. Given the unkind words that he uttered about Islam, and the fact that as a candidate he had promised to ban Muslim entry into the US were he to be elected, that view was only but natural. But to the more perspicuous observer of Trumpian behaviour, choosing the Kingdom as a first stopover demonstrates Trump's businessman-like disposition for jobs, jobs, and more jobs for Americans. And given the huge contribution to the US economy of the US military-industrial complex, Saudi investment of more than a hundred billion dollars for weapon purchase and investment of 200 billion in other sectors guarantee more jobs for Americans. The deal will benefit US by having billions of Saudi dollars pumped into it. And violence and conflict will be the natural corollary of proliferation of weapons, as the billions of dollars of arms purchase will cause, in the Middle East.
As for his address to the leaders of the Muslim majority countries, it was an acknowledgement by the world's mightiest country that it has run out of ideas as to how to tackle the extremist phenomenon, and has sought the participation of these countries by asking them to take the leading role in this regard. It is acknowledgement too that the phenomenon cannot be combatted by force alone.
But when Trump talks about rooting out extremism he conveniently forgets to talk about the drivers of terrorism and extremism. And why should he not? The phenomenon that has engulfed many of the Muslim countries, the concept of Jihad recuperated by the US to galvanise the Islamic world against the Soviets in Afghanistan, has been the single most important causative factor that helped spawn terrorism and extremism. The forbearers of al-Qaeda, Taliban and the IS were once coppered as the "moral equivalents of our Founding Fathers" by President Reagan.
It is pointless to speak of combatting extremism without addressing the causative factors. And that would require readjusting much of US policies, in the Middle East in particular. Is the US prepared to do that?
The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.