In demanding Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi be put on trial Arab intellectuals are inciting, not opposing, violence, argues Gamal Zayda Demands by some Arab intellectuals that the US arrest and try Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi, one of the Muslim Brotherhood's most prominent members, for having condoned the killing of US civilians in Iraq gives rise to surprise and consternation. Al- Qaradawi, who has been resident in Qatar for some time now, and who has acquired Qatari citizenship, denies issuing a fatwa to this effect during the recent talk he gave at the Egyptian Press Syndicate. Despite Al-Qaradawi's protestations some Arab "intellectuals" collected signatures for a petition to be presented to the UN secretary-general demanding that a number of Al-Azhar sheikhs be put on trial before an international court. The reason they give is that fatwas issued by these clerics incite violence and encourage terrorism. While such reasoning -- ie using the American stick to discourage the issuing of such edicts -- is, on the face of it, intended to ward off violence, it is in fact no more than an act of violence itself. In making such demands regarding Al-Qaradawi and others these intellectuals seek to by-pass legal channels well-established in Egypt. Overlooking national authorities and judiciaries and directing demands to external powers constitutes an invitation to intervene, and it makes no difference whether this is directed at the US or UN. Such a situation is unprecedented: at one time in Egypt it would have been sufficient to constitute charges of treason. Appeals to foreign parties in this way also act to endow a degree of legitimacy to the American invasion of Iraq, the costs of which are daily paid by hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. The demand to convene an international trial ignores several basic issues, not least among which is the fact that it is not these clerics who have incited international "terrorism". The absence of democracy in the Arab world and the backwardness of its political infrastructure saw many groups forced underground by post-independence regimes that increasingly resorted to repression and the disregard of human rights to maintain their monopolies on political life. Allowing for neither the rotation of political power nor for modernisation, these regimes failed to attain any significant economic development. This is the context within which we must view the rise of political Islam in Arab countries. In the 1970s, as part of this phenomenon Egypt witnessed the rise of two "militant" groups, Al-Jihad and Al-Jama'a Al-Islamiya, which entered into a confrontation with the state. The latter was ultimately able to terminate their activities. But a third element has to be taken into account in analysing the phenomenon of "religious-based" violence, and that is the closure of the doors of ijtihad (the interpretation of texts of the Holy Quran and Sharia, the body of Islamic law), a closure that has resulted in the stagnation of Al-Azhar, that bastion of Sunni Islam, and an inability on the part of clerics to keep up with contemporary developments. For the larger part clerics have restricted themselves to traditional interpretations even when the texts allow for differences of opinion. When all this is ignored in favour of encouraging foreign powers to exercise punitive measures against individuals or states, those soliciting the intervention are, in effect, no different from militant groups that resort to religion to justify violence. Our intellectuals adopt the trappings of terrorism when, in the face of physical violence, they resort to its intellectual equivalent. A dialogue is needed in Egypt and the Arab world capable of transcending the emotiveness typical of current discourse and daily displayed in newspapers and on satellite channels such as Al-Jazeera. That dialogue must address the fundamental problem of modernising infrastructures, society and its political and economic institutions. It must also work to rectify the Arab world's relationship with the West. We do, after all, share a host of mutual interests. The argument that edicts issued by Al-Azhar sheikhs provide a legal and religious justification for actions perpetrated in Palestine, Iraq and Russia does not hold water. It ignores the primary cause of the current violence, the 56 year-old Arab-Israeli conflict, in which religion has seldom figured as an ideology, on the part of the Palestinians at least, except recently, with the rise of Hamas. That rise was in large part a result of the failure of the Palestinian National Authority, under Yasser Arafat, to effectively manage the conflict with Israel. Add to this the corruption and lack of democracy and you have a perfect mix for the rise of militant elements within the Palestinian national struggle. The bigger picture, of course, must include the collective and individual failures of Arab regimes to deal with this conflict. There are exceptions, including the last years of President Gamal Abdel-Nasser's rule which saw the successful "war of attrition". Then came the October 1973 War followed by the Camp David agreement. Egypt is now in a phase of "respecting the peace treaty between both countries". But what has been achieved on other fronts? What did the late President Hafez Al-Assad and his Baath Party achieve? Syria lost the Golan Heights, while Lebanon was occupied by Israel. Modernisation of society and politics in Syria failed, with the result that political repression and human rights violations continue. And what of regimes in Iraq, the Gulf States and Libya? They, too, have failed to democratise or allow for the rotation of political power. And the international order, pre-September 11, was quite satisfied with these sterile regimes as long as they did not threaten US interests in the region. These regimes failed in their conflict with Israel, on the military level, while the latter was able to build a modern state, with the help of both the US and Europe, and with the support of the international Jewish community. It is futile, though, to endlessly complain that Israel is a foreign body transplanted to the region by the imperial powers. Yes, Israel is an anomaly, but it is an anomaly that has engineered economic development, that has built a democracy and acquired unprecedented military and nuclear powers. The Arab world, on the other hand, has failed on all fronts, and those responsible for this failure constantly cite Israel as a pretext for delaying the adoption of democracy. Israel is the excuse for humans rights violations, Israel the reason economic and social development is so weak. This is not intended as a defence of the clerics of Al-Azhar, or of men of religion per se. The lack of a clear separation between religion and state, the mixing of the temporal with the spiritual in the Arab and Muslim worlds, impedes modernisation. We have yet to attain an enlightened approach that preserves the integrity of religious institutions while leaving the administering of civil life to those capable of undertaking the task. In the end, and whichever the point of view they advocate, the malaise seems to lie in the incendiary and emotive approach adopted by so many of our intellectuals and thinkers. It is in the interest of the Arab world to realise political and economic reform while attaining a balanced relationship with the West. But it is also in our interest that Arab intellectuals do not get caught up in a vicious spiral of violence and counter- violence. * The writer is deputy editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram.
