From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: An Article
Date: 28 Dec 1992 13:03:13 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu


MUSLIMS AWAKE

Who isn't going to Sarajevo this year?

A Christmas visit  by John Major to the British  troops in Bosnia
would come  as no suprise;  such a meeting makes  political sense
and  would be  a decent  Christian gesture.  It should,  however,
provoke  some thought  about  other leaders,  notably those  from
Islamic states, who  have not been seen anywhere  near the Balkan
war zone.

Islamic states  are in confusion, unable  to act as an  'umma' or
concerted Muslim  nation. The war  in Bosnia is  highlighting the
powerlessness of Islam to respond  to a conflict that threatens a
whole  Muslim  community. So,  despite  strident  calls for  arms
shipments to be sent to  the Bosnian Muslims, despite the appeals
for a 'jihad', no Arab leader ventures close to Sarajevo.

The Bosnian crisis directly affects two million European Muslims.
If it spreads, to Kosovo and  Macedonia, if it drags in Bulgaria,
Albania and even Turkey, then tens of millions of Muslims will be
at war  against a Serbian army  that draws on the  imagery of the
Orthodox church.

Mosques and minarets are already  targets in the Bosnian war; far
worse can  be expected.  Yet the Islamic  Conference Organisation
(ICO)  had generated  few ideas  towards resolving  the conflict.
Supplying guns to  the Bosnians - as the  Islamic states threaten
to do  from January 15  - is unlikely to  change the tide  of war
unless it  is part  of more  comprehensive strategy.  The Islamic
volunteer brigade in Bosnia is  a tiny ragamuffin group of Afghan
veterans of no significance.

Money  is flowing  to house  Muslim refugees,  but few  have been
offered homes in  Islamic states. The impotence of  Islam is also
evident outside the Balkans.  When 20,000 Indian Hindus ransacked
the mosque of  Ayodhya, there was a lukewarm  response, even from
Iran,  which merely  appealed to  the Indian  government to  make
"wise  and calculated  decisions". The  famine in  Somalia should
have pressed Islamic  states into urgent action.  The country is,
after all, a member of both the Arab League and the ICO.

The inability  of the Muslim governments  to develop multilateral
solutions to  the problems  that affect Muslim  communities plays
into  the  hands of  fundamentalists.  The  coincidence of  three
crises, Bosnia, Somalia and India -  and the slow progress on the
future  of  the  Palestinians,  is  breeding  new  generation  of
fundamentalist militants.

Every day, small  humiliations add to the anger that is currently
directed not so much against  the Christian West as against those
moderate Arab governments  that raise barely a  squeak when their
fellow believers  are ill treated. The  competition for influence
in the Asian  republics of the former Soviet Union  is typical of
the exhausting, self defeating nature of Islamic policy abroad.

There  is  a  division  between  Sunni  and  Shi'ite  spheres  of
influence in central Asia. In  Bosnia, Turkey is playing a useful
role in  trying to keep  Islamic pressure within the  confines of
the overall  UN peacekeeping strategy.  But Iran is  straining at
the leash. Its  ambitious arms procurement programme  seems to be
enhancing its status as a regional  power and it is eager to test
its influence.  Certainly, it  will be the  first of  the Islamic
states to ship  guns to Sarajevo if the January  15th deadline is
ignored.

Those Serbs who already claim  that they are fighting a religious
war will promptly declare a propaganda victory. The time has come
then to try  to draw the Islamic states more  closely into global
decision-making, to make  more demands of them.  They should help
pay for  the Balkan refugees  who are  putting so much  strain on
Germany, Austria and Croatia. They  should be encouraged to treat
the Somali famine as a matter  of the most urgent concern for the
Islamic world. And it would do no  harm at all if a Saudi prince,
following in the steps of  Christian leaders, were seen in Bosnia
with a convoy of food aid.

THE TIMES, London, 22 December 1992
            _
|-| /-\ |_ |_| |<

Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic