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Current Issues in the Middle East CURRENT ISSUES IN THE MIDDLE EAST a graduate class project of Fairleigh Dickinson University by Mahmoud Aboud Alexandra Acosta Idrees Mohamed Ali Anwar Al-Barout Mohammed Al-Hadrami Nageeb Al-Jabowbi Waheed Al-Shami Abdullah Al-Shammari Adel Al-Sheikh Eve Burnett ‘Matankiso Chachane Ahmad Daoudzai Johannes de Millo Naseer Ahmed Faiq Khalid Faqeeh Bobette Jansen Nikolaos Kouroupis Shihana Mohamed Siham Mourabit Chan Pee Lila Ratsifandrihamanana Tania LaumanulupeTupou Sanaa Eltigani Uro Editor Ahmad Kamal Published by: Fairleigh Dickinson University 1000 River Road Teaneck, NJ 07666 USA May 2009 ISBN: 978-1-61539-567-5 The opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors alone, and should not be taken as reflecting the views of Fairleigh Dickinson University, or of any other institution or entity. © All rights reserved by the authors No part of the material in this book may be reproduced without due attribution to its specific author. The Authors Mahmoud Aboud is the Permanent Representative of Comoros Alexandra Acosta is a Graduate Student from the USA Anwar Al-Barout is Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of the UAE Mohammed Al-Hadhrami is a Graduate Student from Yemen Nageeb Al-Jabowbi is a Graduate Student from Yemen Waheed Al-Shami is a Graduate Student from Yemen Abdullah Al-Shammari is Vice Consul of Saudi Arabia Adel Al-Sheikh is a Graduate Student from Yemen Idrees Mohamed Ali is First Secretary at the Permanent Mission of Sudan Eve Burnett is a Graduate Student from the USA ‘Matankiso Chachane is an Admin Assistant at the Permanent Mission of Lesotho Ahmad Daoudzai is a Graduate Student from Afghanistan Johannes de Millo is Second Secretary at the Permanent Mission of Monaco Naseer Ahmad Faiq is a Graduate Student from Afghanistan Khalid Faqeeh is First Secretary at the Permanent Mission of Saudi Arabia Bobette Jansen is a Graduate Student from Germany Ahmad Kamal is Senior Fellow at the United Nations Nicolaos Kouroupis is Consular Agent at the Consulate General of Greece Shihana Mohamed is a Graduate Student from Sri Lanka Siham Mourabit is Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of Morocco Chan Pee is a Graduate Student from Malaysia Lila Ratsifandrihamanana is the Permanent Observer of the African Union Tania Tupou is Senior Advisor at the Joint Observer Mission of the Commonwealth Sanaa Eltigani Uro is Consular Assistant at the Permanent Mission of Sudan Index of Contents Introduction Ahmad Kamal 1 Definitions and Limits Mahmoud Aboud 7 Linguistic Commonalities Chan Pee 17 Cultural Influences Khalid Faqeeh 25 Jerusalem – Crucible of Religions Alexandra Acosta 33 Inter-Faith Dialogues ‘Matankiso Chachane 45 Israel – a Jewish View Bobette Jansen 57 Palestine – an Arab View Mohammed Al-Hadhrami 71 Western Influences Idrees Mohamed Ali 83 Russian Influence Ahmad Daoudzai 95 Shia-Sunni Divide Abdullah Al-Shammari 107 Baath and Muslim Brotherhood Nageeb Al-Jabowbi 111 Democratic Traditions Anwar Al-Barout 123 Terrorism and Extremism Tania Tupou 133 Minorities Eve Burnett 147 The Red Sea Adel Al-Sheikh 159 Water Problems Siham Mourabit 169 Migration Flows Nicolaos Kouroupis 181 The Impact of Oil Waheed Al-Shami 193 The Search for New Technologies Johannes de Millo 203 Iran and its Nuclear Program Naseer Ahmad Faiq 213 The WMD Free Zone Proposal Shihana Mohamed 221 The Role of Women Sanaa Eltigani Uro 235 African Union and Arab League Lila Ratsifandrihamanana 243 Introduction Ahmad Kamal INTRODUCTION For all the pride that we have in our respective nationalities, and in the countries in which we believe we are rooted today, the fact remains that the true center of our world lies in the Middle East. That is the focal point of our spiritual being, that is where our energies are sourced, that is where all global conflicts appear to merge, and that is where all solutions will ultimately be found. None of this should be surprising. With more than five thousand years of recorded history and civilization, this Middle East is where it started for all of us. This is where humans teamed together in thought and enterprise, giving birth to the very fundamentals of our existence today. This is where the great river civilizations first started. This is then where the three great revealed religions of the world were born and developed. It is odd that, with such a positive contribution to thought and history, this should also be where the greatest disagreements and injustices of humanity should be found. How does it happen that the cementing center of our existence, the very binding force of our belief, should have turned into such a disastrous pot of simmering and bubbling tensions and conflict? How and why have men and women of conscience and goodwill metamorphosed into agents of death and destruction? How does a land that should bring us all together, turn into an arena that divides us so totally? How does a land of learning and tolerance become one that epitomizes only injustice and suffering? This cradle of civilization has witnessed a chequered history with a number of milestones, each one of which has had global importance. First came the initial human migration into this land, drawn by its fertile soil and climate. It was home to several original wild varieties of edible agricultural crops, wheat, barley, and peas, among others. It was then referred to for years as the Fertile Crescent, and it was in that capacity, that it became the land with the first great concentrations of human settlements and towns. Then came the birth of the three revealed religions as man strove to define his relationship with God, and with fellow man. A long string of holy men and prophets all proclaimed the message of God on earth, and then went through great suffering and oppression to spread this message despite toil and travail. It is, in many ways, the land which best exemplifies survival and faith. The Middle East is thus inextricably linked with the three revealed religions, and the societies that they generated. Judaism emerged first, in an attempt to move the local populations towards belief and morality. Then, from its bosom emerged 1 Introduction Ahmad Kamal Christianity, in a renaissance of truth, and a rectification of the confusion that was perceived to have turned people away from the spirit of the divine message into its mundane and temporal letter. Finally, came Islam, as part of the same continuum, with its belief in both Judaism and Christianity as the same single divine message, separated unfortunately into divided rites and procedures. One message with three adepts, each one convinced that he alone was the chosen interpreter and holder of the truth. While each of the three revealed religions brought the message of love and tolerance and respect for fellow man, much energy was nevertheless dispensed in inter-religion wars and conflicts. The consequent turmoil saw Jews against Christians, Christians against Jews, Christians against Muslims, Muslims against Christians, Muslims against Jews, and each one of the three against its own dissidents. It has been one long crusade after another for more than two thousand years already. Part of this is of course due to the manner in which religion has been used to divide rather than to unite. It is difficult to identify exactly how this started, but the Crusades certainly played an important part. They had little to do with religion initially, and more to do with an effort to create unity in a fragmented Europe by conjuring up an external enemy. The liberation of Jerusalem was no more than an excuse, which then justified some of the greatest excesses committed by a nascent European society. The first to suffer were the Jews, who were lavishly slaughtered in the name of God, in revenge for what the Christian soldiers considered the betrayal and hence the responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ. From there, it was a small step to take the fight to the Muslims, even though the latter had always seen the Christians and the Jews alike as “People of the Book”, and thus as part of the same family of believers. The initial wars of religion were thus between the Christians and the Jews. They started in the Crusades, then graduated into the Inquisition in Spain, then into the Pogroms in Eastern Europe, and finally into the horrors of the Holocaust in Germany and beyond. How a people with a common Judeo-Christian heritage could have committed such crimes against their own, remains one of the most surprising aspects of Western European intolerance. Where the Jews were seen as traitors by the medieval European Christians, the Muslims were perceived by them as spiritual upstarts and charlatans. The Europeans conveniently ignored the fact that the Muslim civilization of the time was far more advanced than theirs, in thought and in learning, and that it was the contributions of the Arabs to science, and medicine, and astronomy, and geography, and mathematics, and the Arabic translations and transmission of the 2 Introduction Ahmad Kamal original texts of Greek philosophers and thinkers, that had opened the door to Europe’s own history and civilization after its Dark Ages. Interspersed in this turbulence and turmoil of wars of religion have been some periods of apparent unity. One such period came during the Ottoman Empire, which lasted a full 700 years from the 14th to the 20th Centuries, and spanned three continents at its zenith. It was the center of interaction between the peoples of much of the “known” worlds for these centuries. In fact, it was responsible for the “discovery” of America, for it was the lock-hold that this Empire held on the trade routes between Europe and the East that led to the effort of Christopher Columbus to short-circuit the dangerous land-locked journey through Ottoman lands by undertaking his west-bound journey around the world to the spices and silks of the East.
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