December/January ‘92/’93

What Should the Outgoing and Incoming Administrations Do to Secure Middle East Peace?—Three Views

Three Views from a U.S. Diplomat, an Arab American and a Muslim American

Instead of Just Recognizing Muslims, Consult With Them

By Dr. Maher M. Hathout

From an American Muslim perspective, I can easily say that the four years President George Bush was in office allowed us to be anything but indifferent. The president bestowed marginal recognition on Islam when he congratulated Muslims on their holidays and when he received a delegation of Muslim representatives at the White House.

For the first time, both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives commenced sessions with a prayer offered by a Muslim leader. With American troops deployed in Muslim lands, an incentive emerged to form bonds of understanding with Islamic nations and with Muslims at home.

However, there was no real communication with American Muslims to deepen this understanding. Furthermore, they were not considered a crucial factor in maintaining or restoring harmony within our society.

Globally, these were years of major tragedies inflicted upon Muslim peoples. Regardless of the wisdom, or lack thereof, of Desert Storm, it was in this era of history that the infrastructure of Iraq was destroyed, its people suffered hunger and misery, and the dictator remained unscathed. The administration dealt with rulers and regimes rather than with people.

Today, American Muslims are tormented by an indefensible double standard when U.N. resolutions concerning Iraq are implemented, and those concerning Israel are not. The Bush administration's lip service to condemnation of Serbian genocide against Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the policy of providing food but not protection for the victims of this genocide, have not been satisfactory for American Muslims.

While none of us can predict President Bush's role in the future, it is appropriate to assume that his experience will be a source of direction, information and valuable advice in the American policy-making process. As he is soon to be free of bureaucratic limitations, I would suggest that he meet with a carefully selected grassroots group of Muslim Americans, in a frank soul-searching and soul-revealing session.

He then will discover that he was out of touch with the Islamic masses, even the six million who are American citizens. Their absence from the decision-making process has impeded the goal of achieving harmony in American society and peace in their areas of concern.

If this is good advice for President Bush, it is absolutely essential counsel for President-elect Bill Clinton. As American Muslims, we certainly support his domestic goals of addressing the economy, creating jobs, converting military productive capacity to civilian purposes, providing welfare as a safety net but not as a substitute for employment, and reducing the deficit. We also would support a more thorough analysis of the moral fabric of our nation. Education should include values Americans hold in common. Traditional family units should be protected and glorified as the basic building blocks of society.

Internationally, we want our president to be truly our president, seeking out and standing up for real American interests, not the interests suggested by lobbies and special interests or derived from past or present historical, ethnic or religious bias. We want our country to support democracy, and not just claim that it does, and stand up for the interests of the world's common people, even if they are more difficult and less predictable to deal with than tyrants.

We are eager to contribute to the Middle East negotiations and help make them an instrument of a just and stable peace. An independent Palestinian state is the only expression of that kind of peace.

The tragedy of the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia should be handled with a sense of urgency, clarity and determination. This country should not surrender in any manner to conditions conducive to another holocaust. The current genocide is intolerable. An unyielding American stand should be relayed very clearly to the Serbian aggressors, and should be translated immediately into needed actions such as allowing the victims to arm themselves for their own defense and enforcing the no-fly zone previously declared for the area, except for delivering humanitarian shipments.

If the new America is to be truly American, it needs the whole-hearted inclusion of six million Muslims who share the Abrahamic root of Judaism and Christianity, who share the sentiments of additional millions of Arab Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Armenian Americans. We six million Muslim citizens, comprising all colors of the rainbow, have our roots in the four corners of the globe, and embody a wondrous combination of cultures and human experiences. We ask only the opportunity to contribute our Islamic pluralism to the free and uniquely creative American society which can, in so many ways, serve as a model of the democratic process for societies everywhere that seek to make their own governments more representative of and responsive to the will of the people.

Maher M Hathout, M.D., is chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California, adviser to The Minaret magazine, and adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council.