By Hamza Hendawi
FORMER Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, treading a fine line so as not to offend local sensitivities, spoke yesterday of the West’s “selective” application of moral values and warned that compromise and tolerance were needed if a clash between the Western and Islamic worlds was to be averted.
“Many in the West would like to think of us as terrorists and fanatics. We are neither,” Bhutto told hundreds of participants in a two-day seminar on Political Islam and the West which opened in Nicosia yesterday. “Muslims expect nothing from the West but respect. Mine is a religion that sanctifies Abraham, Moses and Jesus as prophets,” said the Oxford-educated Bhutto.
The Pakistani opposition leader was among several speakers who addressed the seminar, organised by the Nicosia-based Centre for World Dialogue.
The centre is led by Iranian-born Hossein Alikhani, A Shiite Muslim who gained Cypriot citizenship in 1992. Beside Bhutto, the seminar has attracted several prominent experts and academics from Europe, the Middle East and the United States. A large number of participants, however, came from Iran, an energy-rich country ruled by Muslim clergymen since 1979, and organisers provided them with simultaneous Farsi translation. A similar service in Greek was not available.
In a keynote address, Bhutto warned of the “madness” which exists in both the Islamic and Western worlds, the mutual misconceptions held by members of the Islamic and Western communities, and accused the West of applying double standards in regard to human rights while exploiting the free market and deregulation adopted by Muslim nations to dictate policies.
“Many Muslim countries view global values such as child labour, human rights, the environment as attempts by the West to erect invisible barriers to prevent free competition,” she said. “But when they see a West selective in its application of global values, they wonder whether the West wishes to promote a new global partnership or use these values as a tool to tame markets.”
“I believe the tension prints for a clash are there, but that a clash is not inevitable,” she declared. “Building bridges of understanding will lead to peace, harmony and stability. One billion Muslims stand at the crossroads today. One road leads to intolerance. Another leads to accommodation.”
Speaking to reporters later, Bhutto declined to comment on the Cyprus problem and earlier in her address dropped a reference to former Turkish prime minister Tansu Ciller which appeared in an advance text of her speech.
“Pakistan is very close to Turkey, so asking me to comment on the Cyprus issue is very difficult, because I am your guest and I don’t want to hurt any hearts here,” said Bhutto, whose husband faces corruption charges while she herself left office amid a flurry of allegations of wrongdoing.
Senior New York Times writer Judith Miller gave a hard hitting address at the seminar, using facts and figures to illustrate the inability of the Arab Middle East to catch up with a globalised and more free world.
“Not well, not well at all and it is getting worse,” was how she replied to her own rhetorical question on how the area was coping with the latest world political and economic trends. “Muslims lead the world in almost nothing,” she declared, before she went on to illustrate her point by citing falling GDP per capita income in several Arab countries and runaway inflation in Islamic-ruled Sudan, Africa’s largest country.
Attempting to disprove the controversial argument made several years ago by Harvard University Professor Samuel Huntington that a clash between the Islamic and Western civilizations was inevitable, John L. Esposito of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding in Washington said:
“Those who speak of civilisational conflict have been conditioned by a perspective that sees history in terms of sources of conflict… In the post Cold War, they focus on future conflicts, emphasising differences in beliefs and values. But this is only part of the reality,” said Esposito.
