BEIRUT — We are often so obsessed with the problems and conflicts that define the Middle East-West relationship today that we tend to lose sight of the constructive currents that flow beneath the surface. An unusual week of consecutive conferences and seminars in Amman and Beirut brought that point home to me last week. Honest exchanges with scholars, officials and activists of integrity and insight — especially ones we disagree with — enrich our understanding of this region, its ties to the world, and the core issues that plague and challenge us.
In my rich week of exchanges with colleagues from throughout the Middle East, Europe and North America, we discussed many timely issues: Iraq and its consequences, Arab political reform prospects, the weaknesses and potential of Arab secular political parties, and indigenous agents of change and innovation within the Arab world (such as youth, businesses, women, young Islamists, and the culture and arts sector).
Such gatherings reflect an important aspect of the contemporary Middle East, especially its Islamic-dominated regions in the Arab world, Turkey and Iran — a constant, often intense, analytical probing into the nature and causes of our many shortcomings, along with serious attempts to chart a way out of our predicaments. We no longer spend a lot of time merely bemoaning the chronic cycle of violence, warfare, occupation, neocolonialism and extremism that shatters many of our countries, or romantically pleading for more justice or democratic governance. Today, we seem to have entered a new mindset of working together across borders, to probe deeper into fixing what is wrong, instead of only cursing the darkness.
Civil society, scholars, journalists and business people from the entire world are doing what most of their governments seem unable or unwilling to do: Meet regularly with an open mind, free of threats and sanctions — without banning or boycotting any party — to agree on both the problems and the solutions of our societies. The meetings I attended last week were sponsored by a range of institutions that reflect this global dynamic, including the Heinrich Böll Foundation from Germany, the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the American University of Beirut, the Arab Reform Initiative that comprises Arab, European and American research centers, the University of Jordan, and Canada’s IDRC, among others. No clash of cultures here, only an overdose of croissants and coffee, if anything.
Iranians, Turks, many different Arabs, Americans, Canadians and assorted Europeans at these and other such gatherings painstakingly dissect our distortions and deviant behavior. But they also identify the positive forces for stability, self-confidence, creativity and real development that prevent these societies from total collapse. There is plenty to identify on both side of this assets/liabilities divide.
For one important trend that has emerged in recent years, and seems to dominate these days, is the tendency to recognize nuance and shun absolutism — to see the world as a range of shades rather than starkly black and white, good or evil, cowboy or Indian. This may sound slightly simplistic, but it is important to recognize in the face of aggressive attitudes — and occasional organized lobbying campaigns — by some parties in the United States, Israel, and parts of Europe and the Arab-Islamic world that would paint us in single colors, and reduce us to silhouette cartoon figures that deny rather than affirm our humanity and rights.
This tendency to judge others in absolute terms emerges from the discussion of any aspect of the contemporary Middle East — Iraq, Palestine, Hizbullah and Lebanon, democratic change, women’s status, take your pick. The truth is, these and other facets of our region mirror two sides of the same human beings: a tendency to political and intellectual militancy and violence, alongside a heroic, often epic, commitment to reason and humanism in the face of the barbarism and pain inflicted upon them.
The increased number of conferences, study groups and quiet, private meetings that bring together Middle Easterners with colleagues from the rest of the world is a positive sign of the capacity of our societies to engage humbly and seek solutions to our shared tensions rationally and politically, instead of emotionally and militarily. In gathering after gathering that I attend in the Middle East and abroad, I sense this growing commitment and capacity to dialogue across cultures and ideologies — and to go beyond only dialogue, to find realistic solutions that might one day influence our dysfunctional decision-makers.
We meet, talk, learn, and seek a rational consensus on which to build an edifice of tolerance, respect and coexistence — in those interim periods when we are not killing and defaming each other. Take your pick, for there is indeed a choice to be made, for those who care to acknowledge the real world of nuanced human beings, rather than a fantasy world of silhouette cowboys and Indians.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 28 April 2007
Word Count: 796
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