Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization

Five. The Clash of Civilizations?

“The Muslim situation is so desperate. I would gladly give my life for their cause.” These were the chilling words of my dinner companion on a balmy spring evening in Amman. A seasoned diplomat in smart attire, complete with pink silk tie and handkerchief, this former Iraqi ambassador, now head of a major Arab think tank, spoke in measured and quiet tones shaped by years of service, making his message all the more forlorn: “I have nothing to live for. I have lost my culture, my homeland, my honor. I have lost my religion.” We were at the Tannoureen, an elegant upscale restaurant famous for its Lebanese food, at a dinner hosted by Pakistan’s ambassador to Jordan, Arif Kamal. The guests were the elite of the city, Westernized and living comfortable lives, able to travel abroad at will and dine at the finest restaurants. They were examples of the successful Aligarh model in Amman. Kamal, an old friend, had arranged the dinner following my talk at the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies, the brainchild of Prince Hassan, uncle of the present king and one of the leading thinkers of the Arab world. It was a well-attended event, chaired by former ambassador Hasan Abu Nimah, the institute’s director, and had drawn scholars, journalists, ambassadors, and senators living in Jordan. Although the atmosphere was cordial, I had faced some hostile questions about the United States and Israel of the kind I would have expected from less polite audiences. A young man in a dark suit and glasses pointedly asked why I appeared to five The Clash of Civilizations? 193 05-0132-3 ch5 4/6/07 4:35 PM Page 193 194 The Clash of Civilizations? sympathize so much with the death of one Jewish boy—referring to Danny Pearl—and ignored the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young Muslims . Nonetheless, the dinner afterward seemed a pleasant enough evening of diplomats expressing well-rehearsed and inoffensive platitudes—until the former Iraqi ambassador released his despair. Only a few days earlier, on February 22, 2006, explosions had destroyed one of the oldest mosques in Iraq, the Golden Mosque of Samarra. It contained tombs from the ninth century of two of the holiest imams in Shia Islam, one being Imam Hassan Al-Askari, the father of the Hidden Imam. As every Shia knows, the coming of the Hidden Imam will herald the end of the world. According to Shia theology, he will fight side by side with Jesus Christ to defeat the Muslim version of the anti-Christ. The destruction of the mosque triggered a bloodbath between Sunni and Shia in Iraq and attacks of vengeance on each other’s mosques. The Iraqi ambassador did not blame the Muslims for what had happened , however. Like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, he accused the Americans and Israelis of planting the bombs in the mosque. “No Muslim,” he said indignantly, “Shia or Sunni, would ever think of destroying such a sacred mosque that had withstood some of the world’s bloodiest conquerors—even the Mongols.” The ambassador’s quiet remarks, almost as if directed at himself, now took an ominous turn: incidents such as the one at Samarra, he said, were a prelude to the eventual destruction of the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem itself, planned in detail by the Americans and Israelis. Muslims were already at the “boiling point,” and the destruction of what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary with its internationally recognized mosque with its golden dome, their third holiest site after Mecca and Medina, would be a point of no return that would, he was certain, trigger violence on an unprecedented scale. This was not the first time I had heard this notion, recounted only a few days earlier in Damascus by the Syrian minister of expatriates. Overcome by a sense that the world had spun out of control, the Iraqi ambassador had apparently been moved to talk of suicide to a stranger. This was not an al-Qaeda terrorist, a young fanatic, or economically deprived individual —some of the stereotypes of the Muslim suicide bomber. Here was an intelligent human being of the diplomatic world engulfed by despair and anger. 05-0132-3 ch5 4/6/07 4:35 PM Page 194 The conversation at this point was interrupted by the former foreign minister of Jordan, who had declared himself a Christian, launching into a tirade against...