U.S., Muslims and Democracy

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By Husain Haqqani
The Indian Express, November 18, 2005

A US-sponsored international conference on democracy in the Middle East ended last week without a final agreement because one of America’s closest allies, Egypt, insisted on retaining control over the pace and method of democratization. The Forum for the Future, a joint US-European initiative launched at the 2004 G-8 summit hosted by President Bush is part of the Bush administration’s plans for promoting democracy in the Islamic world. But the authoritarian governments that receive massive amounts of aid from the US do not want democracy.

As Egypt, which accounts for a quarter of the Arab world’s population and is the second-largest recipient of US aid, demonstrated at the Bahrain meeting of the Forum for the Future last week, Muslim dictators want to control the democratisation process and would love to get more American money in the name of building democracy. If Hosni Mubarak had his way, the way forward for the US and the Muslim world would be for the US to increase aid for the authoritarian Muslim regimes and declare these very regimes as democratic.
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The Khatibs did not join the long list of Palestinian parents who, upon losing one child in war, pledge their other sons’ “martyrdom” in suicide operations. He donated his son’s organs to be transplanted to any Israeli awaiting an organ donor. “It didn’t matter to me whether they were Jewish, Muslim or Christian,” Ismail Khatib later told reporters.

Ahmed Khatib’s heart now beats in the chest of a 12-year old Druze girl from northern Israel , who had waited 5 years for a transplant. His lungs were transplanted to a 14-year old while his kidneys benefited a 4-year old boy and a 5-year old girl. Sections of Ahmed Khatib’ s liver helped save the lives of a 7-month old female child and a 58-year old woman. The Khatib family of Jenin has shown the way for Muslims who are fed up with their contemporary culture’s acceptance of violence and hatred as the only way of dealing with humiliation and helplessness. If the US is serious about transforming the Muslim world, it must embrace people like the Khatibs and the hundreds of thousands believers in peace and democracy among ordinary Muslims. Muslim rulers, who have created the problem of intolerance in the Muslim world in the first place, cannot bring the enlightenment or moderation that President Bush claims is his goal for the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims.