The stranger within

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The ultimate example of this demonization is when the US government dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first and hopefully the last time this lethal weapon of mass destruction will be used.

During President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Japan, he made a plea that nuclear weapons ought to be abolished. Is that possible when the “Other” is still the enemy?

The vision of the “Other” as the enemy has been dramatized by the insane statements of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.  Instead of preaching tolerance towards the “Other”, Trump has spewed his venom of hatred against Muslims, Mexicans, women and other minorities. Is this a reflection of where America is headed?  As an Arab-American and as a citizen of the world, I hope not.

In this day and age we are in dire need of coexistence. A model where the “Other” is accepted beyond tolerance. A few years ago, while I was working on my book on the Vatican role in the Middle East, the late Father Charbel Kassis, a Maronite Catholic monk, told me that Lebanon was an example of “aborted coexistence.” I recall him telling me that non-Muslim minorities in the Arab world are tolerated as dhimmis those on the consciousness of the Muslim community. Christian and other minorities were only tolerated. But then Father Kassis was the ideological master of the extremist Maronite militias who in their slogans advocated kicking Palestinians from Lebanon. He also called for maintaining the Maronite hegemony in Lebanon. Some Maronite warlords went as far as accusing the Pope in Rome of using Lebanon as a convenient laboratory to prove that Christian-Muslim coexistence is feasible.

On second thought and during this Holy Month of Ramadan one has to underscore the high level of acceptance that Muslims have demonstrated especially towards their colonizers. In my classes, I always remind my students that in all the history of Islam we have never had pogroms, massacres and genocide like in Europe for centuries. The Nazi genocide was the ultimate example of rejecting and obliterating the “Other” as a result of centuries of antisemitism spread around by the Catholic Church. In the Arab and Muslim world foreigners were shown respect. Throughout all the colonial period that goes all the way back to Sykes-Picot colonizers were shown respect even if many colonized populations wanted their independence as soon as feasible.

Unless and until we help humans, nations and ethnic groups overcome their sense of victimization we will still have tendencies to erase the “Other.”

In all fairness things are not so gloomy. Muslims are slowly being integrated in Western societies. Recently Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, Her Majesty’s Minister for Countering Extremism, visited Kuwait. Who would have ever imagined that one day a member of the British House of Lords would be of the Muslim faith? Also who would have imagined that London has now a Muslim mayor? Are Paris, Berlin, Rome or Moscow next in line?

This is an example of how the people in the UK are slowly beginning to accept the “Other”. To the contrary, in France we have writers and politicians who are spreading the fear that one day France will be dominated by Islam. This is absolute and racist rubbish. It is very interesting that during the colonial period and afterwards France benefitted from the cheap labor provided by Muslim North African workers. The same applies to the Turkish cheap labor that was brought to Germany to bring back the country to its economic success.

No one is a stranger on this planet. We belong to the family of humans and, as idealistic as this sounds, the alternative would be the horrors brought about by the arrogance of power from Hiroshima to Syria.

May this Ramadan be a blessed and peaceful month.

As a Christian I am glad and honored to partake in the rituals of this season. I feel tolerated and fully accepted!

George Emile Irani is Associate Professor of International Relations at the American University of Kuwait. He is the author, among other books, of The Papacy and the Middle East.

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