Rosh Hashanah Evening Sermon

September 6, 2002

America, The Arab States and Israel

Two years after the beginning of the current cycle of Middle Eastern violence involving Palestinian suicide bombers, the Israeli military and millions of innocent men, women and children; a year after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, at a time when the American government is indicating a serious intention to remove Saddam Hussein as president of Iraq, -   it is time for us as Americans and Jews to attempt an understanding of what has gone wrong and what needs to be done.

In preparing my remarks, various comments by Thomas Friedman, foreign-affairs columnist of the New York Times, have been particularly helpful.  Friedman speaks about “the circle of bin Ladenism” – the engine that sparked the September 11^th hijackers – as having three component parts. 

The first part is all 22 Arab countries with their unelected, authoritarian, dictatorial regimes.  Because the leaders of these regimes are afraid of elections, they use anti-modernist Muslim clerics, giving them power and money in return for their support.  In Friedman’s words:  

The anti-modernist religious educators then raise a generation of young people who lack the skills – educational or vocational – to master the modern world.  These young people then produce poverty.  And the wheel just goes around and around.  The authoritarianism re-enforces the anti-modernist religious education, the anti-modernist religious education reinforces poverty, and the poverty reinforces the authoritarianism. 

The second part of the circle of bin-Ladenism is Saudi Arabia.  Friedman asks:  Is modern Islam being used today as an ideology to unite 40 factious tribes on the Arabian peninsula, much in the way that the leaders of the old Soviet Union used Communism to unite 100 nationalities in Russia?  From this perspective, Saudi Arabia, the source of the money, most of the hijackers, and the ideology that now threatens us all is ultimately a much greater problem than Iraq. 

Saudi Arabia is also, however, essential to stopping the violence.  With the Muslim shrines of Mecca and Medina both located in the Arabian peninsula and Saudi Arabia being the wealthiest Muslim country, it will be very difficult to bridge Islam and modernity without the cooperation of the Saudis.  The big unanswered question is:  Do the leaders of Saudi Arabia want to be part of the solution? 

The third component of the cycle of violence is that increasingly we live in a world without walls.  The September 11^th hijackers fell into two groups, the majority Saudis, and those from Europe.  The European Arabs, not the Saudis, were the key plotters and the key pilots.          

          All came from upper middle class or middle class, educated families.  All of them turned to radical Islam, not at home, but in Europe.  All were radicalized as students in Europe, on a continent that is not a melting pot, where minorities and immigrants like Arabs and Muslims are often kept out and rejected.  They gathered in mosques and prayer groups for warmth and solidarity.  Some of them drifted into more radical prayer groups and half of the 19 drifted into Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda. 

          Their destructive radicalism was born in the friction and cognitive dissonance of believing that your faith is the most complete and perfect expression of monotheism, yet confronting a world in which clearly the adherents of your faith are living in a far more backward, economically deprived, and democratically deprived state than people living under other faiths.  That cognitive dissonance is the source of the spark which actually produced these hijackers. 

To summarize, what Friedman calls “the circle of bin-Ladenism” has three parts: the absence of democracy in all 22 Arab states, Saudi Arabia, and the cognitive clash between inherited beliefs and modern reality. 

All of this takes place at a particular moment in history when three things are happening:

The first is the resurgence of the Arab-Israeli conflict in its most vicious form since the 1930’s. 

          The second is the current population explosion in the Arab-Muslim world.  40 percent of Saudi Arabia today is under 14.  75% is under the age of 29.  These figures are comparable for every country from Morocco to the border of India.  A huge population is coming of age – teens and pre-teens marching towards a workplace where they will find nowhere near the number of good, satisfying jobs that they need.   

          The third is an explosion of Arab multimedia.  The Internet and independent Arab satellite televisions operate out of London and elsewhere, out of control of any Arab government.  The media explosion of tabloid TV in the Arab world is taking the images from the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and feeding them to this hugely exploding population.

“And so you have a young generation that’s coming of age now being Arabized, socialized to hate Israel, to hate Jews, and to hate America.  Israel, Jews, and America are all being wrapped up in one ball that is being blamed for the tension between America and the Arab-Muslim world today.” 

So, we may well ask:  What can be done?  What must be done? The relatively easy first task is to take effective military action that, at least for the immediate future, eliminates bin Laden and his murderous cohorts.  Other tasks are more difficult.  These include resolving the Palestinian – Israeli conflict, taking actions to convince the Arab leaders that this time we are deadly serious, and then pushing democratic reform and pluralism in the Arab-Muslim world. 

The first task is to resolve the Palestinian – Israeli conflict.  To fully resolve it will take decades, but it can be reduced to the point where it is no longer newsworthy.  Of course, this conflict is not entirely in American or Israeli or Palestinian control.  But as Americans and Jews it is in our interest to urge our President to use all his energy to find creative solutions that will get this ongoing spectacle off the air.  Because if it continues to be the major media attraction that polarizes a whole new generation of youngsters, its hateful consequences will be truly overwhelming.  We may not be able to eliminate hatred, but with involved and creative leadership it is possible to begin the process of lowering the rhetoric and so gradually reducing the level of hatred. 

Before doing anything else, a second major task is for the United States of America to establish its credibility among Arab states.  For a very long time, America’s involvement in Middle Eastern affairs has been intermittent and inconsistent, and this is equally true for Republicans and Democrats.  Arab leaders have been able to conclude that America doesn’t really care, that they are free to do as they wish and to continue in their repressive ways.   

The first step in establishing American credibility is getting rid of Saddam Hussein.  Of course, the man is a monster, who, if not stopped in time, will do untold harm.  The parallel with the 1930’s is painfully clear. Winston Churchill saw the vicious poison of Nazism and the danger of not stopping Hitler.  Frantically he warned that inaction and appeasement would only give the Nazis more time to become ever more powerful.  Tragically, no great power then was willing to act.  Saddam Hussein simply must be stopped before he unleashes even more destruction and misery.  It may well be that only if the U.S. gets serious and actually takes out the worst of the authoritarian leaders, will the others tread more carefully. 

If America is really committed to a world order of democracy and pluralism, it has to act.  Within the United States the decision to break with historical precedent and engage in a preventative war must be publicly debated and voted on by our elected representatives.  And the support of other pluralistic democracies would be important validation.  Having taken the necessary steps to establish preventative war, the United States must act to remove this dictator, set its cat among the Arab pigeons, and make sure that, when our leaders speak, their message will be heard and acted upon. 

Also, as Thomas Friedman recently editorialized:  When we continue to import huge quantities of oil, the money we pay for the oil is directly used by the Saudi and other conservative regimes to build mosques and schools that preach against tolerance, pluralism and change.  Cutting off that oil money would directly threaten these regimes.  If we really want the Arab states to hear our message, our government (made up largely of former oil men) will have to help us curb our consumption of foreign oil, much as the anti-communist Richard Nixon was the one who recognized Red China.   

 If the U. S. takes the necessary steps to get its credibility in better shape, we can then press democratic reform and pluralism on the Arab-Muslim world.   As Friedman comments: “This is part of the world where there are deep, seething frustrations that are directed at us precisely because of people’s frustrations about living under regimes which do not give them a voice, which do not give them a say in their future, and do not allow them to reach their full potential.  It is no accident that the two Arab countries with the most pro-American regimes have the most anti-American populations:  Egypt and Saudi Arabia.” 

We have to help the Arab leaders to take on the bin Ladenists.  Bin Laden has articulated an authentic Arab-Muslim message that is hateful and regressive.  What is needed is for the Arab leaders, the Mubaraks and the king Abdullahs, to articulate an equally authentic Arab-Muslim message that is progressive and modern – to present a persuasive ideological alternative.   

For the last 20 years these regimes have cracked down on their Islamic fundamentalists, evicting the worst of them.  And then they have empowered other Islamic leaders and preachers who are only slightly less violent and slightly more moderate than those they expelled.  This is a losing formula that has to stop. 

To summarize, after militarily reducing bin-Laden and his cohorts to minimal effectiveness, the U.S. needs to use all its resources to defuse the Palestinian – Israeli conflict and to make it of minor international and media interest.  Beyond this the U. S. out of self-interest needs to establish its credibility by mobilizing the support of the American public and its elected representatives, by carrying its case to the other great powers and by both removing Saddam Hussein and interrupting the flow of oil money to those who misuse it. 

Finally, in partnership with the other pluralistic democracies, the U. S. can help the Arab states bridge the Muslim world and modernity.  Let no one doubt the ingenuity and horizon-expanding abilities of religious minds.  When faced with novel situations a redefinition is called for and takes place.  Christians did it, Jews did it, Hindus are doing it.  Now we must help Arabs and all Muslims move beyond the closed past into a 21^st century world of hope and growth and mutual tolerance.  

Amen.

  (Primary source, excerpts from an address by Thomas L. Friedman on the occasion of his receiving the Dr. Bernard Haller Prize, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, May 29, 2002.  These remarks are reproduced in the HUC-JIR Chronicle 2002, issue 60, pages 9,24).