Muslim indignity in Karadzic's arrest

Given the unlucky associations with the number 13, thirteen-year anniversaries tend to be relatively uneventful, but the accidents of history are ironic indeed. Thirteen years ago, in July of 1995, Serbian militia and troops (joined by a small number of Greek volunteers) "cleansed" Europe of at least 8,731 Bosnian Muslims. The ghosts of the holocaust had reappeared, this time drawing blood on the other side of the Abrahamic family tree. While estimates of the total number of victims of a war largely driven by Serbian ethnic and religious aggression ran well over a quarter million, the Srebrenica Massacre was its pinnacle, unparalleled in its brutality and depravity. For the primary architect of Srebrenica, former Serbian President Radovan Karadzic, the 13th anniversary of the massacre was his last as a free man. He was arrested last week, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague will be putting him in jail for a long, long time.

It is important for Muslims to take a minute to really absorb three things at this juncture of Karadzic's arrest and the 13th anniversary of Srebrenica. First, that the pursuit of justice against Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and the remaining cast of war criminals that ravaged Sarajevo, set up Srebrenica, and murdered Muslims by the thousands, has been pursued by non-Muslims. The International Criminal Court is the furthest thing from a Muslim institution imaginable (a Muslim institution being critically distinct and different from what an Islamic institution may look like). It is that institution that has pursued and prosecuted justice against the inhumanity of Serbia's war monsters.

Second, that in the last thirteen years, expressions of outrage at the atrocities committed in Srebrenica and the continued freedom enjoyed by Karadzic, Mladic, and others responsible for the massacre of thousands of Muslims, have been few, and far between. There have been a few, but none of them, outside of Sarajevo, have been newsworthy.

Third, that the most memorable expressions of outrage in the Muslims world over the last several years have been reserved for causes clearly dearer to Muslims than the lives of their fellow believers at Srebrenica, having nothing to do with war criminals like Karadzic. Instead, the most pronounced protests have been against the attack on Saddam Hussein's murderous regime in Iraq, and the publication of blasphemous cartoons in a Danish newspaper.

The collective Muslim memory is long on general indignities, and short on specific horrors. Muslim consciousness is highly sensitive to abstract offenses, like name-calling, and highly passive to tangible offenses, like the massacre of 8,731 Muslims. At least that is the conclusion to be drawn from systemic and consistent failure to pursue justice for events like Srebrenica, through legitimate, legal, and faith-neutral processes. In short, Muslims have an uncanny ability to cede moral high ground--even though some of the most traumatic and violent incidents of recent times, tend to find Muslims at the bloody, wrong end of the stick.

Thirteen years before Srebrenica, in September of 1982, the Muslim refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila were ambushed by Christian militia from Lebanon, under the protection of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The militia exacted revenge for the alleged Palestinian-sponsored murder of their leader Bashir Gemayel, by murdering over 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children, and raping plenty more. There has been no justice for Sabra and Shatila, and there will never be. Sabra and Shatila was among the crowning glories of the ruthless Ariel Sharon, the Israeli defence minister at the time. Attempts to indict him as a war criminal have failed repeatedly. Now, with his vegetative state, and a legacy tarnished in Israel by his withdrawal from Gaza, he'll never have to face the music for his atrocities in the name of Israel.

While justice may be a distant dream, Muslims might have been at the forefront of the campaign to record the history of events at Sabra and Shatila accurately. If nothing else, in the political debate about the worthiness of the cause for Palestinian freedom, it may have been an advantage. Muslims might have been able to seize and retain the moral high ground that Israel has so regularly and consistently ceded to them, especially since 1973.

True to form, there was, and has been, no such initiative, curiosity or passion in the Muslim world. Instead, journalists like Robert Fisk of The Independent, and Fergal Keane of the BBC have pursued the real story that took place in Sabra and Shatila that bloody September of 1982. Yasser Arafat's ego and the endemic corruption of the PLO ceded whatever political advantages the Palestinian people had paid for with their blood, Hamas has ceded whatever legitimacy it might have had by regularly spilling the blood of innocent Israelis, and the conflict is as far away from resolution as it was in September of 1982. How far? Well, Barack Obama just promised the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC, a powerful Israel lobby in Washington DC) an undivided Jerusalem as its capital. That's several steps backwards, even from the weakest Palestinian position in memory--the days and months leading up to Ariel Sharon's ill-advised traipsing through the Temple Mount, and the ignition of the Second Intifada in September of 2000.

In the case of Srebrenica, European guilt and the functionality of Western institutions to fulfil, at least partially, their commitment to justice, and fairness, is seeking to address the question of justice.

The one thing we can be certain of is that Muslims cannot take credit for Karadzic's arrest, nor will Muslims be responsible for his eventual conviction. Similarly, in the hypothetical case scenario of a resolution of the Palestine-Israel conflict, Muslims (other than Palestinians) will not be able to take credit for whatever miracle that eventually generates a resolution.

Remember, Muslims are too busy burning flags, effigies and, given the chance, private property such as cars and government buildings. In enough instances to make it a worry, Muslims are doing so, sporting pictures of the mythical Osama bin Laden--a latter-day caricature of a vile Muslim anger that is all too real to ignore. In too few instances to make it legitimate, Muslims are not doing so in memory of Srebrenica or Sabra and Shatila. Instead, they're driven by the manufactured rage of whatever poison-pill the mullah fed them with that Friday afternoon.

It is a fallacy that the global terrorist enterprise has any legitimacy because of these and other injustices in the Muslim world. The true measure of intellectual disability and moral fragility in the Muslim world is the fact that analysts from all points within the spectrum of Muslim thought--from progressive, to retrograde--consistently rationalise terrorism as a legitimate, or natural response to the indignity of being a member of the Muslim Ummah in the 21st century.

As simplistic as it is, there is no getting around the un-Islamic nature of the global Muslim experience. Muslims sure do anger and rage all too easily to be confused with jahiliyya. This is pitiful. Remember, we claim a faith whose primary articulation was conducted by a man who prayed for those that abused him (Taif), forgave those that attacked him (Quraysh) and forbade vengeance against those that actively plotted against him (ibn Ubayy). Indeed, there is no evidence of any kind, in any text, anywhere, that the legitimate Islamic response to injustice, to attacks, and to conspiracies is unmitigated and indiscriminate rage.

Here's the rub. After all, the protests and demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, the Danish cartoons, or even, further back in time, against Salman Rushdie's pedestrian literature, what's the fruit of Muslim rage?

Meanwhile, the burden of bringing attention to massacres like Sabra and Shatila, and bringing justice to war criminals like Karadzic, continues to be pursued, not without success, by non-Muslims. How's that for indignity?



The writer is an independent political economist. Email: mosharraf@gmail.com