This statement acquires special importance as it is signed by 60 American intellectuals, including Francis Fukuyama, the author of the book The End of History, Samuel Huntington who devised the theory of the clash of civilizations, the well-known philosopher Michael Walker who became famous for his appeal for just war which should be based on moral reality, the sociologist and former Israeli combatant Etzioni and former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as well as several names associated with major American universities. All of these are conservative nationalists imbued with the spirit of American supremacy. I say that for this reason the statement acquires extreme importance.

The statement defines its aim from for the first words of the title: What We re Fighting For . That is, its basic aim is to justify I would have liked to say explain the war which the United States is waging and which it has called the war against terrorism . No one yet knows the extent of this war, nor its real final aims. All we know is that its beginning was above the mountains of Afghanistan. As for its end, no one can predict it, even if it is most likely to be in more than one Arab and Islamic, or other, territory. In spite of that, the words of the statement regard it as a "humane war" which is not aimed at a people, a culture or a religion as such.

Self-Criticism

The first paragraphs of the statement begin with a kind of self-criticism, on the basis that it is the first degree of objectivity. They consider that America has acted at times with arrogance towards other societies, including following misguided and unjust policies.

Likewise the values which America has long helped to promote have harmed many other societies, like the predominance of consumerism as a way of life, undisciplined freedom, excessive individualism which cares nothing for others or the society around one, the decline of marriage and legitimizing relationships outside the institution of marriage. Add to all this a huge information media system which glorifies these ideas and not only promotes them, but even makes them the pattern to which any society must strive if it wants to modernize its traditional structures.

However, this criticism is of an excessively generalized character, and ignores the basic questions which cause many countries in the world to be in conflict with the American system. The statement affirms that these defects do not justify what happened on 11 September, particularly since those who carried out this act the destruction of the World Trade Center had issued no particular demands or specific message. In that sense, the aim of the crime was crime for its own sake, an ugly act in the absolute sense. And in fact those who did that did not say what they wanted, but was it only crime for crime s sake? The history of humanity has never witnessed a crime without a motive. In that  incident specifically, the perpetrators did not content themselves with committing a crime, they also made their bodies into a weapon to carry it out. That is, the motives that activated them were in their belief of more value and more important than their own lives.

We do not wish here to justify the crime which took place on that black day in September. It was enormous by all standards, but not the most enormous or the first of its kind, as the authors of the statement say. Certainly what happened at the end of the Second World War, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the first two atomic bombs, and the killing and maiming of thousands of human beings, was much greater and more savage than the September event. Although some people say that the bombing of Japan took place during a state of war between the two countries, historians agree that this war had in fact ended on the ground, and that Japan was on the verge of surrender. But America was in a hurry to bomb it in order to satisfy its spirit of revenge, and in order to test the effect of this bomb which it had not tested before, and  to verify its effectiveness. If Japan were a European state, America might not have dared to do that.

What happened in Vietnam, like the burning of hundreds of villages with napalm bombs, was much greater. And also what happened in the recent past, when Israel overran the Palestinian cities and turned them into corpses and ruins by means of American weapons, was much greater. Even worse, it was carried out with the complete approval of the US administration and in co-ordination with it for the most part.

Nevertheless, it is our duty not to deal with a complex great power like the United States as one entity. We have to be aware that it is a continent full of different intellectual currents. And we as Arabs are the best ones to be aware that we have to learn how to deal with these many forces with different interests inside American society. So the policies that the US administration is following are not necessarily identical with the beliefs which intellectuals hold. This may be what led Egyptian writer Abdulwahhab Al-Masiri to say, in his comment on the statement, I hate America but I like the American people. In this he draws a distinction between the ruling pattern and the individuals who are ruled. American people are pleasant as individuals, but the dominant pattern is a pragmatic one with its interests in the world which it is striving to impose by every means. The danger lies when the viewpoint of these intellectuals becomes identical with that of the US administration, when together they adopt the idea of the war that the administration is waging, on the pretext that it is a just war.

The strange thing about this just war for which the sixty American intellectuals are calling is that they have not defined the other side. Who is it? Terrorism? Is terrorism a state or a specific and tangible economic and military power? Terrorism is no more than an idea, and the declaration of the official war which these sixty intellectuals are justifying, and calling on the intellectuals of the world to support, is in fact a war but against the poorest and most backward countries in the whole world. But the most dangerous thing in the demagogy of these American intellectuals and thinkers is that they are calling for support of America s just war, but they do not define an enemy target to be destroyed. They are calling for an open-ended war in terms of time and place against anyone who does not stand by America and accept its policies and economic, cultural and military conditions.

These thinkers and intellectuals have put on their military helmets and adopted military logic, opening fire in all directions in defense of war for the sake of the interests of America and the rich Western world against everyone else.

Islam and Islamic Groups

Nevertheless, in spite of the conviction of the writers of the statement that the attacks in New York were carried out by an Islamic current, they try to differentiate between Islam and groups which hide behind it. They say that Islam for them represents one of the greatest religions in the world which contains about 1.2 billion Muslims, including several million American citizens, who enjoy respect, faith and the virtue of peace. On the other hand there are extremist radical groups which oppose not only Western policies but also any principle of religious tolerance. Although they claim to speak in the name of Islam, they betray basic Islamic principles, since Islam is opposed to moral savagery, and they resort to deliberate killing.

We can only agree with the American intellectuals on this view. Fanatics in any religion are a curse on that religion. We have suffered much from Muslim fanatics whom the US Central Intelligence Agency trained in the mountains of Afghanistan and called "Mujahidin", the "Afghan Arabs". We are still suffering from Jewish fanatics who kill our brothers in Palestine and steal their land on the pretext that they took an obscure promise about that land from the Lord of the Old Testament. We are suffering from massacres by Hindus against our brothers in India and Kashmir. In fact we as Muslims have suffered more than any other people from the evil of fanaticism.

The Moroccan thinker Muhammad Arkoun believes that even America s choice of the concept of a just war is a kind of Christian extremism in confronting Islamic extremism. This concept derives its roots from Catholic thinking which once sparked off the Crusades during the Middle Ages. It is regrettable that this idea finds a counter idea in Islamic culture, the idea of jihad, and on both sides the use of religious thought helps to consolidate the idea of war instead of playing its role to be a means of deliverance from war. While America declares its war on terrorism, it is also terrorizing others, because it is embarking on a war against evil as an absolute target. This is a religious expression rather than a realistic one. America is also restricting the free will of others when it insists that whoever is not with us is against us , as if there is no third choice. Terrorism here is an attempt to impose your opinion on others, without giving them a chance to form their own opinions.

The American assault is not in fact an assault against Islam, it is assault against the interests and riches that exist in some Islamic regions, where right-wing forces and industrialists, oilmen and arms manufacturers in the present US ruling structure believe that they have a legitimate right after they overthrew the Soviet Union. These interests and riches are now concentrated in the oilfields of our Arab and Islamic regions, extending from the Gulf and Iraq across to Iran and the Caspian Sea. From it the growth of China and the Asian tigers in general can be contained.

For the Sake of Human Dignity

The statement emphasizes five principles from which it finds its starting-point. The most important of these is that human beings are born equal in dignity as well as rights, that human personality is the basic element in society, and that the legitimacy of the role of government lies in protecting this personality and helping to ensure opportunities for human openness. Freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are among the inviolable rights in this human personality, and killing in the name of God is contrary to belief in God. It is regarded as high treason to the universality of religious belief. On the basis of all that we that is the Americans are fighting to protect ourselves and defend these universal principles.

I do not believe that anyone disagrees with these principles which preserve human dignity, but as the Lebanese thinker Dr. Ali Harb put it things have gone past the stage of issuing statements about human dignity and rights, and are now posing the question of humanity's very existence. The degree of violence has increased and the forms of terrorism have developed, particularly with the development of technologies and the information explosion. Is this due to a kind of clash of civilizations as Huntington says? Or is it a failure of Islamic societies to apply democracy and conduct the experiment of modernization? Or is it due to a greater defect?

We must admit here as a kind of self-criticism that our Islamic culture is also passing through a serious crisis. The method of dialogue in it has retreated in favor of collision. This has brought us to a state of feeling that we are in constant collision with the West. Western culture has settled its problem by turning to secularism and rationalism. The success which Western culture has scored affirms this course and is evidence of its effectiveness, at a time when Islamic culture is still opposing this secularist course and accusing it of being an alien intruder to it, a Trojan horse for Western culture. Extremist groups like Al-Qaida and others are an evil product of a mistaken concept of Islamic religious culture. They cannot deal with the challenges of the modern world with the crises and failures it contains. They could only react with that violence which is directed always at the wrong place, and always put the blame on others. Arab impotence has been clearly apparent in the latest Palestinian crisis, when Israeli violence escalated persistently and the Arabs contented themselves with making angry noises because they only think of the method of collision, while at the same time they are incapable of collision.

The Egyptian thinker Fuad Zakaria blames the Arab mentality for being subject to the idea of constant Western conspiracy against the Arabs and Islam. It is an idea that convinced us and we take comfort in it because it brings about a kind of relaxing function in our lives. It excuses us from confronting our own defects and making any effort to reform them. It also gives us a feeling of false importance, because the West is more preoccupied with us than it should be. Dr. Zakaria believes that one of the most severe manifestations of Arab weakness is the surrender to the conspiracy theory, because the real way to confront any conspiracy is by persistent hard work.

Where Is Justice?

It is astonishing that an important word like justice is not repeatedly mentioned in a statement like this which is full of plenty of words like freedom, the spirit of individualism and American values. The few sentences containing anything about justice are only related to the character of the war which America is waging and which of necessity is just.

In the words of the Lebanese writer Hasan Mneimneh, the word justice occupies first place in Arab political culture. It is no exaggeration to say that the Palestinian question is the main pillar of this culture. Consequently the absence in this statement of any reference to this pivotal question which has shaped our relationship with the West seems utterly astonishing. The Palestinian question is a central question in the position of Islamic religious forces towards America and the West. In spite of that the intellectuals of America ignore this question completely, and in this they are serving Israel and the American concept of the conflict of civilizations. In many places the statement mentions the astonishing question about the secret of why these radical groups hate America. This is just like the question asked by US Secretary of State Colin Powell during his meeting with some Arab ambassadors: Why do you hate us? It is impossible to believe that the Secretary of State was so naïve when he asked that question. Likewise these sixty intellectuals and experts, who include people in direct contact with events in the Middle East. But the whole matter is due to the American manner of viewing the world in general and Israel in particular. Edward Said affirms that the image that the Americans see is completely different to the one the Arabs see. America only sees the Israelis as defending themselves, not as colonial settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. Indeed, American news media since the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada have deliberately not published any maps, to avoid talking in specific language about the land on which Israel lives and the other land that it is occupying and whose people it is trying to exterminate. The American news media do not speak about occupied territory, but always about violence in Israel. This has led a great world writer like Nobel Literary Prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez to write a strongly-worded letter exposing these racist practices by Israel. Another Nobel Prizewinner, the Portuguese author Jose Saramago, also wrote a similar letter.

Despite that one of the signatories to the American statement, Thomas Friedman, criticizes Arab television stations for being one-sided and conveying the situation only inside the Palestinian territories, as if he wants them to copy American television and only to convey Israel s point of view. He ignores the fact that Israel has Merkava tanks, F-16 aircraft and Apache helicopters all of which are fighting unarmed people on their occupied land, and does not stop criticizing others, like many of those who signed the statement who are a clique surfeited with false information but lacking the truth according to Edward Said. Is this closed perspective suitable for building a just view towards our problems, indeed will it allow them to transcend the closed borders of Americocentrism and speak about a universal view like that of which the writers of this statement speak?

For the Sake of Serious Dialogue

In spite of everything, the statement concludes with a warm appeal for mutual contact and dialogue, particularly with Muslim societies. Its last words express a particular hope:  We wish especially to reach out to our brothers and sisters in Muslim societies. We say to you forthrightly: We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. We have so much in common. There is so much that we must do together. Your human dignity - no less than ours your rights and opportunities for a good life, no less than ours, are what we believe we re fighting for. We know that, for some of you, mistrust of us is high, and we know that we Americans are partly responsible for that mistrust. But we must not be enemies. In hope, we wish to join with you and all people of good will to build a just and lasting peace.

We can only appreciate this invitation to dialogue, and also appreciate this lonely voice of American intellectuals, who may be able to understand with a broader vision than that with which successive American governments have attempted. We must assume goodwill, as some of those who commented on the statement have said. We must also meet honesty with honesty and influence with influence. Before that we must absorb that language with which this statement addresses us and investigate its terminology which is based on the heritage of the American nation and the conception of Western civilization.

The message addressed to us as Arabs and Muslims primarily from these American intellectuals must not be ignored as is our custom always and we all Arab and Muslim intellectuals of all trends of thought must receive this initiative and pursue it patiently and persistently. With it we must open doors to debate, dialogue and encounter with all cultural forces in the West in general and in America in particular, and gain access, through them and dialogue with them, to European and American public opinion to explain our ideas, clarify our values and principles, always present the best arguments to them, and not be lazy or retreat into impotence and weakness.

The information, political and military campaign which was launched after 11 September 2001 cannot be confronted by shouting, insults and emotion. It is the greatest and most violent information and military campaign in the conflict between East and West since the Crusades. It must not be underestimated. But also one must not surrender to it voluntarily. The world today is dominated by revolutions of communication and information. This provides a great opportunity for the Arabs and Muslims to explain themselves, engage in dialogue with the world, present their best ideas and values, stand firm, and learn the language of dialogue and persuasion.

We support what was said in the statement about respect for human dignity and not squandering it by killing. It is a dignity that was not born from the American heritage or the American constitution as the statement expresses, but it is a dignity which derives its roots from the great divinely-revealed religions which came from our land. On this very land human dignity is now being degraded. On the same soil of Palestine on which Moses, Jesus and Muhammad walked, tanks which were made in America are daily humiliating the original inhabitants of the country. Any dialogue on human dignity can only be correct after the Americans give up the myth of the Red Indians who had to be exterminated so that America could rise up. This historical extremism cannot be repeated, and it is so shameful that it must not be regarded as a precedent to justify what Israel is doing now.

My greatest fear is that this statement may be for external consumption, namely that the aim behind it is to justify the war that has been declared, not to open a dialogue. As the Egyptian thinker Dr. Anwar Abdul Malik has noted, this statement was published in all major newspapers in Europe. It was also published in Arabic in Al-Safir daily. European and Arab news agencies reported its contents, but it was not so widely published in the United States. It was published on an Internet web site that is not widely known, and half a column was devoted to it in the International Herald Tribune, which by its nature is directed at readers outside rather than inside America.

We indeed hope that this is a serious invitation to dialogue, so that we might all get out of this dark impasse which we have all entered. We believe now that these intellectuals should prove their good intentions and begin to move in the direction of the peoples whom they have addressed in their statement, in order to come to know them closely and understand their culture and their religion. They should sit with intellectuals from these peoples around a table for discussion, and call on their superpower to review its policies towards these peoples and place their just rights in the forefront of its policies in dealing with them. In this way the statement would truly be an honest prelude to a great human dialogue that would open the way before a new future for humanity, in which justice, liberty and welfare would prevail.