Dr. Zaman Stanizai is a professor of Mythological Studies at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif. He also teaches Political Science at California State University, Dominguez Hills. As a Fulbright scholar, he has worked in Indo-Iranian languages and as a political scientist he writes on the politicization of ethno-linguistic and religious identities in regional conflicts. He blogs on Huntington Post, the Middle East Institute, and ArticlesBase.com, as well as in Stanizai.org.
“A reporter asks an international panel the following: What is your opinion about the food shortage in the rest of the world? Here are the responses:
African – What is food?
Arab – What is opinion?
European – What is shortage?
American – What is the rest of the world?”
—Dr. Zaman Stanizai
SBB: As a Muslim, share with us a misunderstanding the Muslim belief system that would bring us together.
ZS: Prophet Muhammad’s prophesy, call it a vision if you may, and was way ahead of its time. It was meant to elevate humanity from the perpetual conflicts of religious tribalism to a higher ground and into the realm of all humanity worshiping the One and only God. This unifying God wasn’t meant to be the god of the Muslims or of Christians or of Hindus, rather a universal god. That’s why its name Allah is an integrated construct of an inseparable article al-, ’the' and the ineffable noun –la, “The Nothingness,” thus TheNorthingness. Named thus, so its para-Cosmic reality would not be identifiable with any one culture, time, or place.
SBB: How then Dr., would that translate to the Western world as being a distinction, a better understanding?
ZS: Please call me Zaman. Unfortunately, this most significant distinction of Islam as a way of life is lost both on the Muslims of today as well as on their political/ideological-cum-religious proponents.
As the Muslim world is entering its dark ages in these critical times, the West seems to be pushing them in, instead of giving them a hand and leading them in the positive. The West is interested in its own economic gains as it supports dictators in the Muslim world and then call it democratization, and with the help of those same dictators marginalizes and radicalizes the masses whose misguided resistance is then called terrorism notwithstanding the fact that in essence we in the West have created them in the first place. And then they target them for extermination instead of dialoguing with them.
The slogan “we don’t talk to terrorists” is a cop out. We dialogue with the Irish, Serbian, Basque, and FARC terrorists to whom we feel akin, but those in the Muslim lands we want to bomb to the Stone Age. This hypocrisy stands in the way of peace, in the way of political reforms and even political protest and revolution such as the Arab Spring that is being brutally suppressed.
SBB: How does the Western world begin that “dialoguing” again?
ZS: If the Arab Spring taught us anything, it smashed the myth of Arabs’ political passivity that the West often blamed as a culprit, it unmasked the perceived invincibility of arrogant ruling elites who were doing the bidding of the West and had no concern for their own people.
The current crisis in Syria is the result of a resurrected/resuscitated cold war rivalry that trumps the people’s desire for a government of, for, and by the people, as any society in the world wants.
This is not a war of civilizations, rather a cultural divide that separates the warring parties. The paradox is this: Foreign powers that have the (military) power to do something, don’t exactly know what to do, and those Syrians whose life and livelihood is at stake and know what to do, don’t have the means. In the stalemate and indifference, on the average over 200 Syrians die every day.
We should not impose solutions that prioritize our interests, but the interests of the people of the Middle East. When people are empowered instead of dictators, most, if not all, of the resentment towards the West will vanish. Then we can send our Peace Corps to sew the seeds of friendship instead of the armed forces that leave these societies a mess and then walk away.
SBB: And war profiteers?
ZS: Our war war profiteers are making everything possible to have these wars go on. They sell to our own armed forces and they are responsible for most of the proliferation of weapons around the world.
SBB: Thank you, Dr. Zaman Stanizai, for your thoughts and words. They are authentic and well stated. My hopes are that we can all proceed with the understanding that in violence there are no heroes or villains, every one is a victim.
Reflections
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, June 1908 to April 15, 1980, a French philosopher, novelist, playwright, political activist, an important part of the philosophy of existentialism and one of the leading figures in post WWII French philosophy, served in the French army, was captured, served a German constriction camp and went on to become a creative and important antiwar activist.
