The inability of Muslim states to overcome their divergent interests and present a united front is preventing a much-needed solution to the Palestinian cause, a sociology professor says.
“Most Muslim nations are not able to exert any diplomatic influence in the international state system,” said Sayed Fared Alatas, a Malaysian author and educator specializing in the decolonization of knowledge, the Islamization of knowledge, Muslim intellectualism and the sociology of Islam.
This impotence is highlighted by a recent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Riyadh, where members “could not even take a united position and embark on a policy that would force Israel’s hand.” or to its allies like the United States,” Alatas said. Daily Sabah on the sidelines of the Conference on Contemporary Muslim Thought in Istanbul.
Backed by billions of dollars in military aid from Washington, Israel has besieged Gaza since the Palestinian resistance group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,200 people and capturing some 240 people.
Israel’s relentless air, land and sea bombardments, which have killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, 70 percent of them women and children, have drawn global condemnation and growing calls for an urgent ceasefire as the humanitarian crisis was worsening in the city under blockade.
When meeting in Saudi Arabia, 57 OIC member states issued a joint resolution urging the international community to pressure Israel to stop its attack on Gaza and calling on the EU to hold Israel responsible for his war crimes.
The EU, US and much of the West classify Hamas as a terrorist group.
For Alatas, a resolution or a call for a ceasefire is not a necessity here but “forcing” is.
“Muslim governments must be able to force the United States, for example, to stop selling weapons or providing billions in aid to Israel,” Alatas said.
Gulf states invest heavily in the United States and its allies; Turkey is a NATO member and has obligations, and Iran is an anti-imperialist country that often clashes with Arab states.
“There is a problem of ideological differences determined by political and economic interests,” the professor said. “And these states are not capable of transcending these differences to achieve a common vision.”
He deplored the lack of support from the international community and help from the Muslim world for the Palestinians who “are waging an 80-year war for independence and statehood against the colonial state of Israel.” .
“The current crisis in Gaza is just one war among several others,” he stressed.
He believes the future of the Palestinian city remains uncertain as to whether it will return to semi-autonomy or be reoccupied by Israel “but the enormous support for the Palestinians that we find today in the West is reflected in the mood Western approach to the conflict. “
“We hope that this pressure from Western people can change the policies of Western governments,” Alatas said.
Growing xenophobia
As for the rise in Islamophobia, compared to the overwhelming support for Palestine in the West, Alatas said the trend is “of course bad but completely natural” and parallels a similar upsurge in anti-Semitism regarding concerns the war in Gaza.
“These xenophobic ideas have existed for decades among Westerners,” he stressed. “They resurface from time to time during certain events like what is happening now. So the only thing I can suggest is that there should be strict laws that protect people from hate speech and violence.”
There are laws against hate speech in the EU, but these would be unbalanced, Alatas added, as they protect Jews from anti-Semitism but not necessarily Muslims from Islamophobia.
Crisis in the Muslim world
“We live in a world that is still very colonial,” Alatas continued.
He highlighted a “strong colonial orientation” in culture and knowledge creation in the Global South, even though the region was politically decolonized.
According to Alatas, different types of Muslim movements strive to bring some independence or autonomy to the Muslim world.
“Many movements generally aim to secure military and economic independence and self-sufficiency from the forces of imperialism and to liberate Muslim countries from authoritarian or totalitarian governments,” he said. “But in most cases they failed.”
“And in some cases where Islamic movements have succeeded in gaining state power, they have been as totalitarian or dictatorial as the regimes they replaced. We really have a crisis on our hands,” Alatas said.
He suggested that there was a lesson to be learned from the pre-modern past, namely the Abbasi period when science, technology and culture flourished “because scientists, artists, scholars and other sectors Muslims did not rely on governments and instead built their own culture.” own institutions based on charitable endowments.
“This could be a model to follow rather than depending on our governments,” he said.
Contemporary thought
Likewise, Alatas studies the philosophy of the 14th-century Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun, widely recognized as one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages.
His research has focused on the problem of Eurocentrism and Orientalism, and their impact on knowledge creation in the non-Western world, including the silencing of non-Western ideas, concepts and thinkers.
On the first day of the Conference on Contemporary Muslim Thought, Alatas led a seminar on “Decolonization of the Social Sciences and the Muslim Intellectual Tradition.”
The conference, organized by the Presidency of Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB), was a two-day event that aimed to dissect contemporary issues affecting Muslim communities around the world and deepen the understanding of Muslim thought contemporary.
Scholars from around the world have discussed Western cultural hegemony, colonialism, and the political, social, and economic movements that resulted, as well as the Islamic movements that developed in response.
The conference also featured an 11-volume book collection titled “Contemporary Muslim Thought Project,” to which Alatas also contributed a chapter.
The first four books in the collection, released in 2020, focus on ideas from Turkey, Egypt, Iran and the Indian subcontinent. The second quartet covers contemporary scholarship from Muslim communities in North Africa, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, Western Europe, and the United States.
The final three books in the series, now available, highlight modern trends and developments in the Turkic world, the Arab world beyond Egypt and North Africa, as well as sub-Saharan Africa.