Taking up peace, putting down arms

Sistani won his peaceful protest in Najaf. But Gandhian methods in the Middle East must substitute rather than supplement violence, writes Brian Whitaker

Tuesday August 31, 2004

A week ago in this column, Attack on Pax - August 23 amid the carnage of Najaf, I wrote about a few rarely-heard people in the Middle East who advocate Islamic non-violence, or "civil jihad", as some of them prefer to call it. I asked why the techniques used by Gandhi against the British in India had not been more widely adopted by Arabs and Muslims, and wondered what Gandhi would have done in Najaf.

This brought an unusually large number of emails from readers, many of them suggesting that non-violent action in the Middle East was an idea whose time had come. Others claimed that Muslims are incapable of anything but violence, while a gentleman who signed himself "Barry" described the article as "anti-semitic propaganda" and said I should be sacked for writing it.

My question about Gandhi and Najaf was answered rather dramatically on Thursday when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who had returned to Iraq from medical treatment in London, brought peace to the city by arriving in a motorcade accompanied by thousands of unarmed supporters.

Sistani is such a widely respected figure that he was able to achieve, by his presence and his persuasive powers, what the Americans and the Iraqi government had failed to achieve by force of arms. It was the most Gandhi-like act we have seen in Iraq since the conflict began. Sistani has previously urged Iraqis to engage in "civil jihad", and if this is what he means by the term, good luck to him.

Another event last week was the visit to Israel/Palestine by Gandhi's 70-year-old grandson, Dr Arun Gandhi. One of his aims was to persuade the Palestinians to adopt a non-violent form of struggle. If they had done so earlier, their conflict with Israel would be over by now, he reportedly told Palestinian officials.

Dr Gandhi, an American citizen who runs the M K Gandhi Institute for Non-violence in Memphis, Tennessee, also said non-violence would do much to improve the Palestinians' image in the United States.

"It makes not only moral sense but it makes practical sense," he said. "I don't think Palestine has the economic and military capacity to confront a huge state like Israel which has not only a powerful military arsenal but powerful friends."

There are signs that PLO and Fatah leaders, in consultation with the Islamist groups, may be beginning to move in this direction. They hope to push Israel into allowing elections, to organise mass protests against the separation barrier and the mistreatment of prisoners, and to challenge Israel again in the international courts.

The high point of Dr Gandhi's trip was a protest meeting, attended by about 2,000 Palestinians and Israelis, at Abu Dis in the shadow of the illegally constructed separation barrier. The barrier, consisting of 26-ft tall slabs of concrete, looks like an insurmountable obstacle but several young Palestinians climbed up by wedging their hands and feet into the cracks between the slabs - and sat on top of the wall to listen to Dr Gandhi's speech.

"This may indeed be what Mahatma Gandhi would have advised in a situation like this," Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli peace activist remarked. "An open non-violence act of defiance ... showing the oppressor the futility of his measures." (Pictures of the wall-climbing can be found in the blog of Dr Gandhi's visit - Gandhi tour of Israel and Palestine ).

Several readers of last week's column wrote to point out other instances of non-violent action by Arabs and/or Muslims. Perhaps the most remarkable of these was the largely-forgotten example of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Muslim leader who resisted the British in the Afghan-Pakistani border area during the 1920s and 1930s.

Ghaffar Khan raised an "army" of 100,000, known as the Servants of God, whose members took an oath: "I shall never use violence. I shall not retaliate or take revenge, and shall forgive anyone who indulges in oppression and excesses against me."

Ghaffar Khan was a friend of Gandhi and always insisted that the greatest figures in Islamic history were known more for their forbearance and self-restraint than for their fierceness. His story is told in a book, "Non-violent Soldier of Islam", by Eknath Easwaran. Readers also cited the current hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners and the first intifada as examples of non-violent direct action. The first intifada certainly had non-violent elements and Gandhi used hunger strikes quite a lot - but so did the Irish Republican Army.

These readers (I think) missed the important distinction between non-violence used as a tactic alongside more violent methods - which has generally been the case in the Palestinian struggle - and non-violence used as a substitute for violence. For Gandhi, it formed part of his overall philosophy, and the problem with the pick-and-mix approach used by the Palestinians and the IRA is that it doesn't provide moral superiority. Some readers disputed Gandhi's role in achieving Indian independence, suggesting the second world war was a more important factor.

On the other hand, Jack DuVall of the Washington-based International Center on Non-violent Conflict traced Gandhi's influence far and wide: "Solidarity in Poland, the 'people power' movement in the Philippines, the people's movement that defeated General Pinochet in Chile, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the non-violent campaign in Serbia in 2000 against Slobodan Milosevic, and the Rose Revolution against Shevardnadze in Georgia this year all deliberately used the kind of non-violent strategies that Gandhi pioneered," he wrote.

"All these movements were successful in bringing down oppressors - and one of the next regions that is likely to see similar results will be the Middle East."

This brings us back to the question of whether the Middle East really is fertile ground for Gandhian activity. Last week, I suggested that Islam is not an obstacle but Arab machismo might be.

Khaled Diab, an Arab reader and journalist based in Brussels, sent an alternative view which is worth quoting in full: "I don't think Arab culture is any less-equipped than any other culture to take on a Gandhi mantle," he wrote. "In my own native Egypt, you can see peaceful conflict resolution in action every day on the streets, in offices and in families.

"One key difference between 1940s India and the 21st-century Arab world is that no Gandhi has emerged to galvanise popular support for such means. This is further complicated by the fact that an Arab Gandhi would not only have to battle against a foreign oppressor but the home-grown variety would chop him down before he could mature.

"In addition, the two most popular manifestations of Arab identity - the secular pan-Arab movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and the current Islamist movement - are built on a sentimental desire to rebuild past Arab glory.

"Both believe, in their own way, that the only way to counteract foreign domination is to construct a mighty and unified Arab Nation (Umma). 'Force is not repelled except by force,' is a common refrain. There is a dangerous aspect to this attitude in that many Arabs tend to overestimate the potential of their own power: 'The Arab World can be a superpower, if it would only unite.'

"The truth of the matter is that the Arab world is not likely to unite in the near-term, and possibly never, and, even if it did, it would not become an overnight world power. Arabs need to swap rosy romanticism for gritty pragmatism.

"What the Arab world needs is the charisma of Nasser in the mould of Gandhi to make the political and cultural case for peaceful resistance, that being a pacifist does not mean that you have been pacified. Unfortunately, the only people who have so far made that case are some Arab intellectuals and outsiders. Painful as it is, I hope the anarchy in Iraq will deliver at least this one hope."