"A Workshop in Amman, Jordan "
Part I

Al Ray Alaam, Sunday, March 14, 2004

By Khalid Al-Mubarak

When I received the invitation to participate in a workshop on Islam and Elections, I said to myself, "The theme of the workshop is narrowly defined." I became more nervous when I was told, "We do not want a written contribution from you. What we really want is for you to help us get in touch with Dr. Hasan Al-Turabi and Mr. Ghazi Suleiman." I tried to get more information about the organizers and learnt that the event is the result of a collaborative effort of New School University in New York, and Majlis al-Hassan of Jordan.

I had not had the honor of meeting Prince Hassan in person before. I was so pleasantly surprised to discover him to be so unlike the prevailing stereotypical perception usually associated with royal families. He is modest and humble, with a vast breadth of knowledge and a wide circle of relations. He told me that he knew the late Mohammad Omar al-Bashir. In the opening session of the Workshop, he effortlessly moved back and forth between flawless polished English and cultured impeccable Arabic. Off the cuff of his hand, he cited indicators that have recently appeared in reports of regional and international commissions, and called upon the participants to practice the "art of noble dialogue." He stressed that deprivation in today's world is not only confined to food and shelter but also included deprivation from participation. And as if he read his listeners minds, he went on to say, "It is ironic that the opening remarks for your deliberations on participation are made by a prince. But I, like everyone else, was born into a set of circumstances over which I had no control."

Dr. Mustapha Tlili, Director of Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West, a program of New School University in New York, and the driving force behind the workshop and a conference held in Granada, Spain in October 2002 on the theme of "Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Perceptions," also delivered his remarks in the opening session. Born in Tunisia, Dr. Tlili is an established novelist. In collaboration with the renowned French critic and intellectual Jacques Derrida he was the coeditor and contributor to For Nelson Mandela. Dr. Tlili is a member of the consultative committee of Human Rights Watch, an American NGO that published many reports on the Sudan.

Many dignitaries attended the opening session of the workshop, among them Sudan's ambassador to Jordan, H. E. Mr. Muhammad Mahmoud Abu-Senn, Jordanian media representatives, intellectuals and members of the Diplomatic Corps.

Without any hesitation, Dr. Tlili went directly to the heart of the problem. He said that the new knights of democracy did not realize that Islam and the Islamic value systems offer ways to achieve good governance. "Because of this terrible ignorance, fused with an overwhelming arrogance--the arrogance of power--it is widely argued in Muslim countries that these same advocates of democracy will not hesitate to launch wars and conquests in the name of their ideological objectives." He went on to say that some of these scholars of Islam in Europe and the United States chose to follow in the footsteps of Samuel Huntington and began to slide slowly from criticizing political Islam to criticizing Islam as a whole. They were disparaging Islam for its supposed incompatibility with what they call "democracy."

In the opening session, Dr. Richard Bulliet, Professor of History at Columbia University and Senior Advisor to Dialogues summarized the background paper that was distributed to the participants, using it as the point of departure to launch the dialogue during the thematic sessions that were dedicated to the discussion of elections, pluralism, governments and freedoms, constitutions, and election mechanisms. It was noted that the participants were a diverse group that came from different countries and included both Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

The background paper was up to my expectations. It even raised some of the questions that I have addressed in my writings, namely the misplaced importance attached to the outer shell of Islam to the detriment of its core message, a fact that has contributed to the lamentable state of backwardness in which Muslims find themselves.

The background paper made reference to the case of the Ottoman Empire that witnessed in the days of its decline a debate on whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic and whether electricity should be used to light mosques. Dr. Anil Seal of Cambridge, England reminded the participants that Christian Europe went though a similar stage when its clergy were bogged down with the discussion of controversial issues like the number of angels that could stand on a pinhead!

 

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