Commentary

13th December 1998

Is Islam, a challenge to global stability?

By Mervyn de Silva

What do you make of the "New World Order"? The commonest cliche in the current international relations discourse prompted the first question I posed to Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka's accomplished Foreign Minister, quite the globe-trotter. And why not? Globalisation is the process which every academic, diplomat and commentator identifies as a prominent feature of the post-Cold War world, a decisive end to bipolarity, US - USSR, Nato-Warsaw Pact, socialism - capitalism; the "ism", ideology determined the nature of global conflict. No more. Identity had dislodged ideology, race and religion most of all.

Mr. Kadirgamar recognised the new forces and the processes, the economic most of all. If WTO threatened to be a juggernaut the target was the under-developed countries, almost all NAM members. The Sri Lankan minister realised that the time was right for an intervention. And so a forum of Third World economists, with Dr. Gamini Corea, the former UNCTAD Secretary-General, was created. The reports attracted unusual interest at the NAM summit hosted by Nelson Mandela of South Africa the towering "freedom fighter". The Corea approach was more diagnostic than curative. Mandela, who believes that the people, not "the leaders" should lead, was full of praise. These reports became "road maps" for the poorest of the poor in a NAM on the threshold of the 21st century.

Bosnia

Which force was stronger - regionalism, globalism or nationalism? Discussing the resurgence of nationalism, Karin Von Hippel of the Centre of Strategic Studies at MIT wrote in the Washington Quarterly: "Few issues pose a greater threat to the post-Cold War international order than those emanating from nationalism and the quest for self-determination. Many of today's most intractable political problems and related humanitarian disasters such as civil war, genocide, ethnic cleansing or forced population transfers".

Is Bosnia the classic example? For us in the non-aligned community, Yugoslovia, Tito's Yugoslavia is the saddest illustration "Liberation struggles" against the centre.

The Belgrade Summit was a memorable event in a post-war world, an international event that dramatised more sharply than any other gathering the birth of a global, well tricontinental, community of countries which had attained independence, by peaceful means (Ceylon) or a popular revolt, often violent, India, Mahatma Gandhi notwithstanding.

And it was Jawaharlal Nehru, not Tito, who conceded non-alignment but was shrewd enough to let Tito of Yugoslavia convene the inaugural Belgrade Summit. Yugoslavia stood on the new frontline in the battle between the US led democratic (capitalist) alliance and Stalin's one party "totalitarian" state, and its "satellites", in the prognostic jargon of the day.

Long before Indira Gandhi, it was Ms. Srima Bandaranaike who was destined to symbolise another "liberation" womens liberation, said Foreign Minister Kadirgamar pausing for a moment. "And we did blaze a trail.... the first woman as elected prime minister, and now her daughter a popularly elected Executive President. Soon South Asia was to make history- Ms. Srima Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and an active women's Lib. front in Bangladesh. The strong tie of religion could not preserve the "unity" of east and west.... Pakistan. Of course the liberation struggle was actively assisted by the big neighbour, India, which had its own large state of Bengal. Indian intervention and active assistance to the Bengali liberation fighters was accepted by many politicians and opinion leaders in many countries and the media.

Some decades later Indira Gandhi's India tried to repeat the performance in a tiny Indian ocean island. And to this day, commissions of inquiry seek the answer to "who killed Rajiv Gandhi".

Our Bosnia

But back to Yugoslvia and Bosnia, and its ethnic "mix". It is that composition which prompts the press to give as much space to the SLMC founder-President Mr. Ashraff as to his colleague, Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar. While the Muslims, are a third of the provincial population - the Tamils are the largest community but not a majority. True, the Muslims speak fluent Tamil just as the Muslims in the Sinhalese dominated provinces speak Sinhala. But the global Islamic revival has made a tremendous impact on a sub-continent (once called the Indian sub-continent) torn apart by a fierce religious allegiance. The politics of the eastern province make religion rather than language the main mark of identity. "However diverse in reality, the existence of Islam as a worldwide religion and ideological force embracing one fifth of the world's population and its continued vitality and power in a Muslim world stretching from Africa to South-east Asia, will continue to raise the spectre of an Islamic threat. In the 1990's it is important that the vacuum created by the end of the Cold War not be filled by exaggerated fears of Islam as a challenge to global stability" wrote Prof. John L. Esposito. Mr. Kadirgamar shares this view.

Hulftsdorp Hill

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