In the center of Seville, La Giralda towers over the city as a constant reminder of Spain's Muslim history. From 750 C.E., when Abd al-Rahman escaped the slaughter of his entire family by the rival Abbas family and fled to what was then known as al-Andalus, until 1492, when Fernando III conquered Spain and moved the capital of Andalusia to Seville, Spain was an Islamic country. As the story goes, Fernando climbed the mosque's tower on horseback after conquering the city to look over everything he had just claimed.
Considering Spain's historical connection to the Muslim world, it is not surprising that the country is becoming a global leader in trying to create peace between the West and the Middle East. In the aftermath of the global drama over the Mohammed cartoons, the Spanish government has launched a campaign to try to improve relations between the two cultures.
On Feb. 6, less than a week after the Spanish newspaper El Pais became one of the first European publications to print the cartoons, Spain's President, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, sent a declaration to Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, calling for mutual respect and peace.
"In a globalizing world," Zapatero stated, "a world where exchanges between diverse civilizations are growing and local incidents may have global consequences, we need to cultivate the values of respect, tolerance and peaceful coexistence."
The document outlined Spain's stance on the vignettes and called for, "initiatives and instruments to stop the spiral of hate and confusion that threaten peace and international security." At a UN General Assembly meeting later in the month, Zapatero asked Kofi Annan to bolster international support for the creation of a high level group to study the creation of an alliance of civilizations.
However, many doubt the plausibility of an alliance of nations between the West and the Middle East. The two civilizations have repeatedly shown a failure to understand each other's culture and values. Over the past three months, it seems as if the two worlds have grown even further apart. While the angry protests over the cartoons may have subsided since early February, tensions between the Western and Islamic world are at an all time high.
American intervention in Iraq seems to be unable to stop the country from erupting into a bloody civil war, the newly elected Hamas government in Palestine just launched a website promoting the valor of being a suicide bomber, and Iran, recently reported to have enough uranium gas to make 10 nuclear weapons, continues to threaten the U.S. and Israel with heated rhetoric. Why does it seem like the two cultures are headed in completely opposite directions?
While religious extremists would balk and say that the following answer is a reflection of the skewed values of a capitalistic society, it is difficult from a Western perspective not to point to economic factors as the basis for much of the tension.
GDP growth from 1993 to 2003 in the Arab world has grown nearly 5.5 percent while productivity has only increased by 0.1 percent annually. This shows that despite the resources that are clearly available in the region, the people are not benefiting. Much of this can be blamed on corruption, which runs rampant throughout the Arab world and prevents oil revenues from reaching the general population.
The Middle East and North Africa also have the highest rates of unemployment in the world at close to 13.2 percent. With 60 percent of the Arab world's population below the age of 25, the UN's International Labor Office predicts that the number of unemployed in the area will increase by more than 500,000 each year. In the near future even more people in the Middle East will be poor, out of work, and angry.
Thomas Friedman also points to technology as a factor for the tensions. Not only is the Arab world failing to keep pace economically with the rest of world, but everyone in the region knows this is the case. "In this flat world you get your humiliation fiber-optically, at 56K or via broadband, whether you're in the Muslim suburbs of Paris or Kabul," Friedman said. He claims that technology has made Arab nations "thin-skinned" and "easily enraged" by the tiniest insult, such as the defecation of a copy of the Koran or a cartoon depicting Mohammed.
Lack of education in the area is also a factor for the current dire situation. While India and China fervently prepare their youth for highly technical positions, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-I-Azam University in Islamabad, has called Pakistan's university system "intellectual rubble." Pakistan has registered only eight patents internationally in the last 57 years.
Educational shortcomings and economic failures have made it easier for extremist groups to come to power and manipulate the public. President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf has claimed, "The teachings of Islam have been hijacked by obscurantists." These "obscurantists" have helped foster a global image of Islam as the religion of violence, hate and terrorism. Yet this could not be farther from the truth. Recently, 56 Muslim nations came together and signed an accord condemning fatwas that justify violent crimes and the act of "takfeer," which involves labeling other Muslims as non-believers.
At the same time, Islamic nations have repeatedly shown reluctance to modernize and join the world community. People in the Middle East seem to have forgotten that during the golden age of Islam, when Islamic nations were considered the leaders in science and mathematics, the civilization was open to the foreign influences of Greece, Rome and Persia.
Yet at the World Economic Forum in Davos, global Islamic leaders plead that Islamic countries are fully capable of modernization, so long as the difference between modernization and westernization remains clear. President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai stated, "If people in the West think modernization means applying their culture, there is a problem...We are all different."
Karzai is right, there is a problem. The longer the people in the Middle East remain poor and undereducated, the more difficult it will be to prevent extremist groups from capitalizing on the public's anger. And Zapatero's dream for an alliance of nations will continue to be just that: a dream.
