Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we're finally on our own,

This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio ...

(from Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, written shortly after the fatal shooting of four students by national guards at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration at Kent State University, Ohio, 1970)

The level of popular opposition in many countries across the world against the US-led invasion of Iraq baffled many commentators. After all, the anti-globalisation movement and remnants of the old left, traditional opponents of corporate America's domination of the world's economy and hegemonic ambitions of the US have been somewhat subdued because Al-Qaeda happened to deploy the very same language in their justification of the September 11 attacks.

Not many would have thought that hundreds of thousands would march in streets of the world's major cities, shouting anti-America slogans of their fathers' generation. Even more astounding was the defeat of Spain's ruling party whose government was a staunch ally of the Bush administration. Even before the Madrid bombing the great majority of the Spanish people was opposed to the war.

For Muslims, resigned to a renewed, intensified prejudice and reduced to caricatures as quixotic enemies of the modern world, the display of sympathy for the Iraqi people, squeezed between a ruthless dictator and the threat of an unsubtle domination by a superpower unrestrained by international conventions, was heartening. It is sobering to know that the common people can still recognise a terrible injustice and rise to oppose it even if their governments have joined the coalition of the "bullied, bribed and blackmailed" (in the words of Arundhati Roy) in a war built on lies. This is reminiscent of the opposition to apartheid, the American civil rights movement and to a certain extent the Vietnam war. These were won by winning over the common people in a moral argument against injustice and oppression, shaming their own powerful governments and exposing the unsustainability of their political position.

The Iraqis are Arabs and Muslims, but this did not get in the way. Concerned people around the world see them as a people unfortunate enough to be rid of one dictatorship only to be replaced by another form of subjugation - by an avowedly well intentioned superpower whose real motives, as read even by many of its own citizens, are Iraq's oil resources and expansion of its imperial domain. The US invasion of Iraq led to some token transfer of sovereignty. Old style colonialism of land-stealing by settler colonialists did not occur and Iraqis were not driven off their towns and villages to live as refugees in neighbouring countries, yet a great many people around the world objected to the immorality of the American enterprise, reaching an astounding figure of 90 percent in Spain and Italy, with disastrous results for the former's governing party in the elections.

The Palestinian cause

If Iraqis are Arabs and Muslims, and the world could be sympathetic with them, why is it that such a level of popular support has never been shown for the Palestinians? They too are Arabs, the great majority are Muslims and their sufferings have no parallel in modern times - expelled from their towns and villages by terror tactics of Zionist paramilitary groups and later the Israeli army to live as refugees in neighbouring states, or under a military occupation in harsh and humiliating conditions calculated to sap their hope, dignity and will to live as normal people. And all this has been going on for more than a half a century, the brutalities inflicted on the Palestinians intensified under Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, and today the fabric of Palestinian society and its institutions largely destroyed, yet we see little of the kind of sympathy and support shown to fellow Arabs and Muslims in Iraq.

There are perhaps a number of reasons for this lukewarm support that bears repeating. The creation of Israel at the terrible expense of Palestinians was a project of European Zionist aided and facilitated by imperial Britain and France to create a national homeland for European Jews at the beginning of the 20th century, partly as a solution to redeem the conscience of Europeans after centuries of Jewish persecution in Europe.

The complicity of European powers and the US in the creation of Israel meant that the root of the Palestinian tragedy should be hidden or distorted as much as possible from the western public. This works hand-in-glove with the hyper efficient and productive Zionist propaganda, making sure that the world does not forget the sufferings of Jews while keeping the sufferings of the Palestinians, "victims of the victims", out of the public view. The more informed western public today, generations away from those that drew up the Balfour Declaration or were complicit in the birth of Israel in 1948 have the means to be more objective in looking at the Israel - Palestine conflict. This is in fact a re-assuring trend especially in Europe, where Israeli policies and actions have increasingly come under intense scrutiny. And there have been westerners who have risked and paid with their lives in support of the Palestinians like the American student Rachel Corrie.

But somehow the level of popular support for the Palestinian cause never quite reached the critical point that would make Israel and its powerful backer back down in shame and offer a genuinely fair solution, in a way that popular support changed the course of apartheid and the Vietnam war. A major stumbling block towards an objective understanding and wholehearted support of the Palestinian cause, the most likely solution out of the impasse in the estimation of many, is the public perception that it is largely driven by terrorism. The Zionist lobby and propaganda has successfully portrayed the Palestinians, being Arabs and Muslims make it that much easier, as violent, filled with irrational hate and have no qualms about using terror tactics to advance their cause.

The plane hijacking and the terrorist activities of radical Palestinian groups in the 70's especially the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics greatly undermined the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. The willingness of the Palestinians under the PLO to recognise Israel and accept the two-state solution in 1988 through a political process, a dramatic u-turn from its former objective of wiping Israel off the map and back to1948, has redeemed that image somewhat.

But the deeply flawed and one-sided Oslo Peace process, the insincerity of Israel which continued its land grab policies and the weakness of Arafat's Palestinian Authority have led to a very desperate situation for the Palestinians - poverty, unemployment and the gigantic prison that Gaza and part of the West Bank have become, led to the phenomenon of "suicide bombing/martyrdom operations". Debate continues to rage wether this is the new face of Palestinian terrorism or legitimate response of a poorly armed people to Israel's state terrorism, with the Muslim camp firmly in the latter.

For Muslims around the world, whom the Palestinian tragedy is as much our own on account of our shared Islamic faith and the special position of Jerusalem, and nourished by the sentiments of 1948 and 1947, it seems that the rejectionist position is immutable. Nothing short of the annihilation of Israel through a total military victory is to be desired regardless of the realities of today's geopolitics. This seems to be the basis why suicide bombings/martyrdom operations are seen as legitimate by the great majority of Muslims, especially when a prominent and popular scholar has issued a positive religious edict (fatwa) on it.

Suicide bombings

If in my previous article on the subject (Live, don't die for Islam), I argued why targeting children in suicide bombings/martyrdom operations is morally indefensible, I would like to expand more on its political costs to the Palestinian cause. Like the airline hijacking and murder of Israeli athletes in Munich, suicide bombings/martyrdom operations severely undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. Even if at its core it constitutes a response of the weak against Israel's state terrorism, random targetting of children and women in public places is reprehensible in the eyes of world.

It is regrettable that Hamas, for all its laudable and productive efforts at maintaining decent services in education, health and welfare for the poor in areas where none exists is largely seen outside the Muslim world as a terrorist organisation because of its endorsement of suicide bombings/martyrdom operations. The political costs of suicide bombings/martyrdom operations have been disastrous - demolitions, targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders like Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdul Aziz Rantissi, the rape of Jenin, the humiliating confinement of Arafat in Ramallah and the building of the wall as more land grab. Despite the Hague's ruling on the illegality of the wall, Israel is likely to remain adamant with the argument that it confers protection from the incursions of suicide bombers.

With the rapid depletion of its leadership ranks, the most worrying trend is the downward spiral towards total destruction of Palestinian civil and political institutions, factional infighting and the breakdown of law and order that has so far given them some semblance of a functioning society. This is beginning to happen as recent events have shown and Israel only needs to watch with arms folded as Palestinian society reaches the phase of auto-destruction.

For us Muslims who have been helplessly watching this tragedy, with the sheer imbalance of military power between the Israelis and Palestinians and that almost all the Arab states have acquiesced to Israel's powerful backer, the US, egging on our Palestinian brethren towards a total military victory is an unrealistic sentimental objective. Given the religious bond that we have with the great majority of Palestinian and the significance of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem in Islam (before Mecca, Muslims turned to Jerusalem during their daily prayers), we have kept Palestine as a purely Muslim and Islamic concern. If Malaysia represents a microcosm of the world community, the Malays are passionate about Palestine whereas the non Malays see it as none of their concern. Strong religious undertones to the conflict there may be, but the Palestinian issue is at its core a question of justice and humanity, and this is precisely where Muslims around the world have not done justice to our brethren by keeping it to ourselves as a purely religious issue.

In modern history, the victory of liberation movements was decided not so much militarily, but more so politically, by the world's public opinion - by shaming their much more powerful oppressors and exposing the weakness of their political cause. This was true both of the Vietnam war and the struggle against apartheid. The US had the military power to destroy Vietnam many times over but her soldiers lost their nerves when young Americans in campuses all over the US and the western world condemned their government's intervention. Similarly, the administration/government of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were strong supporters of the South African regime, but when ordinary Americans' and Britons' disgust of apartheid became widespread, the regime crumbled. Such is the power of public opinion in confronting militarily far superior oppressors.

Algerian example

In the Muslim world, Algeria's war of national liberation (1954 - 1962) provided a telling example. During the war of independence, the FLN divided Algeria into six districts or wilayas, each of which had its own command structure, field of operations and fighting forces. The seventh wilaya was metropolitan France itself. The idea was that given French military superiority, it would be crucial for the liberation movement to win as much opinion and gain as much support from French civilians. France had its own episode of "Ohio", where civilians protesting the Algerian war were killed by the French police in Paris. And this proved to be a significant factor in the Algerian victory, which was not military but political.

Influential French public figures like Jean-Paul Satre, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Jean Genet and others were won over to the Algerian side (from 'The Other Wilaya' an essay in "The End of the Peace Process - Oslo and after" by Edward Said, Vintage Books, New York 2001). Without doubt the Palestinian struggle has all the universal elements that would appeal to the moral conscience of the world's public, more than the Vietnam war, the Algerian liberation movement and apartheid put together. Yet this support in public opinion is only coming in drips and drabs, never quite reaching the critical mass that would make Israel and its sponsor recoil in shame. Could it be that by keeping the issue as a purely religious one rather than universalising it as a question of justice and humanity the reason for this lukewarm support from the non-Muslim world?

Another major reason that Muslims need to consider is the impact of suicide bombings/martyrdom operations on the world's public opinion. With the cold war behind us, the language of human rights and political morality has become unencumbered of ideological baggage and acquired some degree of universality. The world today is also much more conscious of terrorism and, rightly so, much less forgiving of the slightest connection that we have with terror tactics. It is from this perspective of morality and political cost to the Palestinian struggle that suicide bombings/martyrdom operations should be eschewed. Understanding why young Palestinians are driven to it is one thing, but endorsing it as legitimate is another.

Rather surprisingly, the overwhelming sentiments of Muslims worldwide notwithstanding, the religious arguments actually have not found universal consensus among eminent Muslim scholars. On the one hand, Shaikh Yusuf Qaradawi has endorsed its legitimacy, on the other, scholars like the recently deceased Salafi scholar Shaikh Ibn Uthaymeen and the Grand Sheikh of al Azhar have issued contradictory fatwas.

I was not convinced of the arguments by the European Council of Fatwa and Research that malaysiakini letter writer Dr Nazari Ismail has directed readers to. The main thrust of the argument seems to rest on the principle of reciprocity. Since Israel indiscriminately kills women and children, then it is okay to retaliate in a similar fashion, "to treat them like with like to deter them". There are no references to the classical texts, no arguments for exception to the traditional Islamic rules of engagement with regards to women and children, no mention of the views of other scholars or consideration of general ethical principles - all in all rendering the Council's document rather weak.

As a lay person, having read the various views of some eminent contemporary scholars, the religious argument on suicide bombings/martyrdom operations is actually far from conclusive, unlike the moral and political ones which have some degree of universal acceptance among commentators on Palestine. It is time that we balance our passion with rational arguments, temper the heart with the head so to speak.