BOSTON: The United Nations reported that 34,452 civilians had been killed in Iraq during 2006, an average of 94 Iraqi deaths for every day of the year. Half of these deaths occurred in Baghdad and a majority died from gunshot wounds - the result of execution-style killings by Sunni and Shiite death squads.

The UN figures should have prompted strong reaction from the world's 1.4 billion Muslims, coupled with vows to bring to an end what Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a Turk, described as the "frenzy of insanity" in Iraq. But most Muslim leaders and intellectuals address the issue of Iraq in terms of its external drivers. Little debate focuses on the responsibility of the Ummah, or the community of Muslim believers.

The Muslim response to the fratricidal violence in Iraq reflects the tendency among contemporary Muslims to lay the blame for their problems almost exclusively on Western colonization or foreign occupation.

 
 
 
 
Ihsanoglu, the top OIC official, described the violence in Iraq as "a first in the history of Islam," a not wholly accurate description. He argued, rightly, that "different sects in Iraq have lived in peace for centuries," but his conclusion was inescapable: "The occupation and recent interventions have given rise to these events, events no one will ever be able to give meaning to."

Judging by the media, from Morocco to Indonesia, Muslim anger against the US intervention has increased, much as American public opinion turned against the war after initial support. Most pro-Western Arab governments, such as Turkey and Pakistan, did not criticize the Bush administration during the initial run-up to the war, notwithstanding public expressions of concern about loss of Muslim lives in the conflict. Many Muslims had warned against the war and predicted the suffering caused by US military intervention. Many now suggest that mayhem in Iraq is the direct result of American intervention.

But one need not be an apologist for the US invasion and subsequent missteps to suggest that Iraq's sectarian bloodletting has indigenous causes as well. Moreover, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was mired in violence, albeit state-sponsored repression, which also did not generate sufficient opposition from the Muslim world.

Clearly, Muslim leaders and intellectuals find it easier to criticize outsiders - the US, in the case of Iraq - for harm inflicted on fellow Muslims. When it comes to recognizing the suffering caused by fellow believers, there is a tendency among Muslims to dodge the issue.

 
 
 
 
The lack of democratic space in much of the Muslim world has prevented the emergence of mass nonviolent protest movements, especially when the protest needs to be aimed at the conduct of other Muslims. It is common for demonstrators in Muslim countries to protest the actions of Israel or the US. But one seldom hears of protests against the wrongs committed by Muslim regimes or, in Iraq's case, sectarian militias. Violence perpetrated by Sudan's regime in Darfur, for example, goes unprotested in much of the Muslim world.

Since the emergence of Western nations as the world's dominant powers, Muslim discourse has focused on reversing Muslim decline, especially in relation to the West. The colonial experience, in particular, has had a deep-rooted impact on Muslim psyche. There is a rush to condemn the foreigners and the colonizers, coupled with a general unwillingness to look inward and to identify where we may be going wrong ourselves.

Since the outbreak of sectarian violence in Iraq, Muslim opinion leaders have once again turned to theories about Western conspiracies to explain an internal crisis. "Muslim Sectarianism Part of US Agenda," was the title of an Islamist columnist's analysis of Iraq's current Sunni-Shiite divisions. Leading Saudi cleric, Sheikh Nasser bin Suleiman Al-Omar, suggested in a lecture on Al-Jazeera last year that Muslims were now in "a great phase of jihad" in which "The United States is collapsing and Muslims must patiently await their ultimate victory." Muslim voices - such as those of Malaysian Imam Feisal Rauf, Canadian activist Tarek Fatah, Indian theologian Maulana Wahiduddin Khan or Syrian-born poet Ali Ahmad Said - calling upon Muslims to take responsibility for their own actions are relatively weak and few.

 
 
 
 
The consequence of the outward focus in Muslim discourse is there for everyone to see. Islam's early generations produced knowledge and wealth that enabled Muslim empires to dominate much of the world. But now almost half the world's Muslim population is illiterate, and the combined GDP of the member states of the OIC hovers near the GDP of France alone. More books are translated every year from other languages into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic over the last century. The 15 million Greeks buy more books every year than almost 300 million Arabs.

In the year 2000, according to the World Bank, the average income in the advanced countries, at purchasing price parity (PPP), was $27,450, with the US income averaging $34,260. Last year, the US per-capita income went up to $37,500. Israel's income per-capita income stood at $19, 320 in 2000 and was $19, 200 last year. The average income of the Muslim world, however, stood at $3,700. The per-capita income on PPP basis in 2003 of the only nuclear-armed Muslim majority country, Pakistan, was a meager $2,060. Excluding the oil-exporting countries, none of the Muslim countries had per-head incomes above the world average of $7,350.

National pride in the Muslim world is derived not from measurable achievements - economic productivity, technological innovation or intellectual output. Instead, rhetoric about Islam being in danger and Islam's enemies plotting against Muslims prevails. Such rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilizations as much as specific Western policies. More significantly, it serves as an opiate that keeps Muslims riled against external enemies, with little attention paid to the internal causes of intellectual and economic decline. Ignorance and anger feed tribal and sectarian conflict, and the spiral of violence and decline endures.

 
 
 
 
The Koran describes Prophet Mohammad as the prophet of Mercy. Muslims begin all their acts, including worship, with the words, "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful." The Koran also says "To you, your faith, and to me, mine," which removes any theological basis for sectarian violence. But unfortunately these mercy-focused and peacemaking ideas are lost in the overall discourse in the Muslim world about reviving lost glory and setting right the injustice of Western domination.

The Muslim world needs a broad movement to review the material and moral issues confronting the Ummah. The calls for removing the vestiges of colonialism and setting right historic injustices cannot substitute for a realistic effort to combine condemnation of wrongs committed by others with introspection of Muslims' own collective mistakes. Muslim discourse would have to shift from focusing on Muslim victimhood toward taking responsibility, as a community, for our own situation. Authoritarianism would have to make way for democracy, and freer debate would have to replace the current culture of conformity in education and media.

The widely held conviction that sectarian violence in Iraq is a Zionist or American conspiracy or that it is the result solely of US occupation has diverted Muslim rage, leaving little room for ire against fellow Muslims actually engaged in the meaningless violence. Unfortunately, the phenomenon is part of a broader malaise characterizing social and political discourse in the Muslim world.

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