Befitting Democracy

WHAT could our 2011 municipal elections have to do with the North African political earthquake, or, recent events in places such as Cote d’Ivoire or Uganda?

As I watched the results unfold at the Independent Electoral Commission’s results centre in Bellville South last week, I realised that the answer was “everything”.

Described by political analyst Prof Adam Habib as “world class”, he said in an interview that our local elections were a model of participatory democracy. Our 2011 municipal election set the bar at the highest notch, not just for Africa, but for the rest of the world.

Like so many commentators, Prof Habib measured the IEC as one of our most treasured national institutions.

He agreed that one of the hallmarks of our local electoral process was that nominated independent candidates only had to submit a list of 50 signatures, and to pay a small deposit. This meant that they would not be overly disadvantaged against the more muscular parties, such as the DA or the ANC.

Of course, most of us will concur that the playing fields in politics will never be perfectly level, but a fighting chance is – well – a fighting chance. Voters in some wards were spoilt with a selection of more than 20 candidates, something unimaginable in a big democracy such as the US.

For me, Election Day in South Africa means that I get to see the smiling face of my nation; the same one that graced the 2010 World Cup and created the “gees” that enchanted so many millions of people.

However, as South Africans self-absorbed in our daily struggles, we do otherwise tend to be hugely self-critical too. Hence the paradox that the ANC – still with a whopping 62% majority – will beat itself up about the results, and possibly even depose the President in a year’s time.

In South Africa this dynamic of public self-introspection is more profoundly noticed, because when elections do occur in other parts of the developing world, they have a poor record. When stuffed ballots, bribery and corruption are the bane of the honest voter there is only room for anger.

It is no wonder that the electoral process can often become overwrought, leading to frustration and even bloody violence. This year’s Nigerian presidential ballot, only considered “free and fair” by Nigerian standards, resulted in 800 deaths.

The stand-off in Cote d’Ivoire between former President Laurent Bgabgo, and Alassane Outtara, is as a sharp lesson for Africa as the Middle East is – where its tinpot dictators, unchecked for decades, cannot comprehend that their time is up.

Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni – entrenching himself as President for life – was recently re-elected against a background of discontent. And if Robert Mugabe – already President for life – goes to the polls any time soon, it’s guaranteed that his Zanu-PF thugs will beat up opposition voters.

Contrast this against South Africa (three Presidents since 1994) and another shining, but forgotten example, Somaliland (two successful democratic elections) and the picture is clear: those aspiring for a genuine political voice on our continent will obviously look to its best examples.

Whilst Somaliland (a breakaway territory of colonial Somalia) battles for international recognition on the Horn of Africa, South Africa’s positives are the envy of the continent. We are the only African welfare state, and our ARV roll-out for Aids sufferers is probably the most extensive in the world.

And whilst basic service delivery for the poor is a burning question, it can’t be denied that millions of houses have been built, electrified and supplied with running water. Yes, it’s not perfect (and our Gini-Co-efficient ranking is a disgrace) but if you’ve been living for 50 years in a post-colonial slum in central Africa, our post-apartheid era doesn’t look too bad.

In fact, my own experience is that right across the African and Arab world, the victory of the anti-apartheid movement – and the iconic status of Nelson Mandela – have been beacons that have lit up people’s hopes, and in difficult times, bolstered their courage.

For the international community, “Madiba Magic” is not about us winning the World Cup, but rather the values of honest political struggle, personal sacrifice and national reconciliation. And even in 2011 people haven’t forgotten this – as I was reminded by a Khartoum-based journalist just last week.

But where we have the most impact is through our imagery. As much as freedom in Egypt will now be about Al-Jazeera’s depiction of Tahrir Square, South African elections have been about the wire-service queue pictures – wide-angle shots of shadowed lines snaking around shacks.

It has become a cliché; but this imagery is still figuratively powerful. It’s powerful not because the poor are seen to be voting, but because our polling stations are not guarded by tanks, armoured cars and guns. Troops do not patrol barbed-wire perimeters, combat rifles at the ready.

The normality of it all is, ironically, abnormal for the many countries who watch us on their television screens via satellite.

But let it be said: with all the good cheer about South Africa, there is a stern caveat. Voters have expectations, and South African voters now have high ones. Politicians will have to stand and deliver against an uncertain climate of global economics, and a highly limited tax base.

The only answer to this is jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs – not created by government (which doesn’t have the capacity) but by the ingenuity of South Africans themselves.

Finally, the Malema’s of this world need to understand very quickly that their foul-mouthed identity politics merely nurtures a culture of entitlement; a culture of entitlement every bit as repulsive as that of the Afrikaner Nationalists who held this country to ransom for 46 years.

They need to realise that in a true democracy, the majority can only be defined by principle, and never by race.

The Halal Industry: a Call for Common Sense

THE other day I wrote an article about the halalisation of our consumer space by Halal bodies. They were more concerned, I suggested, in making a fast buck than acting in public interest.

The piece, which appeared in a mainstream publication, was a response to complaints by non-Muslims that they had to pay for the Halal certification process.

For those who might not be aware: the retailers who fork out hundreds of thousands of rands annually for the Halal certification of toothpicks, water, fish, coffee, milk or nuts merely pass on their expenses to the consumer.

To say that there’s a growing of cynicism in South Africa of the multi-million rand Halal certification industry is an understatement.

With Halal traditionally centred on the slaughter of meat, and pork derivatives in foodstuffs, it truly boggles the mind that our scholars could suspect that a humble cashew – halal for thousands of years – would now suddenly rub shoulders with piggy en-route to market.

To this effect, an American scholar has even argued that as shocking as it may sound to us, the Halal industry is making a mint out of pork.

In my article I argued that some of our scholars had perverted the very foundation of Shari’ah, or Sacred Law. I said that they had rendered upside down the maxim that the ‘asl (source) of things was their ibahah (permissibility).

In this surreal world, Allah’s Halal Creation has to be deemed inherently impermissible so that some Halal mufti can arrive godlike on the scene with his rubber stamp to deem them permissible.

We have to remind ourselves too that ghuluw, or extremism, was something detested by the Prophet Muhammad (SAW). He would happily dine at the tables of Jews and Christians without inspecting their kitchens, or peering into their pots.

I also argued in my article that had these bodies created public institutions, poverty relief programmes or educational opportunities out of their profits – which they have not to any meaningful degree – we could forgive the Halal industry for taking our money.

I made the point, too, that public interest had to be served here; the benefits accruing from the Halal industry could not be exclusively Muslim, as non-Muslims paid for the certification as well.

Response on Facebook, and other social media platforms, indicated that I had touched a nerve. Some people felt I had attacked particular organisations, and actually named them. This I had not done.

So before I proceed further, let it be said that my aim was to interrogate the principle of the matter. I’m not interested in names, organisations – or the mad-hatter conspiracies surrounding them.

And I seriously don’t advise the indulgence of shoe-fitting. We are dealing with broad issues here that are better dignified by being discussed in a neutral space. Labels only serve to specify, personalise and emotionalise the thrust of the argument.

I have to say, as well, that my critique in no way suggests that Halal certification be done away with. Far from it. We need the Halal process, but what I’m calling for is some commonsense.

The word “Halal process” is used here deliberately. For halalisation in the market place is indeed a process, from the moment the meat is slaughtered – or the product manufactured – to the time it reaches the consumer’s shopping basket.

Historically, the Muslim market-place was governed by the institution of hisbah – the protection of personal honour and public safety. In this scenario a muhtasib, a qualified official, would police corruption and monitor the professional guilds.

He would also check on the ethics of business practice, inspect the quality of goods and ensure that there was no profiteering at the expense of the poor.

“Halal” in this application was far more embracing than just the make-up of the goods on display. It dealt with every facet of commercial life.

Amongst the traditional scholars who’ve studied the role of the muhtasib are Imam al-Ghazali, Ibn Taimiyyah and Imam Taqi Ad-Din as-Subki. The muhtasib played an institutional role in Islamic society from the 8th to the 19th century.

According to Imam al-Ghazali, the muhtasib had to be an accredited scholar – in fact, a Qadi. His duties, which focused on public morality and economic activity, even covered environmental issues. In the modern sense, the muhtasib would be something in between an attorney general and an ombudsman.

Perhaps our Halal sultans, the lords of the supermarket shelves, should be obsessing less on the obscure details of how a particular product is manufactured. They should be indulging more in the spirit of hisbah, and questioning the morality of how things are marketed and sold – and how excessively rising prices, for example, affect the consumer.

For how halal can an over-priced product be if it contains carcinogenic substances and artificial hormones? How halal is clothing that has involved the use of child- labour? How halal can something be if its sale is the consequence of excess interest?

It could be argued – somewhat simplistically I know – that where Muslims live as minorities (as we do in South Africa, the US or Europe) our judiciary bodies’ primary role should be to play the role of a modern-day muhtasib. These responsibilities are enormous.

Hisbah requires large doses of wisdom, as much as it does knowledge of the application of Sacred Law and social custom. It is not a job for the faint-hearted.

The “morals police” of so-called Islamic countries are, for example, an insult to hisbah. Yobbos patrolling the streets and markets with nightsticks and guns are definitely not muhtasibs.

Each society enjoys its own unique customs, and juridicial opinions applicable to Cairo may not be as suitable for Cape Town. But where there’s universality of application is the market-place. That’s where the principles, as reflected in the Qur’an, become the most comprehensive.

And for as long as something with a halal stamp on it is sold to me by a liar, a thief or a cheat – or the goods have been produced by damaging the environment – I will not buy that product. Stamp or not, I will not consider it halal.

Fisk: Bin Laden was a "Has Been"

ROBERT FISK, the Beirut-based correspondent for The Independent, knows his way around the geopolitics of the Middle East better than most.

But more than that, Fisk speaks with the rare authority of having been there. Over the last three decades he has covered most of its major conflicts.

His political nous is also honed by a critical understanding of colonial history, a rare quality in today’s world of event-driven, embedded journalism. His books, Pity the Nation and The Great War for Civilisation, are classics of the genre.

My brief encounters with Fisk (in radio interviews) have revealed that he can be abrasive. He is a dogmatic man who does not suffer fools.

For somebody who must be pestered day and night by all manner of people, I’ve found him to be extremely generous with his time – but, understandably, wary of being exploited for his views.

I remember some years ago he put the phone down on me as we were going live on Voice of the Cape’s Drivetime. After the show I sent him an angry e-mail in which I accused him of being inconsiderate to our listeners.

To be honest, I didn’t expect a reply. But reply Fisk did. He said he gave time to community broadcasters across the world, but when he heard we were a Muslim broadcaster (via the station ID) he’d had to bail out.

Nothing against Muslims, he said, but he didn’t know us. He couldn’t risk being used to further potentially hidden agendas. I then realised that we’d been remiss not to adequately inform him about VOC, and having done that, he graciously agreed to do the interview.

I read later that Fisk had even walked out on a lunch with diplomats in Beirut. It was during the civil war and it was an act that saved his life. Agents for one of the factions in the conflict had told him afterwards he’d been monitored, and that any public bonhomie with a hostile foreign entity would have put him into his grave.

This principled awareness of a reporter’s role is what has sustained Fisk’s career. To be able to reflect the truth you need access to all sides of the story, and to be fair and consistent, you can’t afford to belong to any camps.

Fisk’s generosity of spirit, and nuanced understanding of events, would come to the fore in dramatic fashion in Afghanistan when an enraged mob would set about him after the US post 9/11 invasion.

Fisk was injured in the attack, and could so easily have basked in self-pity. Instead, he penned one of his most moving frontline dispatches, saying that he understood exactly why he – a symbol of the west – had been assaulted.

If I were a lecturer, I would make all my students read that piece. It’s not only informative journalism; it’s also a great instance of humanity.

It’s for all these reasons that I take commentary by Robert Fisk seriously. And when it comes to Bin Laden, I pay attention, because he is the only English-speaking journalist to have interviewed him three times.

Bin Laden’s demise, ten years after 9/11, has evoked a polarised response across the globe – from the Taliban threatening to avenge his death to the triumphalism of President Barack Obama.

There was also extensive comment about Bin Laden’s location in the heart of Pakistan, and an outcry about the nature of his “sea burial” and the refusal by Pakistan and the US to show his body.

But if you speak to Fisk – which I had the privilege of doing on air recently – these are merely distractions to more pressing international issues, such as the Middle East political earthquake.

After crustily accusing me of sounding like “an American radio-show host” when I used the cliché “icon of terror” for Bin Laden, he told me that the al-Qaeda figurehead was a “has been”.

He was a “middle-aged nonentity” who had never done anything. Bin Laden had wanted a Caliphate across the Middle East, but he’d completely failed in everything he tried to do.

“I would love to ask him what he thought of Egypt,” he said.

According to Fisk, al-Qaeda had become irrelevant and that Pakistan – who always knew where Bin Laden was located – had possibly felt he had no more use. He suggested that Bin laden had been betrayed for reward.

When asked about Bin Laden’s funeral at sea, and fears of a shrine being erected at his grave, Fisk answered that his marine entombment was “as creepy” as al-Qaeda and Bin Laden.

“Bin Laden was a Wahhabi, a man who didn’t even support the idea of a marked grave, so how do we understand that? It’s fairly obvious that it (Bin Laden’s death) was an execution mission, and perhaps we were not meant to see that,” he said.

On the question of Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, being pro-Taliban (and al-Qaeda sympathetic) he replied that open US support of India in Kashmir had caused huge resentment in Pakistan.

“I’ve been told by various sources, some even in the Pakistani military, that US policy on Kashmir is unpopular, and seen as about as biased against Pakistan as Israeli policy is against Palestinians,” he said.

The US saw India as a bulwark against China, and this foreign support of Indian Kashmir was a deep-rooted, if not sufficiently appreciated issue in Pakistan.

“The sentiment of the Pakistani generals is: (for Kashmir) let the US bleed in Afghanistan via the Taliban,” commented Fisk.

And, finally, how did he feel about the demise of Bin Laden?

“Well, he was responsible for thousands of deaths, so there you go. He probably got his just desserts. But then, just desserts are not the same as justice, are they?”

Bin Laden's Death: Surprise and Cynicism

PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s announcement that the US’s most-maligned figure, Usama bin Laden, had been killed in a covert operation 50 kms north of the Pakistani Capital, Islamabad, has caused surprise and cynicism in the Muslim world.

There are many Muslims, in capitals such as Cairo and Tunis, who regard it as ironic that the rallying icon of the “War on Terror” for a neo-conservative American president, George Bush junior, has provided the fuel to re-ignite the fading career of Barack Obama, a neo-liberal.

The surprise has been that it has taken ten years to locate Bin Laden, who in 2001 had just enough time to flee his Tora Bora mountain hideout in Afghanistan before US forces destroyed it with Tomahawk missiles.

That he was discovered by Pakistani intelligence, living a comfortable suburban life in the leafy rural town of Abbottobad, is another surprise. The stereotype of him huddling in dark cave in Waziristan was finally proved to be a myth.

Also surprising was that an Arab, a foreigner, could live undetected in a Pakistan rural community. The question is: how long did he stay there? In small towns, where gossip travels fast, secrets are extremely difficult to keep.

Part of the answer definitely lies with the Pakistani intelligence service. Its operatives have been known for their alliances with the Al-Qaedah sympathetic Taliban, whose Pashtun identity enjoys blood ties amongst Pakistanis, and Peshawar’s Afghan refugee camps.

The cynicism in the Muslim world is based on several factors, not least the timing and the nature of Bin Laden’s demise. By not bringing the Al Qaedah leader to legal justice, the US has done itself no favours.

Whilst not denying Bin Laden’s bloodthirsty legacy, many argue that two wrongs do not make a right.

Then there is the issue of his burial. By dumping his body at sea – in an obvious attempt to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine – the US authorities have insulted the dignity of the Muslim dead, even a man of terror such as Bin Laden.

It will be puzzling to mainstream Muslims that the US was unable to realise that the extremist Salafi-Wahhabi sect, to which Bin Laden belongs, does not permit shrines. They seem to have forgotten that Al Qaedah was responsible for the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

But with the US in the midst of an economic crisis, and led by a Democrat forced to seek favour with Republicans, the demise of Usama bin Laden – the world’s most-wanted bogey man – is a huge, morale-boosting victory.

And whilst the Muslim world – a world threatened more by Al Qaedah’s rigid extremism than the West ever has been – does not regard Usama bin Laden’s passing as insignificant, it does perceive Obama’s triumph as being symbolic.

For many, Bin Laden has been the ghost of an ill-contrived and erroneously perceived clash of civilisations – a man created by the CIA during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and re-invented in another role after that.

The fact is that the international Islamic community has had to bear the brunt of an Islamophobia caused by 9/11 where Islam, and all Muslims, were unfairly seen as adherents of terrorism. This in turn informed the perception of a conspiracy that the US was locked in a war with Islam.

And whether one liked it or not, Bin Laden was able to touch the nerve of many poor, disenfranchised and down-trodden people.

However, in recent years, Al Qaedah’s profile has diminished considerably. Its last major accredited act of terror was London 2005, and the involvement of Bin Laden and his second-in-command, Dr Ayman Al-Zahawiri, more distantly ideological than hands on.

Then there are the uprisings that have spread across North Africa and the Middle East. In spite of leaders such as Hosni Mubarak and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi blaming Al Qaedah for their woes, evidence on the ground has pointed more to social movements yearning for democracy.

The final question surrounding the death of Bin Laden are the multitude of myths that now have to leave the shadows of his being. The abstract nouns of the “War on Terror” need some serious scrutiny. Al Qaedah, for example, was never the multi-continental organisation it was so often said to be.

Al Qaedah was always an idea. It was a tragically literalist, fundamentalist one in which the world could be conveniently divided into a domain of Islam and a domain of Unbelief, and that the domain of Unbelief had to be conquered so that Islam – a victim of secularism and colonialism – could be the victor.

The world needs to know that Al Qaedah’s worldview – a total travesty of the Islamic creed – was always an unwelcome extremism that for a brief historical moment, managed to hijack one of God’s most beautiful faiths.

Halal Certification, the Industry of Doubt

THE “Halalisation” of our consumer space continues unabated. In previous articles on this topic I’ve discussed Halal toothpicks and Halal water, both legal anomalies guaranteed to make classical Islamic scholars roll in their graves.

My recent discovery in a local supermarket that milk and yoghurt have now been certified Halal, or permissible, saw me whistling with amazement. The Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic exemplar, used to drink goat’s milk fresh from the udder.

Our contemporary Halal certification mafia, who’ve totally reversed the natural order of divine permissibility, have made legislative nit-picking a money grabbing art, rebuffing even the teaching of the Prophet.

This is because there are no known records of Prophet Muhammad ever asking the goat, the camel, the cow or the farmer whether their milk was Halal or not.

Halal certification in South Africa (and elsewhere in the Muslim world) has become a billion dollar industry. A recent international Halal conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, attended by hundreds of representatives, confirms this.

The sad truth is that the Halal industry preys mercilessly upon the ignorance of its subjects, and its fears. I have seen this in the Far East, the Middle East, the Indo-Pak, the US, Great Britain and now South Africa.

However, Islam’s legal schools of thought reveal that the understanding of Halal matters is based upon common sense. The corpus of Halal legislation was never designed for obscurantist scholarship, but practical application.

The tragedy here is that the Muslim – and non-Muslim – customer has to pay for this sometimes unnecessary service. The retailer simply passes on whatever costs he accrues in the accreditation process.

At the root of consumer Halal legislation is the procedure of slaughtering meat in a prescribed way and ensuring that no impurities – such as pork – come into contact with any foodstuffs.

When it comes to meat, for example, the conditions are easy to follow. The slaughterer has to be a believer who can pray, the animal has to be killed mercifully, the throat slit with a sharp knife and the blood – containing impurities – bled out of the animal.

Here again, Prophet Muhammad’s example is hugely illustrative. He used to dine with Christian and Jewish hosts, and it’s widely reported that his concern was always the meat. Yet if it was slaughtered by a believer – whether Christian or Jewish– he would not ask any further questions and eat.

And unlike some of today’s muftis, he would not rudely go into his host’s kitchen to peer into pots and to interrogate the make-up every single item in the pantry. Encountering products such as Halal certified spaghetti, coffee, peanut butter, dried fruit – and even nuts – is an affront to the Prophetic adage of “ease over difficulty”.

The Prophet operated on the principle that should be guiding our Halal bodies today – the inherent permissibility of things. One of the maxims of Fiqh (the application of Shari’ah or Sacred Law) is that Halal precedes Haram; that permissibility comes before impermissibility.

This is something that the Halal moguls have conveniently forgotten. A well-known verse in the Qur’an (36:38) says: “Be, and it is”. This command is an affirmation of the permissibility of existence, not its impermissibility.

It does not say, for example, “Be, and it is impermissible”.

Yet, in a frantic rush for money, our Halal certifying despots turn doubt into a lucrative industry. Everything is deemed impermissible by them until proved otherwise. Their inverting of the divine order of things is a serious breach of orthodox theology.

It’s the grave equivalent of turning to God and saying: “My Lord, I don’t trust you. Allow me to check your Creation first.”

Yet these same men, who read the same Qur’an as everyone else, seem to be unaware that its pages are resplendent with soaring verses extolling the virtues, graces and generosity of Creation.

They seem to forget that whilst the material world may be indeed regarded as transient, Muslims are enjoined to savour it with moderation. And to this effect, classical scholars such as Imam al-Ghazali will tell us that doubting the fruits of Creation has never been, and should not be, part of the Muslim psyche.

And yet, the doubts are allowed to fester, and cash-strapped South Africans of all ilk have to pay for Halal certificates on a host of products that don’t need certification.

This would have perhaps been a little more palatable had these Halal certifying bodies invested their millions back into the communities they obsequiously claim to serve. But this has not happened.

The Islamic credo that public interest must serve public interest, regardless of creed, has been betrayed.

The educational, artistic and cultural institutions that these monies should have funded simply don’t exist. There are no major university scholarships anywhere in South Africa offered in the names of any of these bodies.

Considering that it’s our money ultimately funding the Halal certification process, as South Africans we should be vociferously demanding some kind of social delivery in return for our investment. And until such time as one sees this, we can only conclude that self-interest and greed are at play here.

Arab Uprisings: The Clash of Civilisation Myth Falls

THE grand myth of the “Clash of Civilisations”, the clarion call of neo-cons and fundamentalists everywhere, has fallen.

It fell during the Arab uprisings earlier this year when tyrants such as Ben Ali and Mubarak were toppled, and the bloodthirsty rule of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi overturned.

The neo-con mantra that the Arab strongmen had to stay in power because Arabs weren’t mature enough to think about things such as freedom of speech, civic liberty and democracy has been blown away.

The real reason why the strongmen had to keep their jobs – oil interests and Israel – has been rudely exposed like bare buttocks at a black tie function. The overthrow of despotic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya was clearly never in the imperial script.

Even Israel’s intelligence service MOSSAD, everybody’s go-to agency in North Africa and the Middle East, could not predict that the Arab world was going to explode.

Bernard Lewis, the octogenarian academic and author – who coined the unfortunate cliché “The Clash of Civilisations” in a 1990 essay entitled “The Roots of Muslim Rage” – must also be scratching his head in amazement.

Lewis’ simplistic view, obfuscated by academic suaveness, was that every Arab state was a Lebanon waiting to happen. Samuel Huntington, who plagiarised from Lewis three years later, wrote that if “central power” weakened, the Arab states would collapse.

For too long, I feel that Lewis’ deceptively genteel grammar has hidden the face of his Orientalism. For example, am I the only one to extrapolate from his writings the contention that “terrorism” is in our Muslim DNA because of the 13th century Hashishin (or Assassins)?

Lewis’ view – again never directly stated in such clear terms – is that Christendom and Islam are destined to be in a perpetual wrestling match for world power, the two opposite corners – east and west – stamping, clashing and flattening the grass like rival bull elephants.

But with Ibn Taimiyyah’s famous 12th century Mardin Declaration (or fatwa) being re-interpreted by modern scholars, it has become clear that Islam can’t be seen in terms of two different existents: Dar ul Islam (the abode of Islam) and Dar ul-Harb (the Abode of War).

Not even Ibn Taimiyyah, the watering hole of Salafi-Wahhabism and Islamic extremism, separated the world into territories of belief and hostility. Indeed, it was Ibn Taimiyyah who ruled that Muslims could live peacefully as minorities during the time of the Mongol invasions.

This is a critical point – one that often sticks in the throat of the Muslim extremist, Christian fundamentalist, Revisionist Zionist or political neo-con – a person who prefers his world to be in reflected as black-and-white, rather than sweeping technicolour.

Indeed, it was Cairo’s Tahrir Square that eloquently put the lie to Lewis’ idea of civilisational discord, a space where I’m sure he believed east would refuse to meet west. This was when Al-Jazeera showed Coptic Christians protecting Muslims at their Friday prayer, and on the following Sunday, Muslims doing the same for the Copts.

With no central power – the manufactured bogey of the neo-con political conservatives – it was evident for all to see that Egypt was moving to the centre, and not dissolving into sectarian chaos like Lebanon in the 1980’s

I was told by Anas al-Tikriti of Britain’s Cordoba Foundation (who visited Cairo in February) that during the uprising churches had been guarded by Muslims, and mosques by Christians. There was not one incident, he said.

These simple gestures in places such as Tahrir Square go way beyond their spontaneity or symbolism; they signify active tolerance and human togetherness. They provide a living example, a common Abrahamic principle as it were, of noble public conduct where east and west do not clash, but join hands – a juncture where Isaac embraces Ishmael.

Further evidence, if one is not yet convinced, can be found in the United States – ironically the wellspring of the “clash” theory – where Pastor Terry Jones, the celebrated Qur’anic pyromaniac, finally succeeded in torching a Qur’an earlier this month.

The be-whiskered Jones stole the international limelight last year when he threatened to have a mass bonfire of the Holy Book outside his parish. Whilst Muslim indignation boiled, it was the Christian community that openly condemned him, and strongly advised him, to desist from his southern-fried madness.

For Jones, at least, fate worked in reverse. Instead of people lighting bonfires around the country, several churches sponsored a “read a Qur’an day” and interest in the Holy Book itself spiralled, translations selling out at many US bookstores.

The Kairos Palestine document, penned by the Palestinian Christian community in late 2009, is yet another example of the “clash” myth being destroyed. With Hamas a central player, the dynamics of the Palestinian struggle have been frequently pigeonholed as “Islamic terror”. The falsehood of it aspiring for world domination, via the subjugation of Israel, has been an easy lie.

The Palestinian Kairos document, a Christian “word of faith, hope and love”, puts the Middle Eastern conflict into the universal light where it rightfully belongs. Originally written in Arabic, the lingua franca of the east, it is currently being introduced to the western church where the mother tongue is predominantly English.

Perhaps the problem with Bernard Lewis and his ilk is that whilst not intentionally ignoble, they have become entrapped by sub-conscious prejudice within their own culturally determined and colonial frames of reference.

Their single biggest failing has been their inability to understand that “isms” of any nature arise out of historical and political circumstances, inside and outside of their respective belief systems. I think the point is that good men of faith, east and west, have always seen “the other” unconditionally, and not through themselves.

Bethlehem

I HAVE NEVER visited Bethlehem during normal times. I have never seen the city crowded with tourists. In fact, I have probably seen more Israeli soldiers at its checkpoints than pilgrims in Manger Square.

My first visit was in 1997, just after Israel had sealed off the West Bank and Gaza in response to the Ben Yehuda mall bombing in Jerusalem. We had tried to enter the city, but concrete barriers and truculent soldiers had barred our way.

After driving around, we were directed to a track that bumped through a stony field. Our driver went a short way, but then turned back, saying he could not risk damaging the suspension of his commercial mini-bus.

Bethlehem is only 10 kilometres south of Jerusalem, so we returned to the Strand Hotel to wait to for nightfall. We would take a taxi as far as we could on a side road, and using the cover of darkness, sneak past the blockade.

After sunset, we drove from Jerusalem towards the city. Our driver had done this trip many times before. He turned off his headlights, and we nudged along a bumpy track until a hole and pile of rocks blocked our way.

“Be quiet,” said our driver, “don’t let the soldiers hear you!”

Waiting about 100 metres from us in the darkness was our ride into Bethlehem. We crept through a field and slipped into the awaiting vehicle. I was in the passenger seat and as we approached a Palestinian roadblock, found myself staring at the muzzle of a gun.

The rest of our journey into Manger Square was less heart stopping. There was little traffic and the Square itself was empty. In fact, there was nothing to see, as to our disappointment, the Church of the Nativity was closed.

Our visit did, however, invite curiosity. Postcard sellers emerged from the shadows. We were invited for tea at a souvenir shop, its owner opening his doors for us. It sold all the usual olive wood rosaries, chocolate box icons and silver bric à brac on its crowded shelves. I was impressed by a mother-of-pearl model of the Dome of the Rock, but even with bargaining, it was beyond my pocket.

Bethlehem, which is situated on the mountainous West Bank has been inhabited since the Stone Age. It was called Ephrath in the Book of Genesis. It was the birthplace of David and is where he was anointed king by Samuel.

Genesis3 also mentions the burial near Bethlehem of Rachel, wife of Jacob, mother of Benjamin. Her rock tomb has been renovated by the Mamluks, the Ottomans and Sir Moses Montefiore, who built a dome over it in 1841.

Revered by all faiths, its caretaker from 1948 until the 1980’s was the Islamic Waqf Authority. Today, Rachel’s tomb is under Israeli control.

Known in Arabic as Bait Lahm (the City of Meat) and in Hebrew as Bait Lehem (the City of Bread), Bethlehem is distinguished as being the birthplace of Jesus. It was Saint Helena who built the Church of the Nativity in 333 CE over the site of a Roman temple dedicated to Adonis.

The Church of the Nativity is Christianity’s oldest existing building, and has been a monastic centre for centuries. Saint Jerome translated the Bible into Latin from Greek in a nearby cave.

In 614 CE the Persians invaded Palestine, but spared the Church of the Holy Nativity due to a mosaic of the Magi, or the Three Wise Men. According to Scripture, these men had followed a star that had led them to the birthplace of Christ. The Church was saved because the Three Magi – called Kaspar, Melchior and Balthazar – were Zoroastrian priests held in the highest regard by the Persians.

When Caliph ‘Umar arrived in Bethlehem in about 638 CE he decreed that the Church of the Nativity be preserved for Christian worship. In 1099 the Greek Orthodox were removed from their Sees by the Crusaders. During the Ottoman era, custodianship of the church was disputed by the Catholic and Greek churches.

The United Nations Partition Decision of 1947 put Bethlehem under the ambit of Jerusalem’s corpus separatum. In other words, Bethlehem was part of Jerusalem’s international zone. Jordan held control of the city until it was occupied by Israel in 1967, and in 1995, Bethlehem fell under the control of the Palestinian Authority in compliance with the Oslo Accords.

Since 1948, Bethlehem has changed in character from being a Christian city to a Muslim one. Apart from emigration being the option of many Christian Palestinians, the conflict has seen the predominantly Muslim refugee camps of Bait Jibrin, A’ida and Deheisheh springing up outside the city.

My second visit to Bethlehem was in early June 2002, right after ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ and the 39-day siege of the Church. This was when Israeli forces had entered Manger Square in pursuit of gunmen. About 200 people were forced to take refuge in the Church, resulting in a standoff that attracted international headlines.

Much had changed since my visit five years previously, not least of all, the construction of the Gilo checkpoint, one of the 69 permanently staffed checkpoints amongst 500 or so Palestinian barriers dotting the West Bank.

Gilo opened at 5 am and closed at 7 pm. For the 2,000 Palestinians who had to cross it daily, it was a soul-destroying experience. What had been a ten-minute taxi ride into Jerusalem, now took more than two hours each way. For those fortunate enough to work in Israel, it meant queuing at 4 am to get to work by 7 am.

Due to the capriciousness of the young conscripts manning the checkpoint, this did not always happen. People we spoke to said crossing the Gilo checkpoint was more tiring, more stressful – and sometimes even more time consuming – than their job. Settlers on the West Bank used separate roads that bypassed the checkpoints.

We approached Gilo at about 10 am. Women in black hijab with shopping bags and an old man were waiting to be processed. As foreigners with passports, it took us about 20 minutes to get through the metal detectors and turnstiles. I saw the old man fidgeting for his identity papers as a soldier in a bulletproof glass booth barked out orders in Hebrew.

On the other side, we caught a taxi to town – or what was left of it. The main road into Bethlehem was like a set from Frank Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’. Israeli tanks had flattened pavements, wrecked vehicles, ripped out telephone lines, knocked over lampposts and left gaping potholes in the tar. Some buildings had been shelled, others flattened. Even trees had been destroyed.

We stopped at a house where two young boys were sweeping up the debris of their living room. A shell had punctured the front wall and smashed into the opposite one. Another family showed me bullet holes in their front door.

“We were just sitting at home and these soldiers started firing at us,” said a young man.

On a rise above me I saw a house covered with camouflage netting. It was flying the Star of David. “What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s an Israeli lookout point,” replied our taxi driver, who said that the family living there had been evicted.

We also visited Yasser ‘Arafat’s headquarters. F16 fighter jets had reduced it to a series of concrete pancakes, twisted steel and piles of rubble under which were flattened cars. Glass and porcelain crunched underfoot.

Israel, claiming that it was hitting back at suicide bombers during ‘Operation Defensive Shield’, had attacked civic infrastructure and private homes, as well as detaining – without charge – scores of people. Yet in Bethlehem there were no military targets as defined by the Geneva Convention. The city harboured no hostile forces – other than a few resistance fighters armed with aging Kalashnikovs.

Locals such as the 22-year-old Amjad Adnan Sa’ada, who bred birds for a living, could tell me that on 17 June 2001, during the height of the intifadah, an Apache helicopter had fired a missile at his house. He had escaped with severe shrapnel injuries, but two of his uncles and a cousin – all of them innocents – had died.

Muhammad Shehadeh, a local activist, could recount that on 26 May 2002, Apache helicopters had fired several missiles at his house, destroying it completely.

According to international law, military attacks on civilians were illegal. Collective punishment – à la Operation Defensive Shield – was a major breach of its statutes.

Our next stop was the house of a Palestinian martyr, the 32 year-old Musa Abdullah, who had passed away on 22 May. We parked outside his second-floor apartment. Sayyid Walid had been given money in South Africa to donate to a deserving family, and apparently after consultation, Musa Abdullah’s widow had been chosen.

I had visited martyrs’ families in southern Lebanon before, and was not relishing the encounter. Even though there was pride attached to martyrdom, my experience was that for those affected it never diminished the harsh realities of loss and grief. The shock of death, especially when unexpected, was hardly made less bearable by its elevated status.

On a wall outside the apartment was a poster of Abdullah, a thin young man with a moustache.

His wife, a woman in her late 20’s, opened the door with an infant on her hip. The sparsely decorated living room had a picture of the Dome of the Rock on the wall. A piece of tinsel and a red plastic Hibiscus were draped over the frame.

She told us that her husband had gone to the shop during a curfew break (Palestinians had been confined to their houses) to buy bread. On his way back, carrying bags of circular loaves, he had been confronted by an Israeli army patrol. They had told him to lift his shirt to see if he was wearing an explosive ‘suicide belt’. But as he did so, he had been shot dead.

While we chat, his 14-year-old son blusters in Arabic that he also wants to die a martyr. But all I see is his mother biting back her tears. She is close to collapse. Our visit to her has been more than she can bear, and it is with relief that I bid salam.

Our next stop is Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity with its lowered door, the Door of Humility. Apart from engendering a sense of reverence as one entered the church, I was told it had prevented excitable Mamluk horsemen from galloping into the nave.

As we approached the entrance, vendors selling trinkets, beads, rosaries, crucifixes and keffiyahs swarmed around us. Manger Square was empty and they were desperate for business. “Here’s a special present for you,” said one persistent salesman, as I tried to swat him off.

Us South Africans were definitely not going to transform the city’s economy in one short visit, and I felt sorry for these people. Their livelihoods had been destroyed through no fault of their own.

Inside the church it was dingy. There were no pews in the nave, its oak roof supported by a double row of veined columns with efflorescent capitals. I viewed the original mosaic floor through a trapdoor. At its Greek Orthodox altar, marked by a glittering iconostasis, I saw bearded priests.

The grotto of the Nativity, which was accessed by a flight of stairs to the right of the Greek altar, had a rock ceiling stained with soot. It was a syncretism of Orthodox and Catholic tastes. In the grotto’s rectangular space there were three altars.

The spot where it was believed Jesus had been born to Virgin Mary was marked by a fourteen-pointed silver star. ‘Hic se Virgine Maria Jesus natus est’ said an inscription. My high school Latin told me that it proclaimed Jesus had been born there.

Above the marble-encased star a thicket of lamps hung in a tangle of chains – six placed by the Greeks, five by the Armenians and four by the Catholics. To my right was an altar said to be where Jesus had been ‘adored’ by the Three Magi. Another altar, the Altar of the Manger, was used by the Catholics. The walls of the grotto were draped with red curtains.

We proceeded to the mosque of ‘Umar across the square for the post midday prayer. Bethlehem’s mosque was not as historic as it sounded. Although it commemorated the presence of the Caliph in Bethlehem, I was told that its current structure had been built in 1947. I was also informed that during the siege of the Church of the Nativity, Israeli forces had imprisoned and beaten its imam, accusing him of ‘encouraging Hamas’.

After the prayers we were invited to lunch. As we sat down to grilled chicken and salads, we heard a racket from a loud hailer outside. It was attached to the roof of a car that was driving slowly through the neighbourhood.

“Don’t worry, it’s just the announcement of a wedding,” laughed our host, Abu Ahmad, who said that Abu Ahmad’s son next door was getting married to the daughter of Abu Ahmad a block away. The room collapsed in a heap of mirth and giggles emanated from the kitchen when Isma’il asked how much a Palestinian wife would cost him.

The West Bank is one of the oldest inhabited areas on earth, and our hosts told us that frenetic settlement building was fast destroying its heritage. “So much has been destroyed or lost already,” sighed Abu Ahmad, who added that countless prophets had trodden its soils.

“The settlers are stealing our land, pilfering our water and chopping down our olive trees. They even colonise our history. But Bethlehem is our home,” he said, “it’s the only place in the world where you can celebrate Christmas on three separate days.”