{"id":1637,"date":"2016-02-12T15:58:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T12:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransview.com\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2016-02-12T16:03:23","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T12:33:23","slug":"iran-us-and-clash-of-values-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iransview.com\/iran-us-and-clash-of-values-dilemma\/1637\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran, US and Clash of Values’ Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"U.S.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (left) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif walk in sideline of nuclear talks in Geneva.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By:\u00a0Sonia Mansour Robaey *<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Values and the West’s double standards approach to ethical pluralism.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ethical pluralism is focused on individual preferences in modern pluralistic societies.\u00a0 It does not dictate what is ethical or what is not. \u00a0It only creates a space for rational dialogue on the diversity of values aimed at reaching a consensus within the limits of reason.\u00a0 Ethical pluralism is practised in West for controversial moral issues like abortion, gay rights and Euthanasia.\u00a0 Although laws are legislated on these issues in some western countries,\u00a0in many cases they do not constrain those who oppose them to live by them.\u00a0 It is believed that ethical pluralsim creates more tolerance and more freedoms for the individual.\u00a0 The essence of ethical pluralism is that moral codes cannot be forced, they emerge by consensus through a rational discourse and dialogue on values.\u00a0\u00a0 Ethical pluralism represents the culmination of many centuries of western thinking in political Philosophy, moral Philosophy and Ethics.\u00a0 Ethical pluralism in western democracies is assumed for example in J\u00fcrgen Habermas\u2019 \u2018Discourse ethics<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u2019 where, within western societies, ethical diversity and pluralism require a commitment to rational discourse and dialogue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However,\u00a0 wide dialogue, based on rational discourse and leading to consensus on moral values in western societies, is denied by the West to others when advancing its own set of values in non-western societies,<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, western moral values, having emerged by consensus, are forced on other cultures and societies who did not participate in the rational discourse leading to a consensus on these values.\u00a0 Another difficulty in implementing western moral values in most non-western societies is related on the status of the self in society.\u00a0 Most non-western moral values are anchored, not in individual preferences, but in community norms, elders\u2019 wisdoms and local laws, which ancient Greeks used to call \u2018nomos\u2019. \u00a0 In non-western societies, core values are transmitted between generations where intergenerational dialogue and closeness are strong, contrary to western societies.\u00a0 They are not discussed in the public sphere where they play a cohesive role in which the individual self identifies more with the community than with the ego.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a tension in the West\u2019s approach to values which allows the individual a greater space of liberty within western societies but denies this liberty to individuals in other societies attached to their traditions and the norms of their communities.\u00a0 In fact, there is a faulty assumption in West that the individual Self in non-western societies is modeled on the western Self, despite historical and cultural differences.\u00a0 This tension has become palpable with the advent of the globalization of markets, cultures and ideas.\u00a0 The West stands as the promoter of one set of values, its own, over others, without regard to context, History, and culture.\u00a0\u00a0 The West\u2019s hegemonic approach to values is being tackled differently in non-western cultures, either by total assimilation, peaceful but active resistance, distrust and retreat, or violent resentful extremism directed against the West in the case of Sunni Islam. \u00a0Colonialism was built on the assumption that the colonized were different in humanity while globalization is built on the assumption that ‘there is no such thing as society’, only individuals exist, as Margaret Thatcher famously said.\u00a0 Both colonialism and globalism approach non-western cultures with models of the individual self-forged in West and imposed on non-westerners, incompatible with many cultural and religious identities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ethical pluralism then, although unequally practiced by West, is not part of the relations the West establishes with other societies, where it is assumed that only individuals exist and that they must consume the product of the ethical consensus built by other individuals in West.\u00a0\u00a0Since 911, as the assumption grew for a \u2018clash of civilisations\u2019<\/span>,\u00a0 there was an upsurge in this approach and the forcing of western values through military campaigns, invasions and occupations preceded and followed by violent backlashes from extremist fundamentalists.\u00a0 Post 911, international relations have become a domain of confrontations thought to be confrontations of civilisations and values.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. A broken dialogue on values feeds terrorism and simulates for us a \u2018clash of civilisations\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Many Muslims today live in communities, societies and countries which emphasize traditional values and the supremacy of the community over the individual.\u00a0\u00a0 Although Muslims are not the only ones who live in traditions which are antagonists to western values, they are currently the main culture and religion to react and to be targeted by this confrontation and it is mainly Sunni Muslims who are engaged in this confrontation which has claimed many lives and wrecked many countries and their social fabrics through terrorism and the war on terror.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the reason why a dialogue on values is urgently needed between the West and Muslims.\u00a0 Some in the West as well as in Muslim countries do not believe in the dialogue on values, firmly standing on both sides of the values divide, committed to wars.\u00a0 But others believe in this dialogue. President Obama articulated his desire for dialogue with Muslims in his Cairo\u2019s discourse early during his first mandate<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 But due to many factors, including America\u2019s previous war commitments and voices of confrontation inside his own administration, Obama wasn\u2019t able to act on his Cairo\u2019s discourse. We will never know if Obama was sincere about this dialogue.\u00a0 But what we know is that he did not blindly follow those who wanted a confrontation to the end with Iran. Recently, Ayatollah Khamenei wrote on his twitter account that Obama wrote him a second letter in 2009 full of affirmative accounts about Iran.\u00a0Ayatollah Khamenei said he had the intention to reply to the letter but after Obama supported the protests against the government in Iran in 2009 he refrained from doing so<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 Obama acted against the voices of confrontation with Iran, but not before the failure of the 2009 colour revolution for regime change.\u00a0 He finally succeeded in reaching a deal with Iran that, if its implementation is unhindered by more confrontation, should naturally open a dialogue on values between Muslims and the West.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the Iranian side, the deal reached between Iran and the West silenced the voices of confrontation and opened possibilities to initiate a dialogue between Muslims and the West.\u00a0 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was first to open this dialogue on the values of Islam with his two letters to western youth (January 2015 letter<\/span><\/a><\/span> and November 2015 letter<\/span><\/a><\/span>).\u00a0 Khamenei\u2019s initiatives came in a context of a renewed wave of Sunni terrorism by ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), more barbaric and more sectarian than the terrorism witnessed since 911, and threatening this time the Near East, the Levant and Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the nuclear deal was being worked out between the West and Iran during the year 2015, many terrorist attacks by Sunni Muslim extremists hit Muslim countries, especially Iraq and Syria, as well as Europe.\u00a0 Most notable were the two attacks in France in 2015, both claimed by ISIS, attracting wide and sustained attention in western media. \u00a0ISIS is virulently anti-Iran and anti-Shia.\u00a0 It promotes a return to the\u00a0 Sunni Caliphate.\u00a0 Khamenei\u2019s first letter spoke of a different kind of Islam in an attempt to educate western youth on the real sources of knowledge on Islam, away from the terrible and negative image that was being presented to the West by ISIS.\u00a0 The letter was deliberately addressed to youth because, as Khamenei argued, dialogue with western leaders was futile since they were the ones promoting the kind of Muslim extremism embodied by ISIS through the stigmatisation of Muslims and the religion of Islam.\u00a0 There is unwillingness in West, especially among those who fear and stigmatise Islam, to learn about the true religion of Islam and Muslims beyond the terrorists clich\u00e9s. \u00a0Ayatollah Khamenei\u2019s second letter to western youth was published two weeks after the attacks on the Bataclan concert venue in Paris that claimed many youthful lives.\u00a0 In it, Ayatollah Khamenei chides the West for its double standards towards the victims of terrorism and for the imposition of western culture by force uniformly on Muslim societies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learning about the true religion of Islam, lifting the peaceful image of Islam and Muslims against the hateful image propagated by terrorists, finding common ground among differences in values, reaching out to youth, were also the main topics of Obama\u2019s speech, and the first, in an American Mosque in Baltimore On February 3, 2016<\/a>.\u00a0Obama\u2019s speech at the Mosque was in many ways a foreign policy speech too in which he condemned sectarian policies implicitly criticising Saudi regional policy. At some point he addressed his critics who say his policy against ISIS is not clear by stating that clarity against terrorists can be found only in countering their message of division, sectarianism and hate.\u00a0 Obama quoted passages from the Qoran more than once during his speech.\u00a0 Only two years ago, such a move by Obama, going to a Mosque, delivering directly to Muslims a message of peace and quoting the Qoran, was unthinkable.\u00a0 What happened between the Cairo speech and the Baltimore Speech?\u00a0 The hate didn\u2019t stop, the terrorism didn\u2019t stop, the divisions and the confrontations didn\u2019t stop.\u00a0 To be fair to Obama, the Cairo speech was meant to inaugurate an era of dialogue between the West and Islam, but Obama couldn\u2019t act on this alone, he needed partners among Muslims leaders in the ME.\u00a0 The Baltimore speech comes after the nuclear deal with Iran, Iran\u2019s participation in the fight against ISIS, and the endless possibilities for finding common ground between the West and Islam these events may produce. Obama also realized that an American Mosque and the Muslim American community are the best place to start this dialogue, not Cairo. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3. A clash of values is not a clash of civilisations.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Although the lives lost to terrorism in France and the West in general aren\u2019t more precious than other lives taken by blind terrorism elsewhere, the attacks in France and the West create a greater wedge between European and Muslim populations at large, inside and outside, in neighbouring countries around the Meditterranean basin, and beyond in the Asian and African continents where the majority of Muslims live.\u00a0 While American neocons, who so much wish for the clash of civilizations, rejoice of the increasing wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims far from their own shores separated and shielded from this clash by two oceans, Europe is increasingly becoming the theatre of the clash.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the nature of this clash?\u00a0 It is important to make a distinction here between the clash of civllizations and the clash of values.\u00a0 While the clash of civilizations includes also a clash of values, it is about more than values.\u00a0 The clash of civilisations leads to wars because civilizations aim for self preservation and fight against their annihilation.\u00a0 The term \u2018civilisation\u2019 implies not only values but a geopolitical, economic and military space.\u00a0 The clash of values can be approached differently and resolved through dialogue.\u00a0 Even inside western societies there is a clash of values.\u00a0 This is why western societies practise ethical pluralism.\u00a0 Values can intersect between two civilizations and common ground can be found amid differences.\u00a0\u00a0 Many values evolve from the inside, but also from contacts with other civlizations.\u00a0 In the ancient times, these contacts were mostly established through wars.\u00a0 The citizens of ancient Greece considered non-Greeks as barbarians and non-humans because ancient Greece was a \u2018closed\u2019 civilisation, that is until the advent of Alexander\u2019s conquests and the Hellenistic period that followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The term \u2018clash of civilisations\u2019 is greatly misleading<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 It implies a geopolitical confrontation.\u00a0 It is both a testimony to the neocons\u2019 warring agenda as well as to their backward thinking.\u00a0 Wars aren\u2019t needed today to establish contacts between civilisations or resolve differences in values between civilisations.\u00a0 Today\u2019s means of communication are many, multi-level, fast and easy. The fall of the former communist bloc countries should have led us to a more cooperative, less confrontational world, militarily speaking.\u00a0 Instead, the neocons created the clash of civilisations set-up to produce more wars and more confrontations to advance American hegemony in a unipolar world.\u00a0 With 911 and its aftermath, Sunni Muslim terrorism, initially born out from the collaboration of America\u2019s cold war ideology and Sunni Wahhabism against the former communist bloc, set the scene worldwide for a spectacular and threatening clash of values with humiliations, provocations and blasphemy of religious symbols.\u00a0 A clash of values enacted amid wars, fear and mongering on the world scene, leading to greater divisions, erasing the common ground between civilisations, fulfilling the \u2018clash of civilisations\u2019 prophecy. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is Europe and Asia where most people on the planet, and most Muslims live, that are set to take the full impact of this clash being prepared for decades now by the neocons. The neocons\u2019 game in Europe<\/span><\/a><\/span> is to treat Europe\u2019s woes resulting from a clash of\u00a0values between east and west, between\u00a0 north and south, with more confrontations and wars.\u00a0 The neocons who are the promoters of the clash of civilisations are the new enemies of the Open Society<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the post 911 reality created by the neocons. A world that has every possible tool to make communication and dialogue on many issues, including values, easy and natural, yet is locked in confrontations and wars. As it takes two to dance, the neocons\u2019 project to produce a clash of civilisations is greatly helped by Sunni Muslim resentful extremism and its state sponsors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately for us, the majority of Muslims do not want this clash of civilisations<\/span><\/a><\/span> which has been hurting Muslim countries and Muslims more than others.\u00a0 Fortunately for us too, Iran refuses to engage in the clash of civilisations.\u00a0 Amid the tensions created by 911, Iran has shown the world it can make peace without losing its dignity by not responding to the humiliations and provocations of those who want wars for the sake of wars.\u00a0 I have argued before<\/span><\/a><\/span> that both the nuclear deal and Khamenei\u2019s letter to western youth form a coherent approach by Iran to treat the woes of Islam and show the West that there is an alternative to confrontation with Islam and Muslims through dialogue on values and the respect for the dignity of others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those in the West who want a dialogue on values with Muslims to peacefully resolve differences instead of a clash of civilisations and wars can now count on Iran\u2019s leadership.\u00a0\u00a0 A dialogue on values can be much more enriching than the forcing of western values on Muslim societies.\u00a0 A dialogue on values doesn\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t end by one set of values taking on another but by finding common ground amid differences.\u00a0 That\u2019s the essence of communication and diplomacy and the respect for the dingity of others and our common humanity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia, which has worked hard to end Iran\u2019s isolation, has a diplomacy which instinctively understands the potential of resolving the issue of the clash of civilisations<\/span><\/a><\/span> that feeds today\u2019s devastating terrorism eating at the heart of all civilisations.\u00a0 Because Russia’s neighbour, Europe, is by excellence the theatre for this clash.\u00a0 And because a clash of civilisations that counts on terrorism for self-realization will undoubtedly lead to the end of civilisations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The US however, despite the nuclear deal and the recent d\u00e9tente with Iran, is still very much sitting on the fence, between war and peace. \u00a0Hesitations and mixed messages, as well as Obama\u2019s end of mandate, risk annihilating the dialogue that the Iran deal is promising, putting the initiative back in the hands of the neocons.\u00a0 Obama\u2019s last year in office must prove decisive in its open approach to the ills born out from the confrontation with Islam and Muslims if we are to bend the arc of History definitively away from the neocons.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I wrote in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy<\/span><\/a><\/span>, only a dialogue on values can silence the voices of confrontation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Sonia Mansour Robaey, PhD, teaches Philosophy and Ethics, does counselling in Ethics. She is an observer and analyst of Middle Eastern and Levantine politics. Follow her on Twitter\u00a0@les_politiques<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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