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 he
new annual survey by Freedom
House on the state of liberty in the world lists seven Muslim
countries among the ten least free in the world — and most
of the other Muslim countries do not fare a great deal better, although
Turkey, Bangladesh, and Bahrain indicate that notable progress toward
democracy is not inconsistent with Islam.
During Ramadan,
I confess, I did not do much fasting. But I did do a lot of thinking,
trying to explain to myself why I had paid so little attention over
the years to the state of democracy and the protection of human
rights in Muslim countries. In self-defense, I reply to self-accusation
with the retort that ending Communism was the first priority —
behind the Iron Curtain, in China, Cuba, and North Korea, and even
through foreign outreach throughout Africa and Latin America. I
should have known better.
After September
11, we are fighting also for Muslim civilization — for that
great and noble civilization of Islam, which once built a region
of gleaming cities and learning and science that were the envy of
the world.
When our American
forebears wrote in the Declaration of Independence of "certain
inalienable rights, endowed in us by our Creator," they were
not describing merely American rights. They were describing the
rights of all men and women everywhere. They were describing Muslim
rights, too.
The United
States of America has been fighting against terrorism, yes,
and against lawlessness, and the taking of the lives of innocent
non-combatants, including women and children.
But, far more
important, we need to make sure that the United States of America
is also fighting for something.
The United
States is fighting for FOUR UNIVERSAL LIBERTIES, which are
also MUSLIM LIBERTIES. We are fighting:
First, for
the liberty of Muslims to worship the Almighty [Allah] without
terror or coercion, according to conscience and tradition, so
that the praises of Allah may be sung freely in every part of world,
with the same freedom that others enjoy, in praising God as their
conscience directs.
Second, for
the liberty to study, learn, and inquire, and the liberty
to write and speak, from the honesty and purity of one's own
heart, docile to the light that the Almighty [Allah] sheds in all.
Third, for
liberty from poverty and lack of opportunity — for freedom
from want, for Muslims everywhere in the world.
Fourth, for
liberty from torture, tyranny, and arbitrary autocratic government,
so that all the human, civil, and political rights of Muslims will
be respected — everywhere in the world.
These are the
four liberties we fight for. Liberty of worship, liberty of speech,
liberty from poverty, and liberty from tyranny. Basic human liberties.
Simple things. Basic things. Fundamentals.
We invite all
men and women of good will — all peoples everywhere —
to fight at our side for these four liberties, everywhere in the
world.
There is nothing
we would like better, there is nothing that would make us safer,
there is nothing that would make our national destiny more complete,
than the achievement of a world in which these four liberties were
respected, and practiced, and deepened — everywhere in the
world, without exception.
Not only in
the so-called developed world. But also in the less-developed nations.
Not only in
the rich nations. But in the poor nations most of all.
Where a people gain liberty, they produce abundant bread. Where
the tents of liberty are pitched, foods of every sort are heaped
up in abundance.
The world we
should work for in the decades just ahead, is a world in which Muslims,
like every other people on this planet, are free to worship as conscience
directs them; a world in which Muslims, like every other people,
are free to inquire and study and write and speak; a world in which
Muslims, like every other people, escape from poverty by the millions,
and find abundant opportunity to employ their immense wealth of
God-given talents to make a better Earth; a world in which Muslims,
along with all other peoples, are free to practice the arts of democracy,
civility, and all the fundamental human rights that are endowed
in every man and every woman on this earth, by our Creator. Who
is One, and Who is Great. May His name be praised, through liberty
for all.
We Americans
claim no rights that are American rights only. All our rights are
also Muslim rights at the same time. Every right endowed in us,
is endowed also in every Muslim, and by the same Creator.
All of us together,
every woman and every man, are made in the image of the same Creator.
From that Creator, each of us receives our innate dignity, our noble
vocation, our call to liberty, and mercy, and justice, and love.
"The God
Who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time," Thomas
Jefferson wrote.
It is a liberty
that God gave to all, equally. For too many decades we in America
have not thought enough about extending that same liberty to our
brothers and sisters in the Muslim world.
In this generation,
vast changes are likely to sweep through the Muslim world, as the
peoples of Muslim nations demand liberty and prosperity, and seek
to regain their place as leaders among the nations of the civilized.
It is important
for the United States to be out ahead of that curve, in order to
be faithful to our own traditions.
[Note: The
obvious allusions are to FDR's State of the Union Address to Congress
on January 6, 1941, well in advance of Pearl Harbor, but already
establishing the positive aims on whose grounds he would be defending
western civilization if war came. He sought to establish a positive
world vision for an era of world war.
In our case,
we have the uncommon but necessary duty of describing a vision for
Islam as well as for ourselves. Our task is to describe Islam better
than our enemies do.
We have the
advantage that both the Taliban government and the Ayatollah's government
in Iran — the two most prominent experiments in a hijacked,
politicized perversion of Islam — have been hugely unsuccessful
and are bitterly hated by Muslim populations. Our task is to put
in words an alternative vision, attractive to Islamic populations,
because human and universal, but expressed in accents accessible
to them.]
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