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Egyptian Intellectual Speaks Of the Arab World's Despair<br><br> By SUSAN SACHS<br><br>NYTimes - 8 April - [C]AIRO, April 6 — Early in the morning, while most of Cairo is<br> asleep, Ahmed Kamal Aboulmagd watches the war on television and<br> despairs over the path taken by the United States. Even in the gloom<br> of 4 a.m., this is not a normal emotion for Mr. Aboulmagd, a<br> sprightly man of 72 who has lived through more than his share of<br> revolutions, wars and international crises, yet has maintained a<br> marvelously sunny outlook.<br><br> "We should never lose hope," he remarked the other day from his<br> 18th-floor law office overlooking the Nile, a room crammed with books<br> and brightened with paintings of sailboats on calm waters.<br> "Frustration is not an option." <br><br> But in truth, Mr. Aboulmagd admitted, he is just whistling in the<br> dark. Never have America's Arab friends, he said, felt so estranged<br> from the United States. <br><br> "People in Egypt and many parts of the Arab world used to love<br> America, and now they have a sense of being betrayed, misunderstood,<br> taken lightly," he said. "And when it comes to the central problem of<br> the Middle East — the Arab-Israeli conflict — we feel that even a<br> minimum of American even-handedness is missing."<br><br> Mr. Aboulmagd is one of Egypt's best-known intellectuals, a senior<br> aide to former President Anwar el Sadat, consultant to the United<br> Nations and ever-curious polymath whose interests range across the<br> fields of Islamic jurisprudence, comparative religions, literature,<br> history and commercial law. <br><br> Like many educated Egyptians of his generation, he is a man whose<br> views on democracy and political values were shaped by reading the<br> United States Constitution, the Federalist papers and the writings of<br> Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson. <br><br> For him the United States was a "dream," a paragon of liberal values<br> to be emulated by Arabs and Muslims seeking to have a voice in the<br> modern world. <br><br> One of his daughters lived in the United States. Mr. Aboulmagd<br> studied there, earning a master's degree in comparative law at the<br> University of Michigan in 1959. He served as president of the<br> administrative tribunal of the World Bank in Washington. And he has<br> spent more than 20 years of his life working on projects aimed at<br> promoting dialogue between the Western, non-Muslim civilization and<br> the Arab-Muslim world. <br><br> Yet these days, in his opinion, something has gone terribly wrong. <br><br> "Under the present situation, I cannot think of defending the United<br> States," said Mr. Aboulmagd, a small man with thinning white hair who<br> juggles a constant stream of phone calls and invitations to speak<br> about modernizing the Arab world.<br><br> "I would not be listened to," he added. "To most people in this area,<br> the United States is the source of evil on planet earth. And whether<br> we like it or not, it is the Bush administration that is to blame."<br><br> When speaking of President Bush and his administration, Mr. Aboulmagd<br> uses words like narrow-minded, pathological, obstinate and<br> simplistic. The war on Iraq, he said bluntly, is the act of a "weak<br> person who wants to show toughness" and, quite frankly, seems<br> "deranged."<br><br> Such language from a man of Mr. Aboulmagd's stature is a warning sign<br> of the deep distress that has seized the Arab elite, those who preach<br> moderation in the face of rising Islamic radicalism and embrace<br> liberalism over the tired slogans of Arab nationalism. <br><br> Similar opinions can also be heard these days from wealthy Arab<br> businessmen, university professors, senior government officials and<br> Western-leaning political analysts — the people whose support could<br> help advance the Bush administration's professed mission: to bring<br> democracy to the Arab world.<br><br> Mr. Aboulmagd has a hand in just about every institution or board<br> that counts in Egypt, including al Azhar, the authoritative<br> institution of Sunni Muslim learning. He is consulted on<br> inter-cultural dialogue by the United Nations, the Arab League and<br> the European Union. He has taught law in universities in Egypt, Sudan<br> and Kuwait.<br><br> He is the epitome of the Arab establishment. Sprinkled throughout his<br> conversation are anecdotes about President Sadat and recollections of<br> discussions with luminaries like the United Nations general<br> secretary, Kofi Annan. He receives phone calls from Arab presidents<br> and kings. His office is filled with mementos from trips around the<br> world as a lecturer and consultant. An oversize Koran in a green<br> leather case rests on a coffee table along with a rendition of the<br> scales of justice in brass and alabaster. <br><br> He has devoted decades of his life and his writings to the cause of<br> modernizing Islamic life and promoting understanding between Muslims<br> and non-Muslims. <br><br> Now those efforts, Mr. Aboulmagd said, have been set back by<br> President Bush's "exaggerated" response to the terror attacks of<br> Sept. 11, a response he believes only encouraged mutual enmity and<br> suspicion by painting Muslims and Arabs as potential enemies to be<br> reformed or destroyed.<br><br> "I find what is happening to be a serious setback in the endeavors of<br> noble people who have realized the commonalities among different<br> civilizations and nations," he said. <br><br> The problem, he said, is that the war on Iraq is widely seen in the<br> Arab world as an attack on all Arabs, meant to serve the interests of<br> Israel with no compensating outreach to aggrieved Arabs.<br><br> While the 1991 Persian Gulf war, under Mr. Bush's father, was waged<br> with the understanding that the United States would engage itself in<br> the search for peace, he said, this war was launched without a<br> parallel American effort to compel Israel to forge a genuine peace<br> with the Palestinians.<br><br> "The United States has played a destructive role by giving direct or<br> indirect green lights to the Israeli government to do what it<br> pleases," Mr. Aboulmagd said. "This is ruining Israel's future in the<br> area. And whatever, even if all the Arabs sign up, this is a truce,<br> this is a ceasefire, this is not peace. It is not peace. If you want<br> peace you must have genuine desire for peace."<br><br> If the Iraq war comes to be seen as an American war against Islam, he<br> added, President Bush may be partly to blame. "He believes he was<br> chosen by the Almighty to fulfill a Christian mission," Mr. Aboulmagd<br> said. "Or at least he was made to believe that by the people around<br> him."<br><br> Still, at the end of three hours of discussion, he returned to an<br> optimistic viewpoint — a position that clearly fits his nature.<br><br> "Many people are talking about planet earth being no more a safe<br> place for anyone, but I am optimistic," he said. "I believe dialogue<br> is needed now, so we should not give in to desperation, to loss of<br> hope, to pessimism. Rather we should act actively and continue the<br> path of dialogue and the path of understanding, simply because we<br> cannot afford the other consequence." <b off></b>
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