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By: Ibrahim Ramey
Is the “unthinkable” destruction of human life on earth by atomic weapons now re-emerging as a clear and present danger in the modern world? It very well may be --with Muslims at the very center of the controversy, and the danger.
There is no shortage of bad news from the Middle East, but recently many of us who read these dispatches were confronted with a sobering reality: major political leaders in Israel are now openly calling for pre-emptive attacks on Iran in response to Tehran’s refusal to halt it’s national program to make enriched Uranium and, ostensibly, weapons-grade material for nuclear weapons. And all of this emerged while the United States entered into an agreement to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia. This is, presumably, the same nuclear technology that could precipitate an attack on Iran.
Iran claims that their nuclear program is not a weapons program, but a program to make fuel for peaceful nuclear reactors. The Iranian insistence on their right to this fuel enrichment program (which more than 40 nations in the world also have in place) has resulted in international economic sanctions against Iran and even more severe measures planned against Iranian international bank holdings.
Some interests are willing to wage economic warfare against Iran over the nuclear issue. Others seem to prefer war of the more literal type. Both options, clearly, have consequences for millions, not only in Iran, but throughout the world.
But what should we do? And how can we encourage a response to this crisis consistent not only with our faith, but with international law as well?
My first argument is one that advances the idea of common sense. Nuclear energy technology may be perfectly legal for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to possess (under the “peaceful uses” clause of the Non-Proliferation Treaty), but the pursuit of nuclear power options is certainly not wise: there is the problem of disposing of radioactive waste, which even the “advanced” nations have not solved, as well as the (relative) ease of transforming nuclear power technology into weapons-grade Uranium - a substance which may, even under the tightest security protocols, wind up in the wrong hands.
Then, there is always the possibility of a Chernobyl-type catastrophe.
The more immediate task, in this context, is for Muslim environmental advocates - and peace advocates, who are usually the same people - to present the facts that support non-nuclear, renewable energy options for nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. Solar energy immediately comes to mind. And the considerable scientific and intellectual capital of the Islamic world could devote some brain power, and material resources, to developing and popularizing technologies that generate energy from renewable sources. No one, I believe, would attack a nation because it uses sunlight as a power source.
But a more immediate question looms: if Iran should persist in its pursuit of enriched Uranium, how should the world safeguard Iran from pre-emptive attacks by Israel or the United States?
The simple answer lies in the simple obedience to international law. The spread of nuclear technology and possible weapons proliferation is a serious matter, and an issue of grave importance to the security of the world. There should be inducements for the “newer” members of the nuclear club (India, North Korea, and Pakistan) to dismantle their arsenals, just as the bigger and older club members (the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, and China) severely restrict, and ultimately end, the export of nuclear material and technologies that can be used as building blocks of nuclear weapons. This might be a useful and necessary measure that builds the confidence required for the more difficult - but necessary - steps toward global abolition.
But just as important, the policies of the United States that selectively threaten some nations while encouraging nuclear developments in others must be vigorously opposed.
A pre-emptive attack on Iran, whether from America or Israel (or both) would likely escalate into wider war and unthinkable mass killing in a part of the world that has seen far too much bloodshed already. The American president must, as a matter of morality and public policy, take this option off the table, and make such statements from other nations unacceptable as well.
By all means, we should demand a single, un-hypocritical, and transparent standard that prohibits sanctions and threatened military actions against nations like Iran. Especially from neighbors, in the international community, that are guilty of the same nuclear sins.
Muslim leaders and organizations in the United States must, in the final analysis, leverage our political and moral influence here in support of peace and non-proliferation.
Ibrahim Ramey, an original member of the U.S. Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, is a longtime global peace and human rights activist. He currently directs human rights work for MAS Freedom, an affiliate of the Muslim American Society.
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