Negotiation

"In view of their peaceful nature, negotiations are more beneficial than violence and terror. Violence is a coercive procedure and its effect is temporary. Negotiating, on the other hand, is constructive and stabilizing; it has a lasting effect because it depends on the elements of rational persuasion and mutual respect, on the observation of the principle of equality, the endorsement of friendship and understanding, and the rejection of discord and struggle. Thus, the benefits of negotiation are immediate and come swiftly..."

From a lecture by Professor Wahbah al-Zuhaili, Director, Department of Islamic Jurisprudence and its Schools, Faculty of Sharia, Damascus University, Syria.

Negotiation in Islam

The value of negotiation is well understood throughout the Middle East. The ability to have negotiations is of course possible and dramatically needed and necessary. What will it take to make such a thing happen, a negotiated understanding between, for example, the USA and Iran.

The Bush administration exclaims that it does not negotiate with evil. This is problematic because as it slams the door to negotiation, it throws open the door to war, a major war.

The idea that war is actually the desired course of action comes into play. The dreadful sense that people could possibly be so cavalier about war is heart dropping.

On the other hand, war has been very carefully sanitized for the American public. If we don't see it, we don't feel it and our leaders are well aware of this fact. No one sees the "blown to bits" corpse, the limb-less child, the brutally destroyed face, the agonizing pain of the victim, or the casket of the young American soldier. Its absent, so there is no pain to share.

Rumsfeld was fond of talking about the humanity of his Iraq war, the humanity of the smart bomb. In fact this is the desecration of the English language and western morality. There is no humanitarian bomb. The notion that there is such a thing, is pure deception. It is another aspect of the sanitization of war.