\u201cThis day is a pivot of history. It heralds a new dawn of peace.\u201d So declared Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after his country signed the Abraham Accords, a \u201ctreaty of peace, diplomatic relations and full normalisation\u201d with the United Arab Emirates, and agreed a separate deal with Bahrain, at the White House on September 16.<\/p>\n
The agreements make the UAE and Bahrain only the third and fourth Arab nations to recognise the Jewish State. Breaking with the longstanding policy of Arab states to wait for the resolution of the Palestinian issue before contemplating normalisation with Israel, they represent the biggest step forward in Arab-Israeli relations since the 1994 Treaty of Peace between Israel and Jordan, and a major achievement of diplomacy and policy-making for the Trump administration, which facilitated the talks.<\/p>\n
Significantly, the Accords also represent the first step in the formalisation of a powerful new Middle Eastern alliance between the Gulf nations and Israel. Engaged in tacit collaboration for several years now, these countries have been drawn together, in part, by economic interests. Article 5 of the Abraham Accords looks ahead to agreements between Israel and the UAE in finance and investment, healthcare, tourism, and the \u201cpeaceful uses of outer-space\u201d. Already, since the signing of the Accords, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office has announced plans to open an office in Tel Aviv; the Dubai Airport Free Zone Authority has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce; and Dubai\u2019s state-owned ports and logistic firm DP World has agreed preliminary deals with Israel\u2019s Dover Port and Bank Leumi to explore infrastructure development projects. Saudi Arabia, too, is waking up to the benefits of economic ties with the Jewish State. Israeli venture capital and cyber technology firms are reportedly involved in NEOM, a $500bn project to build a \u201ccity of the future\u201d on the Gulf of Aqaba, a key pillar of the Kingdom\u2019s Vision 2030 plan to diversify its economy away from oil.<\/p>\n
If economic interests are important, however, even more so are common enemies. Israel and its Arab allies are united in their opposition to what Mohammed Bin Salman, the reforming Saudi crown prince and a key driver of the new alliance, has called \u201cthe triangle of evil\u201d. This, he explained in a 2018 interview, consists of the Iranian regime, which seeks to export its \u201cextremist Shiite ideology\u201d across the region; the Muslim Brotherhood, which uses democracy to build \u201cshadow caliphates\u201d in the hope of one day constructing a \u201cglobal Muslim empire\u201d; and Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, which also strive for a caliphate, only by violent means.<\/p>\n
Within this overall framework, the new alliance identifies other threats. In an article published in the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0the week the Abraham Accords were signed, UAE foreign minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan denounced \u201cnon-Arab countries and a mob of non-state actors\u201d who \u201cexist in a warped axis of perpetual resistance\u201d, \u201cadvocate one brand or another of extremism\u201d and \u201care nostalgic over lost empires or obsess over a new caliphate\u201d. The references were clear. \u201cNon-Arab countries\u201d denoted first, Iran, and second, Turkey, which the new alliance opposes on account of President Erdo\u011fan\u2019s pro-Muslim Brotherhood policies. (It is also opposed to Qatar, which is not part of the new alliance, for the same reason.) \u201cThe mob of non-state actors\u201d was a reference to Hezbollah\u2014the Lebanese proxy of the Iranian regime\u2014and Hamas\u2014the radical Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood\u2014which consider themselves the advanced guard in the so-called \u201cresistance\u201d to Israel. Those who \u201cobsess over a new caliphate\u201d could equally be the Muslim Brotherhood or IS.<\/p>\n
Notably, the new allies\u2019 assessment of the threats to regional peace is shared by Washington.\u00a0Peace to Prosperity<\/i>, the January document setting out the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cvision\u201d for the region, identifies a \u201cfault line\u201d in the contemporary Middle East \u201cbetween leaders who want to create economic opportunity and a better life for their peoples, and those who manipulate religion and ideology in order to foment conflict and excuse their failures\u201d, where the former are the members of the new alliance\u2014along with other US allies such as Egypt and Jordan\u2014and the latter are Hezbollah, Hamas, IS, and the Iranian regime. Like the new alliance, the US has singled out Iran\u2014described by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as \u201ca radically revolutionary, outlaw regime, the world\u2019s leading state sponsor of terror and anti-Semitism, and the principal driver of instability in the Middle East\u201d\u2014for particular criticism, and has recognised that a common enmity towards the Islamic Republic might serve as the basis for a new stage in Arab-Israeli relations. \u201cThe threats posed by Iran\u2019s radical regime,\u201d\u00a0Peace to Prosperity\u00a0<\/i>explains, \u2018have led to a new reality where the State of Israel and its Arab neighbours now share increasingly similar perceptions of the threats to their security\u201d, setting the stage for \u201cdiplomatic breakthroughs\u201d\u2014such as the Abraham Accords\u2014\u201cand a broader regional security architecture in the future\u201d.<\/p>\n
Underlying this \u201cnew reality\u201d in the Middle East are ideas and ideologies. For the Muslim-majority nations, this primarily means competing interpretations of Islam.<\/p>\n
The Arab members of the new alliance profess themselves representatives of \u201cmoderate Islam\u201d. \u201cWe are simply reverting to what we followed\u2014a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions,\u201d said Mohammed Bin Salman in 2017, of his plans to move away from the more exclusivist aspects of the Kingdom\u2019s puritanical Wahhabi creed.<\/p>\n
In May of last year, the Saudi-based Muslim World League hosted a \u201cGlobal Forum on Moderate Islam\u201d. The result was the Mecca Declaration, which stressed among other things the importance of \u201ctolerance, respect, dialogue and cooperation among peoples as a means to combat discrimination and hatred\u201d. \u201cWe are building partnerships in which Muslims, Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths are advocating common values and educating their diverse communities on such commonalities,\u201d the League\u2019s Saudi secretary-general Muhammad Issa said recently of its interfaith initiatives. In January, Issa led a delegation of Islamic scholars on a historic tour of Auschwitz organised by the American Jewish Committee.<\/p>\n
Islam in the UAE, similarly, is defined to a large extent by\u00a0tasamuh<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0ta<\/i>\u2019ayush<\/i>, often-heard Arabic words denoting \u201ctolerance\u201d and \u201cco-existence\u201d. 2019 was declared the country\u2019s \u201cyear of tolerance\u201d. In February of that year, the UAE hosted a summit between Pope Francis and Ahmed el-Tayeb, the rector of Egypt\u2019s al-Azhar\u2014the leading religious institution in Sunni Islam. The result was the pluralistic \u201cDocument on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together\u201d, which declared that religious diversity had been willed by God and that salvation was anchored in values like peace, justice and co-existence. A few months later, the UAE announced plans for the \u201cAbrahamic Family House\u201d, an interfaith complex featuring a mosque, synagogue and church, due to open in Abu Dhabi in 2022.<\/p>\n
This perspective has found its way into the Abraham Accords. The name and text of the Accords\u2014like the Abrahamic Family House\u2014draw on the idea that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam constitute the \u201cAbrahamic religions\u201d. Under article 6 of the agreement, the parties \u201cundertake to foster mutual understanding, respect, co-existence and a culture of peace between their societies in the spirit of their common ancestor, Abraham\u201d.<\/p>\n
As well as proclaiming these positive values, moderate Islam defines itself against its extremist alternative. The Mecca Declaration condemned sectarianism, terrorism, and \u201cintolerance and discrimination based on religion, colour or faith\u201d. The Document on Human Fraternity likewise denounced terrorism and extremism as deviations from religious teachings. The parties to the Abraham Accords commit \u201cto work together to counter extremism, which promotes hatred and division, and terrorism and its justifications\u201d.<\/p>\n
In particular, the proponents of moderate Islam contrast it with Islamism, the ideological interpretation of the faith which insists that Islam is a comprehensive \u201csystem\u201d regulating all aspects of life, public as well as private, and that political sovereignty belongs only to God, whose law, the Shari\u2019<\/b>a, ought to be the law of the land.<\/p>\n
In spite of their differences and mutual loathing, the three members of Mohammed Bin Salman\u2019s \u201ctriangle of evil\u201d share this basic Islamist perspective. The second article of Iran\u2019s constitution declares that the Islamic Republic is founded on the doctrine of the \u201cexclusive sovereignty\u201d of God. The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood\u2014adopted by Hamas\u2014is \u201cThe Qur\u2019an is our constitution\u201d. The fifth article of Al-Qaeda\u2019s creed states that \u201call rule and legislation belong to God alone\u201d.<\/p>\n
As Islamists, they also share a fundamental hostility to the West, Israel and the Jewish people. They believe that Muslims\u2019 understanding of their religion has been distorted by Western orientalists\u2014many of them Jewish\u2014who present Islam not as a system for governing society but a religion of personal piety and ritual law, and that the West, Israel, and the Jews have long conspired to keep the Muslim world backward and divided. \u201cFrom the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews,\u201d wrote Ayatollah Khomeini in\u00a0Islamic Government<\/i>, the unofficial ideological charter of the Islamic Revolution. \u201cZionist scheming has no end,\u201d declares Hamas\u2019s original 1988 charter, referencing the anti-Semitic forgery\u00a0The Protocols of the Elders of Zion<\/i>, \u201cand after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, the Islamists have been among the most vehement in their opposition to the Israel-UAE deal. \u201cThe savage, criminal nature of the heads of the Zionist regime has not changed a bit since the first decades of the occupation of Palestine,\u201d proclaimed the Twitter account of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader, two days after the deal was signed. For them, the values proclaimed by the representatives of moderate Islam, and agreements like the Abraham Accords, are barriers constructed by the enemies of Islam to prevent the realisation of their all-encompassing system of life.<\/p>\n
Seen in light of this cleavage in modern Islamic thought, the Abraham Accords represent a vision for a post-Islamist Middle East, of a \u201cmoderate\u201d Arab-Islamic world committed to the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence, and ready to embrace the West, Israel, and the Jewish people in a spirit of \u201cAbrahamic\u201d fraternity. Significantly, it is a vision supported not only by the signatories to the Accord, but also by Saudi Arabia and Egypt\u2014always bellwethers of important trends in modern Islam\u2014and key Islamic institutions such as al-Azhar and the Muslim World League. For that reason\u2014and with a number of other Muslim-majority countries reportedly ready to consider normalisation with Israel\u2014there are grounds for optimism that this vision is becoming the new norm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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