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| Israel-Palestine | |
| Dirty little secrets | |
| 2004-02-15 | |
| I like this guy a lot. He’s a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears every Thursday in the Toronto Sun and other newspapers. BTW, this isn’t hard news so if the website master deems it fit to delete, please do so. By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun ...But it was in the Middle East where nationalism fused with Islam into a political ideology - Islamism - whose effects have brought ruin to the region - and beyond. The dirty secret apologists for this tragedy in North America and elsewhere refuse to address is how Muslims have suffered as a result of Islamism, have been driven from their homes, tortured and killed across the Arab-Muslim world. There has been no systematic collection of this horrible data over the past five decades, but the numbers run into millions. It matters little within the larger context of the struggle for Islam’s soul whether Muslims have been primarily the victims of tyrannical authority in Muslim majority states, or of Islamists waging battles against corrupt power elites. No one in the Arab-Muslim world during this period exceeded the bloody-mindedness of Iraq’s fallen despot, Saddam Hussein, who blended a Nazi-type nationalism with his version of Islamism into a sheer hell for Iraqis. The world also witnessed many Islamists and Muslim apologists rallying to Saddam’s defence with contorted arguments of anti-imperialism in all of its variations. I thought Saddam had his conversion to Islam only after the war started (and ended) with his taped calls for jihad. So I’m not sure what Saddam’s version is exactly. The other dirty secret is the continuing victimization of Palestinians by many of their fellow Arabs, and of their being used as pawns in the war of Islamists against Jews and Israel. Neither Islam, nor Muslims, have any quarrel with Jews and Israel. The conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis was, and remains, a nationalist contest over land. This contest could have been avoided, or settled at any time since the full reality of the Holocaust became known, if Arab Muslims in a position to lead had chosen to live by the principles of Islam. A slight disagreement there. In many instances Islam itself is the problem, atleast the way I understand it. The best remedy in my opinion is secularism. Instead, they opted for the German model of nationalism in opposing Jewish demands for a homeland in historic Palestine. Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was the leader of the Palestinians during the years between the world wars of the last century. His embrace of the German fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, during World War II was not a whimsical choice. I wonder who Arafat is embracing these days. Islamists deliberately incorporated the racist doctrine of the Nazis into their thinking and politics, and brazenly propagated anti-Semitic literature as a tool in their war against the Jews and Israel. Consequently, the damage Islamists have done to the very legitimate grievances of Palestinians is immense. Moreover, many Muslims, in supporting Palestinian rights without repudiating the rabid anti-Semitism of the Islamists, have contributed to the undermining of Islam as a religion of peace and coexistence and sabotaged their moral authority to speak of justice in Palestine, or elsewhere.
That’s not an optimistic outlook since I don’t believe the war on terror is winnable. It’s like trying to defeat evil, but evil will always exist. The change has to come from within Islam itself, just like Christianity changed, but I don’t see that happening for a long time yet. | |
| Posted by:Rafael |
| #4 Excellent post, .com |
| Posted by: 1234L 2004-2-16 8:35:28 AM |
| #3 Excellent points, folks. The common factor, which the article author dismisses as root cause without sufficient argument to support doing so is, of course, Islam. In practice, and this means well-researched Islamic text is almost irrelevant, the Muslims (some say Islamists - I find no such distinction in actual practice) can and do justify anything they want. The facts of Islam's clear directions to Muslims to subjugate all others to Islam is the core issue. How can Islam peacefully coexist with any other ideology or faith when: 1) Muslims are forsworn from even friendship with non-Muslims 2) Muslims are directed to consider themselves Muslims first and always - no other affiliation (nationality, etc) matters 3) Muslims are directed to subjugate, "as cattle", all others until they "fill the world" 4) Muslims have few restrictions upon how they achieve this in their dealings with non-Muslims - and honesty is not among them; i.e. the first casualty dealing with Islam always seems to be the truth - lies are totally acceptable; so how may non-Muslim nations ever deal with or make treaty with Muslim nations? In practice, they cannot. 5) Muslims have no rigid religious hierarchy; dealing with this Mullah or that Imam will have no bearing or effect upon how Muslims who follow someone else will behave. The convenience of this subtlety for those who do not want peace has been obvious in the M.E. for decades - and is a prime reason why no peace will be achieved as long as there are practicing Muslims there. 6) Muslim practices, embodied in Shari'a Law, are in conflict with all modern notions of civility; honor killings and the brutal treatment of women will always make Muslims pariahs to anyone who subscribes to civilized concepts and precepts. 7) Muslims consider Islam as perfect - the literal I see no reasonable way nor rational path to follow to stay out of conflict with Islam. Where there is trouble in the world, 90%+ of the time it is Islam, in practice, seeking to fulfill the goals set forth above. As KSM said of the failure (yesterday) of AlQ to disrupt the Japan / Korea 2002 World Cup, the problem was a dearth of Muslims in Japan to support the operation. That's it in a nutshell. Where there is a concentration (critical mass?) of Muslims, you will find conflict - from terror to barbaric honor killings to brutal suppresion of women to strife due to zero-compromise politics. Islam is there in sufficient numbers to make it so. You want peace? Then there must be a dearth of Muslims. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-2-15 6:19:25 PM |
| #2 The WoT deals with the short-term problem. The long-term problem is demographic. All of the world is undergoing population stablization EXCEPT the Muslim world and sub-Saharan Africa (compare India and Pakistan on this score). As long as Muslim women are kept in subjugation, birthrates will remain high. Couple this with economic stagnation, and you have millions of young men coming of age every years with no job prospects, and few marriage prospects either (it doesn't help that older, richer men get t have 4 wives). These frustrated young men make easy recruits for Islamismism -- and the fact that Islam itself makes no distinction betweeen religion, politics, and law makes it all the easier to brew up the evil tonic of terror. But how to handle "demographic jihad"? (the term, btw, is Robert Spencer's). Any ideas? |
| Posted by: closet neo-con 2004-2-15 4:30:17 PM |
| #1 Rafael, I think the WOT is winnable, but I probably define victory entirely differently than you do. I define victory as the elimination of state sponsorship of terrorists and the recognition by all legitimate states that states sponsoring terrorism shall be international pariahs subject to isolation or intervention. To me victory also includes a trip through each substantial rogue state by a Coalition of willing rat exterminators such that a reaonable level of lasting vigilence shall enable the free people of the world to live without substantial fear of being the subject of a mass killing. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-2-15 4:14:30 PM |