 Intelligence regimes have destroyed the development of the Arab and Islamic world by restricting freedoms, caging creativity and forcing people to submit to dictatorships, said Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.
| That's an interesting departure for him... |
In his weekly seminar on Wednesday, Fadlallah outlined an Islamic position on the region's security regimes. Fadlallah said Islam bans eavesdropping on the personal level on the grounds that it exposes the private defects and the secrets of others. Likewise, Islam bans political espionage, he said.
| Oh, yasss. Everybody knows that... |
He said a government does not have the right to tap people's phones or follow their personal affairs, except in cases of emergency or cases of a threat to national security. Even in such cases, the government should not treat its citizens as suspects by spying on a large majority of a population under the pretense of preserving political or social security, he said.
| Keep going, Mullah. Eventually you'll arrive at the view that people should be allowed to do as they damn well please, unless it involves conking other people on the head and stealing their property or blowing things up. Once you accept that dangerous premise, it's a short step to the idea that they can go to any kind of mosque they want, or to none at all, or to a church, or a temple or what have you, and that the only difference between a Believer™ and an infidel is the hat. When that happens, you're going to end up with people marrying outside their immediate families, women wearing what they please, dogs and cats lying down together, and the occasional drunk lying in the gutter. At that point somebody's going to put out a fatwah on your ass. |
Fadlallah said the Arab and Islamic world had paid a heavy price for allowing secret services complete authority to interfere with political and social life and restrict freedoms in the name of preserving public security or fighting Israel. "These barbaric regimes succeeded in restraining the people's ambitions for change and social creativity," he said.
| Then, of course, he goes on to blame us for all the problems he can find... |
Fadlallah strongly accused the superpowers of strengthening such regimes, even charging them with enrolling presidents in their intelligence services. The cleric said that the CIA had employed most Arab leaders at one point, often discarding them or toppling them in the name of freedom and democracy when they ceased to be useful. |