13 July 2005
It is time to talk a little bit more than about just what is happening in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Muslims’ situation is very bad. There is an obvious attempt to wipe Muslims out of the map if they do not agree to live by what has been repeatedly mentioned by Bush, Blair. Martin, and others as “our way of life” and our “values.” No other way of life and no other value matters. Terrible crimes are being committed to impose a “way of life” on Muslims. These are the crimes which no one would even feel like describing; not accidentally but with a purpose aimed at creating societies which submit to the will and way of life prescribed by the modern day fascists. The aim is to keep Muslims away from Islam in accordance with the ideologists of the Washington regime and that aim is to be fulfilled by any means and at all costs. Briefly there are 150,000 dead people in Afghanistan and Iraq until now. The rest of the populations are subjected to a life which is hardly better than death. Economies and infrastructures are totally shattered and the only job available are working as collaborators for consolidation of occupations. Besides the concentration camps, there are areas, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, where no body knows what is going on, because there are no journalists and no monitors allowed. We fear that the death toll is much higher. There are reports of concentration camps even on ships in the international waters. The extent of the crimes against humanity has crossed all limits of comprehension. The question is: How come this is going on before the eyes of the “civilized” world and there is no one who can hold the culprits accountable? Some people argue this is a war against terrorism and the extremists. In fact all those who died are ordinary Muslims, not even knowing the complex classification which the war lords have invented to divide Muslims. Yet the “civilized world” world is mum over Afghanistan occupation and there is no way it can deal with the occupation of Iraq and Palestine. Similarly, there is no "collateral damage." Every damage is intentional from day one to break the back of resistance in Muslim populations as a whole.This is total indifference and complacency and this is confusion between values and interests; principles and interests. This is what is serious because no civilization, or no man, can live without principles, values and dreams. That's what happened to the Roman Empire. That is what happened to the Muslim empires, to the Turkish empire and the British empire and that is what is happening to the West right now. But then that is not a black and white situation. We have a situation where we have almost undivided sympathies of the public, most of the press, and yet in the democratic societies this is not reflected in the policies of the governments and the media. This is another question mark. Although in the United States, the general public is moved much more easily than in Europe. Why is this happening in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine? Did these places deserve this kind of treatment by the US, Israel and UK? What is happening now are condemnations, expression of concerns but not actions by the concerned quarters. Hallow claims of democracy and freedom and liberation are to deceive their own people and their own self: to assuage the conscience of the West with lies and self-deceptions. This is not to question the goodwill of those who expose the truth. Not at all! This is not to question the courage of those who risk their lives to bring the reality before our eyes, but the overall attitude is that 'we have been attacked so you must pay for the terrorism that emanates from your part of the world'. Or, try and blame all sides; a not very intelligent construction is used, 'No one is blameless'. Whatever it may mean, it is very much used when it comes to dealing with the US and Israeli occupations..'No one is blameless' is true in itself but it 'says nothing. It makes it easy not to act and easier to overlook what is happening: That there is an aggression! That there is a victim!! There is total confusion despite the overwhelming and incontestable evidence of the lies upon lies of the aggressors. The attempt to equate the two, the aggressor and the victims, is almost pathetic. And this is the most painful of all. It is much more human to say, well, we can not help or we are not willing to help and you are on your own, than to sit and watch the slaughtering of innocent women and children and to pretend to be fair to both the killers and the killed. This is not a war on terrorism. This is a war to make and then break “terrorists” to terrorize all Muslims everywhere into total submission to the US and Israeli will. This is another excuse that since this is a war on terrorism so let them fight to exhaustion for an indefinite period, as it is being claimed repeatedly, “we are into a long war,” and “it could last decades.” Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq are fighting against a common enemy for their right to self-determination. Muslims there are fighting to end direct US occupation. At the same time, Muslims are struggling in Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Morocco, Jordan and many other places to get rid of the mini-terrorists imposed on them by the US and its allies. It is a war between normal human people and primitive savages; brutes who stop at nothing. Who tout their values and way of life, but have no respect for other’s religion and way of life at all. The question is, where do these people grow? What trees do they grow on? Where were they before? What happened to their minds? Who told them to do so? We have the media pundits saying we do not teach them to slaughter and torture! Who told them? What happened? We do not have an answer. Who is to blame for the upbringing of the monsters who are flattening town after town in Iraq. Who are butchering scores of civilians at homes, in the cars and in the buses. Who being their criminal assault with attacks on hospitals, ambulances and media offices and reporters. They are not in small numbers or a “few bad apples.” Thousands of them have the license to perpetrate savagery in a systematic manner with the help of the latest technology which man could invent to inflect misery and death on fellow human beings. They kill, torture, rape, loot, destroy, and confiscate whatever they wish. There are videos of US marines who are very ashamed of what they are told to do. They are giving presentations on how savage they had been before taking on the mission to stop the needless war. They are showing pictures of the torture and their fellows inhumanity to the occupied people. They seek forgiveness. Surely many of them will soon ask Muslims to forgive them, but it will not help Muslims. Some of Americans and Europeans want to know about Muslims and Islam. In short, despite introduction of all divisions in the name of “liberal,” “moderate,” “extremist,” “fundamentalist” and other shades of Muslims and Islam, all Muslims are known for a tenacity to go on living their own lives and keeping their identity whatever happens. This is what is at stake now. They are forced to lose their identity and merge into the crowd that helps and sustains the tyranny of capitalist and corporate terrorists in the name of secular and liberal democracy.This is not the first time that Muslims are under attack for what they believe and what they stand for. It has been the case since centuries. It is not easy to defend one’s way of life and right to self-determination when monsters and primitives of this kind are ruling. Instead of arms and ammunition, Muslims are more equipped by their psychological and social structure to succeed in a state of peace and order and, may be, that is why they must be now destroyed or at least partly destroyed, in order to throw them hundreds of years back. The capitalist system has reached it breaking point. It must grow to sustain. The corporate terrorist of the Multinationals have invisibly joined hands with the religious zealots who have a mission to transform the Muslim world in their own image. Unless there is a uniform, homogeneous world of billions of consumers, capitalist dream can never be realized. Similarly, the same is necessary for establishing the Christian Kingdom of God. These missions are complementary. That’s why every move by the oil mafia is as much back by the crusaders as by the religiously motivated political leaders such as Bush and Rice and a whole army of the neo-cons. Although different actors are involved, but the only common way to sustain capitalism, the tyrannical order in the name of democracy or to establish a Kingdom of God is to destroy systematically everything that Muslims have, especially their values, their way of life and, of course, their culture, history, heritage, economy and military strength. The damage inflicted so far is before our eyes. Almost every thing of worth has been destroyed. The focus now is on destroying the identity of a people, and that’s why the stress is on defending “our way of life.” The public would be fool enough to believe this mantra because so far none of the alleged terrorists have claimed that they are out to change the way of life in the West. The freedom fighters everywhere demand the occupiers to get out of their land. Stop injustice and oppression of their people: leave them alone. They cannot feed and raise their kids the way they want to. How can they think of changing the way of life and values in Europe and America? It is not easy, however, to keep on killing and torturing millions of people. It takes lies besides time. It also causes some embarrassment for the “enlightened” regimes in London and Washington, not so much for the one in Tel Aviv. There is a growing public awareness of the lies told to justify the genocides of our age and it is difficult to avoid questions for ever to come. Sooner or later, the modern day fascists will come out and start openly challenging Muslims to choose between Islam and non-Islam. War lords on the media and academic fronts have already challenging the validity of the Qur’an and cursing those who believe in the “totality of the Qur’an” or those who consider it a “final manifesto of God.” What else is left behind with a Muslim to consider himself Muslim after discarding the fact that “Qur’an is the final manifesto of God” or who challenges the totality of it, knowing full will that the Qur’an tells Muslims not to reject or accept it in parts. On the other side there is a determination among Muslims to go on living with their identity intact. And this is the characteristic of Muslims that who would never enter a mosque being Muslims, they will, after all this is over, build even larger mosques, and enter them in even larger numbers. The more the face and dirty tricks of the enemies of Islam come before Muslims, the more their determination to preserve their way of life increases. After all they, too, have a way of life and a manifesto to follow. The situation is very catastrophic in some places. For the time-being it is tanks, aircraft, heavy artillery pieces, and attack helicopters using banned weapons and destroying every thing. Concentration camps are in full swing. We may not realize the enormity of the situation because we are living in these times. But the situation is far worse than any period in human history when fascists and warld-mastering demi-gods were on a rampage. So we are bound to see a very protracted prolonged war, more suffering of innocent civilians more deaths and more casualties, until something happens or until the victims or the aggressors are exhausted. Guess who that side will be? But it is not the end of the world, especially for those who believe in God or in humanity or in any kind of values, and who do not confuse values with interest.Abid Ullah Jan’s latest book, The End of Democracy, has just been released. <[email protected]>
