Look to Your Orb for the Warning; or, superficial is no degree of understanding
(Q) said:
Good one, T. Hatemongers? Who exactly are we hating, T?
Muslims, quite clearly. You, personally seem to be stoking an abiding hatred of all people and things theistic.
In the meantime, S.A.M. actually has a viable point. While some are quick to be horrified by people wrapped so wrapped up in religion as to be neurotic or even psychotic, it seems—in the U.S., at least—that, faced with mass murder in pursuit of petroleum resources and other economic rewards, we are supposed to just shrug, maybe mutter, "That's a shame, but we gotta do what we gotta do," and carry on with our daily lives.
Extending that comparison to the inherent violence of a culture, the displacement of violence unto other people does not change the fact that it
is violence.
The killing of a wife, or sister or daughter, for honor
is twisted. But in the case of individuals or families caught up in such severely dysfunctional philosophical expressions, it is far less an indictment of an entire multinational culture than our fantasy-driven wars in Vietnam or Iraq testify about American culture.
Look back in Western history. The tale of how we emerged from our own systematic barbarism is complicated and dependent on diverse and often subtle factors. But even some very apparent components of our story are absent in the Islamic world. Economy and education, for instance. And, as our Western needs compel us to interfere with such developments in those nations, we contribute to the problem. We could certainly try to help, but so far our help has been limited to coddling tyrants in pursuit of resources and profit thereby abetting the destabilization of the masses, and in some cases actually fomenting extremism. Remember that the now-hated madrassas fueling the Taliban were established with no small contribution by the United States. It helped our fight against Communism to do so, and nobody seemed to recognize—or, if they saw it, nobody seemed to care—about the future implications. I don't know, does "Whoopsie-daisy!" cover it?
To the careful observer of Muslim countries it is quite evident that a phenomenon hardly visible in the 1960s and the early half of the 70s appears to be gaining momentum and mass approval. A growing consensus among an increasing number of intellectuals as well as the common people suggests that “the time has come to try Islam.”
There also is evidence that an increasing number of national governments feel it necessary to appeal to Islamic principles to maintain legitimacy. They do this either through the adoption of Islamic apologetics to justify their policies or through the implementation of various Islamic laws.
There are numerous examples of such efforts in press reports in the 1970s and 80s. In Pakistan, Zia Ul-Haqq, upon assuming office, aligned himself with the Jamaati Islam and attempted to implement Islamic laws. Other nations, including Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Bangladesh, the Sudan and Indonesia, introduced various Islamic laws. Syria found it necessary to explain that Baath ideology is grounded in Islam, while Ja’far al-Numeiry of the Sudan has written a book justifying Islamic government, entitled The Islamic System: Why?
(Haddad)
No matter how many times I mention this twenty-six year-old article, most people just shrug it off. Much of modern Islamic tyranny is simply the latest incarnation of modern tyranny. Attaching the faith to Ba'ath ideology doesn't seem to have done much to help either the political philosophy or the people who lived under it. And Sudan? Well, we can't really say that painting the governing philosophy with Islam got them anywhere. It is, of course, easier to simply denounce Islam.
Likewise, for comparison, painting up nationalist tyranny with Socialist colors did little, in the end, to help either the Nazis or the Soviets.
It is more convenient and gratifying, then, to blame a shoddy paint job and transfer the outcome to the superficial label than it is to examine and understand the sources of the underlying corruption.
_____________________
Notes:
Haddad, Yvonne Y. "The Islamic Alternative". The Link, v. 15, i. 4. September-October, 1982. Americans for Middle Eastern Understanding. http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=120&aid=163
