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Dirty little secrets
I like this guy a lot. Heâs 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 isnât 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 Islamâs 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 Iraqâs 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 Saddamâs 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 Iâm not sure what Saddamâs 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.
Thatâs not an optimistic outlook since I donât believe the war on terror is winnable. Itâs 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 donât see that happening for a long time yet. Posted by: Rafael 2004-02-15 |
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