After deliberate absence of
any serious efforts for peace-making, the US Obama
administration has reconvened the Arab-Israeli peace
talk without a defined agenda. It is unusual and
strange peace adventure. Previously, Bush
administration had claimed a media famed “road map for
peace”- a map turned out to be without a road and
prospects of peace, hastily agreed upon by the Arab
rulers that had no elements of peace. If the parties
were serious this time, they should have clarified the
peace agenda for result-oriented pursuit. A rational
agenda for peace would set the goal to end the Israeli
occupation since 1967, stop the Jewish settlements,
return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland,
security for the two states (Israel and Palestine),
and the establishment of an independent State of
Palestine. The global politics is changing and most
powerful ones determine the fate of the weak nations
and deprived people. The Arab states 19 or so lack
visionary leadership, unity of purpose and proactive
leadership strength to make a difference in
competitive global affairs. The Israeli leaders
represent their unchanged national interest to hold a
position of political strength with continued US
support but the Arab rulers live in the past and seem
to be indifferent to listening and learning of new
leadership traits for the 21st century
innovative politics and to engage educated and
intelligent people in political discourse and decision
making. Nobody knows where would the peace come from
and who would deliver to whom? They are all parties to
conflict-making and conflict-keeping for their
self-interest except the Palestinian people victimized
by the global politics of the few.
When the European lived in dark
ages and fought within themselves for influence and
survival, the Arabs were the most progressive people
articulating a model civilization to pursue balanced
(al-mizaan) human development (material and spiritual)
to give meanings to freedom, peace and equality and
clear purpose to global sense of humanity called Ummah.
The message of Islam was meant for the whole of the
mankind to be one humanity living on one planet in
peace and progress. But when the Europeans crusades
colonized the Islamic world, they destroyed Islamic
institutions and divided the Arabs and Muslims and
made them fight for their existence as was their own
history of the European cultures. Despite of the oil
generated paper wealth and transitory economic
prosperity, Arab people lack Islamic unity and force
of being one Ummah to restore their own historical
linkage to change and human progress. The Western
media views them as source of entertainment and one
track business deals to sell the obsolete weapons and
consumer products but not valuable partners in global
community. We live in an information age of images
carved up by the few for business and human
exploitation. The Western media networks portray their
own manufactured images of the contemporary Arab and
Muslim world – more so of the oil exporting Arab
nations – twisting tail of the camel, women covered
in burkhas or splendid shopping malls full of walking
black veils versus bikinis.
Despite the history of tribal
warfare contributing to national feuds in the Middle
East, Arab rulers facing difficulty in catching up to
modernity and how to be progressive with all the
stolen wealth from the public oil revenues thru the
neo-colonial corrupted system of governance in a
modern age of ignorance. Syed Qutb (Milestones), the
respected Islamic thinker and scholar once warned, "Jahilliya"
(ignorance) is a movement and has its own culture,
plan and force, and it wants to destroy you within but
do not follow the influence of ignorance - "Jahilliya"
age.
The Arab masses do have informed
consciousness of the global political reality; but the
rulers are uneducated and too dull to share a
sustainable sense of humor for public consumption.
American media fosters strange images of the Arab
world. Israel is at the top in political imagery
promotion. Obama and Netanhuyu are the master piece
images beamed-in when it comes to media news making in
the Middle East as if they are the heroes of all those
living in the Middle East. Inadvertently, this exposes
the US policy that America and Israel are one in
strategic goals and military actions. Arabs have no
entry in the making of political scenario because they
do not have smart leaders or public institutions to
THINK and change the adverse propaganda ventures as
once they were slaves under the European colonial
domination. The European imperialism denied human
identity and dignity to the Arab subjects. The
European imperialist never allowed the subjects to
exercise rights of freedom choice and vote. Democratic
values were seen relevant only to the Europeans but
not to the Arab-Muslim subjects. The Arab leaders in
particular, love the body and soul of the Anglo-Saxon
complexion, and would even bow to its mirror
transformed reflection. One American Honey or a
British sweetheart can make the difference without
going to a battlefield. The Arab armies are not the
armies of Islam and their Generals are drawing room
decorated Generals and lead nobody. The national
freedom and operational security of the petro-dollars
maintained Arabian economies remained a myth.
Nobody wants to talk about the
real-world problems. Arab elite sectors are
deliberately kept fat, lousy and ignorant to ensure
American – European collaborative upper hand in the
entire global political imagery making. As if there
are no other flourishing human societies or culture
except the US and Europe. Jerusalem, an occupied city
by the Israelis under the International Law and the UN
resolutions, the western media calls it Jewish
capital. The Western mass media is enriched with a
culture of lies of deceptions. Petro-dollars rich Arab
leaders are too busy to THINK of this growing
dichotomy, giving free hand to America-European all
around the political environment. Global culture of
ignorance "Jahilliya" entices human desires to
cultivate pleasure and comforts. It entangles human
being in pleasure-seeking adventures. Arab oil
exporting people often derive solace from pride and
palaces. No statistical data is currently available to
indicate how long these self-ingrained illusions will
continue.
Arab people are talented and
progressive but irony is that the American mass media
does not want to see it that way. There are no Arab or
Muslims leaders to offer a sense of intellectual
security to the Muslim Ummah or be able to speak
wisely to the global audience. They live in palaces,
not with the people. The Arab masses look for change
from subjugation to the Western masters and freedom
from the foreign cultural exploitation. They deserve
leaders like Sultan Salahuddin but how to bring about
this change from primarily authoritarian regimes unto
Islamic governance befitting to their need and genius?
At the outset of the continued Western Crusade against
the Islam in Iraq, educated Arabs begged their leaders
to speak out, challenging the Western nuisance of
"Islamic terrorism” and its linkage to the occupation
of the Arab heartland – Palestine and Iraq. Arabian
newspaper editorials and reader’s letters often
persuaded the leaders to come out into public but the
leaders would not face the public and stayed in
palaces like the carved dummies on wall. As
subservient to their masters, some of the oil
exporting Arab rulers helped America and Britain to
bomb the Iraqi civilians and destroy Iraq’s national
existence.
At the beginning of 21st
Century, it seems, the world has gone terribly benign
and out of focus – the Western perceived reality has
no reason to be reality. If it is an absurd one-sided
viewpoint – what the world should look like: Arabs and
Muslims as "terrorist" while the real terrorist –
Bush, Blair and Cheney are called men of peace. Muslim
spectators prefer silence as the body language to
avoid standing for Islam and end up losing the
official financial aid.
Western ruling elite have many
intellectual and operational problems; they do not
know what peace means and how to define it? After
deliberate absence of any serious efforts for
peace-making, the US Obama administration has
reconvened the Arab-Israeli peace talk without a
defined agenda. It is unusual and strange peace
adventure. Previously, Bush administration had claimed
a media famed “road map for peace”- a map turned out
to be without a road and prospects of peace, hastily
agreed upon by the Arab rulers that had no elements of
peace. If the parties were serious this time, they
should have clarified the peace agenda for
result-oriented pursuit. A rational agenda for peace
would set the goal to end the Israeli occupation since
1967, stop the Jewish settlements, return of
Palestinian refugees to their homeland, security for
the two states (Israel and Palestine), and the
establishment of an independent State of Palestine.
The global politics is changing and most powerful ones
determine the fate of the weak nations and deprived
people. The Arab states 19 or so lack visionary
leadership, unity of purpose and proactive leadership
strength to make a difference in competitive global
affairs. The Israeli leaders represent their unchanged
national interest to hold a position of political
strength with continued US support but the Arab rulers
live in the past and seem to be indifferent to
listening and learning of new leadership traits for
the 21st century innovative politics and to
engage educated and intelligent people in political
discourse and decision making. Nobody knows where
would the peace come from and who would deliver to
whom? They are all parties to conflict-making and
conflict-keeping for their self-interest except the
Palestinian people victimized by the global politics
of the few.
The Arabs are cultured and
civilized people with immense tolerance for diversity
as the European and now American have capitalized
their life, markets and governance. Historically,
Arabs were leaders in progressive culture and
development of human civilization, whereas, the West
was in infancy learning from the Arab knowledge,
explorations and scientific achievements. They
remained the single most contributors of 1000 years of
advanced civilization in Al-Andalusia (Spain). When
the Arabs left Islam and stopped listening to voices
of intellectual reasoning, they fell in disgrace.
Money can not buy the honor and integrity lost because
of the modern ignorance and arrogance of the
neo-colonial Arab ruling elite. If the Arab leaders
could change and reform themselves and return to their
originality of Islamic THINKING and behavior, they are
the best people to invite towards goodness and forbid
evil. Arabs exponents of peace do speak but are unable
to reach the majority of the media controlled
humanity. The Arab religious scholars see the light
only in mosques, whereas the people live in darkness.
Their barricaded Islam is supplemented by matching
regular salaries and making it non-active part of the
distant history.
Arab people are ancient, tolerant
and enjoy credible history, Americans are new in
civilization and rush to hasty conclusions, only to
THINK after the facts and feel guilty for misleading
the world on the Iraqi’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Islam disciplined the Arabs to THINK in advance, not
just the self, but for the good of the whole of the
Humanity. When Arabs left the universal mission of
"goodness", they were defeated and continued to be so
to this day. Could they regain the global leadership
through Islam? AbdulHamid AbuSulayman (Crisis in the
Muslim Mind), believes so: “our glorious past and
achievements are linked to Islam, not without it.”
Al-Qura’an stipulates, "Allah is
ever Forgiving and Merciful."
The compound mark of reality is
getting thinner but western media’s plan renovate it,
paint it and erect solid walls to oppress the human
voices for change, understanding and collaborations in
a global human context. Arab masses reaction to the
Zionist occupation of Palestine, and the freedom
movement to undo the Zionist terrorism made them so
called "terrorist". Arabs have a history of
civilization, not terrorism. European persecuted the
Jews for ages, not the Arabs, and American never cared
about it, well after the 2nd World War
until the Jews established their institutionalized
influence and power in politics, mass media and
financial domains. People and nation of the world must
listen, learn and understand this forgotten reality.
Americans have ignored it and they are in Iraq and
Afghanistan, daily being ambushed until they will
leave Iraq and Afghanistan abruptly in a worst mess
than Saddam Hussein and Talaban. On the American media
screen, Arabs are defeated and punched to "their
knees" as Eric Morgalis points out, but in reality, it
is the beginning of an evolutionary awakening to know,
learn and understand, who the real enemies of the
mankind are.
Once Muslims were the pioneers
to have developed the humanity for civilization in
thinking, education, philosophy, sciences, technology,
medicine, architecture, jurisprudence, human
relations, Taj Mahal, Al-Hambra, Cordoba Mosque and
the largest library of Cordoba (prior the invention of
the printing press), that was burnt down by the
Christian crusaders in 1492 A.C. Muslims and
humanity are inseparable. To discredit the Arabs and
Islam is to discredit the humanity itself. Humanity is
not politicking. Neglected and subdued Arab masses are
waiting to be heard – they can make the difference
with the help of Allah and without the dull and
ignorant leaders; they can help to uplift the besieged
humanity to reclaim its rightful global conscience,
peace and harmony and to rebuild its man-destroyed
heritage for the GOOD of ALL - ONE HUMANITY LIVING in
ONE WORLD in COMPLETE SUBMISSION TO ONE GOD.
In the previous centuries, Arab
proactive visions articulated the change and progress
as an essential precept of Islamic THINKING and
obligation. Under the European colonialism, they lost
what they had contributed for the best of mankind.
Understandably, Arabs and Muslims in general were
enslaved and devoid of opportunities. But went wrong
after the post-independence period? Despite all the
material resources and comforts and palaces, why have
the Arabs and Muslims in general, not been able to
progress and make the earth feel their presence?
AbdhulHamid AbuSulayman (Crisis in the Muslim Mind),
believes that when the Muslims compromised the Islamic
thinking and practices, they fell into disgrace under
foreign subjugation. The reality that contemporary
Arabs must face and plan to come out of the stigma of
ignorance, economic prosperity and transitory
security. The problems of ignorance and arrogance need
to be recognized and diagnosed. One most useful remedy
is that Arab-Muslim leadership MUST listen and learn
from the scholars and intellectuals of the Ummah.
Leaders have no education how to lead and most are
devoid of intellectual vision and foresights, whereas,
Muslim scholars and intellectuals of the Ummah are
knowledgeable and rich in wisdom and creative
strategies, and can offer assistance and guidance to
the ignorant and authoritarian rulers. Change is part
of the Islamic discipline leading to progressive human
development for the good of all, not revolution. Often
revolutionary clichés have one act play and do not
facilitate peaceful and durable change for societal
growth and success. It is possible to build a NEW
FUTURE of the Ummah with restored progress, honor and
political weight and make it better and brighter for
the deprived masses only if the leaders are open to
listening and learning for change. The planned CHANGE
must envisage new people-oriented system of political
governance based on the Islamic values and replacing
the Western backed authoritarianism and self-generated
dynasties and encouraging new educated, responsible
and intelligent generation of young Arabs to help
reshape the political landscape with institutionalized
approaches to make policies and decision in the best
interests of the people, not of the protective ruling
class living in hidden palaces. Once the change is in
process, and new proactive and intelligent leaders
will emerge to hold the offices and positions of moral
and intellectual responsibilities across the Arabian
societies, the world would view the Arabs differently
with respect and values at the global political
theatre of New Age politics. If the current redundant
foreign implanted Arab rulers would be open to change
and listen to the voices of REASON and HONESTY, the
global community would listen to them too.
Dr. Mahboob A.
Khawaja, an academic with special interests in global
peace and security and conflict resolution, and
comparative civilizations and author of numerous
publications in global affairs. His latest book
includes: To America and Canada with Reason. Comments
are welcome:
kmahboob@yahoo.com
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