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29 Jan 2012 By Mahboob A.
Khawaja, Ph.D. "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these
rights, Governments arc instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed,
that whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government............ (Thomas Jefferson, American
Declaration of Independence: 07/04/1776) Arnold Toynbee (A Study of
History) clarified the European paradoxes of history
that when political, moral and intellectual values
come close to stagnation, "warriors become dreamers"
to overrun the world. European colonization of the
racially inferior herds was a planned scheme of things
not an accidental history - an obsessive political
belief that Europeans were superior in their
intellect, ethnicity, race, color and human
configuration than the other people of the globe.
Nazi Germany patronized and militarily carried out the
national strategy to fix the ethnically and
politically inferior species in their lens and to take
over by force the neighbors around. Britain embarked
on invading and conquering the fertile heartlands of
Asia and Africa to occupy their natural resources and
use human beings as slave trade - a business ran
efficiently across the seas unto the making of new
America. French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese
and other followed the suit. Strangely enough, none
seemed to have challenged the other Europeans in their
domain of business enterprise, military control and
imperialist quest for political supremacy. Many
Europeans interpret it - a history making events for
the emerging liberal democracy, industrialization and
cheap labor sweat of Asian and African origins. Lord
Macaulay, a British Viceroy of India spelled out the
futuristic education policy in clear terms: "Indian in
color but British in taste, thinking and behavior" -
the new neo-colonial generations of future Indians
seen from the British eyes and mindset. After
centuries of warfare and killings of million and
millions of fellow human beings, they claim to be
civilized nation - the nuisance baggage you will hear
often referred to at global academic conferences and
at the redundant UNO Security apparatus. Were all the
European imperial forces acts as terrorism or
peacemaking across the globe? Racially conscientious
Europeans forced by the nature and compulsion of the
self-image went on to global conquests by radiating
aggressive and violent acts as a deliberate policy – a
political engine to encroach the Asian and African
continents for centuries. H.G. Wells (Outline of History,
Bk 5) said it right: "So began the first of the most
wasteful and disastrous series of wars that has ever
darkened the history of mankind." Terrorism originates from the
Western colonial powers but none would dare to concede
it for the FEAR of unknown intellectual, moral and
political consequences in contemporary history. When
the European businessmen explored new world markets
for diminishing resources and their armed forces
invaded and occupied the vast Islamic world, there
were no television, internet, video cameras and stone
throwing public and voices of reason to call them
foreign mercenaries, aggressors and terrorists. The
colonization scheme of things was not outcome of the
Western democratic values to spread freedom, liberty
and justice but ferocity of violence and killings of
millions and millions of human lives for the Empires
to be built on colored bloodbaths. The European
crusaders crossed the channels and unknown time zones
to subjugate the much divided Muslim people as part of
their superior nationalism perception and values that
Muslims were inferior to the European race and could
be used as subjects without human identity and as raw
material to build the new Empires. Many centuries
past, if there was a UNO, it would not have dared to
call the European intruders as terrorists because it
would have been their own organization as Muslims
lived in slavery and denial of basic human rights and
identity. In an information age, knowledge–driven
global culture of reason, ignorance is no longer a
requisite to learn from the living history. India under the Mughal Empire and
prior to British imperialist designs and subjugation
had enjoyed an enriched culture, educational
institutions, monetary currencies, social and economic
development, and a viable system of governance
suitable to the interest of the people. With British
onslaught, business deceits and occupation of India,
these public institutions were dismantled and their
foundations destroyed and replaced by force with
British system of educational indoctrination, thinking
modes and behaviors, laws and justice, morals,
organizations and imported culture. The Indians were
compelled to assume new identities and to learn
English and assimilate into European style culturally
manifested landscape of India. Was the European
imperialism a choice in democracy and civilization or
a dictum of terrorism against Asian and African
people? Throughout human history the
destitute and poor people of Asia and Africa never had
the thinking or capacity to threaten the European by
any means. Until European incursions into their lands,
they had peaceful societal outlook, educational
institutions, industrial development, human freedom,
public institutions and viable system of governance.
Take India for instance, it had a history of almost
thousand years of rule by Mughal Empire and major
advancements in economic and intellectual progressive
domains. British went there as businessmen and through
intrigues, tactful deceptions and backdoor
conspiracies worked hard to divide and disintegrate
the unity of the local people. They divided them by
force of treachery and ruled over them. In 1857 at the
last war in Delhi, it is said almost two millions
Indian mostly Muslims were killed by the British
armies to link India as a jewel to the British crown.
The last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was forced
to exile to Burma at gunpoint and the British army
chopped off his son's head and presented to the
deposed emperor on a breakfast plate. British
historians call it a mutiny; the succeeding
generations of Muslims narrate it as an episode of
freedom movement crushed by the British colonial
invaders. Perhaps, the British Queen should take
initiatives to address these inhuman atrocities
against the Asian and African people and forced
colonization, more so when she is set to celebrate her
golden jubilee soon. Would the British Crown apologize
from the Muslims for its killing and aggressive war
and occupation of India under the Mughal Empire? Now, the Europeans identify
themselves as civilized people but the effective date
for this claim remains a mystery. The previous Empires
knew their geography and limits, but the newly
articulated American Empire in its infancy, is
challenging to the limits of the Laws of God and
appears obsessed with "fear" of being replaced by the
new emerging economically productive nations of Asia
such as China, Japan and India and combination of
others. In a reactionary and irrational impulse,
President George W. Bush invoked the "War on
Terrorism" against Muslims as a dictum of power, not
reason and wisdom, to camouflage the prospective
future with acts of barbarity and to dispel the notion
of accountability in global affairs. Historically,
people and nations pursuing this path of behavior have
ended up in self-delusion and self-destruction. The 9/11 attacks in the US were
carried out by individuals and not inspired or
supported by the religion of Islam or Muslims. Some
hourly paid intellectuals turned guardian of the
approved truth, allege that Islam breeds terrorism.
The Western mass media complements the self crafted
notion to poison the public thinking and perceptions
and source of judgments against the Arabs and Muslims
as "terrorists" making the treacherous claim as if
Islam was at the threshold of the paradigm. The US
Neo-Conservatives gang helped to rob the mankind of
its human heritage. The perception of ‘radical Islam'
was invented and enhanced by the ‘fear' of terrorism
as if Arabs and Muslims were born in the eye of the
storm and terrorism was an exclusive domain of the
Islamic religious tenets. Gwynne Dyer, the London based
prominent writer (The International Terrorist
Conspiracy") points out that "Terrorism is a political
technique, not an ideology and any group willing to
use violence in pursuit of its political goals may
resort to it." He explains that "there are left-wing
terrorists and right-wing terrorists; national
terrorist and international terrorist; Christian,
Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and atheist
terrorists. In theory, you could have a "war against
terrorism", but it would involve trying to kill
everybody who uses this technique anywhere in the
world. The United States is not trying to do that, so
it is not fighting a "war against terror." In
reality, what the United States leadership is doing is
fighting its own articulated war against the people
and nations who had no animosity, nor did any perceive
capability to threaten the US as a global power. British author and producer Adam
Curtis (The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the
Politics of Fear: BBC documentary challenging the
American version of the "War on Terrorism"), spells
out the myth with clarity: "international terrorism is
a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by
politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread
unquestioned through governments around the world, the
security services and the international media."
Remember, after the 9/11 attacks, the US official
statements made no mention of involvement of the
government or people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran in
the accused list of the 9/11 perpetrators. In 1997,
many leading architects of the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC), did include the name of Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, PLO as selected targets to impose
the American liberal democracy and throw out the
authoritarian regimes. It was a strategic stunt to
inject the fear into people's mind. Paul Craig
Roberts, in his recent article ("The High Price of
American Gullibility", ICH), makes a logical
assertion: Bush's rhetoric "you are with us or against
us" is perfectly planned to influence the common
masses. Emotional appeals to fear and to patriotism
have led close to half of the population to accept
unaccountable government in the name of "the war on
terrorism." What a contradiction it is that so many
American have been convinced that safety lies in their
sacrifice of their civil liberties and accountable
government." Obviously, human intelligence, emotions
and perceptions, superficially turned antagonistic
with compelling impulse of media propaganda strategies
to view Arabs and Muslims as the qualified candidates
for extreme militancy. Truth is one and indivisible.
When it comes to terrorism and the Arabs or Muslims,
the North American and European mass media portrayals
enforce two distinct order of truth - one for the
general public and one reserved for the Muslims. In
all human affairs, facts are considered to reach the
conclusion. End cannot be assumed to play with the
facts, nor based on dogmas to explain the facts of
human life. Under the guise of the Anti-Terrorist
legislation, America, Britain and Canada have misused
the logic of power to arrest, defame and punish people
of Arabian and Islamic origin who had no linkage to
the terrorism myth. The strategy dictates that
selected groups should be detained and tortured
indefinitely, to drain out their moral, intellectual
and creative energies, making them incapable to
survive socially or professionally credible citizens
of the country. Consequently, the public will view
them as crazy and undesirable people to be counted as
numbers and digits in economic terms, but not
dignified human beings. Divergent scenarios flourish to
manifest lies and deception about the real aims of the
"War on Terror." When the Western leaders play with
words, it is known and often acknowledged, but when
the Muslim leaders offer ignorant excuses, they are
masked under willful lies and deceptions without any
accountability. Many Western scholars wonder, why
leaders of the Arab countries and the masses appear
disinterested in the post 9/11 affairs when it had
direct impacts on the entire Arab and Muslim world.
Foremost reasons being that the Arabs and the Muslim
countries in general, do not have educated and
responsible leaders to represent the masses and their
interests. The West and its scheme of political
subjugation institutionalized the neo-colonial
authoritarianism. Arabs and Muslim societies are
devoid of public institutions for thinking, change and
policy development. In the made–run politics of wars,
Arabs-Muslims have no weight on the scale except being
digits and numbers. Muslim world is politically weak,
intellectually and morally divided and leaderless. The
Arab League is just a written name on paper in dry ink
and nothing else. The recent events and authoritarian
warmongering across the Arabian Peninsula clearly
demonstrates that Arab dictators are disconnected
rulers with the mainstream of their societies and
people's movement for change and freedom from the
tyranny of neo-colonialism. Most of them are puppets
installed by the former Western imperial masters to
ensure the oil pumping and safe delivery of the oil
supply lines to Western markets. When the Muslim Ummah
(nation), looks for intellectual security, it fails to
get any logical support - all authoritarian leaders
operate under the dictates of Western masters, namely
the American and British leaders. Islam is One and so
should be the believing folks, but there is no unity
of thought and actions across the Muslim world, a
typically neo-colonial landscape governed by ignorant
and intellectually bankrupt rulers, subservient to the
West. For ages, the Arabs and Muslims masses continue
to pray to Almighty God for change, reformation and
democratically elected governments without public
demonstrations. Europeans invaded the rich and
morally and spiritually advanced people of the
Arab-Islamic world several times in unsuccessful
attempts to take control and establish political and
religious hegemony over them. The true history of the
European Crusades has never ended to any decisive
conclusion. In 2001, President Bush made it known that
it was a "crusade" against the Islamic world after the
9/11 tragedies in the US. It is undetermined what
other titles and names would the imperialist European
assign to their continuous crusades against the
Muslims in Asia, Middle East, North Africa and other
vital strategic locations. Many pretend that it was a
"democracy at work." Rational observers would call it
democracy at home and barbarity abroad. The
distinction is self-explanatory. There is an obvious
unanimity in the design, culture and framework of the
imperialistic supremacy. Wherever, British, French,
Dutch went, they used hatred and fear as the
strategies to implement their political hegemony over
others. Russian (former USSR) did the same across
Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Across the board, in
a colonized landscape whether in Europe or Russian
doctrine, people lived as subjects deprived of basic
human identities, their inner thought, mind and soul
injected with fear and inferiority complex and
mistreated for ages to come. The impacts of
colonization leave an unending trail of horrible
consequential outcome of inferior people, culture and
indoctrination striving to match and co-exist with the
fittest race. How would the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, Thomas Paine's Common Sense and World
Citizen, Kant's Perpetual Peace, Stuart Mill's Liberty
and the American Declaration of Independence encounter
such insane tragedies? Would the American and British
political leaders learn any lessons for their failure
in the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? While
the rest of the so called Islamic world was complacent
and coward, an International War Tribunal in Malaysia
concluded the public proceedings and unanimously
charged Tony Blair and George W. Bush as guilty of
crimes against the humanity in Iraq. Would the masses
in Europe and America pursue the guilty verdicts and
asked the officials concerned to arrest these sadistic
criminals? John Laughland ("The Mask of Altruism
Disguising a Colonial War: The Guardian: Aug 2, 2004),
offers a real world perspective: "Just an old
fashioned colonial war – the reality of killing and
escalation of violence, disguised with the
hypocritical mask of altruism. If Iraq has not taught
us that, then we are incapable of ever learning
anything." Every beginning has its end. It is just
that most transgressors do not know about it when they
cross over the limits of the Laws of God. The Roman,
Austro-Hungarian and British Empires collapsed after
they violated the limits. Nazis claimed to run the
world for thousands of years, but ended up in just 12
years after killing millions of human beings
throughout the Western hemisphere. Fascism met
resistance at its early stages. The beginning
envisions the end. The USSR was defeated, the day it
raided the destitute people of Afghanistan and
disturbed the dead in graveyards with continuous
bombing. The American and British surrendered the day
international community learned about the Guantanomo
Bay prisoners and photos of the Abu Ghraib Prison in
Iraq. An estimated three million civilians have been
killed by the American-British war in Iraq since March
2003. After waging a decade old bogus
wars of terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan,
America and some of its hired European allied policy
makers and military strategists seem to have exhausted
their rational THINKING and failed miserably to
understand or differentiate between the myth of power
and realities on the ground that they cannot win any
wars against Islam and Muslims. Of all the forbidden
truth that the Western news media does not exhibit and
the political leaders failed to grasp is that the US
and its former colonial allies do not have the will
nor weapons to fight against God and Islam. If time
and history could reawaken their conscience and give
them a space for self-reflection, would they ever
learn this compelling reality from the undeniable
recorded history of the Nature of things? President Obama dashed away all
the optimism for ANew America – different than the
perpetuated insanity of the Bush era, more akin to
peace and co-existence with the rest of the global
community in particular, the Arab-Muslim world. It
was a political myth that Obama used to get elected,
not to govern and work out a new way of thinking for
the future of the US policy behavior and
relationships. All the impartial observations clearly
point out that Obama has been a blind follower of the
Bush administration political inconsistency between
thoughts and behavior. Who is going to write the
closing chapter of the history of the "War on
Terrorism?" Is the history going to wait for the
cessation of the aggressive hostilities in Iraq and
Afghanistan and Pakistan? Would the American-led war
achieve its agenda priorities or meet the same destiny
as it happened to the Romans, German Nazis and the
USSR Empires? Obviously, history will judge the
nations and leaders by their actions, not by their
claims. In his farewell address to the
American people (01/17/1961), President D. Eisenhower
made the following foresight known to the masses: …. Together we must learn how to
compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect
and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and
apparent, I confess that I lay down my official
responsibilities in this field with a definite sense
of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror
and lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that
another war could utterly destroy this civilization
which has been so slowly and painfully built over
thousands of years…… We pray that peoples of all
faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great
human needs satisfied, that those who denied the
opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full……..
That the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance
will be made to disappear from the earth, and that in
the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live
together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of
mutual respect and love." (Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja
specializes in global security, peace and conflict
resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western
comparative cultures and civilizations and author of
several publications including the latest one: Arabia
at Crossroads: Arab People Strive for Freedom, Peace
and New Leadership. VDM Publishers Germany-UK,
September 2011. Comments are welcome at: kmahboob@yahoo.com) |
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