Paul Marshall Johnson has reportedly been beheaded by his captors a few hours ago according to the BBC. The manner of his brutal killing was exactly like that of Nick Berg, alluding to the same perpetrators, or perpetrators sharing the same ideals and ruthlessness.
My question is what else are WE as Muslims, Arabs whatever are we waiting for exactly to rise against these bastards? It is quite clear that the governments we have inherited are incompetent in the face of this terror, espcially Saudi, where they still seem to try to sweep this event under a rug and still refusing to accept that this is a violent revolution or civil war that is happening, rather than a few criminals who were “led astray” by “foreigners.”
The sooner they face facts and immediately put a transparent action plan in place, let by capable people the sooner we can sleep well again. But that, I fear, if a very long time coming.
My personal commiserations and heartfelt condolences to the family of Mr. Johnson.
Comments
What exactly are we waiting for?
Hi Mahmood–I just recently found your blog and have very much enjoyed reading it. I thoroughly agree with you on this horrible murder of the American hostage. I am just incredibly saddened and angered. I’m absolutely sure that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful and would never condone this murder and I do wonder why more don’t speak out against it publicly. Thank you so much for sharing your views with us. It is very enlightening and I hope you continue.
Laura–Southern California, USA
What exactly are we waiting for?
Everyone seems to be paralysed by these fanatics, like rabbits in front of a cobra.
What exactly are we waiting for?
I hope you are not the lone voice crying in the wilderness, but sometimes I do wonder; and you are right, it’s not just saying it, but doing something about it. I realize people put themselves and their families in danger by speaking out, but these guys will eat up anyone who doesn’t “live up to their standards”. The peoples and governments of the ME need to not only condemn this behavior, but rapidly work towards reforms and equal rights for everyone because that is the only way to rid the plague that these idiots are.
What exactly are we waiting for?
I’m not sure if the question is what are you waiting for, Mahmood, but rather what can you do?
What exactly are we waiting for?
Our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Johnson. The prayers of our family are with you in this tragic time.
J.Mark Doenitz
What exactly are we waiting for?
Ironic that US attacked Afghanistan because Afghan government would not violate Islamic code by handing over their ‘guest’ (Osama bin Laden) to the US, and now Mr. Johnson, a ‘guest’ of SA is executed in the name of Islam.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Well said Mahmood.
I’m waiting for the inevitable conspiracy theory about how Islamic extremists couldn’t possibly be responsible, like I hear every time there’s another atrocity.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
You’re right. It’s about time to figure out what can be done rather than said. At this point I am feeling quite helpless watching these guys commit murder after murder while I sit and watch from the sidelines. I’ve posted comments on my blog, but that is more out of respect to the deceased than out of any realistic hope that it might bring about a serious change.
What exactly are we waiting for?
I have been walking around with a heavy heart all week – knowing that this moment would come. What a senseless, brutal, horrific murder. And this poor gentleman just sitting there counting the minutes to what was inevitable. Disgusting. And sinful.
I cannot help but recoil in disgust at what these idiots are doing in the name of religion. I wish there was a way to influence the course of events. I am just really really upset about this. I send my thoughts and prayers to Paul Johnson and his family and friends. I am hoping the horror he lived during his last week on earth will be put to rest and his soul will find peace.
And I hope that it will not take too much blood for people to realize that this downward cycle of violence is senseless.
Sorry for the emotional post – but I am really really sick to my stomach.
Jasra Jedi
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Oh no- they are responsible for it alright. Every single long bearded short thobed sexually frustrated misogynist pedophiliac one of them ..
What exactly are we waiting for?
[size=18][color=black]It is high time that the majority of the muslims in the world stood together and fought against those fanatics claiming that they are doing all the killings in the name of Islam. Why don’t they read into the true meaning of Jihad. Where does it say on any religious book that killing and innocent soul is justified. Why sit around and watch a group of radicals tarnish the name of muslims worldwide.
Isn’t it about time to stand up against all this. Today it is the foreigners…tomorrow it is different sectors…etc.
My heartfelt codolences to the family of Mr. Johnson. May his sole rest in peace.[/color][/size]
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Change cannot be imposed?
Which is why the Nazis still rule Germany, I guess?
Anytime you want to let reality enter your worldview, be my guest.
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
Dont be stupid, you are dealing with a zealous religious fanatical group of idiots here, you cannot compare this situation to the Nazis.
You remain as arrogant and pathetically simple minded…… you do your country no favours by spouting your self congratulatory crap here, please tone down the arrogance!
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
Which of us is being arrogant? I’m simply stating a fact: change can, and has, and will be, imposed by external forces. Your belief that it can’t be done is simply false.
And last time I checked the Nazis were fanatical zealots.
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Change CAN be imposed. History shows that. Irrespective of whether it is from the inside or the outside.
And some of the best ‘changes’ do not always come from the inside ‘street
What exactly are we waiting for?
prayers and heartfelt condolences to the Johnson family, God bless them!
-pamela
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
The peoples of Germany (not the Nazi’s) were a free society who due to many reasons found themselves in a political situation that was used by the Nazi’s to gain power of that society. The root cause of the troubles of this region are religious! There is no comparison whatsoever.
I despise the fundamentalists and their like, I despise the rotten core of this region. I do not think that arrogance from any person or country helps the situation at all. I think that tolerance and a basic understanding of other cultures and traditions is the way to go. Arrogance and patronising comments only serve to isolate the very people who make them. Arabs are very much like the Europeans in their attitude to arrogance, it is frowned upon and in no circumstances is it polite to use it. Think before you speak people!
Re(4): What exactly are we waiting for?
You stated that change cannot be imposed. That statement is completely false. Your own faith spent its first 200 years imposing change on the peoples of the Middle East and Africa — how the hell did Morocco become muslim if the change wasn’t imposed?
We went into Iraq to impose change because YOU — the wonderful, proud, God’s-gift to the world, superior Arabs — had spent 20 years licking Saddam’s balls while he slaughtered your people by the millions.
How much time has the Arab world spent hating Israel? How much time has it spent hating Saddam? See the double standard? Apparently, if Arabs kill Arabs, that’s okay?
If the Arab world can’t take care of its own problems, and lets those problems become our problems, then we have no choice but to step in. Maybe if your culture would actually follow the Koran’s tenets of brotherhood and love, instead of paying them lipservice while you demean every other faith on the planet and raise your sons to be human bombs — maybe then we wouldn’t have to step in.
Re(4): What exactly are we waiting for?
I can tell you where the problem is .. it is the fact that the US originally waged war in Iraq under the pretext of WMD’s, and then had that pretext change to the war for reforming the ME, and then had that pretext change to the war of terror …
The arrogance comes into play when the US administration thinks that the rest of the world will buy their ‘ever changing’ justifications for war without questioning the real motives. The arrogance also comes into play when the US then decides that it can achieve its ever changing objectives in Iraq without the necessary resources that it needs. The arrogance comes into play when the US listens whole heartedly to Chalabi et al because he screeches (or rather screeched) what they wanted to hear .. even when their friends and foes alike were questioning his credibility.
If you dont like the word arrogance, you might want to try hubris!
Jasra Jedi
Re(5): What exactly are we waiting for?
Easy there buddy …..
“We went into Iraq to impose change because YOU — the wonderful, proud, God’s-gift to the world, superior Arabs — had spent 20 years licking Saddam’s balls while he slaughtered your people by the millions.”
Errrrrrm. Do I remember something called a dual containment policy vis a vis Iraq and Iran? Something to do vaguely with US arms being sold to both in order for both to be the de facto check on the other?
If the Arab’s were licking Saddam’s balls – then they were doing it hand in hand with the Americans, my friend …
Re(6): What exactly are we waiting for?
No, they were doing it after the ’91 uprisings, when Saddam slaughtered 300,000 Shiites — while we were protecting the Kurds.
But then, the Kurds are traitors, and the Shia dogs, right?
Re(7): What exactly are we waiting for?
You do insist on picking your own scabs, dont you…
Are you aware of why Saddam was able to slaughter the Shia in the 91 uprising?? (The US allowed the use of helicopters). Were you aware of why the Shia ‘uprised’ to begin with?? (They were led to beleive that the US would support them)
Perchance you need need to take a look at those history books my friend.
Oh – and you may wish to brush up on your demographics as well. In Bahrain, the Shia are not dogs. They constitute 60% of our local population. In fact, the Bahraini Shia are able to do what they please re Ashoora as opposed to Saudi and Iraq under Saddam…
The poster before me who called you arrogant was wrong – ignorant would be a more apt word.
JJ
Calm down people…
pretty please?
we’ll probably contribute to solving problems and understanding each other’s opionions if these opinions were presented in calm and studied fashion.
Re: Calm down people…
silly me forgot to log in first…
Re(8): What exactly are we waiting for?
Like you, I agree that Bush’s actions in ’91, his failure to overthrow Saddam, was a tragic mistake.
Therefore, all the better that his son corrected that mistake last year, no?
Re(1): Calm down people…
Mahmood, it’s difficult to be calm when faced by the famous Arab worldview: apparently, change is needed, yet change CAN’T be imposed. So then what? Wait for Osama to assume the throne of the worldwide Caliphate?
Oh, wait, that would be impossible, since change CAN’T be imposed!
Re(1): Calm down people…
Sorry Mahmood. Got a bit worked up. Low blood sugar and all of that….
I promise I will behave. Or at least, try 😉
JJ
Re(2): Calm down people…
I meant IMPOSED by one culture on ANOTHER. Sorry i was not clear, my mistake!
Re(3): Calm down people…
Still wrong!
Re(9): What exactly are we waiting for?
Hold on a minute. I never said that Bush’s failure to overthrow Saddam in 1991 was a mistake… I dont recall maing a judgement on that. I do recall pointing out to you that if you are to hold the Arab’s accountable for Saddam .. then US foreign policy is also culpable.
However, since you asked … I am clear on the motives of why Bush Snr waged in 1991 – to stop Iraqi territorial expansion. I am not so clear on why Bush Jr waged his war in 2003. The reasons keep changing. I dont think I am alone in this either. I think a majority of the international community would state the same.
But – enough about Iraq.. we have our own problems left of the border to worry about the north …
JJ
Re(2): Calm down people…
I understand your frustration. Believe me I do, however let me tell you that we (Arabs and Muslims) are even more frustrated with this situation, much more than you can imagine:
1. We have no say in the way our governments are run.
2. We CANNOT (the Arab and Muslim majority) show our sympathies on our cuffs for fear of persecution and execution.
3. For the most part, we don’t care about religion, any religion, we have just become to sickened by the crimes perpetrated in religions’ name.
4. We cannot even SAY what I have in 3 above for IMMEDIATELY being labeled as heretics, and that will result in just as immediate death penalty for apostasy by our Islamist friends.
5. We crave liberalism, but our liberals are treated like pariahs by our governments who can’t seem to decide where their support should be.
6. Our governments cannot show that they want to progress and support liberals for the perceived threat on its existence. However some have done it in varying successes like Turkey and Tunisia.
7. Secularism is like a death penalty to any Arab/Muslim government (almost) and that’s why we see the very first thing in any constitution is that it is based on Islam, if a constitution was present in the first place. What happened at the EU last night with Italy and Poland wanting to add “based on Christianity and European culture” just sickened me. Here we are aspiring to separate religion from politics and we see “the first world” countries wanting to impose texts that would take them back a few hundred years.
8. There is real and present danger for anyone and their families should they be seen as opposition in most if not all of our countries.
9. Free thought is not considered a virtue, but insolence.
10. We don’t have any freedoms of the press to speak of, hence, they have to toe the official line, and provision of alternate thoughts and tolerance killed at infancy.
11. No Arab/Muslim government enjoys sympathy from their own people. We have learnt to not trust our governments for generations, hence, there is real absence of a sense of patriotism.
12. 11 would lead to not caring about whatever happens in our environment with thoughts ranging from “if it didn’t happen to me or my family, I don’t care” to “they deserve it, let the government clean up the mess, it’s no skin off my nose.”
These are some of the feelings I hear when interacting and traveling through the Gulf countries and speaking to other Arabs and Muslims.
I hope you understand the immense frustration we feel. It’s not lethargy or not caring for our fellow human being. We do. We feel for everyone, but it is very difficult for an Arab to show emotion because of this ever present fear of state-sponsored-intimidation.
Should we just sit back and give up though? No chance. This situation IS changing to the better. Slowly mind you but is changing.
The irony is however is that Osama bin-Laden has served as a catalyst for this change! We despise what this animal has done for our way of life and reputation, but through his heinous acts it has FORCED change!
So we’ve back to the beginning of your assumption: Should change be imposed?
I think whether we like it or not it IS being and will continue to be imposed by the “west” and by the likes of bin-Laden. It’s how we deal with that change and the opportunities presented by these factors is the question, and I don’t have the answer for that one yet.
I believe that maybe there should be another way to impose this change, and that is by exploring partnerships and the world powers providing catalysts for change. Maybe a carrot and a stick scenario is one way: fix up your country or we won’t trade with you…
But if we both – as peoples – just get frustrated and start throwing accusations and bombs at each other, we won’t be fixing up any mess but adding to it.
Let’s partner for peace. We KNOW that we have problems, you KNOW that you have problems, so how about calming down and looking at problems through the thoughts of partnership and try to fix them? Wouldn’t that be a catalyst for change for the better?
or am I again just being naive?
What exactly are we waiting for?
Thank you Mamood for your condolences and showing us Americans there is hope. Your voice should be heard by all.
Kindest Regards,
Bill Roggio
http://thefourthrail.blogspot.com/
Re(2): Calm down people…
heh, no problem JJ. I know how emotive you can get!
More and more I see discussions here (and I don’t mean you specifically) which are extremes, which is fine by me, what irks me though is the absolutes that some people hold on to: I will support Bush/Saddam/Sauds/Whatever no matter what happens! There are either people who are absolutely with or against! What happened to the people who hold views in the middle? They can’t have just given up the field and continue to watch from the outside have they?
Let’s get some sanity back and discuss things without holding such a firm view about events, but accept that we can learn from each other and maybe, just maybe my firmly held view is wrong!
One thing though, whoever comes here never has to revert to history books because references supporting any argument abound!! Soon we’ll replace google with mahmood’s den!! 🙂
I promised myself to lay off the bottle for a few days.. I think now I need a drink. Anyone wants a quick tipple?
Re(3): Calm down people…
I will take a double of whatever your having. Then just pass me the bottle.
Ciao!
m
Re(4): Calm down people…
cheers! aahhhhh, that’s going down sooo gooood!
To Nick Berg and Paul Johnson’s and every other victim of terrorists memory!
What exactly are we waiting for?
Sadly, i fear there are not enough Arabs, Moslems ect. with any will or power to do anything about the currrent God awful situation. They will sit on their backsides secretly being pleased or non-plussed when a westerner is killed (okay, I realise not all, but a fair and worrying whack of them.) When an Arab/Moslem is killed then they will have the attitude ‘well it’s no one I know’ or ‘but why? The victim was a Moslem!’ Even if it is close to home, they will still sit there, not having any knowledge or experience of speaking out against injustice or terror. The fear of speaking out in this part of the world is ingrained just as the knack for deadly silence under all circumstances is ingrained.
Arabs/Moslems face a future that is very very bleak if they DO ot rise up against the threat from within their own nations now! There is no free press, there is no freedom of speech, what can they do? Power rests in the hands of a few sycophantic families who have NO idea how to run the countries that they have used as an income source since time immorial.
In feel that as westerners we should stop expecting the people of this region to do anything at all because they have no freedoms to protest, if they do it would be seen as a threat to the ruling despots and clamped dowen on OR it would play into the hands of the fundamentalist and they would gain more power. NO, the answer lies in the hands of the regime rulers, it is they that have to be pushed into facing the very real future, no longer can they placate them with money, training and silence, those days are gone!
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
#Pastor Martin Niemöller
My sincere and heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Paul Marshall Johnson and Nick Berg, may their lives lost bring about change for all humanity.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Sorry for the atrocious mistakes in the above, I was rushing!!
What exactly are we waiting for?
This murder in the name of religion is sickening. I too had a ‘bad’ feeling about how this would end, and unfortunately I was right. My heartfelt condolences to Mr. Johnson’s family.
Ahmed
What exactly are we waiting for?
Sure it turns to anger and uncertainty, but one thing that could be done NOW is for the political establishment in Saudi, that is the very highest ranking princes NOT the religious freeks they have there is to take over the mics in the major mosques in Saudi and talk directly to the people and challenge the Al-Qaeda shits to come and face them. Time to go into direct confrontation right in their midst.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
and while we’re on the subject, why don’t the Saudi public themselves organise a demonstration in Dammam, Riyadh, Jeddah and Meccah to absolutely show their position that they are against religious extremism and Al-Qaeda? Surely such a demonstration will be permitted?
It took only a few hours to capture Al-Muqrin?
That was pretty damned quick wasn’t it? If the “security forces” knew where the body of poor Paul Johnson was going to be dumped, and that the person doing the dumping was non other than the leader of the Falujah Brigade of the Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia Abdulaziz Al-Muqrin, why the bloody hell couldn’t they get the terrorists before they beheaded their captive? Why does it take 6 full days NOT to find the cell, when it takes only minutes or a few hours to suddenly find the most sought after terrorist who has evaded them for months?
I sure am happy that I wasn’t strolling in Al-Mallaz last night. There’s a shawarma shop that I like to visit when I’m in the area!
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Come on Mahmood! Do you think that even if the Sudi’s allowed it for their own ends, the people would not be suspicious that their names/photos are being taken while marching? Also look what happens when marches are allowed by gorernment sanction…. Bahrain is a prime example, the people are in absolute awe of the fact that they can march at all, soon the fundamentalists start ‘organising’ insane reasons for marching until it becomes ridilculous, they will march for any reason now AND it is in murky water now because often the reason for these rallies are just a cover for another agenda and end up escalating into violence.
I hardly think the Saudis are liable to allow such marches because very quickly it would turn against the ruling family! Power to the people?? No, not while the people are dangerously minded to revolt against even freedom itself Mahmood. A transmission period of free and open education, let the schools teach and encourage creativity, independant thought, human rights, sexual equality, freedom of religion and others rights to practice as they wish, destroy the txtbooks of opression and discrimination… THEN let the people take power, power in the hands of an extremist (and that goes for Bush and Blair here too) is the fastest road to hell for us all.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
The Taliban did not hand over Bin Laden because he owned them. He was the source of their cash, millions and millions of it. The protest about him being a guest is just a word game the Taliban was playing.
Steve
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
Scary isn’t it when a simple act to demonstrate the general public’s rejection of extremism could be thought of like this, and I agree with you, this is how we lived in Bahrain not too long ago. Without a doubt the (useless) Saudi CID might also take this as an opportunity to “update their files” on activists.
But such a march or demonstration should be done, if not with feet, then with pens and letters to various newspapers and websites. But the rejection must be registered where sympathisers of these morons could see a backlash against them is taking shape in grass-root levels.
On a wider scale I agree with you too that the education system should drastically and radically change from the hate it now perpetuates to acceptance of differing opinions. That will take a long time.
The regimes in this area are still operating for a large part in a medieval mind-set, rule by oppression. This must change if these very same rulers are to continue to rule, but I have trouble accepting the argument that we have to wait an inordinate amount of time to first educate the people in order for regime to change. That will not happen simply because the rulers won’t plot their own downfall. I have no answer as to how things should progress other than what I have noted in various posts here, but time is running out, fast.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
[quote]Isn’t it about time to stand up against all this. Today it is the foreigners…tomorrow it is different sectors…etc. [/quote]
A pretty point. Revolutions consume themselves. The French Revolution starting guillotining nobles, then random citizens, and then finally the leaders of the Revolution.
Do you think that if by some miracle these Wahhabis were to take over a country that they are going to stop killing when they run out of infidels? Guess again. A lot of Muslims are going to be discovered as heretics or blasphemers or enemies of the state when the Wahhabi revolutionaries rule.
Steve
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Not to worry, Mahmood. These terrorist attacks are the work of Zionists. We know this to be true because Crown Prince Abdullah said so. Prince Nayef backs him up and so do many of the other Saudi princes. All the Saudis need to do is round up all those Zionists who infest Saudi Arabia and this problem will be solved.
Doesn’t it fill you with confidence that the Saudis recognize the problem so that they can take effective action? After all, if you can’t trust the Saudis, our allies in the war against terror, who can you trust?
Steve
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Mahmood,
Why would the Saudis demonstrate against religious extremism? That’s the basis of their country. I’m hardly persuaded that the Saudis see a beheaded infidel as a bad thing. In their eyes, that’s the best use of an infidel.
There are not going to be any marches against beheading infidels. There are not going to be any articles in the Saudi press expressing anything but perfunctory regret. There is not going to be any Saudi acceptance of responsibility for fomenting this terror.
The Saudis will only do enough to sweep it under the rug, until the next time.
Steve
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
this is the crux of the problem as I see it. Denial.
Once we learn to accept that we are not a “master race” and that “we could do no wrong” and stop putting blame on “others” then and only then will we (as Arabs) start to really go forward.
There is nothing that pisses me off more than hearing “it’s foreign to our Arab values and culture” or some dirge like that, as if we have been placed on earth especially as man’s salvation.
Time to wake up and take responsibility.
Re: It took only a few hours to capture Al-Muqrin?
The only bright point in this dark episode is that a witness saw the Wahhabis dumping Johnson’s remains and reported the license plate of the car to Saudi security, who caught up with them at a gas station where a shootout ensued. A few bullets did wonders to improve the personality of Abdulaziz Al-Muqrin.
Steve
Re(1): It took only a few hours to capture Al-Muqrin?
Is that right? So the 15,000 policemen combing Riyadh’s districts needed a haphazard event in order to zero in on the perpetrators?
Allah works in wonderous ways…
What exactly are we waiting for?
Spurred by the smell of blood and the taste of ‘victory
Re(3): Calm down people…
No mahmood, you are not being naieve, you are being honest! You say so well and so clearly what I tried (and failed miserably to say in my previous post) it is not that we ordinary people dont want change and it is not as if we don’t feel frustrated about what is happening but it is simply that we have no viable way of attaining change without risking our very lives or welfare. We are powerless except by writing and discussing between ourselves.
One of my pet peeves is the lack of knowledge of the ordinary Arab citizens predicament here. I honestly have always had an interest in learning what makes other cultures ticks, their beliefs and traditions and the social manners of the same. It frustrates me when I hear the arrogance of certain nations, they seem to think that we are in a position to rise up and be like them, as if we have the same freedoms and are cloaked with a fair judicial system to protect our human rights. It is patently obvious that they know nothing about our culture nor our history or even our present situations. Why do they think we need treated like children and SHOWN the way to BE like them? It is our governments the need to be tackling to allow us to gain the freedoms we want. We are in no position to rise up for more reasons than our own lives, if we rise up in the present situation then guess who will be waiting in the wings to replace our present tyrants? Yes the crazy bearded ones!
We DO want to become free, we do want human rights, we want everything that free men deserve but please dont treat us like morons, dont speak to us like illiterate children and most of all, dont use arrogance to try and talk AT us.
Re(1): It took only a few hours to capture Al-Muqrin?
according to the BBC again, they report that
I guess the Saudis have to show the bodies on-camera to allay that counter-claim.
Re(3): Calm down people…
Sounds good, Mahmood, but my original question remains: what CAN you do? We went into Iraq to make the exact changes you want to see enacted in your region. You (and I) can disagree with the way Bush has handled it, but we’re not spending $120 billion to steal Iraqi oil — we want all Arab nations to turn into Denmark, because Danes don’t cut off Americans’ heads.
So what concrete actions can moderate Arabs take? What should be done? And can you get it moving?
— James
What exactly are we waiting for?
I think this section was once about right-minded people coming together to try to figure out if there’s anything we can collectively do to either stop the madness going on the middle east right now, which includes whatever contributions the US government is making, or at the very least to let the world know the vast majority of Muslims are as appalled (assuming they are) with fundamentalist insanity as the rest of us.
As an American, I can say we’re just not hearing that message over here and the media portrays the whole region as full of either crazed maniacs who are running things, or the masses of weak, scared sheep who are not allowed to have an opinion.
I’m going to expose my ignorance here, I swear I didn’t know a thing about the Middle East until after 9/11. My first question when I first read about al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden was, “who are these people and why do they hate me? I’m here coming the internet to get away from the mass media influence. I don’t know who to believe anymore. It seems everyone has a slant and an agenda. I figure if I read enough opinions, and consider the sources, I’ll be able to construct my own ideas or at least know which to believe.
I hope it’s true that the maniacs decapitating people out there represent a very small minority of the Muslim population. I also wish I could do more than just hope. I wish the many millions of Muslim in the Middle East would/could speak out and help take command of the situation.
I believe the vast majority of Americans don’t know why we’re in Iraq and don’t believe most of what George Bush is telling us and the world. We feel somewhat disconnected from it all and a little helpless. Normally I think Americans feel we have more of a say in what our government does. That’s not the case right now. President Bush has everyone wanting to believe there’s a just cause behind what our troops are doing there, because we have pride in our country and Americans want to be the good guy. Unfortunately in this case I think many are beginning to wonder and are embarrassed and confused about how it seems so many people in the world now view us. I have a feeling we’re going to do something about it this November. Sorry for the long, wandering message.
Re(2): It took only a few hours to capture Al-Muqrin?
Though I am reluctant to trust anything the Saudis say, their account of a witness fingering the bad guys has a true feel to it.
It’s fairly easy for a small cell to hide in a big city, no matter how many police are looking for them. Here in the States, the Symbionese Liberation Army hid Patty Hearst for years while every police officer was looking for her and them. Such cells become undone when they make petty mistakes that indicate their location that are found by enormous research through public or commercial records by the police.
Also, if the police have a license plate number associated with a crime, they usually can crack it open from there. If they just have a description, even fingerprints, it’s hard to track the bad guys down.
So maybe this could be true, even though the Saudis are saying it.
Steve
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
We Americans are not interested in winning popularity contests with the likes of you but in stopping foreigners from murdering our people. To be frank, you are going to criticize America no matter what we do, good or bad. Therefore, your opinion carries no weight with us.
You’re quite mistaken to believe changes can not be imposed from outside. We did it to Nazi Germany and Japan in WWII. It worked. We will do it to Iraq, too.
We don’t require an invitation to defend ourselves. Hitler did not invite us to invade Germany. Hirohito did not invite us to invade Japan. Saddam did not invite us to invade Iraq.
All were necessary.
Had we not put pressure on Iraq and then taken it down, Saddam would be funding more terrorists, buying nukes from Pakistan, and the missiles to carry them from North Korea. He was an evil guy hellbent on an evil destination. Thank goodness America stopped him.
And make no mistake, if other countries threaten us, we will deal with them as well.
Steve
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
The Japanese were far more fanatical and competent than the Wahhabi terrorists, more devoted to their living god emperor than the Wahhabis are to Allah. After the US conquered them, they became pacifists and gave up their emperor worship. They did not grow that devotion to peace on their own. The US imposed it on them, much to the benefit of the world.
Steve
They can’t keep shifting the blame
Here’s an article by John R. Bradley that is interesting: SAUDI ROYALS CAN’T KEEP SHIFTING THE BLAME
Re(3): Calm down people…
Mahmood, I appreciate the long post explaining your position.
Understand that it’s very hard for an American to comprehend what you have to live with — I’m an atheist, so I guess I’d already be dead were I in your shoes. I simply can’t begin to imagine living in your country; I’d go nuts. What point is a life without alcohol and pornography? And the whole praying five times a day thing would throw me for a loop.
I agree we should look for solutions. As I see it, I have worked to improve the situation. My social life is a shambles because I’m a liberal who has strongly supported the removal of Saddam. You have no idea how unpopular that makes an American Democrat.
It seems to me that a liberal democracy in Iraq would be the best possible catalyst for progress in the region — am I wrong?
Which is why I’m shocked to hear so many “liberal” Arabs talk as if A) the invasion was ‘illegal’ — whatever that means; and B) it has already failed.
I’m sure you’re educated — you know it took 4 years to put Germany back on its feet. Why is there no patience with Iraq? And why are so few Arabs helping the reconstruction? Why is the Arab media treating terrorists like heroes? Why do baseless and absurd conspiracy theories continue to propigate?
And what about the elephant no one talks about — a Saudi ideology that brainwashes children to hate “infidels”? When will that be openly addressed?
In the end, I think progress will succeed, at least in Iraq. And it will spread to Iran. But it seems that the closer you get to Mecca, the more popular Osama’s 8th century barbarism becomes. I fear for your country and the rest of the Gulf states.
— James
Re(5): What exactly are we waiting for?
Jasra,
I disagree that the WMDs were a pretext. Everyone believed that Saddam had them, everyone, including the people attacking Bush now for saying so. We know that Saddam has not accounted for vast quantities of chemical munitions he admitted to possessing. My guess is that there was much more we never knew about.
The story of the WMDs has not been told yet and has not been uncovered. The sarin shell used against our troops a few weeks back may well be the tip of the WMD iceberg. Iraq never declared binary sarin artillery shells at all. Yet there it was. How many more are there and how many kinds?
I also disagree that Chalabi had a lot of sway with the US. It was clear to me long before the war that Chalabi was not a very respected figure among US intelligence nor State Department. He did say stuff we wanted to hear, but it did not differ from what normal expatriate Iraqis were saying here in the states. We funded him enough to keep him going but we haven’t made him president of Iraq nor is he likely to be elected to anything when the Iraqis start voting for their leaders.
I also disagree that the US has not placed sufficient resources in Iraq to achieve its goals. They are just about right. The danger is to place too many troops and assets in Iraq and try to fix Iraq for the Iraqis, much as we overplayed our hand in Vietnam. It is better for the Iraqis to be stung into taking their own fate into their own hands, shaking off the passive mentality of Saddam’s slaves.
I’d say hubris more neatly fits Saddam, with his pervasive statues and paintings of himself, his imprinting of his name on the bricks of his palaces. Look upon his works and despair.
Steve
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
I think the hope is that Muslims learn the limits of other people’s tolerance before Americans have to learn the limits our their power, because those limits result in most Arab urban centers turned into smoking craters. Let’s not forget that.
Re(3): Calm down people…
That was a very interesting post, Mahmood. It certainly helps me to better place myself in your shoes (sandals?) and imagine things from your perspective.
Probably what we can all agree upon is that it is unlikely that change in Arab governments will come about through ordinary means because those governments possess a monopoly on power and an interest in maintaining it. Change will most likely come about through extraordinary means. The irony is that the violent extraordinary actions of Bin Laden has led to some desired changes, such as the removal of Saddam in Iraq.
That certainly is not the preferred course. It seems far better to pursue peaceful extraordinary change, through commerce, for example. Afghanistan doesn’t have a chance of becoming a liberal democracy with free speech and a free market, but Iraq does. If we can build Iraq up, convince it to invest its oil wealth in infrastructure rather than weapons, and crown it with the prosperity that property rights and free markets bring, it could become an irresistable model for its neighbors.
By way of comparison, you can look at North and South Korea. Before the Korean War, they were roughly equal. Now the free markets of the South have produced an economy with a GDP of $855 billion, eighteen times that of the North’s $23 billion. That’s $17,700 GDP per capita in the South compared to $1000 in the North. Free markets favor larger families. The rich South has double the population of the poor North. Inevitably, the free market course will make South Korea so much stronger than the North that it will absorb it.
The same strategy would hold for Iraq. If its free market approach leads it to become more populous and rich, its neighbors will be forced to emulate it to remain on equal terms. The pressure will slowly rise over decades to force the change by degrees.
This is a strategy of generations. You can’t stick Iraq in the microwave and expect it to be done in four minutes. If we can maintain our course there while steadily reducing our presence, we could grow a new South Korea in the Middle East.
Steve
Re(6): What exactly are we waiting for?
“Errrrrrm. Do I remember something called a dual containment policy vis a vis Iraq and Iran? Something to do vaguely with US arms being sold to both in order for both to be the de facto check on the other?”
That’s not quite so. The US has never been a major weapons supplier to Iraq. You might be able to find some nuts and bolts and software made in America, but that’s about it. The Soviet Union supplied 95% of Iraq’s arms before Saddam. Saddam diversified his arms suppliers so that the Soviet Union only supplied about 60% of arms while Europe supplied most of the remainder.
That’s why Iraqis carry AK-47s, not M-16s; drive T-72 tanks, not M-1s; fly MiGs, not F-16s. This is obvious to the casual observer who flicks on the TV.
What the US did in fact do is provide intelligence to both sides during the Iran-Iraq War. When the Iranians pressed too far, we provided aerial photography to the Iraqis showing the disposition of the Iranian troops. When the Iraqis pressed too far, we did the same for the Iranians, pointing out the weaknesses of the Iraqis. As Kissinger said, it’s a shame they both couldn’t lose.
With their fury directed at each other, neither Iran nor Iraq had much energy to make attacks on the US. That was good.
Steve
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
“Sure it turns to anger and uncertainty, but one thing that could be done NOW is for the political establishment in Saudi, that is the very highest ranking princes NOT the religious freeks they have there is to take over the mics in the major mosques in Saudi and talk directly to the people and challenge the Al-Qaeda shits to come and face them. Time to go into direct confrontation right in their midst.”
The Princes and the Wahhabis are on the same side. How can there be confrontation?
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
artificially, yes they are one and the same, practically, I don’t think this is the case now. I think the princes are trying to find a way, be that a face saving gesture or otherwise, to distance themselves from the the religious wahabis as much as possible. They’re just not sure how that will play out. At least this is what I hope will happen.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Mahmood wrote:
[i]On a wider scale I agree with you too that the education system should drastically and radically change from the hate it now perpetuates to acceptance of differing opinions. The regimes in this area are still operating for a large part in a medieval mind-set, rule by oppression. This must change if these very same rulers are to continue to rule….[/i]
Whether you agree with the action or not, that is exactly why we deposed Saddam — to put these changes into effect throughout the region.
Abdulaziz Al-Muqrin
… and now he can get a job in Bahrain where his feat will equate him with a university degree!
[Modified by: Mahmood Al-Yousif (mahmood) on June 19, 2004 03:34 PM]
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
Yes, it is all very scary mahmood. Like you I have no answers because the answers lie in the deeply secretive and deadly hands of regime leaders and in their hands alone. They must be in turmoil, how to deal with this and yet still survive holding on to as much money and power as there greedy hands can manage.
What I am acutely aware of is the educational system in this region, it is downright scandalous, the lies and misinformation that students are subjected to from the earliest age. There is still in this day and age (albeit it slightly less, but not much) a system of learning by rote and intimidation. There is NO arts/drama, creative thinking, neither are the children allowed to question and debate. Questioning and debate are seen as insolence if not downright subordination.
Without tackling education at the basic level AND I mean immediately, concurently with political changes I fear any hope for the future will be stalled for the forseeable future. Change should begin at the TOP (regime leaders and their families of thousands) and from the BOTTOM (the children are our future hope to destroy the fungul disease of fundementalism that is eating at our society.) Hopefully when the two meet in the middle, then we can begin to live in the real world in peace.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Sheesh, you Americans are so pathetic, change can not be imposed! It must grown from a stable and healthy root! Saddam was evil, no doubt about it but who appointed America as gaurdian angels of the world, who invited you into Iraq, you are only changing chaos for another sort of chaos. Keep your arrogance to yourself, it irritates me and many others, you wonder why America is not popular?
On Naievte
James.
I was not addressing you specifically as being naive. I agree with your point that change can be imposed; sometimes obviously, and sometimes not so directly. A butterfuly in Japan can lead to a hurricane in Europe, (or something like that).
However, I do consider a significant majority of Americans much less politically sophisticated than their counterparts in Europe and the Middle East. You live in such an open society where there is no such thing as ‘can’t’. The halthy optimism that pervades every single layer of your cultural attitude makes it extremely difficult to understand some of the fundamental paradigms that our socieities operate in.
A kid from a broken home with a junkie mother and wife can go from growing up in a trailer park to becoming an MTV hero with enough money to bring up his daughter in the lap of luxury. He may even send her to Yale. (Eminem). The equivalent of that kid in this part of the world will probably end up groing up a ‘hero’ dying in a shootout with Saudi secuirty forces in Riyadh. Whereas Eminem’s frustration and anger is allowed to be channelled into into his performance on stage .. Al Muqrin resorts to guns.
The difference between the two men is that they come from fundamentally different societies. The US rewards talent. it rewards entrepreneurialism. With a good idea and some decent marketing skills, American kids can fund themselves through college, raise capital and create businessess that end up ruling the world. Microsoft, Rand. (Rand was said tongue in cheek).
My point being – that this ‘can do’ attitude, which is a refelction of the institutions of democracy (legal, judicial, accountability, access to capital, relatively free markets) – does NOT exist in this part of the world. For the primairy reason that we ‘Cannot’ do.
Any attempt to understand this region needs to understand our media does not work the same way that it does in the states, our parliaments do not yet work the way they do in the West, and quite frankly, neither does our leadership!
We all know that Arab blood has spilled Arab blood. We all know, and agree, that Saddam was a butcher. Whetehr Arabs have spilled more blood than Americans is a futile debate in my mind. The bottom line is that we need to get our acts togther and create socieities that can contribute to the 21st century. Which means democractic insitutions. Which means we have to replace tribalism and factional loyalties with performance based support.
Bahrain is conducting an experiment in democracy – and we have a situaiton going on where if we were to allow the will of the people to prevail, we may end up with fundies in charge. Whilst the majority of the people on this blog are liberals and support democracy – we realize that we need to change the attitide of the voters so that they fully understand what they are voting for when they vote in the bearded ones.
Its not as black and white as you make it out to be. There are a lot of shades of gray and nuances and years of historical precedent and cultural norms that need to be changed and amended. And it wont happen overnight.
So – be patient. read and absorb and try and recognize that there is an incredible amount of frustration that we are all dealing with in trying to move the process forward without resporting to ‘Me Good, You Bad’ mentality.
Jasra Jedi
Re(7): What exactly are we waiting for?
Steve ..
How did the Iraqis fund their weaponry? And what about Iranian weapons? Were they American or Russian? I seem to remember some stuff about Iran contra … but .. oops. was just a casual observer of Tv at the time. Ollie North .. Olive oyl .. I get them mixed up somtimes.
also – side note – this casual observer of TV doesnt think that either Iran or Iraq were interested in attacking the US. Just US interests as embodied in … *drum roll* saudi Arabia! Saudi was always Iraq’s target. and Iran was acting in self defense ..
Jasra Jedi.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Mahmood,
I was just on the Religions Polieman’s website last night, when a “lovely” person named Zahir, began exchanging comments with the other posters.
First, He/she (sorry, I am not yet familiar enough with names to understand their gender relationship) began by commenting how upset they were about P. Johnsons beheading and how it did not represent Islam. The people who did this were evil monsters. Simple enough statement and cognizant to the post.
Continuing posts included the following (paraphrasing for sake of space):
Do you understand OUR frustration? Who believes this stuff? I know you and Jesra keep posting here and trying to explain how the repression, etc, etc, etc effects peoples thinking, but I have a really hard time understanding how anybody who has access to the internet and many other sources can still mouth this kind of…what is a polite word?…delusional insanity?
It’s right up there with Prince Abdullah claiming yesterday to the Jeruselem post that Al-Qaeda is in collusion with the Zionists to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia. Claims Al-Qaeda gets 95% of their “assistance” from the Zionist.
Do you understand why we lose hope? I’m not sure if I or my country can wait for people to get “educated” before Osama and friends take over KSA.
Last comment…you and Jesra keep saying why you can’t do this or can’t do that. You are unwilling to risk your lives for your freedoms. You prefer to wait until they come to you *peacefully*. Can you tell me one dictatorship that was every overthrown peacefully and replaced with a democracy? Any anywhere?
I realize that I am saying this from my nice cushy chair in my nice quiet office in the land of the free. But, having tasted such freedom, if it was taken away from me, I would fight tooth and nail to get it back and not wait for my “government” to give it to me.
Freedom is the gift of God or allah or whoever to all men (and women). It is not a *gift* given to me by my government. That is the concept that apparently has not caught hold in your respective or collective minds. Until it does, you are right, everyone will be sheep waiting for the next shephard to cull the herd for slaughter.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Chan’ad:
I’m going to assume that you are living in the M.E., this is a war of IDEAS, and those of you living in the Islamic/Arab world are on the front lines. You need to confront these….people(for lack of a better word), when you see someone spouting words or ideas that support the radicals SMACK EM UPSIDE THE HEAD( rhetorically of course). We here in America can kill them when we find them. BUT it’s you guys that can and need to defeat their ideas.
Trackback :: Win-Win
TrackBack from gulfreporter
It’s good to see Mahmood, one of the Gulf’s most reliable commentators, posting parallel sentiments to our sleepless screed of last night. Asks Mahmood, What else are WE as Muslims, Arabs whatever waiting for exactly to rise against these bastards?
What exactly are we waiting for?
As usual, Mahmood, you have sparked a lively debate. It was great to read this post, and even better to read your more detailed analysis that followed it in the comments section. Keep up the good work. The situation is far more complicated than simply fighting tooth and nail, and your contribution is a move in the right direction, I believe.
What exactly are we waiting for?
“I have a really hard time understanding how anybody who has access to the internet and many other sources can still mouth this kind of…what is a polite word?…delusional insanity?”
There are people in the US who believe strange things too, in spite of having free access to books and the Internet. For example, some believe the world is only a few thousand years old, others believe aliens have landed in flying saucers, others believe the moon landings were faked.
Don Cox
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
How can you talk sense to a madman? This dickhead that you quoted is simply that, a madman, even more than that I think he’s patently living in a dreamworld manufactured specifically for his kind. He’s the kind of person who has been so blinded and lied to that lies have become facts and no matter what we do and say, he’s not going to see things as they are. I cannot and will not respond to this kind of person, it is just futile and doesn’t bring anything new to the table.
Is he the only one around in our world? Most definitely not. There are many people in Bahrain who just love conspiracy theories. I call those people fishwives who like to hear their own voice and try to look important in front of their ilk, and the more conspiracies against the States, Israel, Iran or whichever country that is the flavour of the day, the more their egos get pumped.
Do I even waste time trying to change a mind that is not present in the first place? No. They don’t interest me and they never will. At the end of the day, their opinions do not count and they hold no influence in society, maybe only in their own slime puddle with their amoeba friends. It is these people who keep sending me death threats which I handily label as junk and my trusty Thunderbird email client take care of.
Regardless of these idiots, change is happening. There is no turning back. Bahrain – even with its disfunctional democracy and impotent parliament – has shown the way, with the limited freedoms of the press, we have started to speak, with the limited personal freedoms we feel, we have started to demonstrate, about petty things now mind you, but demonstrations have become a way of life here. This is not replicated anywhere else in the Arab world as far as I know.
True that freedom is a gift from Allah, subsequently metered by governments and societies, but if you live for generations under repression, you just do not know what freedoms people are talking about, and it’s no big deal. It’s only when you experience it first hand that you become to appreciate and crave it.
I was fortunate enough to have lived in the UK for a few years, and the United States for a few months and even for those short periods of time, I have come back itching for change. Where did I start? I started 18 years ago when I got married, 14 years ago when we had our first child. I can tell you that sometimes I’m a totalitarian at home in some issues, only to be faced off by my children and shamed into re-evaluating positions I have taken. I don’t fly off the handle so much when that happens, but we enter into a dialogue (parents and children) and come to a satisfactory middle ground.
Today I try to get involved in political activities, this blog (has become) one of them, and soon I hope to make up my mind which party I would want to pitch my tent at. At the moment I am still undecided, but I can tell you now and you can hold me to it that I will never belong to a religiously-based party, but a liberal one that expounds the values that both you and I strive to: personal freedoms a-la First Amendment.
Getting back to our dear friend MR. Zahir, he joins an illustrious lot, the same lot that still believes to this very day that the earth is flat, and that no-one landed on the moon, that the earth and not the sun is the centre of the universe, and superman can’t fly without his cape!
Chill out man, this guy does not hold any sway in the real world. Let him continue to dance to his own tune. Maybe if ignored he’ll pat himself on the back and think that he’s right, or maybe starts to think, but for this guy, I’m not holding my breath.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
thank you Mark, I appreciate your support.
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Chan’ad is a Bahraini in all but a piece of paper. He lives in Bahrain and runs his own blog at http://chanadbahraini.blogspot.com/“ which is well worth a visit.
I completely agree with you. The least we can do is smack them on the head in the hope that some sense will be knocked loose! Everytime some “short-thobed sexually frurstrated long beard” spouts some idiotic remark we need to write to the papers to knock him and his ideas a few rungs down.
Maybe with our persistance we can finally show them that we oppose them and their idiotic thoughts.
Re(5): Calm down people…
[quote]The easiest way from an American perspective to resolve the existence of bad features in other cultures is to assume that the population supports it. [b]There is a kernel of truth in that assumption[/b]. [/quote]
Steve you just can’t stop putting a little jab and a poke in your comments. If it is not the Claus Von Sydow Needfull Things mentality of “KILL EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT” you then start branding all with such broad based strokes and comments. “Kernal of Truth” my ass that the population as a whole or in large part, and yes Steve, that is what you imply by saying this, supports something. Steve you have NO CLUE what some of these people have been through and you have NO CLUE what it is like to live in a Religous Police State. No idea of the GENERATIONS of FEAR and TERROR that has been in place for the general popualtion. And it cuts through all sectors of the society. No one is safe. NO ONE. Open your mouth and say the wrong thing and you might not live to tell it. You mistake silence for apathy or support when it is more like a matter of survival.
You can make such wonderful statements yet LOSE the entire message with INSANE jibberish like the “Kernel of Truth” quip.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Don Cos…thanks for the reminder. You are right. There are delusional people on our side of the pond as well. Just saw a poster last night telling us we need to negotiate with Al-Qaeda. LOL
That almost made me fall out of my chair. ROFLAO
Mahmood…I must thank you and Dan for reminding me not to paint with to wide a brush! LOL I am actually eternally thankful that you post this blog. It has been a serious eye opener to me. For instance, I will not lie, until I came to your blog about a month ago (been lurking and not posting much), I did not know that Bahrain had any such thing as a parliament! I thought ALL of the Gulf states were straight up dictatorships or monarchies with no popular representation.
I will take your advice and refuse to try to reason with people like Mr. Zahir (thank you for gender direction), although, when I see these, kind of things I just can’t stop my self from asking where they’ve been.
I am glad you are deciding what political party to join and of course, this blog is a good start. I realized, when reading your blog, that you had obviously been educated or traveled considerably outside of your respective country. I can’t wait for the day when travel between our respective areas is a as common as the commuter flight I can catch to Chicago everyday. Probably dispel alot of misgivings on our differences (or re-enforce some)
I am certainly not advocating “martyring” yourself for nothing. Just don’t accept any substitutes for a real democracy. Fake elections and no reforms are just the same as none at all.
Oh…I realized I didn’t put my name on last time. My apologies.
Kathleen H.
your friend and supporter.
PS..I just received my first hatemail on my blog as well. apparently I am crazy (not proven), nihilist(never), warmongering(sometimes), insomniac (sometimes), stalker of President Bush (uhhh…never met him, seen him, or stalked him), that should be locked up in a padded room. LOL
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
[i]Trust takes a long time to happen James, but very little to destroy. It is this quality that we have to build between our cultures.[/i]
Well yes… but how?
In its current incarnation, it’s rather difficult to trust the Arab world. I don’t hear much but xenophobic racist lies coming from the Arab media. I see a culture hamstrung by its “pride” — and what exactly you have to be proud of is beyond me.
I trust the Japanese. I respect them. I buy their products and visit their cities and admire their culture (and date their women without receiving death threats!). Compare their culture to Arab culture — you notice a difference? Your schools teach racism as a matter of course. Religious freedom? You EXECUTE atheists? Do you have any idea how that makes an atheist like me feel?
I see the Japanese building robots, and the Arabs building human bombs. That’s my perspective.
The fact is, in their current incarnation, I cannot trust Arab governments or media. I automatically assume that everything they say is a self-serving, delusional lie. And I don’t know any Arab-Arab people (as opposed to Arab-American) to trust. So there’s not a lot of trust to be had.
I hope you’re right that most Arabs are moderates — but I doubt it. The recent poll showing a majority of Saudis agree with Bin Ladin doesn’t do much to convince me of your arguments. And your own posts about the strength of the Bahraini fundamentalists are disturbing. It seems to me that this barbaric ideology is prospering.
We’re in a confusing time — until Iraq either stabilizes or falls completely apart, it’s going to be hard to know what direction we’re travelling in.
— James
Re: On Naievte
[i]I do consider a significant majority of Americans much less politically sophisticated than their counterparts in Europe and the Middle East.[/i]
You really think the average American is less politically sophisticated than the average Iraqi or Syrian, who has never voted? Of course not. And Europeans, for all their “sophistication,” have grown remarkably adept at stiffling dissent in their press. I think you’re buying into a stereotype because you simply don’t know many Americans. Impatient — yes. Naive, I don’t think so. Not more than any other people.
You’re right about one thing — we don’t like to sit around and hope things get better. Action is always better than inaction, that might as well be an American proverb. So something needs to change in the Middle East, we figure why not throw a big rock in the middle of it and see what happens. The native regimes weren’t making any improvements.
[i]Its not as black and white as you make it out to be.[/i]
But sometimes, Jasra, it IS black and white. Saudi culture IS black. IT’s wrong. It’s inhuman. It needs to change. Saddam’s regime WAS black. It was inhuman. It needed to go.
Moral relativism is great… to a point. But when you give 50% of a society [the men] the right to treat the other half like cattle, that’s not tolerance — it’s evil.
[i]Bahrain is conducting an experiment in democracy – and we have a situaiton going on where if we were to allow the will of the people to prevail, we may end up with fundies in charge.[/i]
Well, then start arming yourselves. The British had to fight for their freedom. So did the French, the Russians, we Americans. Why would you be any different? If these animals want to control your lives, you have to stand up to them.
— James
What exactly are we waiting for?
Kathleen ..
I am assuming it was you who said …
“Last comment…you and Jesra keep saying why you can’t do this or can’t do that. You are unwilling to risk your lives for your freedoms. You prefer to wait until they come to you *peacefully*. Can you tell me one dictatorship that was every overthrown peacefully and replaced with a democracy? Any anywhere? ”
If you will allow me, let me explain to you how I see the problem:
My government in Bahrain has taken steps towards democracy. both politically and economically. We are liberalizing markets, doing privatizations and are currently enjoying our first parliament with all its nuances. martial law was removed, and there is a distinctive feeling of freedom that did not extst a few years ago. it might not be perfect, but we are moving in the right direction.
There are those who dont agree with me. They are vocal and they are religious in nature and they have support from the street. they are doing exactly what you want them to do – which is risk their lives for their beleifs. The problem is – you wouldt like their beleifs.
So, given the fact that I am a beleiver in the process of democratization … I can either support my government, or work against it. I choose to support it – I think that opposition in a legal context is valid and needed. Within the current parameters. I speak up against the fundies here, all the time. I challenge them on economic agenda. I challenge the voters on why they voted for them in the first place.
However, we in Bahrain are lucky because the process is moving forward. However, it was a process started by HM King Hamad. Possibly and probably as a repsonse to our own internal problems in the 90’s… but – he took the gauntlet and “Led”. The battle on the consitution is being fought through legal channels and not with gas canisters.
The problem in saudi is that the leadership let it get to this level where people are beheading others. Which is why, if i were a Saudi, and I wanted to affect change – and I were given the choice in either supporting the terrorists in voicing their opposition, or supporting the status quo in its denial – I would find myself paralyzed. Which is why, think that it will take the silent majority in saudi to feel firsthand the devastating effects of terrorism on their own day to day lives to come up with a constructive form of opposition. Which, would be helped out significantly if the Government there established parliament ASAP.
This does not mean that I am waiting for people to hand me democracy on a plate – it means that I am waitinfg for the current leadership to create the right structure so that I can contribute PRODUCTIVELY.
Right now – the average Saudis are between a rock and a hard place. We need more reform minded saudis to place pressure on their own Goverment. It wold also be nice of the Government recognized that they need reform as well.
i hope this makes sense ..
jasra jedi
What exactly are we waiting for?
The terrorists will fight and die for their beliefs but no on will fight and die for the House of Saud. I’m sure most, even the vast majority of Saudi subjects do not want the government to collapse or a bin Ladenist takeover but they are unwilling to do anything. it’s too risky. All that is required for evil to triumph is for men of good will to do nothing. Good luck Mahmood. – Rant Wraith [url]http://rantwraith.blogspot.com/[/url]
Re(1): On Naievte
James sweetheart ..
you just illustrated my point. beautifully.
political sophistication is not judged by whether someone can vote or not. it is judged by the ability to understand power politics and what motives are separate from the moral rhetoric that gets spewed. and power usually has something to do with economic resources.
saudi culture aint all black. theres some great stuff there. the ‘system’ they are operating under doesnt allow the good to come out.
oh – on a side note – i do know plenty of americans. i also lived in the states for a while. i can tell you the cultural difference between the east coast and the west coasts of the us. i speak english. i can even differentiate between color and colour.
but – can you tell the difference between an iraqi and a bahraini? can you speak arabic let alone differentiate between all the dialects? can you look at arab behavior and differentiate between what is religious in nature and what is cultural?
thought not.
jasra jedi
Re(2): On Naievte
Jasra, I’m not sure how I demonstrated my naivete. By condemning a culture that is rooted in 8th century barbarism? If that’s naivete, then so be it, I’m happily naive.
I’m glad that you’re familiar with my culture, and indeed impressed by your knowledge. By the way, how would you describe the difference between the West and East coasts? I’m a New Englander drawn to California, and have my own theories… most involving the impact of added sunlight!
The truth is that most Americans couldn’t care less about your region or culture. We learn about the Europeans, because our language and culture is descended from them. We study the Greeks and Romans, because all mankind owes so much to their legal system and philosophy. We interact with the Japanese and Chinese, because we do business with them, and watch their movies and play their videogames and strive to understand their religion.
But what interaction do we have with Arabs? What Arab culture do we read or watch or enjoy? I could tell you in great detail about the life of Akira Kurosawa, explain the Japanese anime industry, describe my trips to Paris, my love of Shakespeare — but couldn’t for the life of me name a single Arab arist.
Why would we study Arab culture? What does modern Arab culture offer, other than endless poems about the plight of the Palestinians?
How can I as an atheist even begin to comprehend a culture so infatuated with religion? Why would I want to? I run from religion — the image of devout Arabs rocking back and forth as they memorize the Koran turns my stomach.
I think there’s a real clash here that you may not be grasping. As long as your culture sets it watch by the prayer calls, it’s alien to me, and I won’t ever embrace or understand it. I don’t want to. The world needs less religion, not more.
None of this is directed at you personally, of course. And of course I know that most Muslims are perfectly decent people. But currently, your worldwide ambassadors are the ones flying jet airplanes into skyscrapers, not the ones promoting tolerance of other faiths.
— James
What exactly are we waiting for?
Jesra…thank you for the explanation. It does sound like Bahrain is underway to the necessary reforms. As I said to Mahmood: don’t accept and counterfiet “democratic” processes that do nothing, but pretend. That will surely be as disasterous as doing nothing.
I must tell you, from an outsiders point of view, reading all the english arab newspapers from the region and then comparing it to western media, I see a huge gaping hole in what is being reported. Considering that the Religious Policeman usually interprets this the same as the western media, I would have to assume he understands or only watches BBC-ARabic.
It appears that it may be too late for these reforms in Saudi and, if they were held, it is possible that mostly Islamist parties would win the seats, either through popularity of intimidation. Then it will be like communism, dictatorship with fake representation of the populace.
I think the KSA royal family is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. You think KSA can go “reform” without violence or total take over by wahabis?
What exactly are we waiting for?
Hmmm.
Some interesting points. Most of them valid. Mahmood – I hope you poured yourself a double – you deserve it!
There are a lot of rich comments in this post .. Americans trying to understand us, and in some cases, trying to understand each other. And Arabs trying to communicate to the Americans why it is unfair to judge our behavior within the American paradigm. When I say ‘our’ behavior, I would venture to say that it is the ‘we’ of the silent liberal majority in Bahrain.
I think that the point that the previous poster made about us being quiet as a matter of survival and not about weakness and apathy is a very valid one. I definitely dont suppoprt what the fundies are doing, I am interested in seeing how the American experience in the ME plays out – and I am most interested in seeing whether our leadership can respond to these extrernal forces and actually take us one step further in the right direction.
What can I do? Not much. Not at the moment. Except maybe support my government in what its trying to do because I definitely dont support the fundies.
James/ Steve .. The perception here is that most Americans are good people. In fact, we joke around that they are not as imperialist as the Birts used to be. The issue is that to most Americans – foreign poicy is a small component of their lives. Therefore, the awareness you have of geo politics is not as enahnced as it could be. Which is why some of the statements made get a rile out of people – because there is a tremendous amount of political naievte implicit in these comments. Which then gets transalated into arrogance. (Is the downside of not having to watch your back every time you open your mouth … 😉 unlike the US, we are not a free society … )
jasra jedi
And, Steve .. like you, we question authority, which is why we question the US motives. Nothing to do with whether there is a bias or not agasint the US – but more to the fact that it is the only superpower in the world and yeilds tremendous amounts of power and authority! We are just exercising our newly found tools of critical analsysis and thinking .. (newly imparted to us post iraq!) and, lo and behold, not all the pieces fit! but maybe we need to wait until iraq is fully liberated to speak knowledgably about democracy and responsability. or should we wait until Saudi Arabia has been liberated? oh sorry – Iran is next in line. God bless America ….
(and before anyone jumps down my throat – i was exercising a healthy dose of sarcasm and irony in humor – not something that comes easy to Ameiicans – but they are remnants of the British attempt at ‘liberalizing’ the natives … 😉
Jasra Jedi
Re(6): Calm down people…
In all fairness to Steve .. when I look at Saudi from the outside in – it is a bit hard for me not to think that there is a critical amount of Saudis that support Al Qaeda and the horrific random beheadings that are going on.
The irony is that, in fact, the Saudi population are as angry with their leadership as the Americans. Al Qaeda is the voice of ‘those who dare to speak out’ – those who want to implement change! The system they operate under doesnt allow them a voice. Hence they use violence.
So, there is a kernel of truth. And its pretty damn hard to swallow.
Jasra Jedi
Re(3): On Naievte
James, Jasra Jedi is probably the most sincere Arab spirit that you would hope to meet. We both genuinely believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, however your continuous accusations and your refusal to accept that there is another – probably correct – point of view really disturbs me, for you read like an educated and worldly person.
Hence, your condemnation of our way of life as Arabs and Muslims is unwarranted, and would do least in rapprochement between our cultures.
Just accept – please – that our cultures are different, our values are different, and our ways of thinking is different. However we do share a common view in that we want a better world first and foremost.
You condemn us for being proud. You condemn us for you know being able to name a single Arab contribution to world culture and human spirit. You accuse us generally of subjugating women and their rites, and you blame us for holding fast to our religion and you paint us with the broad brush of terror-sympathisers and you refuse to see our point of view – which ironically is very similar to yours.
Your posts seem to me just as hard-and-fast as the Taliban’s and you are at the very least being derogatory.
What I understand from your posts so far – and correct me if I’m wrong please – is to immediately bear arms and go into a full-fledged armed struggle to topple our governments, replaced by what you hope to be a rule akin to your own. This will not happen and that would be the very worst that you can hope for, because if it did descend into an armed conflict, the biggest loser is the whole world, not just this area of the world.
You state that the American person cannot care less about our culture and religion, permit me to say that you are very wrong. One of the greatest influences of my life has been an American teacher who has educated me for the best part of 7 years and beyond. Mr. Gary Brown, apart from being an Evangelical missionary, was a huge influence on not just me by tens of students who have come under his tutelage, he garnered our complete respect by not only being an able educator, but because he took pains in understanding our culture so much so that he became fluent in our own language, and slowly, methodically and logically convinced us that there is no such thing as a single point of view which is correct, but there are several faces and ways to think of human nature and the human being’s beliefs. Through his memory and my own contact with tens and hundreds of Americans I know that you are completely wrong.
I am not being facetious here, on the contrary, I am trying to make you understand that the way you are expounding your hard-held beliefs are just as bad as the Taliban’s or any other extremist. Please prove me wrong.
If and when you are ready not to condemn us as backwater rats who deserve nothing less than being nuked out of existence, then I will be – as I am sure the majority of the visitors we have on mahmood.tv – will be more than happy to assist you in your rapprochement efforts. Until then, I hope that you will allow your mind to accept that we too deserve to live a decent and honourable life.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
or at the very least to let the world know the vast majority of Muslims are as appalled (assuming they are) with fundamentalist insanity as the rest of us.
[quote]
Of course we are Steve, we are just not in a position to be vocal about it, we have no free press, no way of conveying to the world at large how very much we are against the fundementalists. As has been mentioned on this board numerous times, the majority of us are silent because of fear for our lives and our families.
One of the main problems I see that we have in this region, is that the uneducated, poor people who have historically had no prospects whatsoever have turned to religion (the very religion that has been hijacked by extreism) If you give these people freedom, right now, they would not know what to do with it, they have never had any before. They would just turn round and give their freedom into the hands of the local Imam ect who has always looked after them in the past, he is someone they consider educated and wise (because he can memorise the whole Koran!) Now if this said Imam is a fundementalist?? You see my point? We need at a local/village level, people who will go round the villages and towns holding ‘freedom’ classes (for want of a better expession) people need to know what they can and cannot do with their freedom, they need to know that with freedom comes a responsibility to protect others freedoms and to use it wisely. They need to know what benefits will come to them with freedom! So you can only ‘assume’ because you are learning about our culture and lives. This is good and should be reciprical, we should not assume about the West, we should be taught your values and cultures ect, just as you should be taught ours. Problems are easier solved when you know what is causing them in the first place.
How do you know?
How do you know what’s going on in Arab newspapers? You read Arabic?
What exactly are we waiting for?
how can anyone in thier right mind, or should I say how can any Muslim condone the sick execution that is now trawling the internet on live webcam, these people are not warriors in a holy war, they are sick animals, pigs !! and should be slaughtered like pigs themselves as a punishment, then they should be laid to rest for eternity in a stinking pig sty, with no hope of 27 spiritual virgins to bring them an afterlife comfort, sick stinking bastards that they are
Re: How do you know?
Many of the regions newspapers print and also have online an English version.
What exactly are we waiting for?
I realise that some heavy discussions are afoot here right now BUT this interuption is an emergency!!!!!
Has anyone else noticed that our Saudi friend ‘the religous policeman’ has disapeared? Oh No, please try and find out if he is okay Mahmood? I hope it’s just a temporary blip?
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
none of the blogspot hosted blogs are working, it probably is just a maintenance period, haveing said that, I just raised Alhamedi’s blog, so it’s back online!
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Phew! I worry about him you know lol
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Certainly a few of the Wahhabis are willing to die for their beliefs but not the majority. Certainly not their leadership. Most of them go to extraordinary lengths to survive, especially Osama and Zawahiri. Most of the terrorists willing to die are chumps that have been talked into a suicide attack, and not all those carry through on that commitment.
Steve
What exactly are we waiting for?
Pretty interesting discussion, and I am glad the Gulf Reporter copied and pasted your 12 statements on why the silent majority doesn’t rise up. I’m saving them for some American websites that need a dose of reality, but I won’t say where they come from cause Mahmood’s safety is more important.
With Mr. Johnson’s murder, a lot of Americans are wondering why the silent majority doesn’t do more to change things; it is illogical to Americans, and the media doesn’t help either. I understand James’ prospective, but it is an outsiders prospective and fighting with guns isn’t going to do anything but make things worse. Wouldn’t work here either. The fear is that by not fighting for reforms or demanding their rights that it is all too easy to have the bearded ones take control, and then all is lost or a mess like SA.
I do think NOW is the time to do something because of world opinion and that the bearded ones feel threatened because of Iraq. If the opportunity passes; things will just go back to the way they were or worse.
My 15 year old was watching the civil rights movement on Discovery and couldn’t believe the things that happened even though he’s read it in the history books, and we talked about how things changed over the last 40 years. Not going to tell you there isn’t racism in America, but there is no question in most people’s mind that everyone has equal rights and you don’t tromp on them. That’s why I think Mahmood’s ideas about reforms are right. The government has made a statement in alot of ways by allowing more openness just as the US did with civil rights. It took time, protests were nonviolent and the message was so obvious that no one could fight it. Hope the people of Bahrain continue to speak out against the total control of the religious police and take one step at a time until EVERYONE in the country can live in dignity.
Regards,
Marlene
What exactly are we waiting for?
Forgot. I don’t agree with James that Americans could care less about the peoples and cultures of the region; no excuse to live in fear any where on the planet.
Re(4): On Naievte
[i]We both genuinely believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, however your continuous accusations and your refusal to accept that there is another – probably correct – point of view really disturbs me, for you read like an educated and worldly person.[/i]
Fair enough, but what accusations, in particular, am I making that are unfair? Isn’t your society dominated by religion? Isn’t that domination holding back your progress? Isn’t your society more closed to other ideas than most? Isn’t your society more xenophobic than most? Doesn’t your society treat women worse than most? These are findings reported by Arab intellectuals in the Arab Human Development Report, I’m not pulling these things out of my ass.
What point of view am I missing? It seems to me that the poison taught in Arab schools and Arab mosques — that Islam is the only true religion, that “infidels” are inferior, that the Jews are the source of evil — leads directly to young men strapping explosives to their bodies, and old men writing checks to their favorite terrorist group, and my fellow citizens having their heads sawed off on your evening newscast.
Am I wrong?
[i]Just accept – please – that our cultures are different, our values are different, and our ways of thinking is different.[/i]
How, specifically, do you and I differ? Do you think religion should be enforced by the state? Do you think homosexuals should be executed? Do you think women should be banned from working? Do you think alcohol should be illegal? Do you want your children memorizing the Koran?
I think you and I have very similiar values — the values of all enlightened men, through all of history. Freedom of speech, representative government, freedom of religion, gender equality, tolerance of others, an opportunity to work and raise a family without interference by the government, the church or the mosque.
How do you and I differ in our values?
And why, when I slam the twisted values of the Wahabbi ideology, do you compare me to the Taliban?
Yes, I despise the Wahabbi creed, because I despise intolerance, I despise misogyny, I despise indoctrination, religious tyranny and blind adherence to tradition. Don’t you?
— James
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Compare the number of Arab language classes in US universities to German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, Portugese, Russian, etc. and so on. It’s not exactly a high priority.
Re(8): What exactly are we waiting for?
Iran got its US weapons from the US during the Shah’s reign, not because Khomeini bought them. They had quite a bit of problem with launching their F-4s and F-14s due to the cut off of support. Fighter jets need a steady stream of technical support and spare parts to fly. They could only get a fraction of their air fleet airborne by cannibalizing the rest.
I wouldn’t call paying a ransom of a thousand TOW missiles to Iran to free US hostages captured by Iran’s surrogates in Lebanon evidence of support of Iran. It was a pretty cynical deal, but it was not evidence of an ongoing business in supplying weapons to Iran. It was a one shot deal.
Jasra, I recall Khomeini having quite a bit to say about the US when he came to power, none of it good. Iran was quite busy printing counterfeit $100 bills and spreading them around the world as part of an economic war. It also was very busy sending Iranian agents to the US to assassinate expatriate Iranians in their homes. They also tried to car bomb a US Navy captain in California. Sometimes, when the Ayatollah called us the Great Satan, I cried myself to sleep.
Although Iraq was the major aggressor in the Iran-Iraq war, Iran was not exactly innocent. Iran had been stirring up the Shia population to undermine Iraq in the years running up to the war.
I also recall Iraq shooting two Exocet missiles into the USS Stark, killing 37 US sailors in 1987. That sounds awfully hostile to me.
Steve
Re(7): Calm down people…
Holy cow, Jasra, you’re defending me now? Obviously this is some sort of a trick.
Steve
Re(5): On Naievte
James ..
One slow step at a time.
In your earlier post, you yourself mentioned that you are learning about this region and that you have not met any Arab-Arabs that you can trust. I am guessing maybe not any Arab-Arabs at all. All we are asking for is that you spend some time learning about what issues and challenges we face before you pass judgement.
The fact that you cannot grasp some of the challenges that we face will make it harder for you to understand. If you cannot respect the fundamental challenge in separating state from religion, you will never be able to see the steps that are being taken as baby steps. You will always view them as not enough. You will underestimate the amount of time and blood that will need to be spilled to get there. You will fail to see the parallels in Europe during their attempt to separate church from state. You will fail to see the parallels between the Wahabbi ideology and the Spanish Inquisition. The cutting of the religious umbilical chord will take a long time in this part of the world. not because people here are deeply religious, but because religion is so enterwined in the culture. it will be separated – but it will take time. And, we are all hoping that the first ‘real democracy’ in the Middle East – aka israel – will lead the way and change the rules for citizenship such that it is not based on religion. (said tongue in cheek).
james – on a more serious note. if America was established in 1789, how come women only got the right to vote in the 1920’s? how come the civil rights movement only took place in the 1960’s? how come it took so long for a Rosa Parks to come along? it took time America to move from a constitution that was drafted by a bunch of Puritan Real estate owners to a hetrogenous, diverse society that guaranteed minority rights.
So, you might step back a bit and develop a healthy respect for time and the process of revolution. if you dont want to learn from our current challenges, then you might want to step back and learn from your own country’s experience in building a civil society.
Re alcohol … can someone say ‘prohibition?’
Re the state not interfering in religion .. ‘In god we trust.’
😉
jasra jedi
Re(6): Calm down people…
I think you are misinterpreting my comment as a jab. It was a general observation. When we were studying military history at the Air Force Academy, one lesson was that the military of a country is a peculiar expression of its culture. More simply put, a country gets the military it deserves.
I couldn’t help but see that was true as I came into contact with foreign military members and studied potential enemies. Some were good, some bad, most mediocre. The strengths and weaknesses of each military mirrored its parent culture.
The same can be said of the governments of countries. The government is an expression of the people it rules. Is it just coincidence that most Western countries are democracies? Is it just coincidence that all Arab countries are authoritarian? The government represents how the people of that country understand government.
Look at how hard it is to transplant a form of government from one culture to another. We are having a tough time installing democracy in Iraq. Attaturk had a tough time installing democracy in Turkey. Theocracy wouldn’t fly in America. You couldn’t bring the monarchy back to power in England.
Every government relies on acceptance by its people at some level.
Not Insane At All,
Steve
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Hey, that wasn’t me. It was somebody else. The Real Steve always signs his name. Accept no substitutes!
Steve
PS. I’d sign in if the registration worked for me.
Re(9): What exactly are we waiting for?
Steve ..
I am not condoning Khomeini nor am i condoning Saddam. i dont think either Iraq or Iran come out smelling like roses.
My main point is that the US does play an extremely active role in its foreign policy in the region to maintain its own self interest. Sometimes productive, sometimes not.
[side bar on US foriegn policy successes :
Israel – check. (albeit expensive)
Lebanon – negative.
Iran – check until the fall of the Shah.
Kuwait/ Iraq 1991 – check.
Iraq 2004 – the jury is out.
Saudi – the jury is having lunch with the iraq jury. Looks like they might get food poisoning though.
net net – compared to its isolationsim pre WW2, the US is now firmly a global player. but i digress, back to my point …]
I am not even saying that the US should not play such a role. It should, and it does. Someone once said that in diplomacy, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies. but there are permanent interests.
The only reason I followed this train of throught was to show that contrary to what we hear on Fox, US involvement in the region has not been for altruistic reasons. Some on this posting are very quick to jump to black and white absolutes. Good and Evil. Sometimes the choice is not between right and wrong, but between the devil you know and the devil you dont. or the lesser of the two evils.
Incidentally – the GCC states were active players in the dual containment game as well.
jasra jedi
Re(8): Calm down people…
Steve ..
Methinks you are actually a Jedi who has been tempted by the dark side. i am convinced that with time, you shall see the light and come back to our fold. darth and george shall rule no more.
Besides, I am vying my time for when you establish your Republic of Steve. I would like to be appointed Chancellor of Everything. Maybe we can get Mahmood to be Chancellor of Everything Else.
Jasra Jedi
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
[i]”Which is why some of the statements made get a rile out of people – because there is a tremendous amount of political naievte implicit in these comments.”[/i]
Please don’t call me naive, I imagine I’ve seen as much of the world as you and have studied as much history. The comment I made which seems to have “riled” my brother Arabs is that change CAN be imposed by another culture. That’s a historical fact. How the hell did Islam spread if not by imposing itself?
The naivete is pretending that change can’t be imposed. There’s a horrendous double-standard in the Arab press, which you can’t deny. If it’s American, it’s bad. If it’s Jewish, it’s bad. If Arabs are slaughtering Arabs, it’s not worth mentioning. If Arabs are occupying Arabs, no comment.
Frankly, it disgusts us. Until you can see your own region with open eyes, there will be no change. What I’d give to see an Arab leader tell it like it is, starting with the FACT that Saddam did far, far more to hurt Muslims in 20 years than Israel has in 50. When do you think I’ll get to hear that?
— James
What exactly are we waiting for?
Actually, there was no failure to overthrow Saddam in 1991 because there was no intent to do so. Such an action was seen at the time as expanding the scope of the mission ad hoc. We went in to save Kuwait and stopped when that was done. Expanding the scope of your mission every time you enjoy some success is a recipe for catastrophe. It’s like doubling your bet every time you win a hand of blackjack because you’re doing so well.
As for Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq, in his own words: “”The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other.”
Even if you accept the dubious premise that Iraq was clean of chemical and biological weapons, the inspectors did find a covert network of laboratories for making them in Iraq. Had we not intervened, those labs would be in production now. Likewise, were it not for the US, Saddam would be buying nukes from Pakistan and missiles to mount them on from North Korea. He would also be continuing his support of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Nothing good would have come from any of this.
Sep 11 and WMDs have moved the threshhold of war for the US. We can’t wait around to react to a massive attack. We have to preempt such an attack. We will do whatever is necessary to prevent a mega-attack on the American homeland. We are not much interested in attempting to purchase the world’s good opinion with American blood.
I might also point out the hypocrisy of castigating the US for not invading Iraq in 1991 while simultaneously castigating the US for attacking Iraq in 2003. Either course of action brings criticism. It’s not a principled argument but an expression of implacable bias against America. Why would we give such criticism any weight?
Steve
PS. I’m not throwing this at you, Jasra, but more on the previous poster. I am just posting after you to preserve the continuity of this thread of the discussion.
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Trust takes a long time to happen James, but very little to destroy. It is this quality that we have to build between our cultures. You asked in a previous post of what I should do in order to hasten the demise of terrorists, my answer is this blog. The premise of me starting it is to share my own point of view, while most defintely not the zeitgeist of Arab spirit, I would like to think it is of the new liberal spirit which should be fostered.
When you think about it, most of the people who I am fortunate enough to have as my guests on this site share the same ideals, regardless of their national loyalty, hence, we are essentially on the same page. We do have problems for sure, but every passing day with every comment posted here we are exposing our moderate and modern point of view to the world. With a million visitors to this site a month, I would hope that a small percentage leave with the correct idea that we are (1) vehemently opposed to terrorism no matter where it comes from, and (2) that we are human with our faults, but very ready to learn from them, and (3) that change IS happening in the Arab world, led by Bahrain.
As to wanting to hear from any Arab leader who would tell it as it is, patience my friend, it will happen and sooner than we think. This is the prerequisite of the moderm world, the Arab leaders hopefully finally recognised that there are no curtains to hide behind if they want to maintain and propogate their rule, and there is no way that they can continue to rule without the direct participation of their populace.
Even Saudi recognises it as they have already announced limited municipal direct elections, which is a step in the right direction. I think that process (of democratic movement) will snowball after that, because the downside, if it doesn’t happen, then it’s the continuation of civil unrest and war in that country.
Re(4): Calm down people…
I would say that the average American does not understand Arab civilization at all. After all, here the average citizen has no fear of the government at all. It’s pretty common for a parent to give a teacher unshirted hell if his kid is slighted, even if richly deserved. It’s common for people to chew out local politicians, even unreasonably. Police are routinely sued by citizens, often frivolously. Everyone here believes in questioning authority, including me, and I came out of the military.
For most Americans, it’s just outside their experience that people would willingly take abuse without a peep. To an American, only a wimp lets himself be pushed around. To an American, it’s exasperating to hear you can’t do this or that because of a religious authority. The easiest way from an American perspective to resolve the existence of bad features in other cultures is to assume that the population supports it. There is a kernel of truth in that assumption.
The problem is that most Americans take their lives, culture, and government for granted. They are not aware of the effort required to put it and keep it in place. They tend to assume that everyone everywhere in the world is kinda like a middle-class American, except for those few faraway spots pictured in the National Geographic.
Steve
What exactly are we waiting for?
You know, Marlene…I think you are right. As soon as Iraq has it’s first elections, the moderates in SA and such should organize a peaceful demonstration. It would have to be huge so it would get big press coverage. Like Tianamen square (except i hope nobody gets ran over by a tank). But Tianamen square, with all it’s martyrs for change, actually did something. There was a serious outpouring of popular support around the world for their peace movement. The government was shown for the criminal scum they were for using such overwhelming force on students with lunch pails as weapons. And while everything is not rosey in China, they have definitely come a long way.
Right now would probably not be a good time to organize a demonstration. The SA royals are too sensitive and would use it as an excuse to strike out at anyone to show their power to the rest. At the same time, and I hate to say it, the US will not say anything because they need SA to stay stable at least until we have Iraq pacified (as best as possible). After Iraq elections (and hopefully some calm), US would be more likely to pressure SA about making changes. A demonostration (PEACEFUL) at that time would get support (I think).
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
First of all, I want to say thank you for setting up this blog. I visit it on a daily basis. And most important, thank you for setting up this thread. I have some comments percolating in my head while reading through this thread and crossing fingers I will actually get these written down later today.
One quick comment – what kind of pictures does the average Arab get of what life is like in the US (without having ever visited the country)? I know that Hollywood movies are very popular. But . . . the problem with these movies is that these present a very distorted picture. Even I have to suspend my sense of reality when watching these movies such as “waitress falls in love with owner of store.”
In the Republic of Georgia, they have a Center of American Studies, and if I understand it correctly, courses on American culture are offered in their universities. They may study, for instance, the influence of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer on the civil rights movement. Of course, there’s the Bill of Rights and how it’s been interpreted throughout the US history. I do not see such studies in Arab countries, at least from what I have seen so far through my own readings and observations. And, what would be the reaction if such a center were to be set up at the top Saudi university? I can see a lot of hurdles before this could happen, with the present environment as it is right now.
Center of American Studies
It would be good to set up something like this in every American consulate or embassy in the Arab world. Alas, the US embassies in the region are almost unapproachable due to security measures (which no one blames them for) but if they do that, I think it would help people understand a lot more about the States.
The British Embassy created and supports the British Council which offers subsidised English language courses and it has been a hit with people from all walks of life. Of course students don’t only learn the language, but a lot more about the British culture and ways of life. The Americans should do that sort of thing too.
As to the pictures of what people see about the States, it’s the Hollywood movies and television as well as what they can see on the web, all of which hardly offer a positive aspect of American life. Some would argue (and I would agree) that Hollywood is primarily concerned with entertainment, and with entertainment you would suspend reality anyway.
I think your idea of an “American Council” would be great to bridge some gaps.
Oh, we also have something like that for the French in Bahrain and I think other parts of the Gulf. It’s surprising that the States didn’t start a program like that!
[update] I’ve just noticed an article in today’s GDN that supports your call! This one relates to the British Council training 30 Bahraini teachers taking part in a quality teacher development programme. This effort could easily be done by an “American Council”!
[Modified by: Mahmood Al-Yousif (mahmood) on June 21, 2004 05:46 PM]
View From Eye of Storm
Came across an interesting article via rogerlsimon.com –
[url]http://www.muslimworldtoday.com/storm.htm[/url]
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
“The British Embassy created and supports the British Council which offers subsidised English language courses and it has been a hit with people from all walks of life. Of course students don’t only learn the language, but a lot more about the British culture and ways of life. The Americans should do that sort of thing too.”
They used to. I remember way back borrowing records of American music from a library in the US Embassy in London. So far as I know, they had similar centres in other embassies.
The trouble is that a cultural centre is a favourite target for rioters, and the cost of reconstructing it after each riot soon gets too high.
Re: Center of American Studies
For anyone who is interested the US Embassy does have some programs of this type available. If interested here is the web address.
http://www.usembassy.gov.bh/Section/PAO/html/index.asp
Mark
What exactly are we waiting for?
Well! comments from Asia. When will they (Americans and their cronies) ever learned? They should know by now that they will never ever get rid of the holy warriors. There are so many of us. Say what you like. We will prevail and the battle will be won. All praises to Allah
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Anon. Are you sure you’re posting on the right site? Maybe you need a break from blogs, seems to a little overwhelming for you.
L F
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
You really have to wonder what kind of upbringing people like the above have had! However, we have no time to look at the social issues in the current climate, we can do that later once scum like this guy have been obliterated from using Allah and the Koran for their own purposes. If he was an individual with such delusional ideals he would have been in a mental home, he is not however the only one so a mental home is not in his future, neither is it in the future of any of the others like him.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Hehe, you fool, you are joking arent you? NO ONE is SO moronic as to actually believe crap like that. If you are serious then you have done some readers of this blog a favour by showing them just how stupid and simple minded an enemy the world is up against. Thank you!
Re(6): On Naievte
Jasra, the only “Arab-Arabs” I’ve known were foreign exchange students in college; they kept to themselves and only dated Japanese women for some strange reason. The Arab-Americans I know are just like any other young American men — interested in buying cars, making money and getting laid.
And believe me, I’ve spent quite a bit of time learning about your region — more than most Americans. I know you’ve got a budding democracy going in the Gulf states — but you and Mahmood sometimes act like mice, not men, with regards to it. If you want it to grow, you need to campaign for it, speak up about it, print up flyers, give speeches, organize marches. Study what Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan Anthony did — they didn’t get their rights by quietly hoping that someone would grant them.
You and Mahmood talk a great deal about your desire for change, but don’t seem inclined to make any noise for it. That’s not how the world operates. I keep hearing about this mass of middle-class Arabs who want democracy, yet I don’t ever see a leader of that movement, or a demonstration for those rights. You can put a million Egyptians in the streets to support Saddam’s regime, but you can’t put a thousand Bahrainis to support democracy or women’s rights?
I hope you’re right about this progress, this gradual social evolution, I really do — but we over here don’t see much evidence for it.
And if I sound pessimistic, I’m sorry, but it probably has something to do with a big chunk of your society wanting to saw my head off. I’m very attached to my head, and I’d like to keep it.
— James
Re(1): Center of American Studies
There are also commercial services available to US and Bahraini businesses for those who might be interested in Importing or Exporting goods. I suspect that as the Free Trade agreement matures there will be more of these services in place.
These programs can be found here.
http://www.buyusa.gov/bahrain/en/
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Thank you Marlene, that was well said and analysed.
I don’t mind you saying exactly where you got the points from at all. I’m safe enough here that I don’t feel threatened. It would be good to share this site’s address with the points so that if people have the need for more information, they’re more than welcome to come and discuss and read the posts and comments here.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
The effects of Iraq are already felt in the whole region in a way that you probably don’t realise, that is, the Shi’a have found a voice and some measure of freedom. Consider this, in Saudi Shi’as (by the Wahabis especially) are thought of as apostates at worst, and tolerated as backward people who have damaged Islam, hence, they were never allowed to practice their specific religious rites, one of which is self flagilation in commemoration of the martyrdom of one of their saints, Imam Hussain the grandson of the Prophet. If they attempted to do so in the past, they were harassed and imprisoned, but last year for the first time they came out on the streets to practice that rite and they were protected rather than beaten up by the police! They provided a cordon for their march and everything went relatively ok.
More important than this, some of the Shi’a reformers in the Kingdom have joined their Sunni counterparts and lodged a petition with prince Abdullah who later met them personally. That was unexpected and unthought of before.
So we the democratisation of Iraq, even though it is a mess at the moment, provided a catalyst for the Shi’as to be noticed and counted in the most prejudicial state in the region.
So it’s not all bad, there are a lot of good points regarding Iraq that people are seeing day to day. It can only get better, if the Iraqis are left alone and the coalition forces are left to help them rebuild their country.
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
you must have registered with an AOL account. AOL does not like any emails from us for some reason, if you would email me at mahmood@mahmood.tv I’ll set up an account for you manually, but please provide an email account other than aol!
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Ah, our friend from Malaysia has come in again! I hope you take the time to open your mind and pour some of the comments you find here into it. You’ll find that it will make your life much better, and the air your breath fresher.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Saudi is a new country, in the sense of ‘state
What exactly are we waiting for?
I should add quickly that some inspired Saudi leadership could do wonders, both secular and religious.
One of the sure things is change.
Re: Center of American Studies
Yeah, I have to agree that the American Embassy could be doing alot more to make people feel more comfortable. The British Council and the Alliance Francaise have always been prominent among local activities, and have left a good impression on people overall I think. It reminds us that the British and French missions are more than just political bodies trying exploit us, but that they have alot to offer in terms of culture and stuff.
On the other hand, the American embassy takes much more of a stand-offish approach, which is very understandable. But it would very much be in its interest to create a body which would promote cultural understanding of Americans here. It doesn’t help that the American Embassy here that it is built up like a fortress (which is again understandable). But people don’t seem to like the fact that “these foreigners” are here on “our soil” and have very much disengaged themselves from normal people on the island. The embassy is this highly secured place which very few people have access to,… and these very physical boundaries seem to encourage notions (among Bahrainis) that the Americans here view themselves as being superior to the locals. Creating an American cultural centre here would do wonders. There are things about America which many many Bahrainis and Arabs love: American cars, Tupac Shakur, American movies, the American system of education, etc. It’s only a matter of linking these things with the Embassy and the American mission in Bahrain in general. Right now we view them as separate things. We defend our right to hate the US government while at the same time driving around in a Dodge Viper. I think it is possible for this to be changed.
Re: View From Eye of Storm
very interesting indeed and worth a read. thank you for the heads-up.
Re: View From Eye of Storm
The author of the article states (about suicide murderers):
‘The only way to fight this new “popular” weapon is identical to the only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way. Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top of the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the head of the “Family.” ‘
This doesn’t seem to be working. We must go after them the way we go after cockroaches or rats. There’s no point in trying to kill them directly. We must dry up those sources which nourish them, like keeping our garbage tightly covered will discourage roaches.
Praise Allah!
Re: View From Eye of Storm
Mahmood, do you find this article speaking the truth? It seems a fairly bleak outlook:
[i]Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean free elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel, exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the solution. If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey.[/i]
— James
Re(1): View From Eye of Storm
As all of the mentioned factors are inter-dependant, the only logical answer is that yes, it is speaking the truth, a truth which transcends borders and cultures.
Without freedoms of speech and the press, without an independent judicial system, without gender equality, and without minority protection laws then even a freely elected parliament were elected it by itself would not constitute democracy.
We have a little of everything in Bahrain, the struggle now is to complete these little things into a complete circle.
I tend to agree with the sentiment of the article mentioned, it concisely points out our problems and where we should concentrate our efforts.
Re(7): On Naievte
I can’t speak for JJ here, but as far as I am concerned, I agree with you. We (I) need to do something more concrete than just demanding change in these pages. A more felt approach is needed, be that organising a demonstration in front of parliament every time they have a brain-fart, write to the papers and the parliament, and make my beliefs known in a wider circle than this blog.
Yes more practical peaceful steps are needed, the question that I am asking myself right this very minute is can I afford it? This requires a lot more time that I can reasonable dedicate to it full time, as I already have a full time job, this requires a lot more monetary resources than I have at present, but I’m sure I – personally – can do something more tangible.
You provided me with good food for thought…
Re(7): On Naievte
James …
Hmmmm.
Interesting tone. Please do tell me more about Ghandi and Martin Luther King. I am really interested in learning about democracy. If I could get the one size fits all prescription from you, I would be most grateful. And – I apologize for getting the Egyptians on the streets to support Saddam – and not getting the Bahrainis to march for the new improved liberated and secure Iraq. You are right. I am my brothers keeper. And, you are right to hold me accoutnable for what the Egyptians, the Iraqis and the Moroccans think. We are all Arabs, no? We must think alike, act alike, hold the same values. We are responsible for our moderates, our terrorists and our activists.
Jasra Jedi
Incidentally – I am neither a man, nor a mouse. But – I can bet you $100 that you never once assumed that I would be a woman. You might want to start by changing the sterotypes in your head my friend. It will do you alot of good in the long run.
Re(7): On Naievte
James …
You say: “I keep hearing about this mass of middle-class Arabs who want democracy, yet I don’t ever see a leader of that movement, or a demonstration for those rights.”
In case you havent noticed, this is exactly what Al Qaeda are doing. They are fighting for their rights. And UbL is their leader. And not only are they demonstrating for their rights, but they are willing to kill and (have others) be killed for it…
I trust you might have begun to see a glimmer of the extent of the roblem that we have???
JJ
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
It must be so hard for many in the ME to understand America and our freedoms. Freedom is not easy but it is wonderful. Americans work hard and live life to the fullest, we have much to be thankful for, most of us take it for granted. Being born free we have never known anything else. It must be hard to come to America from an oppressed country and learn that you are responsible for making your own life and being a good person. We are taught one basic rule when we are children and that is treat others as you would like others to treat you. The one thing about America is almost all Americans wish everyone all over the world could have the same freedoms and chances in life that we do, which is also our flaw because we think everyone wants this and they probably don’t, but we keep wishing. Just like every other country we make mistakes, the difference is we have so many watch groups our mistakes are not hidden, we are forced to face them, and for this I am grateful. I will never stop wishing that all people all over the world could have the freedom I enjoy and I can not wait till the day I can safely visit the ME and see all the wonderful sites from days long ago and be welcomed.
Re(8): On Naievte
Mahmood, you’ve mentioned that you haven’t picked a party to support yet — a simple solution is simply to select the party that best represents the progress you want to see, and help it any way you can.
Volunteer your time, donate some money, print flyers for them, call into radio shows to talk about their vision, convince your friends to vote for them. If your new democracy offers a platform that appeals to you, run with it. After all, that’s what it’s there for…
— James
Re(8): On Naievte
Jasra, I was using the term “man” as in “mouse or man” — it’s an expression we have, not meant to imply your gender. I was aware through your flirting with Mahmood that you’re female 😉
The Egyptian example was simply making a point: Arabs seem far more likely to march in support of tyranny, or in outrage over Palestinians they’ve never met, than in support of their own rights. Am I wrong about that?
And please don’t start with the “democracy is not the same for everyone”. It works in Canada, it works in Japan, it works in India, it works in Turkey, it’ll work in your neck of the woods.
For inspiration, and a sense of what I think the Gulf states need, let me offer you this:
http://www.susanbanthonyhouse.org/biography.html
Read it all; I think you’ll be as impressed as I was. Conviction and intelligence like that CAN change nations.
— James
Re(8): On Naievte
Are you suggesting that the fact that your enemies have taken up arms and are fighting with every ounce of their strength means that you shouldn’t? I would think the opposite.
— James
What exactly are we waiting for?
Thank you Mahmood for your site, it is refreshing to hear from Muslims and how they feel, I found your site through Iraqthemodel site. Thanks again.
Lenore
East Coast USA
Re(2): View From Eye of Storm
Huh. That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Bismillallah
Assallamu aliekum Ya Mahmood,
I am sorry I do not have the patience to read all of the above comments but I need to tell you that your original message is a beacon of hope in what has been a very sad few months for me.
I am an American Muslim…(previously a good Irish catholic girl) I converted about 7 years ago and consider myself a true believer with a somewhat moderate lifestyle. My personal “jihad”, if you will, has been trying to hang on to my American identity and still relate too and be recognized by Muslims in my area.
I have always taken issue with the fact that Muslims particularly in America never speak out against things that I see as very damaging the reputation of Islam. I have always found it intensely annoying that Sunni Muslims do not denounce the Nation of Islam, for example, as they are a group that made my transition to Islam extremely difficult. The NOI are what the majority of Americans thought Islam was all about until now… I can not tell you how many times I heard “how can you be Muslim… when they think you are the blue eyed devil?”
I was very angry that I had to fight for the reputation of Islam’s true nature all by myself, constantly telling everyone I met that Islam does not tolerate racism…
I really felt foolish when I traveled to KSA and saw racism and discrimination flourishing in what was supposed to be my holy land. Sure in Mecca we are almost all the same… except for the rich people who get to pray in the front rows close to the Kabba but in the streets of Jeddah I saw such poverty and despair surrounded by opulence and waste. It was heart breaking.
Several weeks ago I made the horrible mistake of watching the Nick Berg murder on the internet. I told myself that I should subject myself to such things in order to truly understand the world. I was in a room with 3 American coworkers… they kept asking me to translate what was being read… I only know basic conversational Arabic and of course recognized lots of Duwaa.
The murderous bastard read his statement and I like an idiot translated anything I could understand “… If god wills it…. the believers struggle against the devil… the Quran… Allah is most great … in the name of Allah … etc.” Every word I recognized I translated to my friends.
Then that pig that Allah will surely punish, took the knife and attacked that helpless boy from behind with his hands tied behind his back, in my mind this display of cowardess is unparalleled and no different than if he had attacked a child or decrypted old woman.
I am an ER nurse I see senseless death on a daily basis, it was not so much the murder that I feel has scarred me so terribly…it was the words… “Bismillallah� and “Allahu Akbar� associated with such utter stupidity and Arrogance and blasphemy. I was overwhelmed with anger and sadness. Allah’s most precious gift to us was the Quran… the language in the Quran is so holy we don’t even utter the words or touch the book unless we are clean physically and spiritually, yet these heathens have taken what is most sacred to us and smeared it in front of the entire world. These bastards have robbed me of my treasured moments in prayer when I want to say Allah is greatest there is none worthy of worship but Allah…. Now I have an image of evil in my head that I think I will spend years trying to erase.
Where is the Muslim community? Where is the outrage?
Muslims have become experts in the past few decades with blaming non-muslims for anything and everything. We are over one billion strong … it is absolutely shameful that Muslims have failed to unite to at least make clear to the world that this behavior will not be tolerated by Islam. There has not been a single protest or vigil held to reclaim the honor that Islam has lost because of these psychotic animals. Arabic media glazes over the issues and barely covers the story. We leave it up to the fumbling George Bush to defend the “peace loving Muslim people.� He is the only one I hear telling the world that Islam does not support this type of evil. How pathetic are we that George Bush is our spokesmen? It seems he is the one teaching the world about Islam … not the Billion brothers and sisters who should be speaking up for Allah.
I told you I felt you were a beacon of light however small. I hope this message will encourage you to continue to shine for those of us who are feeling very sad and alone.
Assallamu Aliekum,
Um Mahmoud
Washington, DC
Re(10): On Naievte
Well you do have political organizations of some sort, right? You’ve got a “bloc” of candidates representing liberalism, a bloc representing religious fundamentalism, etc. Whether you want to call them parties or not, they’re basically parties. I’m sure the candidates with similar agendas are sharing resources and coordinating their strategies. So pick a bloc, or even a single candidate, who you like, and start campaigning for him or her. And start pushing for the recognition of political parties. You’ll need them for the next step.
— James
Re(10): Of Mice and Men
Well, it’s definitely a mess. You have to get a free press going, reform your courts, get gender equality and political parties, and then march on the palace and depose the emir!
Okay, scratch that last part. But you know, there is a long and proud tradition of overthrowing absolute monarchs…
So basically you’ve got a long, hard struggle ahead. But progress won’t come by wishing for it…
— James
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
I’d say the amount of interest in studying a language tends to follow the amount of trade with the countries that speak it. The amount of cultural exchange follows the trade. The Romance languages, Chinese, and Japanese, even Portugese, are spoken in countries which are an order of magnitude more productive economically than the Arab countries. That drives the interest.
Correlated with that, beyond the Koran and political rhetoric, Arabic does not offer as much content as the main languages. There are scientific breakthroughs detailed in French and Japanese and Chinese. Not much of that in Arabic. Arabic does not give you a window to the modern world that other languages do.
Steve
PS. I am putting on my flame-retardant suit now.
Steve
What exactly are we waiting for?
[i]…it is how do we make sure that there is enough participation in the current political process in Bahrain to ensure that the fundies dont in every seat in parliament?[/i]
Well that’s simple — people vote for two things: concrete proposals that will impact their lives, and charismatic leaders. You need one or the other, preferably both.
People don’t vote just because they can, they vote FOR something or someone, or AGAINST something or someone.
Figure out a specific piece of legislation that the “silent majority” want to see enacted — for Arnold in the California election, it was the repeal of a hugely unpopular car tax — and push that issue hard. Get people excited about it if it’s positive, or get them angry about it if it’s negative.
Associate your candidates to that issue. Register voters. And on election day, get the vote out. Phone by phone, door by door.
It’s not an easy process — first you need the right spark to generate interest, and then a whole lot of tedious work to follow it through — but it is simple.
— James
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Get ready to be sick to your stomach again. They made this South Korean beg and scream for his life on video. Soon the Wahhabi snuff video will in the mail to Al Jazeera. It looks like the Wahhabis are setting up a head-cutting production line.
The Wahhabis have profoundly misjudged the Koreans in this episode. There is no give in the Koreans. And you certainly don’t want to get in a head-cutting contest with them. Bad things will be happenning to Wahhabis where ever those 3000 Korean troops end up in Iraq. Very bad things.
Steve
What exactly are we waiting for?
[quote]These bastards have robbed me of my treasured moments in prayer when I want to say Allah is greatest there is none worthy of worship but Allah…. Now I have an image of evil in my head that I think I will spend years trying to erase. [/quote]
There is no reason for you to feel robbed.Your realtionship with God should not weaken because of the actions of a few animals.
Your are right, it is sad the “W” is the one telling America that Islam does not support actions like this. So why is that? Where is the outrage from American Muslims?
The best thing I think you can do is educate those around you about Islam. Don’t let those NOI twits bother you as that is all they are is TWITS.
I know Islam does suport these pure acts of evil. A big march on Washington by Muslims denouncing these type of things would do wonders for the country. Sadly that isn’t going to happen for your religion.
Re(3): It took only a few hours to capture Al-Muqrin?
I’m starting to feel like a fool for trusting the Saudis. In typical Saudi fashion, the original story has changed. They didn’t spot the Wahhabis dumping Johnson’s body. They don’t know where his remains are. They didn’t chase them down at a gas station. They stopped him at a checkpoint. The story will probably change tomorrow.
Now I read that the Wahhabis claim to have gotten police uniforms and police cars from Saudi security to erect a phony checkpoint to kidnap Johnson. The new head of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia is a former Saudi police officer. It appears that the police in Saudi Arabia are a pool of recruits for Al Qaeda. And where does it go up from there?
My guess is pretty far. I’m swinging back to the view that the Saudis caught them fast because they could have done so all along. And they killed them because they don’t want to have them name their supporters.
Steve
Re(9): Calm down people…
I’m seriously considering making you Minister Of Pleasure. You might like that.
Steve
Re: On Naievte
[quote]A kid from a broken home with a junkie mother and wife can go from growing up in a trailer park to becoming an MTV hero with enough money to bring up his daughter in the lap of luxury. He may even send her to Yale. (Eminem). The equivalent of that kid in this part of the world will probably end up groing up a ‘hero’ dying in a shootout with Saudi secuirty forces in Riyadh.[/quote]
Can we send Eminem to Saudi Arabia?
Please!
Steve
Re(1): Center of American Studies
[quote]There are things about America which many many Bahrainis and Arabs love: American cars, Tupac Shakur, American movies, the American system of education, etc. [/quote]
Tupac Shakur? If we are foisting that crap on the Arab world, it’s no wonder why they hate us.
Steve
What exactly are we waiting for?
Another dark day for humanity
My thought are with his family
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3830843.stm
Re(9): Of Mice and Men
James.
Am glad we sorted out the gender issue.
re the Egyptian example – my point was to try and show you that there is no single politically homogeneous Arab voice. It is actually quite fragmented. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, some of the Palestinians in the streets were jubilant. the Saudis and the rest of the GCC were not. People do tend to unite over the Israeli-Palestinian issue.. but that is about it.
Re marching for thier own human rights. I think there have been numerous posts on this topic whereby people would be scared to march for anything for fear of the consequences. Which is why we had the birth and propseprity of Al Qaeda. they dont march for their perception of human rights. they kill.
Re democracy. I never said that democracy is not the same for everyone. My point is that although the pillars of democracy are the same in most models (free press, elections, juducial, legal, minority rights, etc) – they way these interact with each other and the level of readiness of where they are at – differ significnantly. Have open elections today, and you would have the bearded ones.
JJ
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Thats a good question.
I think that the KSA royal family have no choice but to try. Even if all they are motivated by is self preservation.
I do think that if they do the right thing, they can avert the possibility of violence and a total takeover by wahabis.
The key is in how they do the right thing.
They are starting with municpial elections. They need to do more – they need to establish a parliament. I would use the Bahrain model – have an appointed uppoer house and an elected lower. Except, I would go further than Bahrain because the problem is more acute. So, I would have at least 40% women in the Upper, as well as a proportional representation of Shia. I would start with a few ‘soft’ topics – meaning , ones that generate alot of heat – but not much light. Easier for people to find their political ideologies that way and come up the curve on process.
The leadership also needs to get thier act together. They need to start with some hard core economic reforms. And they need to do this fast. They need to liberalize and privatize. They need performace masures. They also need a young leadership.
So, the answer to your last question is that I dont think that the ‘reform’ can be done without some violence – but I do think that if done in time, they can avert a total take over by the wahabis.
JJ
incidentally – I have my doubts that Alhamedi is Saudi ..
Re(9): On Naievte
james ..
it was said earlier that we have started these reforms in bahrain – but that it is the beginning of the process…
we dont have political parties. not yet.
moreover, the majority of those who ran last session did not really have an agenda or a platform …
the political sophistication that exists in foriegn policy has not yet transalated into constructive and effective political activism in domestic policy. we are slowly learning how…
JJ
Re: Bahrain Arrests Six Men Suspected of Qaeda Links
No surprise to hear that MP Mohammed Khaled is speaking up for the detainees, demanding to know why they were arrested.
Asalah are to Gulf Al-Qaeda what Sinn Fein is to the IRA, or Herri Batasuna to ETA.
Re(9): On Naievte
James.
First off – I am a Bahraini, nor a Saudi. The Wahabbis are at war with Al Saud at the moment in Saudi Arabia. We dont have a critical number of Wahabbis in Bahrain. Even if we did, their ideology would never fly here because the majority of people here are Shia. Bottom line – this ain’t our battle.
I will tell you what our battle is in Bahrain .. it is how do we make sure that there is enough participation in the current political process in Bahrain to ensure that the fundies dont in every seat in parliament? What can be done to ensure that this country has got the right economic basics in place to avoid a potential Saudi Arabia in a decade? how can we ensure that GDP/Bahraini capita increases over time? how can we develop solid courts and independent judges so that the degree of subjectivity in rulings are removed?
And to be quite frank with you – my own personal political identity is NOT based on religion. So, if you ask me to get involved agaisnt the Wahabbis to ‘clear’ Islams name – I probably wouldn’t. Leave that for the non political clergy to sort out – our fundies need to grow up and accept the repercussions of what being a fundy means in this day and age. And it might be good for the silent liberals to see first hand what the cost is for being silent .. ours have a chance to participate in 2006 – I hope they do…
JJ
Horrific
How long is this going to go on for? How many people are they going to have to behead until they realise it is futile, or do they think that after the first 10, 100, 1000 they are going to get results?
Its Sickening.
JJ
Re(2): Center of American Studies
Now now Steve .. how many times have I told that you need to keep ypur admiration for Barry Manilow under wraps ?!
JJ
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Either that or wait for another 5 – 10 years, possibly less. The top 3 are all closer to 80 than 70 and they can’t live forever.
The question should be, what will happen after they are gone? There is no clear structure on who is to take over, which leaves a huge void that could be filled easily by Wahabis or their sympathisers, unless of course a personality like Al-Waleed bin Talal steps in now to get things done, or even his father Prince Talal who is a very outspoken reformer, and I guess not much liked by the current top 3.
Alhamedi to me has too much ideosyncharacies NOT to be a Saudi! Educated and lived in the UK for sure so much so that he’s taken the British eccentricities too. You could be right though as he is incognito. One thing for sure though, it’s NOT me, as has been suggested to me this morning!! 😉
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
[b]Alhamedi to me has too much ideosyncharacies NOT to be a Saudi! Educated and lived in the UK for sure so much so that he’s taken the British eccentricities too. You could be right though as he is incognito. One thing for sure though, it’s NOT me, as has been suggested to me this morning!! [/b]
If memory serves me correct Alhamedi and Zeyad from Healing Iraq are distant relations. I seem to recall Zeyad posting this on his blog. If this is the case I would tend to think he is a Saudi.
Ahemedi where art thou?
Zeyah said that tongue-in-cheek, he based that assumption on Alhemedi’s chosen tribe name, which is another nom du-plume!
Bahrain Arrests Six Men Suspected of Qaeda Links
Bahrain said Tuesday it had arrested six people, who are suspected of having links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, to thwart “dangerous” attacks in the kingdom, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
The arrests follow a Friday warning by the State Department about the possibility of militant attacks in the oil-rich Gulf region.
Bahrain’s neighbor is Saudi Arabia, which has been hit by a wave of al Qaeda suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Westerners.
Interior Minister Sheikh Rashed bin Abdullah al-Khalifa told the official Bahrain News Agency the six men were arrested to “prevent them for committing dangerous operations that would have threatened people and their possessions.”
The U.S. embassy in Manama declined to comment on the arrests.
But the lawyer of five of the detainees, Abdullah Hashim, said the men were suspected of having ties to al Qaeda.
“They have not been charged but there is talk about links to al Qaeda,” he told Reuters. “I don’t think they have any links to al Qaeda. This is not true.”
more on Reuters
o’oh!
Re(1): Horrific
“How long is this going to go on for? How many people are they going to have to behead until they realise it is futile, or do they think that after the first 10, 100, 1000 they are going to get results?”
Johnson is, of course, not the first to be murdered in such a gruesome manner. Nor, alas, is he likely to be the last. For the cutting of heads (in Arabic, qata al-raas) has been the favorite form of Islamist execution for more than 14 centuries.
In the famous battles of early Islam, with the Prophet personally in command of the army of believers, the heads of enemy generals and soldiers were often cut off and put on sticks to be shown around villages and towns as a warning to potential adversaries.
In 680, the Prophet’s favorite grandson, Hussein bin Ali, had his head chopped off in Karbala, central Iraq, by the soldiers of the Caliph Yazid. The severed head was put on a silver platter and sent to Damascus, Yazid’s capital, before being sent further to Cairo for inspection by the Governor of Egypt. The Caliph’s soldiers also cut off the heads of all of Hussein’s 71 male companions, including the one-year-old baby boy Ali-Asghar.
Islamic history is full of chopped heads being sent around by special delivery to reassure rulers, to terrorize foes and to impress the common folk. In 1821, the Qajar king of Persia ordered a week of celebrations when he received the severed head of a Russian general who had been captured in a battle near Baku. In 1842, the Afghans massacred the British garrison in Kabul, a total of 2,000 men and their wives and children, chopping off their heads and putting them on sticks to decorate the city. (They allowed one man to leave to report to the British.)
In 1885, it was the turn of British Gen. Gordon to have his head chopped off and put on a stick in Khartoum after it had fallen to the forces of the Mahdi. Slightly later, Mullah Hassan, the Somali rebel known to the British as “the mad mullah” but to his fanatical supporters as “the Shah,” made a habit of chopping Western heads in what is now Somalia. At one point he had a large collection of severed Italian and British heads.
Iran’s Khomeinist mullahs also love severed heads. In April 1980, Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali wanted to cut off the heads of eight American soldiers who had died in a failed hostage rescue mission in the Iranian desert. He was prevented from doing so thanks to a last minute intervention by the Swiss government. In 1986, the Khomeinist mullahs cut off the head of William Buckley, the CIA’s Beirut station chief who had been kidnapped by the Hezbollah and sent to Tehran for interrogation.
And in 1992, the mullahs sent a “specialist” to cut off the head of Shapour Bakhtiar, the shah’s last prime minister, in a suburb of Paris. When the news broke, Hashemi Rafsanjani, then president of the Islamic Republic, publicly thanked Allah for having allowed “the severing of the head of the snake.”
In 1993, Fereidun Farrokhzad, one of Iran’s most famous pop stars, had his head chopped off in Germany by a Khomeinist hit squad after the mullahs issued a fatwa for his murder.
Chopping off heads was widely practiced throughout the Afghan wars of the 1980s. An estimated 3,000 Soviet soldiers, many of them Muslims, had their heads cut off by the Mujahedeen, who at the time enjoyed U.S. and other Western support. (In other cases the Mujahedeen cut off the testicles of the Soviet soldiers and fed them to other Soviet prisoners.)
Needless to say, rival Mujahedeen also chopped off each other’s heads. The group led by one Haji Akbari was especially notorious in that respect. One of its members was Osama bin Laden.
Throughout the 1990s, head-chopping was routinely carried out by the Army for Islamic Salvation (AIS), the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), the Salafi Group for Preaching and Armed Jihad (GSPAJ) and other Islamist terror outfits.
One Algerian specialist in slitting throats and cutting off heads was known as Momo le Nain (Muhammad the Midget). He was a 20-plus-year-old butcher’s apprentice recruited by the GIA for the purpose of cutting off people’s heads. In 1996 in Ben-Talha, a suburb of the capital Algiers, Momo cut off a record 86 heads in one night, including the heads of more than a dozen children.
In recognition of his exemplary act of piety, the GIA sent him to Mecca for pilgrimage. Last time I checked, Momo was still at large somewhere in Algeria.
Four years ago, Iran was shocked by the murder of the well-known dissident leader Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh. The couple, in their 70s, had their heads chopped off and displayed on their mantelpiece. The regime blamed “rogue elements” within its Ministry for Intelligence and Security. But no one was punished.
Cutting heads is frequently practiced against clerics from non-Islamic faiths or even rival Islamic sects. At least four Christian priests and nine Sunni Muslim muftis have been murdered in that way in Iran since 2001.
In Pakistan, rival Sunni and Shiite groups have made a habit of sending cut-off heads of each other’s activists by special delivery. By one estimate, over 400 heads have been chopped off and mailed since 1990.
Chopping heads is also practiced by Muslim militants on the Indonesian island of Borneo as a means of driving the Christian majority out. It has been effective in forcing nearly half of the island’s Christians packing.
At one point in the 1980s, the Abu-Sayyaf Islamist group in Mindanao, The Philippines, used the tactic of severing heads as a means of terrorizing the security forces.
Americans should also remember Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered in the same way in Pakistan over two years ago.
Although head-chopping is now seen as a mode of communication between Islamist militants and the Western world, the overwhelming victims have been Muslims.
Mankind has a natural propensity to become used to the worst atrocities and factor in the cruelest facts of life. But the sight of a severed head will continue to shock even the most blasé of the cynics. This is why those who are defying the whole of humanity in this war on terrorism are certain to continue to employ people like Momo le Nain.
Advocatus Diaboli
Re: Horrific
Oh, they will be getting results, just not the ones they expect.
Steve
Re: Horrific
It won’t end as long as these parasites are allowed to continue their rein of terror. They are faithless, heartless cowards. I hope that the people of Iraq, Saudi, Bahrain and the rest of the world stand firm against these insects.
Re(1): Bahrain Arrests Six Men Suspected of Qaeda Links
I agree, by definition all Asala/Minbar members are Salafis and at the very least sympathisers with Al-Qa’ida’s goals. Mohammed Khalid, Al-Saidi, Al-Moawdah and the rest of them probably are the ring leaders of Al-Qa’ida in Bahrain.
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Good point.
America is evil. All evil flows from America and its master, the Joos. Up with Islam, down with evil Joos!
What exactly are we waiting for?
Here’s what we’re up against:
http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/.Movies/muslim-kids-play-murder.avi
A culture that teaches its children to emulate butchers. Not even the fucking Nazis did this.
What exactly are we waiting for?
I think Chan’ad has the right idea, but I don’t know about the timing. I can tell you the West is looking and finds very little condemnation from the average guy on the street; I understand why, but it does validate the guess they got double standards routine too. Stuff I hear is, if muslims can organize worldwide to protest a ban on headscarves, why can’t they when someone beheads someone in the name of their religion?
Anyway, I don’t know where Iraq is really going or if it will be like Iran or SA, but these guys realize a line in the sand has been drawn. It’s almost like they want a war of cultures or for people to pick sides, because if there were more freedoms in the ME or Iraq survives, then they lose their power and money.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
The answer to your question is … BECAUSE to protest IN the name of religion, ie. headscarves (just as an example), is acceptable, (because it’s against the west) where to protest against the very same people who headscarves is an issue to means that your head is next on the chopping board!
Really, you have to live / have lived or have family from this region to understand the dire consequences of dissention. I dont mean that to sound like we are weak or making excuses BUT it is a cultural thing that has been SEARED into our everyday lives from birth.
For instance, if I was to take a stand against, oh, lets say … women driving WITHOUT the black EMBALMED face veil, on the grounds that it is unsafe! I would have to stand up before a country and an unseen world of fanatics who would kill me for being ‘against Allah’ and his word. Do I want to die a quick death? Or shall I wait until one of the veiled ones driving with her mobile attached to her ear runs into me?
On the other hand, if I was to be in a country that respected my rights and I knew the majority of people would not kill me for my beliefs, then that is another matter!
BUT!, then again, if Salman Rushdie (PBUH) can write a FICTIONAL novel in BRITAIN (a so called democracy) and still have the fear of death knocking on his door, who am I to risk my childrens, wife, parents and friends life for speaking out in this undemocratic region of the world! If it were only MY life, then fine BUT, that is NOT how they work here, it not only ME who would suffer but my wife/husband, children, parents, brother, sister, cousins or even friends!
Please try and understand the very real fear we live in, if you have a friend from this region, just ask them, how many people do you personally know that have been jailed or if they are lucky exiled!
I know MORE than I should!
The average guy on the Arab street has NO voice, only their governments/regimes/juntas/despots (take your pick) DO!
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?–What do the Arabs have to be proud of
James,
I’m a non-Arab American, so I’m not speaking for myself, however, I have read a few things.
You say rhetorically, “what exactly ” the Arabs “have to be proud of is beyond me”. This is an attempt to answer that.
1) The preservation of Greek science and philosophy:
While Western Europe lost literacy and access to Greco-Roman literature, the Arabs were gaining access to the same through the translations by the Syriac Christians (both ‘Jacobite’ and ‘Nestorian’)
2) The advancement of knowlege:
Rather than merely maintaining the information received (also from the Hindus–note ‘Arabic’ numerals) the Muslims advanced in many areas. (Note–I don’t know whether or not Avicenna was an Arab. He was from Bukhara in Central Asia, and may well have been of Iranian extraction. Avicenna was perhaps the first modern philosopher of science.) Note algebra was developed by Muslims
3) Prior to the 20th century (and outside Saudi Arabia), the treatment of the Jews:
While the European Christians were persecuting and murdering the Jews, the Islamic nations tended to welcome Jews.
4) [rather more PC here] a religion which was foreign to racism:
Malcom X left the Nation of Islam when he observed Muslims of all races worshipping freely together. (On the other hand, there has historically been a strong Arab bent to Islam. Thus, the Matoki/Kenuzi Nubians in Egypt think of themselves as Arabs, and thus better than the Fadihka, since the Kenuzi Bedouins married into their tribe some 600 years ago. Also, at various periods, non-Arab theologians have faced a great deal of prejudice.)
5) Per http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ many Arabs maintain a genealogical knowledge going back as much as several millenia. While most of us in the US don’t care much about genealogy, to see an American example of the same sort of pride, consider the Daughters of the American Revolution (and that’s only over a couple centuries ago.
I am neither Arab nor Muslim, so these claims to pride are not my own. However, they are real, and they aren’t unusual.
If you wonder why the Arabs can remain proud when other groups have surpassed them in technological success, then I suggest you note the pride of Greeks regarding ancient Greece, the pride of Assyrians regarding ancient Assyria.
I hope that helps promote understanding,
Bob Griffin
What exactly are we waiting for?
Mahmood …
I dont know how we are going to ‘stand firm’. To me, this is an issue of security. And if the Israelis have not yet been fully able to clamp down on Hamas, Hozbollah, etc .. I dont have much faith that the GCC security forces are going to be able to fare any better – even with external help.
I was chatting with a few Saudis yesterday – they dropped a few scary statistics. The number of Saudi’s who had trained in Afghanistan is around the 100K mark. And the numbers of Saudis in Iraq today are expected to be in the 10’s of thousands. These numbers are a bit scary.
The only ‘light’ at the end of the tunel is the fact that these terrorists have not (yet?) adopted suicide bombing as the method de jour. Maybe they value their own lives and their twisted hope for the future enough to want to keep their hearts beating a little longer. Perhaps this mentality would make them easier to track .. I dont know.
JJ
Re(2): Bahrain Arrests Six Men Suspected of Qaeda Links
Mahmood …
Lets assume for the sake of discussion that these guys are Al Qaeda, how do people think that Al Wifaq are going to respond? Not only is this a sectarian issue – but the Salafis are now claiming the throne of the opposition!
2006 is getting closer and closer …
JJ
What exactly are we waiting for?
I hate to say it, but everybody is fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. “Terrorists” is too generic a term. It does not indicate their agenda, therefore, does not make the common person understand why they do what they do.
We need a better terminology for these people and we need to spell out their agenda. it is not just “to instill terror” as the name “terrorist” implies. They have a specific agenda and frankly, I can only call it the new fascist movement of militant Islam.
The problem with saying this is the whole “politically correct” issue. Nobody wants to offend our Islamic friends. But what else do we call it? If we can’t name it and define it, how do you battle it? How do you win “hearts and minds”?
Imagine not being able to call a NAZI and NAZI because it might insult a German Socialist. We would still be arguing about them while hitler was enjoying a nice dip in the sea from his villa in “Palestine”, reminiscing about the good ol’ “jew killing” days.
Seriously…not trying to start a discussion about isreal/palestine. Just pointing out that these people need a name and their agenda needs to be put out in front of the world. If we can’t even do that without fear of “politesse”, how the hell are we going to win this war?
Re(1): On Naievte
Dear James,
According to a non-American friend who has worked as a news camerman throughout the world, Americans tend to be extremely uninformed. He truly gained insight into this when he saw (for the 1st time) the broadcast of story he’d worked on for CNN.
I am somewhat aware how little I was taught in school (including college). I have learned a great deal since then, and am still overwhelmed by the amount of relevent information which I’ve never learned.
My experience, as an American, is that many of my fellow Americans tend to be uninterested in the rest of the world. Even the ethnic and historic backgrounds of other Americans tends to be uninteresting, and often even annoying. (As a Southern Californian, I live in an area characterized by immigrants from around the world, many of whom are extremely proud of their heritage, and quite of few of whom barely speak English, if at all)
Naively yours,
Bob Griffin
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
And you blindly believe this crap? I could get any kid off the street to act out this if I paid them a few BD…….Nope, its pathetic and I will say no more, I wont justify this stupid amateur video like you did, get real!
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
Asshole
Minister of Pleasure
Steve ..
I never thanked you properly for your earlier post where you graciously offered to make me Minister of Pleasure in the future Republic of Steve.
Unfortunately, I am going to have to decline such an honorable position for the simple fact that we do not know what the word Pleasure means.
We dont drink, dont smoke, dont listen to music, dont have sex, and pray for redemption and salvation all day long. We have the original sin of the Catholics compounded with the belief that we, are in fact, the ‘real’ chosen people .. (God made a mistake and chose the wrong cousin).
The stuff you hear in the papers about Iran and Kuwait having a significant problem with hard drugs has nothing to do with the prohibition on alocohol or social repression. The fact that Alcoholics Anonymous would have a flourishing time in Saudi is also totally irrelevant. The fact that homosexuality exists in pretty high numbers in this part of the world has nothing to do with artificial boundaries between the sexes, but due to a Zionist conspiracy that is trying to spread Aids amongst the average Arab Male.
So, you see, I must decline such a position – even though I am sure you thought about it long and hard. However, should you choose to rework your cabinet to include other posts, I would be very grateful if given the chance to contribute.
Incidentally, perhaps we could find someone else in Bahrain to qulaify for the Minister of Pleasure. We have a group of people called the Salafis .. they are dying to be given the chance to contribute to the solid evolution of our community. Perhaps you could take them on a 6 month training program – start in Holland, Ibiza, Los Angeles and Miami. Introduce them to the Pleasure benchmarks of the world. I am sure that they will come back changed men.
Yours humbly
JJ
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Good Point.
I wonder what the CIA called them when they were recruiting and training them in Afghanistan… were they known as Islamic Fundamentalists then?
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
Don’t even give this “troll” the time of day nor the courtesy of a reply. His/Her words speak VOLUMES about the neolithic insect intellect that resides in the space where the brain should be.
To bad we don’t have this nutters email address so we could sign him up for all kinds of fun stuff.
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
I suppose the Palestinian baby suicide-bomber was also “crap”? Oh wait, his parents admitted to that. But this, of course, must be fake, because militant Islam would NEVER get children involved.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000495.php
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/24/world/main608523.shtml
http://www.npr.org/programs/wesun/transcripts/2004/may/040509.mccarthy.html
In denial much?
Re(2): On Naievte
Bob,
A news cameraman is hardly an unbiased observer with regard to America, especially a foreign one. It’s very nearly a guarantee that the guy is a flaming liberal, if not a socialist, with a doctrinaire negative view of America. I can assure you that having travelled a bit myself, I’ll put stupid Americans up against stupid foreigners any day. We may have our share of knuckleheads, but its impossible to beat the brick-like dimness of the citizens of many countries. Most of the world is far ahead of us in the race to the stupidest.
Think about it. You complain that you didn’t learn much in school in America. Well, guess how much you would learn if you didn’t go to school at all, which is the situation in many foreign countries. When you read some of the numbskull things Iraqis believe, it’s not hard to believe that most men there don’t make it past the sixth grade. In the Pakistani madrassas, they were teaching the kids that Western infidels created dinosaurs to eat Muslims, for Pete’s sake. How bonecrunchingly stupid do you have to be to buy that? Some journalists interviewing Afghans out in the wilderness discovered that they opposed America and considered us their oppressors, even though they had never met an American nor knew exactly how we were oppressing them. Their mullahs had told them so.
May I also point out that this entire Wahhabi War Of Terror is based on a rather colossal ignorance of America and what it is about. Virtually all the Wahhabi combatants are carrying a load of crap in their heads when it comes to American and Americans. They are none too interested in exploring other cultures either. We all must submit to their way of life.
You might also consider that it is a virtue that Americans don’t particularly care where you came from, unlike those parts of the world aflame with ethnic strife. They care far too passionately about where you come from in many violent parts of the world.
Europe has countries like America has states. You can’t back out of your driveway there without backing into another country. If you want to drive 500 miles in France, you’ll probably blast through a couple countries. If you drive 500 miles in Texas, you might still be in Texas. Why in the world would it be better to have everyone speak a different language, have different money, and maintain borders against each other? If having different cultures separated and packed together cheek by jowl is so great, why can’t Europe go a full generation without one of its cultures setting up death camps to annihilate the other cultures?
All this talk from Europeans about being rich in culture seems to be a rather labored exercise in turning a negative into a positive. They are too proud of their differences. We are more focused on our common interests. That’s one good reason why you don’t see Oregon setting up death camps to kill Idahoans or North Dakota launching terror attacks on South Dakota. The rest of the world should put a sock on the culture crap and take a good long look at America’s indifference to differences and the resulting peace it brings.
From sea to shining sea, baby,
Steve
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
You’re right that most people in the region will be very very reluctant to protest against something that the fanatics may be in favour of. If you read my earlier post however, you will see that I was talking specifically about Bahrain. I don’t think people in Bahrain live in fear. Yes, it would be wise not to protest against something very controversial, but for the most part we are far better off than our neighbours. It was in that respect that I was saying that Bahrain should lead the way among the Muslims.
I think the question of double standards is very valid: why was it possible to organize a huge protest rally against the desecration of Iraq’s holy shrines, but there have been no protests against the several beheadings (or any of the many many crimes against humanity committed in the name of Islam)? There have been protests against the war in Iraq, against the Israeli occupation, and a host of other issues, but I can’t remember there once being a protest in Bahrain against crimes committed in the name of Islam (please correct me if I’m wrong on this).
To answer this question I would first of all be very honest and tell you that many of us in Bahrain DO actually seem to hold double standards. But that is not the case for everyone here, and it does not fully explain why there exists such a huge imbalance in the issues that are the subject of protest rallies in Bahrain. The way in which I would explain this is to take note of the fact that it does take a lot of time, effort and resources to organize a protest rally. The only people here who really have those resources available are the political societies. The political societies however are dominated by clerics or Islamists, with a specific agenda. Therefore it is only the protests which are in the interests of the political societies (i.e. religious societies) that are ever organized. Even though everyone here is angered by the beheadings no one is willing to commit the necessary resources to organize the event (especially not any of the religious societies).
That said, I think it is possible to change this. Local organization which have a humanitarian agenda (as opposed to a political or religious agenda) such as the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and others should be the point at which the resources are collected and the events organized. It just means that all of us in Bahrain who have the time to post here should also get around to calling up the BCHR (or other such groups) and give them our suggestions and ask them how we can help out. It means that we have to take the initiative and not leave it to the political/religious societies to dominate the public scene.
Re(1): Horrific
Mahmood, it seems to me that it is about time that we do more than just “stand firm”. We’ve been standing firm for quite some time now, but these crimes are increasing. Neither is it a problem than can be solely dealt with by the security forces of any state. I think that the people need to be doing something also.
The problem as I see it is that these terrorists think that they are doing some great service for the “umma” by murdering people, and have no incentive to stop. For there has been no significant outcry among the Muslims against these heinous acts. Sure, there have been a few articles in the local newspapers, and bloggers like you and I have expressed our condemnation, but I don’t think the terrorists are too bothered by the disapproval of the few individuals. We need to arrange an organized widespread public Muslim condemnation against these acts; not for the purpose that Westerners have a better opinion of us, but so that the terrorists know in unequivocal terms that they are not welcome here and that their actions are not appreciated whatsoever. I understand the fact that most Islamoterrorists are supposedly driven by the “reward of the hereafter”, but they are also political animals so they’re quite sensitive to the feeling of the Muslim street, as we have seen several times before. For they know that they can run away the guns of armies and security forces so along as they have a place to hide among the people. They are also quite well aware that the feeling on the Muslim street is crucial to its continued existence in the future, since this is the real source of recruitments to their cadre. Up until now there has been NO pressure from within the so-called umma on them to stop doing what they’re doing. That is why they feel quite comfortable to not only murder people, but to kill them in the most gruesome way and then broadcast videos of it while they gloat in the background.
We live in Bahrain, not in Saudi, nor in Iraq during Saddam’s rule. Today we enjoy the right to organize public protest with relative freedom. In organizing a peaceful protest we are not faced with the threat of being thrown in to jail by the government, nor is there the threat of being physically attacked by people who hold an opposing view. The only thing stopping us is the time and effort each of us is willing to take out from our everyday lives towards this effort. It should be the responsibility of us in Bahrain to lead the way among Muslims in denouncing these murders.
I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority in Bahrain is angered by these recent crimes, but there is no one to organize this anger and present it in an organized fashion. I would imagine that even most of the clerics would be quite happy to issue condemnations. We just need to take out the time and make the effort.
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
Do you mean the desecration of Iraq’s holy shrines by the murderous Muslim thugs who turned them into military bases?
Oh no, of course not, you mean the “desecration” of the shrines by the US military trying to kill those thugs.
You yourself have a double standard. Maybe if you started seeing the truth, you’d find the world a very different place. The “heroic resistance” in Palestine and Iraq uses children as shields, ambulances as personnel carriers, mosques, hospitals and schools as ammo dumps and military headquarters. The US military does not.
Stop defending the inhuman practices of these murderers just because they share your religion. It puts you on their level.
— James
Re(3): On Naievte
Steve,
Thanks for informing me. Obviously you’ve got all the bases covered, and I have nothing more to offer.
Interesting to note:
although the Patriarch of the Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East resides in Chicago, very few Americans are aware of the existence or identity of the Assyrians.
The professors of a Kyrghyz business student at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville were apparently unfamiliar with his ethnicity.
In 1979 Coptic priests were threatened by Americans who thought they were mullahs.
in 2002 a Coptic store owner in the San Gabriel Valley (suburb of Los Angeles, California) was killed under the belief that he was a Muslim
These are fairly typical examples.
But my ignorance is showing, so I’d best leave.
ma’a salama/alah ma’akum
Bob Griffin
Re(4): On Naievte
It’s a very good and fresh perspective you’re bringing in here Bob, I have certainly learnt something I don’t know after reading your post.
Don’t mind Steve though, he’s an angel at heart, that seams to just throb at Americana. Although I know that he is the first to recognise Americas failings, but emphasises the goodness, which is natural enough.
Please do keep posting comments whenever you feel the urge, you are bound to find people who oppose your point of view, but that’s what makes the discussions richer.
Re(4): On Naievte
Bob,
This is a rather fallacious line of reasoning, isn’t it? You have picked out anecdotes of rather obscure ethnicities and religions and inferred that Americans should know them. It’s an unreasonable and specious argument.
For example, Kyrghyz has perhaps two or three million people and is recently separated from the Soviet Union. It’s a brand new republic only a few years old. The world has a population of 6.5 billion. That means that there are 2166 groups of three million. Now what person on Earth knows the details of ethnicities and religions of every group on Earth down to the level of populations of three million? Nobody. Certainly not you. If so, tell me quick the difference between Malays and Negritos in the Philippines. You don’t know, do you? By your logic, wouldn’t flunking this phony test prove you ignorant of foreign cultures?
A Coptic store owner getting killed in America is hardly proof of the ignorance of Americans of other cultures. There is a convenience store worker getting shot somewhere in America every hour of the day. It’s the most popular crime in America. 28% of all prisoners in the US have robbed a convenience store. If you read accounts of the crimes, racial and ethnic slurs are a signature of such crimes. The fact that a Coptic got caught in one is hardly proof of ethnic ignorance. If a Korean or Vietnamese or caucasian American or Mexican had been working that night, they would have been the ones who got shot. Their shooting would not mean that the robber was ignorant of their ethnic origin.
Expecting the normal American to know the difference between a Coptic priest and a normal Egyptian Muslim is about as reasonable as expecting the average Egyptian to know the difference between an American Lutheran and a Southern Baptist.
Your argument is weak.
Steve
What exactly are we waiting for?
Chan-ad ..
Good points. You made me stop and think.
Most Islamist political parties use Islam to gain support in order to push for a political agenda. The liklihood that these guys will push for an Isamic agenda is low on the priority list – because their end goal is not really religious but political.
The only people who are going to demonstrate agasint Islam being hijacked by the extremeists are Moslems who are spiritually connected to the faith. We need a Luther in Islam to lead this process.
The only problem is that we dont have an equivalent of the ‘church’ to reform, and we dont have a Luther ..
Its going to be a long night ..
JJ
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
James, buddy, calm down for a bit. I don’t know how you came to the conclusion you did. Maybe my post didn’t convey thoughts well. I tell you what… why don’t you read my previous post again, and if you still hold the same opinion of me then let me know, and I’ll try to better explain my position towards Muslim thugs. Cheers
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Jasra, yes exactly. A good read on this topic would be “The Failure of Political Islam” by Olivier Roy. Roy’s basic thesis is that as soon religious entities enter the political playing field, they can no longer remain strictly religious. They succumb to the realpolitik strategies necessary for their survival, and thus compromise on their religious values, whatever they might be. In the end, rather than “Islamizing” the political arena, these guys end up being politicized. The book is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the movement of Political Islam.
Sorry, I don’t know enough about Luther’s reformation to understand what you suggest is needed. Could you maybe explain in a few lines?
What exactly are we waiting for?
Here’s a bit of a problem:
They take us to the shrine of Imam Abbas, and into a marble-clad room filled with big, ugly guys with thick beards and an arsenal of automatic weapons. These men are from the Shrine Protection Force, a militia loyal to the grand Shia Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and so loosely allied with the Americans.
“It is all because of journalists that all this is happening,” says a guy dressed in black, sitting behind a big wooden table. He says that the Mahdi are manipulating the media. “They are thugs and assassins, they have paralysed the holy city of Kerbala, they have desecrated the shrines and shoot from behind them, trying to provoke a response.
“But, alhamdulillah [thank God], the Americans are very wise and respect the shrines. Our brothers, the Americans, are taking very good care of this thing, but as far as the Shias around the world and in Iraq are concerned, they hear that the Americans are fighting ‘close to the shrines
Re(4): What exactly are we waiting for?
You wrote:
[i]why was it possible to organize a huge protest rally against the desecration of Iraq’s holy shrines, but there have been no protests against the several beheadings[/i]
Maybe you understand that we haven’t “desecrated” any shrines, and the desecrators are the thugs of al-Sadr and the bandits in Fallujah. But it certainly doesn’t come across in your post.
— James
What exactly are we waiting for?
Maybe memri.org is a Jewish conspiracy, and all its translations are false. But if this sort of dialogue is really going on in Muslim media, there are very black days ahead:
Supporting Jihad against U.S. troops in Iraq is the topic of many Saudi TV programs. On May 10, Dr. Yassin Al-Khatib, a professor of Islamic law at Um Al-Qura University, declared on the UAE’s Al-Majd TV, which frequently has Saudi guests on it, that “the honor, blood, property and mostly the fact that they entered the country [i.e. Iraq] … make it every Muslim’s duty to go out against them, not only the Iraqis. This is every Muslim’s duty. Jihad today has become an individual duty that applies to each and every Muslim. It is forbidden for a person to remain silent… When the Muslims fought in Afghanistan they destroyed the Soviet Union, which was a superpower. It collapsed and Allah willing, so will this [the U.S.] collapse.â€?
The Coming Islamic Takeover of the U.S.
Saudis often discuss the issue of the U.S. becoming a Muslim state in the future. On a March 17 broadcast on Iqraa TV, Saudi preacher Sheik Said Al-Qahtani discussed this issue, as well as the cases in which Muslims are permitted to declare a defensive Jihad: “… We did not occupy the U.S., with 8 million Muslims, using bombings. Had we been patient, and let time take its course, instead of the 8 million, there could have been 80 million [Muslims] and 50 years later perhaps all the US would have become Muslim… What should a Muslim do if he is attacked in his country, on his land? In this case, there is no choice besides defense, self-sacrifice, and what religious scholars call – Defensive Jihad… We attacked their country, and this caused them to wake the dormant enmity in their hearts… Especially since there is global Zionism, the enemy of Islam, and Judaism, and fundamentalist Crusaders… They interpret this whole incident as only the beginning and thus there is no choice but a preemptive strike.â€?
Al-Qahtani added on another Iqraa TV show on May 5: “Allah said, ‘prepare against them all the force and horsemen that you can.’ What for? In order to strike fear into their hearts… At the same time, [we should] establish strategies for the future, even if only for the short term, and prepare … so that one of these days, even 100, 200, or 400 years from now, we will become a force that will be feared by the infidel states.â€?
[url]http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SR2904[/url]
You guys know Saudi media better than I… these quotes be accurate?
— James
What exactly are we waiting for?
Something else I’d like to get the Bahraini opinion on:
———————-
Beleaguered on all sides, the faction of the royal family that had fostered al-Qaida brought the terrorist movement back into the peninsula. That, at least, is what Saudi liberal dissidents, who are far more numerous than most Westerners realize, believe. The Wahhabi fanatics were repatriated to the kingdom to dramatize the message the royal family always wanted the West to hear: that if the royal family falls, or is compelled to surrender any of its power, the only alternative is something worse: Bin Laden ruling the peninsula. But Bin Laden’s patrons already rule the peninsula. Al-Qaida and its imitators returned to Saudi Arabia with two other goals: to operate in the rearguard of the American liberation of Iraq, inciting young Saudis to go kill and die in places like Falluja; and to intimidate the liberal reformers.
And so began the cycle of terror within the borders of the kingdom, including the atrocities recently seen in Khobar, and further assassinations and kidnappings of Westerners. Yet Saudi reformers point out peculiar aspects of these events. Al-Qaida and its allies do not act against the lives of the Saudi rulers, but against their credibility. Although there are thousands of Saudi princes and princesses in the peninsula and scattered around the world, not one has ever been attacked by al-Qaida or its allies. Except for a raid on a police station, not one of the Saudi institutions found here, there, and everywhere, in the kingdom and beyond, has ever been assaulted. No banks are robbed; no government agencies bombed. Thus, al-Qaida and its allies appear to be the first radical movement in history that does not aim its actions against its alleged enemy. Only foreigners are consistently targeted; and the terrorists have a peculiar ability to get away from the scene, and to escape detection.
To Saudi liberals, all this is evidence that al-Qaida and its allies are still supported by a faction within the royal family, which protects them. When I and others are interviewed in Western media, we experience a strange kind of cognitive dissonance. That is, everybody now knows that the Saudis have been less than enthusiastic about cracking down on al-Qaida; many people know that the financiers of the organization, men named by the U.S. authorities like the businessman Yasin al-Qadi, continue to walk the streets of the kingdom unmolested; it is common knowledge that the Islamic charities, which are official arms of the Saudi authorities, assisted in the conspiracy, and the whole world knows that tens of thousands of Wahhabi clerics, who are paid functionaries of the state, continue to preach violent jihad in Iraq and against the West in general.
And yet we are asked, in wonderment, “are you saying the Saudi royal family supports the terrorists?”
Well, what else could we be saying? Not the whole royal family, but enough of them for the terrorists to operate with impunity inside the kingdom. Enough of them for the Saudi government to pretend to shut down the terror-funding charities and then allow them to continue to operate. Enough of them for the Saudi response to al-Qaida to remain little more than verbal.
[url]http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13873[/url]
Re(5): What exactly are we waiting for?
Yes I completely understand that the real criminals here are al-Sadr’s thugs. But that was not the point of my post, so I did not feel the need to mention it. The people who organized the rally I refer to protested against “the desecration of the holy shrines”. If that’s what they were protesting against, then that’s how I will report it, regardless of whether I think their stance was justified or not. Could I have phrased the sentence in a better way or something? Let me know.
Olivier Roy
Where Olivier Roy is particularly good is on the sterility of the Islamists, although I disagree with his thesis that Islamicism is a spent force which has been contained by the challenges of day to day politics. One only has to look at the difficulties Bahrain’s parliament has in containing Asalah and Al-Menbar to realise how difficult it is to ‘domesticate’ them.
Islamicists don’t need to have a revolutionary take over of state power in order to enforce their agenda, they can be just as effect in taking over a society from the bottom up. This is what makes them so dangerous, because it tempts Arab state’s into a qui pro quo – leaders are willing to compromise with them because they are allowed to keep their jobs while the society below is hollowed out. Egypt’s a prime example – once the fountain of the Arab world, the politics of compromise means now that Cairo’s now an irrelevance.
Re(5): What exactly are we waiting for?
I’ve got to agree with the Chanad here – he’s making some very valid suggestions about what civil society organisations in Bahrain, such as the Bahrain Human Rights Centre, could do to protest against the crimes of the Islamic extremists. James, in your near hysteria you’ve completely missed his point. Cool it dude.
Where I might disagree with the Chanad is where the Bahrain Human Rights Centre actually fits into this. I’ve been very disappointed so far that whenever an Islamic extremist abuses human rights they say silent. The principles of human rights apply just as much to Ali Salman’s and Asalah’s brownshirts as they do to members of the security forces.
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
Thank you, James. I am now wholly convinced that Saudi Arabia is our enemy, that its government is evil, and that it can not be reformed. I had some lingering doubts. They are now gone. It is obvious that Saudi Arabia continues to play it’s double game, lying to us in English here in America while preaching our destruction through jihad back home. I believe that a critical mass of Saudis support the destruction of the United States and that as long as they have the money, they will continue to act on these evil Wahhabi fever dreams.
From this point on, I believe that the only way to make America safe from the Wahhabi Terror is to destroy Saudi Arabia.
The best way to destroy Saudi Arabia is to let the Wahhabis win the civil war. They will perform the useful chore of executing the evil Saudi princes. A mountain of heads of Saudi princes will be a good first step to improving Saudi Arabia by removing the Saudi from it to become Wahhabi Arabia.
When the Wahhabis take over and, encouraged by their victory, issue their inevitable threats to do the same elsewhere, then who will blame us for bombing them into oblivion? The Wahhabis will provide us with a casus belli through some terrorist provocation. It is their nature. Then we can target them in their home country in large groups. This will have the added benefit of sucking all the jihadis home. It is much better to fight them in their own home, destroying their cities, tearing up their economy.
America will not be safe until Saudi Arabia is destroyed and the evil Wahhabis crushed like bugs.
Steve
Re(6): What exactly are we waiting for?
Both JAMES and STEVE have at times not taken their medication prior to posting. Both are good people but there no reason to blow a head gasket during a post. 99.99999% of the people who post here are good people at heart. Views of things will differ at times and they should. It is hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who lives in the Arab world if you have never been there and it is hard for someone from the Gulf area to grasp Western thought without spending time in the West. A two week visit doesn’t cut it. Bridges can be built between us by staying rational in our thoughts and posts and understanding there is a language gap between us as well. Many who post here English is their second or third language while I will bet Steve and James learned English as a FIRST language.
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Steve, what you’re talking about is basically the destruction of an entire culture. I’m still hoping it won’t come to that. But I agree that it sure seems that the Saudi government is our enemy, and our own government’s actions towards the Saudis are sickening and beyond excuse. It needs to be stated loudly and clearly and every single day: their culture is a medieval relic, it does not belong on this planet and it must change. Now. I’d demand that they build a nice big church in the middle of downtown Riyadh, for starters. If they say no, then we cease all aid, put them on the list of terrorist nations, implement sanctions, and begin funding a liberal insurgency.
I’m sick and tired of our culture bending over backwards to be tolerant of intolerance. Wahhabism is barbaric, it is the enemy of civilization, and it cannot be tolerated.
– James
Luther
Chan’ad ..
I am not a Moslem scholar and I am definitely not a Christain one. But, from what little I know – I am left with the impression that when the Church became so powerful and rich – (i.e. when the Church became much more than a religious ideology but a socio-political entity that owned significant amounts of real estate and generated lots of revenues – a de facto state, if you will ), Luther hit back agasint the Church and asked the Christianity pare itself down to its simple, purital, no frills roots. i.e. – he started the separation of Church and State in Christianity.
Unfortnately, we dont have a unified ‘Church’ entity like the Vatican to hit back against. And we dont have a Luther.
So, Moslem moderates living in the ME who dont agree with bin Ladenism or Talibanism or Wahhabism or whatver ism cannot use their intellectual fire power to challenge these isms – we dont have a ‘unified’ mosque to break. We have Al Azhar, we have Mecca, we have the Shia in Iran and the Shia in Iraq. Whose version of the appropriate relationship between Islam and the State is right??
Jasra Jedi
What exactly are we waiting for?
Thats a bit racist and ignorant – don’t you think?
The beheaders are acting as the prophet would have wanted them to act? Thats like me saying that the Israelis are acting like Moses wanted them to act .. an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Or that the anti abortion nutters that go around killing doctors or harassing homosexuals are acting the way Jesus wanted them to act – (look at how the scriptures deal with both abortion and homosexuality).
We can first start by employing reason and rationale in our own attitudes .. and realize that the issue is in how people view themselves as having a socio-political identity. If you go on a full on attack against Islam – you will get nowhere. Wiser and more prudent for you to think through where the problems really rise from – and recognize how Islam is being manipulated – (like Judaism, Chirstianity was in their own time) to justify political means ..
JJ
Incidentally – there are significantly more non Arab Moslems than there are Moslem Arabs. And there are significant amounts of non Moslem Arabs…
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
[quote]( I appreciate that there are still some non muslim arabs now ). [/quote]
There have always been non muslim Arabs. I personaly know Christian Bahrainis, Christains from Kuwait and Iraq and even some from GASP Saudi Arabia. Other religions are also practiced in the Gulf area and indeed throughout the Arab world by ARABS. Granted the numbers are few and only one country I know of bans all other religions except Islam and that is Saudi Arabia.
Look for a post on this site titled HUG a JEW that Mahmood wrote a while back.
What exactly are we waiting for?
The beheaders are acting as M., aka the prophet, acted before them, and as he instructed.
The voice of reason heard in this blog from arab sources is the same voice of moderation heard and crushed by M aka etc., and frequently crushed since in the name of Islam.
A new renaissance for arabs will take place when, finally, the voices of reason prevail, though when that will be is unknown.
And Islam looks vunerable, brittle – to an outsider.
Other ‘religions’ have changed dramatically in the last hundred years and seem the stronger for it. Can Islam change ? Should it change ?
I would be interested in feedback from arabs ?
Should an arab be a Muslim or can arabs again be, as they were less than 1400 years ago before M., aka etc, a multi faith community ?
( I appreciate that there are still some non muslim arabs now ).
What exactly are we waiting for?
Thanks for the moderate responses to what was a provocative assertion re beheading being as M. acted/instructed.
The war of Badr, the war of Ahud, the Ahzab war, the Bani Qurayzah war, the Bani Mustalaq war, the Khaybar war, the Mutah war, the conquest of Makkah, the war against the Havazin in the valley of Hunayn, the war against the Saghif, plus other less severe wars were all fought by M. to defend/promote Islam, and beheading captured opponents, as in the beheading of the 600 male Qurayzah ( Aws tribe ) who had surrendered to him, was done on his specific instructions.
Thus my assertion.
What can ‘modern’ muslims do when ‘extremists’ use this historic reality, together with quotes from the Quoran, to justify, even glorify, what they are doing.
I do not have answers; Moslems have the answers.
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
I am not advocating the destruction of every Saudi in Arabia but rather their decimation from the air until they abandon their war on the world. I don’t want to replace the mosques with churches, though it would be a sign of moderation if other religions were tolerated in Saudi Arabia. You can not learn moderation if you never meet people from other traditions. Part of the reason for the virulence of the Wahhabi disease is its isolation from moderating influences, much like the Ebola virus flourished isolated deep in the jungle.
I do agree that the Wahhabis are barbarians who must be crushed. They are the enemy of civilization by their own admission.
The Sep 11 atrocites were an act of war by Saudi Arabia, if not overtly by the government, then certainly indirectly. The funds for the attack were provided by princes of the Saudi monarchy. I believe other princes knew and winked. I believe these attacks are an expression of the Saudi people’s hostility to America. They are far too indoctrinated in this evil, intolerant, murderous Wahhabi faith to ever be rehabilitated through reason. They simply must be taught that the violence they wreak in their religious war will be amplified and returned to them in such a volume that they will abandon their jihad to avoid extinction. Just like the Japanese.
Saudi Arabia delenda est.
Steve
Re: Luther
I saw an interesting documentary the other night on St. Benedict, a medieval hermit who decided to live in a cave by himself, having his food and water lowered to him in a bucket while his waste was lifted out, hopefully in a different bucket. His pious example attracted admirers who crowded his cave in imitation. Pretty soon, it got out of hand and he decided to write a rulebook for how to be a monk, starting the Benedictine Order. They built a church and monastery above the cave. Then they built other monasteries all over Europe, then the world. Over generations, it amassed tremendous wealth and power. The monks abandoned the ascetic life by degrees to embrace the good life of wine, women, and song. They became completely corrupted by their success.
That fairly well describes the arc of most religious movements as they move from their puritan origins to their corrupt and degraded destinations.
It seems like many of the fundamentalist Islamic movements are one step out of Benedictine’s cave, full of fervor.
Luther’s revolt from the church was set up by a technological advance, the printed book. Much of the Catholic church’s power came from its monopoly on the sources of knowledge, handwritten manuscripts, each of which cost the equivalent of a Rolls Royce today. The priests, who had access to the Bible, acted as intermediaries between the worshippers and the word of God as expressed in the Holy Book. When printing made books cheap enough for ordinary people to acquire, they no longer needed an intermediary to interpret the Bible for them. They could read it for themselves. That laid the foundation for ordinary people’s revolt against the Catholic Church, their protest which led to the Protestant strain of Christianity.
It seems like the technologies most likely to undermine the fundamentalist Islamic headlock on the wretched lower levels of Arab society are television and radio, delivered by satellite. America and the West should be delivering competing ideas by these means to the Middle East. We should be actively promoting liberty, capitalism, and democracy through programs directed into the heart of the totalitarian states. We should be providing rebuttals to the arguments advanced by the mullahs for their followers to consider. In the war of ideas, we have the advantage. We should exploit that to the fullest.
Steve
What exactly are we waiting for?
Sorry, Qurayzah not Aws tribe.
Yes, there are more non-arab moslems than arab moslems.
With 1 billion plus moslems in most parts of the planet, problems within Islam become world problems, and problems between Islam and the other 4 billion of us must be resolved peacefully.
Dreams of world dominance for any religion should be rudely shattered as neither realistic nor desirable nor achievable.
Thanks Mahmood, for the apportunity to rant a bit on your blog.
Re(6): What exactly are we waiting for?
[b]Mahmood[/b], it may be an unfortunate fact, but it is a fact that waging wars of total annihilation has worked for America before. We turned Germany and Japan into our trusted allies by indiscriminately exterminating huge segments of their population, reducing their urban centers to ash, occupying them, and hanging their leaders.
I don’t like to admit this, but I don’t think Americans are all that much more morally advanced than in 1945. If Wahabbi terrorists do manage the unthinkable, and detonate a nuke in one of our cities, there will be calls for massive retaliation. I know several people who even now think we should just nuke Mecca and Medina and let the Arabs see that they are infinitely weaker than we are. Because bending over backwards to preserve civilian life and respect their culture hasn’t done much to end this conflict so far, has it?
I’m not condoning these attitudes, but I understand them, and they are much stronger in America than you might want to believe.
Steve isn’t an unthinking brute, he’s a baffled American faced with a poisonous idealogy who sees few alternatives to exterminating it, by whatever means necessary. Personally, I believe that we went into Iraq to begin changes in SA and Iran and Syria, and I see hopeful signs coming from Iraq now (finally!). With the modernization of the Gulf States like Bahrain, a new Iraqi democracy could transform the whole region. That is our best hope, and we should all be pushing for it.
If you visit the Angry Arab’s website, you’ll see who our enemies are: Arabs so consumed by their hatred of America that they work towards failure in Iraq, because it’s better to see Iraqis die than to see Bush vindicated.
As for understanding their culture, we CAN’T understand Wahabbi culture, don’t you understand that? It is the exact opposite of everything that we believe in. And when you realize that the Saudi royal family is spending billions to promote this barbarism across the world, isn’t it only natural that we come to despise them as well? When they change their tune, you can ask Steve to tone down his hatred. But as long as they spin their lies to the West while financing schools that brainwash children by the hundreds of thousands, don’t ask Steve and I to respect or understand that pack of jackals.
— James
Re(7): What exactly are we waiting for?
We know that. We accept the obvious fact that the United States is the greatest power on earth and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. America doesn’t have to prove anything. Nothing at all. We (the human race) know that it is the most powerful and the demonstration of power by annihilation is not going to solve a thing. What might have worked 60 years ago is not going to work today. Everybody remembers the great wars and their effect. And the millions of lives lost.
I also recognise that it is foreign to you (the general US population) to understand the underpinning of Wahabism and their culture. Heck, I have a problem with it as well as most non-Wahabis as well. But getting into a pissing fight is not going to solve issues.
Look, let me put it plainly, WE (the non-Wahabi Muslims) are WITH you on this issue. We knew the existence of the problem before you experienced it. We have been living with it since 1747 and have suffered variously under it. You have only experienced it for the last 3 years. The difference is that you have had the capacity to respond to the threat in a way that we (the Muslim/Arab people) could never do, because WE will be annihalated by them.
My premise is that WE (collectively) can beat them THIS TIME with your help.
You know how? One way is putting pressure on the Saudis, and it only takes one thing: deny them Intel! That would send them back to the 7th century so fast they wouldn’t know what’s coming!
And that would be much more effective than any nuclear bomb that you and Steve might want to lob on them!
But will even that solve the problem? I don’t think so. The ONLY solution to this is reasoned politics, not bombs.
Re(7): What exactly are we waiting for?
Mahmood:
[quote]We know that. We accept the obvious fact that the United States is the greatest power on earth and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.[/quote]
The thugs dancing around burning humvees in Fallujah don’t appear to be aware of it. The Arab media wailing about our “destruction” of Iraq are clearly not aware of it — since we fought that war with both hands behind our backs. The Saudi preachers droning on about the imminent worldwide victory of Islam are not aware of it. The poor kids being brainwashed each day in Pakistan’s maddrasahs are not aware of it.
A real demonstration of power might change these minds. This is the same situation faced by the Israelis; they bend over backward to spare civilian lives, and they’re accused of genocide. As you well know, if the Israelis wanted to commit genocide they have the means to do so. I think a huge segment of the Arab world is so out of touch that they really don’t realize how militarily weak they are, and that this weakness stems from cultural and economic repression.
I take it as a given that you and most of your readers (and possibly even most of your countrymen) are an exception to this delusion.
[quote]What might have worked 60 years ago is not going to work today. Everybody remembers the great wars and their effect. And the millions of lives lost.[/quote]
We also remember a hateful idealogy wiped from the face of the earth, and a rebirth of democracy and economic liberation that improved the lives of millions more. Perhaps World War II means something different in Bahrain; we see it as an example of a necessary sacrifice to move the human race out of an era of darkness. And many influential American commentators are already calling this ‘war on terror’ World War 3.
[quote]I also recognise that it is foreign to you (the general US population) to understand the underpinning of Wahabism and their culture.[/quote]
I think I understand the underpinnings quite well actually: xenophobia, hatred of women, nepotism, fear of technology and progress, blind adherence to a religious idealogy. We went through the same things ourselves, and the Catholic Church still represents some of the same tenets (homophobia, for example).
I’m not really sure I see anything good in Wahabbism. Do you?
[quote]You know how? One way is putting pressure on the Saudis, and it only takes one thing: deny them Intel! That would send them back to the 7th century so fast they wouldn’t know what’s coming![/quote]
I’m all for it. But I’m not sure how that would topple them. Since they seem to want to regress back to the 7th century anyway, and since so many of them seem to look forward to death, I can’t help but feel that we’re going to have to end up killing lots of them. Taking away a computer from a guy who hates the telephone isn’t going to change his mind. Ultimately, a liberal movement must be launched in your region, it has to be powerful, it needs charismatic leaders, it needs religious legitimacy, and it has to be willing to fight.
— James
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
Steve, you’ve made your point amply clear. You hold the Saudis to wrong exclusively for the attack on the United States as if they operated in a vacuum. I too do not like and cannot stand Wahabism and its isolationist dogma, but please re-evaluate your position, when even moderate Saudis – who are with you and us in our thinking – read your posts they would do a 180 and stand with the Wahabis rather than try to resolve the situation amicably and peacefully.
So, come back please with solutions (non violent) and stop painting the everyone in Saudi in particular and this area of the world in general with a the broad brush of hate and vengence. It just won’t work, or if it did, it will work out in a way that both you and I and the majority of the people posting here do not want or dare to think about.
Calm down and let reason take over. Please.
Re(4): What exactly are we waiting for?
You’re quite correct that I am a Saudiaphobe and with good reason. They have declared war on my country, have made attacks on my homeland, and have killed thousands of American civilians. This is a casus belli. With what part of the above do you disagree?
Yes, I do hate Wahhabis who declare that they have the right to kill two million Americans and also two million American children and are making every effort to do so. Please explain why you don’t hate such murderers.
It’s true that I have never been to the Gulf area, yet that is rather a weak rebuttal to my position. I have never been to Nazi Germany yet I am quite certain through indirect sources that it was evil. Since you have not been to Nazi Germany, please apply your logic to that situation and explain to me why you can’t know whether it was good or bad unless you were there.
You need to brush up on disease theory. The first generations of disease are highly virulent and often kill their hosts if they live in isolated populations. When diseases spread to the general population, in order to survive they must mutate into less virulent forms that allow their hosts to survive in order to infect other hosts. That is a good analogy for the Wahhabi strain of Islam in Saudi Arabia. My recommendation to you is to curb your arrogance when criticizing arguments that you don’t understand.
And by the way, it is a pretty well known tactic for liberals to declare themselves to be conservatives in Internet debates to confuse the argument. I don’t buy it.
Steve
Re(4): What exactly are we waiting for?
Mahmood,
I know I am beating a drum rather than making an argument in all my posts. This is an expression of my utter frustration when I see the oily Saudi representatives here in the States pitching a pack of lies on TV to soothe us while at the same time back in Saudi Arabia they stoke the jihad against America.
Mahmood, where are these moderate Saudis? The only Saudi I have ever seen for which I have any respect is the Religious Policeman blogger. Every other Saudi I have met (which is not that many), read about, or seen is something between a simple jerk to an evil mass murderer. If these moderate Saudis can not even whisper their objection to the murdering arc of their evil state, they must be a very small minority. Where are the Saudis who want to end the jihad against America? I don’t see any evidence of them at all.
Even in Nazi Germany where the consequences for rebellion were severe, there were rebel cells and even assassination plots against Hitler. Where are the equivalent Saudi rebels against Wahhabism?
This is a one-sided war. Saudi Arabia actively makes war on us yet we do not fire so much as a bullet in Saudi Arabia. We are already effectively at peace with them on our side. Yet they continue to support attacks on the US. To make peace with a determined enemy, there has to be some sort of desire for peace on the Saudi side. I don’t see it. I only see hostility.
I don’t see where reason has any effect on the Saudis. When presented with evidence that 15 of their people did the Sep 11 attacks, they insisted that we were racists for saying so. They maintained this position for six months until it became impossible to deny it to the world. Yet inside their evil kingdom, this is the story they tell their people still, years after the truth is out.
The Saudis do not operate on facts and reason. Reasonable argument has no effect on them. If one of their tribe kills infidels, they simply deny it, cover it up, do nothing.
When you exhaust all the reasonable options, only brute force remains. I honestly think that taking their jihad back to their doorsteps is the only thing that the Saudis will respect and understand.
There is a historical precedent for this. The Turks had no respect for Western infidels until they began losing to technologically superior Western armies. It was only then, after getting fatwas allowing them to learn from infidel teachers, did the Turks begin opening up to the Western world and modernizing their army. Their society followed.
It just may be that the only way to open up Saudi Arabia is to crack it open with military force. If the Saudis continue their war against America, I would much rather fight it on the offensive in Saudi Arabia than on the defensive in my America. I would rather see Saudi cities burn than see the skyline of Washington afire from another Saudi attack.
Steve
PS. They have changed the announcements on the Metro in DC. Every morning and every afternoon I am reminded to watch for unattended packages and told to report them immediately, lest they be bombs. And I watch. They announce that a terror attack is expected in the next few months. It is a continuing reminder that evil Saudi Wahhabis mean to murder me. I hate sitting around like a damned target. And Washington has seen few of the school tours that jammed the museums on the Mall before Sep 11. Parents are afraid to send their children to DC for fear they will be caught in another terrorist attack. I absolutely despise the Saudis for that.
Re(8): On Naievte
Well maybe James stereotypes weren’t changed, but mine certainly were. I thought you were a guy. Man, this is a confusing world.
Am I wrong about you being a Bahraini or are you from somewhere else? You don’t need to give me your street address, just give me a hint which country I’m dealing with.
Steve
Re(6): What exactly are we waiting for?
Mahmood,
The problem is not that I am closed to Saudi culture or uninterested in it. Heck, I took a year of Arabic in college and swallowed a load of Aramco propaganda. I’ve read Middle Eastern history. I keep up with current events. I am the most informed person on the Middle East among the other Americans I encounter, though that is not much of a boast.
The problem is that the more I learn about the Saudis, the lower my opinion sinks. There is a rather thick crust of lies that coats Saudi society, which inspires my contempt. When you drill through that, there is not much to respect and very much to despise. To understand Saudi culture is to loathe it.
I suppose the good thing is that they actually used some of their oil money on roads and buildings and infrastructure instead of blowing it all on weapons, like Iraq. After that, I run out of good things to say about Saudi Arabia.
Mahmood, I am hard pressed to name a country where the citizens are so faithfully devoted to a criminal creed of murder against the rest of the world as Saudi Arabia. Under Saddam, there were refugees from his regime who spoke out against him. I see no refugees from Saudi Arabia speaking out against the bloody crimes of Wahhabism. I don’t see any Saudis fleeing their country at all. They are voting with their feet to stay in Saudi Arabia and support its regime and vile state religion. They like it. You can’t call them innocent when they support this jihad against America. If I could see even a handful of Saudis reject the Wahhabi Terror, I could assume that there were another hundred silent resisters for each one. Yet I do not even see any even a trivial number of Saudi dissenters.
We do absolutely agree that the Saudi apparatus of extremist Wahhabi indoctrination should be dismantled. It is one of the evil nests of this Wahhabi hate. Yet, this system of miseducation is the main effort of the Wahhabi clerics who are tightly entangled with the Saudi princes in a Gordian knot that can not be untangled with diplomacy.
My hatred of the Saudis is authentic, considered, inspired by their murderous acts, and confirmed by their intractable hostility to America. I disagree that the burden of changing this situation falls upon America. The burden for changing this state of war falls entirely upon the Saudis. This jihad ends the moment the Saudis decide it ends. We have no other cause for attacking the Saudis other than their massive terror attacks upon us.
Mahmood, you’re a nice guy, a likeable guy, but your country has not been attacked by the Wahhabis. Your people have not been butchered. The Wahhabis are not threatening to kill Bahraini citizens and their children. That makes your perspective different than mine. You can detach yourself from this war and adopt positions about it that carry no risk for yourself.
I disagree that vengeance is the wrong course with respect to Saudi Arabia. High-minded appeals to reason have no effect on the Saudis. Vengeance is simple enough for the Saudi barbarians to understand: You kill three thousand of us. We kill three hundred thousand of you.
My sympathy lies with Lucy Fishman. She dropped off her son at his first day of school before she went to work in the 105th floor of the World Trade Center on Sep 11. A week before, she and her two kids were caught in the rain at the zoo. They took off their shoes and sang in the rain.
Juliana McCourt was headed to Disneyland with her Mom on United Flight 175 when Saudis steered it into the south tower of the World Trade Center. She was four years old.
Rosa Julia Gonzalez worked on the 66th floor of 2 WTC. Fifteen minutes before her building collapsed, she called her sister, “Promise to me that you are going to take care of my daughter.” Her daughter, Jennifer, is twelve.
Mary Lou Hague did what her friends called a “happy dance” when she was listening to music, waving her arms in the air and hollering “Woo-hoo!” She worked on the 89th floor of the second tower to be hit. Her mother said her entire floor was wiped out. She was 26.
And there are the Egan sisters.
The lives of those 2948 people who died at the hands of the Saudis had value. The nation which butchered them and celebrated their deaths as infidels deserves punishment. A powerful demonstration of retribution against this Saudi culture of death will deter other aggressors, sparing American lives in the future.
Steve
Re(5): What exactly are we waiting for?
I understand and respect your position Steve. What has been done to the States and the rest of the world by these bunch of cowards is reprehensible. They will continue in their terror for some time to come, beheadings and other acts so unimaginable that it makes you wonder what is the real difference between them and soul-less animals.
Fine we agree on that point, but is hate really and continuous rants on the same subject actually going to solve the problem? Is your wishing of seeing Saudi cities burnt to the ground with hundreds of thousands of innocents dead and dying quench your thirst for vengence? More importantly, will that act if it occurs eradicate them from existence? No it won’t. I know that you do not want innocent blood on your hands, be that Saudi, American, Israeli, Palestinian or whatever else.
Calm down man. This is not going to solve the problem. You cannot win wars and battles like this. You cannot wish death and destruction on a people just because they share the same country.
If you haven’t seen or heard of Saudis who are completely opposed to the Wahabis and their terror then that is not a guage that all Saudis are corrupt and condone the Wahabi terror.
It’s also documented that your very own current president and his father have benefitted handsomly from the Saudis via the Carlyle Group and will continue to do so, should we also wish them ill or a fate worse than death?
Look. It is NOT of Al-Saud’s best interest to carry on as they were. They more than anyone else recognise that, but I suspect that they cannot and will not just come out and say it. They have to fix their mess their own way. To you and me this is happening at a snail’s pace and should be accellerated, but what can we do to expedite the process? If we continue just to rant and rave continuously and wish all their cities burn to the ground it will only strengthen their hand, not weeken it.
A better strategy would be for you to understand their culture, canvas your own government to help the Saudis solve their problems by exerting pressure for change, for pressuring them to empty their prisons of prisoners of conscience, for shutting down their centers of hate propogation (the Imam University is a prime location I suspect) and the various other tools available to us that we can make a difference with.
As for security announcements, I’ve been hearing them since 1980 when I started to travel to Europe, sure they’re more persistant now, but security announcements have always been a part of travel, be that air, rail or whatever other form of transport.
Please, open up and lessen the unmittigated hatred that’s pouring out of your posts. We can use your energy for helping rebuilding cultures where it will be much better employed in fighting terrorism.
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
Steve,
What do you think Saudi’s never travel? Don’t have Sat TV? That they all live in tents and herd camels? Steve I am afraid you are a [b]SAUDIAPHOBE[/b]. No matter what you toss into the air hoping for a thought to stick, your like a poor marksman who keeps missing the target. Steve I am so far to the RIGHT I make Limbaugh look like limp wristed liberal and it is YOU that won’t stop spewing the hate.
Are you having seperation anxiety since being discharged?
I can tell you have never been to the Gulf area and if you have you never left the confines of base camp. If by chance you did, you sure didn’t absorb much.
Also please brush up on the Ebola virus anology. That one is a stretch.[b][/b]
Re(7): What exactly are we waiting for?
Steve, there is a Saudi dissident movement:
Saudi Dissidents Launch Satellite TV Channel
Thu May 15,
LONDON (Reuters) – A Saudi opposition group has launched a satellite television channel which its leader said on Thursday could prove a greater threat to Saudi rulers than violence inspired by Osama bin Laden .
Saad al-Fagih, head of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, told Reuters the Islah channel was part of efforts to “penetrate the wall of deception” in the kingdom and allow Saudis to express their own opinions freely.
“This will be more dangerous to the Saudi royal family than all the bombs of bin Laden,” Fagih said.
He said the channel, now showing only an introductory message, would be fully operational in the next few days, offering two to three hours a day of live talk shows to be repeated over a 24-hour cycle, as well as text news on screen.
Fagih said the [b]Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia[/b], founded in 1994, called for peaceful change in his homeland, demanding political freedoms along with a transparent and accountable government.
The television channel will replace a 24-hour Voice of Reform radio station launched by the group in December 2002.
http://www.emjournal.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/may03087.html
— James
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
You are exactly right, Jasra. The opening gambit of beheading foreigners establishes the legitimacy of beheading which leads to the end game of beheading natives. When you justify injustice to others, that injustice is destined to be visited on you sooner or later.
Steve
Re: Minister of Pleasure
It must have been a bad day in Jasra-land when you wrote this.
I read today that Americans are sad three days out of every month. So I’m guessing you are having your sad day but surely will be enjoying your happy days by now.
Steve
Re(8): What exactly are we waiting for?
James,
Dr. Saad al-Fagih is Al Qaeda. He was the doctor for Bin Laden’s Service Bureau in Pakistan, tending to jihadis flowing through to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Steve
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
Remember in the 1945 scenario, the Soviets occupied Central Europe. The West Germans had to become democratic and pro-Western, because the alternative was to be thrown to the Communist wolves.
Re(2): What exactly are we waiting for?
[quote]You’re quite mistaken to believe changes can not be imposed from outside. We did it to Nazi Germany and Japan in WWII. It worked. We will do it to Iraq, too. [/quote]
One problem though is that unlike 1945 you don’t have Stalin to help you.
Germany and Japan [b]had[/b] to become pro-Western democracies after WWII because the alternate – being abandoned to the mercy of the USSR – was too horrible to contemplate. The South was just as thoroughly smashed in 1865 as Germany was in 1945, but Radical Reconstruction still failed because there was no greater evil to force white Southerners to go along, and I suspect the same problem will occur in Iraq. Now that Saddam is behind bars and his sons are dead (good riddance…) foreign conquest can no longer be seen as a lesser evil from the Iraqi point of view.
Re(3): What exactly are we waiting for?
This may be too obvious for you to see, but have you ever considered that Germany and Japan had to become democracies because we occupied their countries and ordered them to do so?
Steve
Re: What exactly are we waiting for?
when?? has happened yet.. The Korean Soldiers have proven nothing but cowards.. No “head cutting” contests there.. They’ve done nothing and killed no terrorists
Re(1): What exactly are we waiting for?
Please give examples where the Koreans have been cowardly. You have not proven your point but merely made a wild acccusation.
Steve
Re(4): What exactly are we waiting for?
Well, in 1865 the Union occupied the Confederacy and order it to give blacks equal rights to whites. Did it stick??
Without the Communist occupation of Central Europe, the Germans could have done what the US Southerners did after the Civil War – wait for the occupiers to go home, then revert to type and exact revenge on ‘scalawag’ collaborators. Fortunately the US Southerners were ‘Stresemanns’ not ‘Hitlers
What exactly are we waiting for?
There are some serious questions in my mind about why some Muslims (I am told about one-three percent) are so violent, and worse, why the great majority of Islam, especially the majority of religious leaders or Imams, have not spoken out in public nor in the papers worldwide to clarify what Islam is all about, for the sake and worldwide reputation of Islam. I read 5-6 Middle Eastern papers by the way so I am not referring to only Western press. Only a few handfuls of Imams from the Middle East stood up to defend Islam against the violence presented in the press, while violence by Muslims gets a tremendous amount of press in non-Islamic countries. This is a major problem I think. It creates a very poor impression of Muslims worldwide, and Muslims do not counter this poor image in the Western press. WHY NOT?
When do THEY, THE MAJORITY OF MUSLIMS, become outraged about this? When do THEY take to the streets and the newspapers worldwide to express their outrage at the radicals who are making their religion the object of worldwide hatred and ridicule? When do their police arrest and jail such criminals? This is the key question. And this is what creates doubt in non-Islamic minds. Everyone listens to the words. But if the actions are different, actions or lack thereof speak louder than words. Islam needs to take actions.
Islam must clean its own house of these criminals who misrepresent Islam with the worst of barbaric crimes. Part of that must be not giving them a platform to communicate via video or audio tapes to the public (as through Al Jazeira). Why does anyone want to give criminals such an advantage to “sell” their ideas? It is just plain stupid. Islam must clean its own house because the extremists desecrate Islam AND bring nothing but economic destruction and poverty with them. There has never been a good, prosperous example of such people or countries that “host” them. Why are they tolerated? AND why is Islam still relatively quiet about this problem within Islam?
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!”
Edmund Burke 1729-1797
Irish philosopher and statesman
If you notice, there is a strong correlation between areas of religious extemism, and political grievances.
Alot of the Arab world, Imams included, sympathize with those political grievances. The Imams might find attractive resonances with current political conflict in the ancient Qur’an, while the average Arab is more angry based on the actual politics. What do they have in common? The political grievance.
Thus, the short answer to your question is that non-Islamic countries dont know or dont care to know about the underlying political grievances. (It is unpatriotic to ask why the terrorists hate us remember?) While in the Islamic world, it is well understood that there is a political problem, and that people will use religion as something to lean on in tough times. And we have plenty of tough times in the Middle East.
This does not excuse the barbarism we see today with some terrorist attacks, (sunni/shias blowing each other in Iraq for example), but I take it you get the jist. (And even then, I would state that those attacks are based more on distrust, revenge, payback, and retaliation, than purely because of religious differences).
As you can see, there is alot of detail and subtle yet important factors to what you simply paint as “Muslim violence”, Mr docspencer. And that violence doesnt come from a vacuum. There is almost always a political undertone. Perhaps you will be more lucky in your quest for answers if you took a look at the actual political grievances in the area, vs just analysing a Qur’an. I would also invite you to take a look at data between Muslim countries that do not have major political grievances, (Indonesia, Morroco, Oman, Turkey), and ones that do. Then look at religious fanaticism, and finally, draw a correlation.
-Ibn
“If you notice, there is a strong correlation between areas of religious extemism, and political grievances.”
Thanks Ibn, this seems to be the case.
“Thus, the short answer to your question is that non-Islamic countries dont know or dont care to know about the underlying political grievances. (It is unpatriotic to ask why the terrorists hate us remember?)”
I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and have a lot of contacts elsewhere in the USA and my experience is different. Although among 300 million people that the USA has I am sure we can find all kinds, my personal experience is that we do care, we do not feel that it is unpatriotic to ask why terrorists hate us, and I would very much appreciate it if you educated me about this. Be real frank, I am not thin skinned. I want the truth. If you want, my email address is vicspencer@charter.net .
Please educate me about your last paragraph. You make good points, and in areas where I and we Americans are uneducated. I would like to include such information in my Web site’s Islam page at http://www.bahraindubai.info if you don’t mind. I get about 20K visitors per month to this site and rising, only positive feedback so far from readers, but don’t know yet how many read the Islam info. Anyway, I aim to help with what the real story is in the ME. There is too much misinformation around.
Where are you in the USA and for how long?
I really appreciate your helpful comments. Thanks Ibn.
And I am surprised that so many people comment on this topic anonymously. However few of us, we need to stand up and do something about this problem. And communicating openly is a good first step.
Vic
Yes, the opinion that it is unpatriotic to ask why they hate us is obviously not going to be uniformly spread across the entire population. However, it seems to be very prevalent among Americans of right and right of center political persuasions.
My sources include personal experiences with individual Americans, watching FOX news which is predominantly on the right of the political spectrum, reading many American blogs of similar political persuasions, etc. They spend their time trying to convince themselves and others that Muslims are inherently hateful – simply because they are Muslims – whilst doing next to nothing to look at the source of hate from political grievances.
As far as your site goes, I think you have a noble intention, but I think you are focusing too much on the religion, vs the politics. Like I said before, any analysis of Islam’s “bad parts” will fail to explain the existance of Muslim countries where extremism is almost non-exsistant. But the fact that there are no major outstanding political problems there does explain it. Your site focuses too much on Islam – you might want to add a section on the history of the region – maybe even an “anger” section, where you could summarise why most Arabs are politically angry.
Hope that helps.
-Ibn
Ibn, good suggestion about adding a section about Middle Eastern anger, but on that topic I need a lot of help. I don’t even know where to start, so guys, please help. Are you willing to help?
I watch FOX news, and my take is different than yours. You are probably more sensitised to pick up on this than I by virtue of your background. Anyway, I do find Americans more friendly toward Muslims, despite the fact that one will see all sorts among 300 million people.
My original motivation about the Web site two years ago was our total lack of understanding of Islam. I heard and read comments, and decided to do some research. Many negative comments were incorrect, especially those quoting the Koran. The Web site used to be totally Islam focused. Then I saw wonderful things in Bahrain and Dubai in March this year in addition to some old friends. It was a great eye opener for me. So the bahraindubai.info Web site became more “tourism focused” and I saw what you are saying, “the existance of Muslim countries where extremism is almost non-exsistant”. I see a parallel between economic prosperity (that pretty much reflects good local management assets pretty much on all levels, as a result of education levels, and no local armed conflicts and hate at high levels) and such countries. The Web site got a good number of Americans to go as tourists so far to Bahrain and Dubai and they wrote very positive things about the experience to me.
But I need help with conclusions and explanations therefor about the politics and anger topics. Especially in those places where we see more demonstrations against the West. I wonder if Jasra Jedi could also post about this to me. Like your posts also. And of course Mahmoud. Look at a page called “Conflict” on my Web site first. Here we are not aware of such things so many readers appreciated the simple explanation.
James, you write well also and say quite a few things that make sense. When you try to solve problems between groups, it is a good thing to understand where each of you are coming from on the issues and why. If you manage people on the job, doesn’t matter how many, this is quite important. You need not become a Muslim or Christian or part of any religion to understand enough about Muslims or Christians. In my experience, this can be best accomplished by going there, getting to know some people and just listen to their answers. A trip like I made to Bahrain and Dubai in March was so fantastic for me and my wife, that I cannot imagine that you would not enjoy it. And don’t be shy about debating some points politely, as you do in your comments.
So I need some help from you guys to make bahraindubai.info a better tool for us to understand each other’s issues better. The truth.
Best regards,
Vic