Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Muslims Don't Hate Freedom; They Hate Oppression
By Khalid Amayreh
12 August, 2006
See also Khalid Amayreh's excellent "War Shows There Will Be No Stability Without Resolving the Palestinian Issue."
George W. Bush, undoubtedly the most ignorant and mendacious President in American history, claimed this week that Americans were in a confrontation with “Islamic fascists” who he said hated American freedom. This is basically the same nonsense he uttered following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, ignoring decades of US involvement in promoting, effecting and sustaining oppression of Muslims in the Middle East and enabling and maintaining tyrannical regimes that oppress and humiliate Arab masses from Casablanca to Bahrain.
It is always very hard, of course, to reason with an ignoramus, especially if he is mendacious and fanatic, let alone if he happens to be the President of the United States.
Nonetheless, the truth must be proclaimed aloud, not so much in order to change the mindset of the sadistic fuehrer at the White House who apparently is unreceptive to common sense and prefers to parrot crass lies about just everything from the Ozone layer depletion to the latest Israeli aggression against Lebanon.
“Islamic fascism”
Bush’s use of the term “Islamic fascists” is a very serious calumny that can be compared to Adolph Hitler’s deliberate vilification of Jews prior to WWII. It is designed to make people hate and murder Muslims. And as everyone knows, collective hatred toward a specific ethnic or religious community is only the penultimate step toward the systematic persecution and possible extermination of that community.
Yes, there are Muslim extremists and terrorists who ought to be condemned in the strongest terms. There are also Christian, Jewish and other terrorists who commit far worse acts of terror and criminality. Terrorists are terrorists because terror has no religion or particular ethnic or cultural identity. George Bush himself, if truth is be told, is probably the greatest terrorist of our time.
However, to ascribe terror to a particular religion and to call Muslims terrorists and fascists is a grave and malicious misrepresentation of reality.
Nothing can be farther from truth. Ask any respectable academic, and he or she will tell you that “Islamic fascism” is any oxymoron because Islam and fascism are contradictory terms.
Fascism is characterized by its emphasis on racism, idolatry of the principle of leadership, its intolerance and one-mindedness as well as violence and despotism, whereas Islam is a religion whose very name is derived from peace and whose ideals are overwhelmingly similar to those of true Christianity and true Judaism.
In Islam, the ultimate criterion for salvation and success in this world and the hereafter is righteousness, not race or anything of this sort.
God declares in the Quran that “Oh Mankind, We created you from a single pair of male and female and made you into nations and tribes so that you may get acquainted with each other, the best of you in the sight of God, is the most pious. Verily God is well-aware of all that you do.”
In Surat al Asr (Time), the Quran further states that “by the passage of time, man is indeed in a state of loss, except those who have faith, do good deeds, and counsel each other to truth and counsel each other to patience.”
Does that sound fascistic, Mr. Bush?
I am not a theologian, but as an ordinary Muslim, I can testify that my parents taught me (which I later learned in school) that “there is no superiority of an Arab above a non-Arab save by piousness, good will and good deeds.”
We were taught to respect and venerate all the prophets of God, including Adam, Noah, Idris, Lut, Abraham, Issac, Ishamel, Joacob, Moses, Jesus and Muhammed and others and not to make any preference of one over another.
Yes, we are commanded to resist oppression, but we are exhorted to do so in proportion.
“And if you punish the aggressors, do it in proportion to the original aggression, but if you forgive, it will be better for the forgivers.”
Yes, I realize too well that there are many Muslims who do things that are starkly incompatible with the sublime teachings of their religion. I condemn them unhesitatingly. But the same can be said about adherents of other religions as well, who too ought to be equally condemned.
The early American settlers exterminated millions in the name of “manifest destiny.” In the past century alone, as many as a hundred million people were killed in wars waged and sustained by “Christians.” And, today, in the name of fulfilling Jewish nationalism, Israel, thanks to active American backing and support, is committing a slow-motion genocide against the Palestinian people on no other ground than the victims not being members of the “Chosen people.”
Indeed, the so-called Christian west prevailed, not because of the excellence of its ideas, ideals and even religions, but rather because it excelled in applying organized violence against militarily weak and undeveloped nations.
We the peoples of the Third World don’t forget this fact and will never allow ourselves to be duped and deceived by the western lie about democracy.
The rejection of Hamas’s election victory by the West has been a clarion testimony to western mendacity and hypocrisy about democracy.
The West, especially the US and UK, uses the issue of democracy and human rights as a ready-made tool in the service of its knaved strategic goals.
However, when democracy and human rights don’t concord with these goals, the west encourages and supports despotism and tyranny and police-state repression. Just look how the West is so comfortable with the police state regimes in the Middle East.
Why we hate America
In an article titled “Why I hate America” which I wrote a few weeks after 9/11, I pointed out that there were three main reasons for Muslim hatred of the US government.
These included America’s embrace of Zio-Nazism (Israel is a Nazis state because when Jews behave like Nazis, they become Nazis), America’s embrace and support of Arab and Muslim tyrannies from Morocco to Pakistan, and this evangelical Nazi-like hostility to Islam and its estimated 1.5 billion adherents which has assumed cynical proportions such as claiming that Muslims don’t worship the true creator.
As a Palestinian, who by the way received his college education in the United States (I received my BA in journalism from the University of Oklahoma and MA in the same field from the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale), I can’t possibly like a government that slaughtered a million Iraqi children in order to punish one man, Saddam Hussein. Nor can I view with indifference America’s Gestapo-like policies and practices toward my people.
People don’t like their tormentors, and American is par excellence the tormentor of the Palestinian people. America is the author of 39 years of death, bereavement, savagery, home demolition, roadblocks , persecution and repression of my people. America is to us what the Third Reich was to the Jews. America and Israel are the Nazis of our time.
During the so-called Oslo years, America gave us a police state without a state, and when elections were finally held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in January 2006 and Hamas won the elections, America suddenly turned its back on us, conniving with Israeli war criminals to impose a hermetic siege on three and a half million people.
Today, Israel, with enthusiastic American support, is denying 3.7 million Palestinians access to food, water and work. Moreover, the Israeli wehrmacht has destroyed, nearly completely, the infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon, including bridges, schools, colleges, power stations, streets and apartment buildings, all in the name of Jewish nationalism. If this is not Nazism, then what is Nazism?
America, where children are taught to “give me freedom or give me death,” consistently prevented justice from my people for nearly sixty years and actively supported policies and practices that go against the most elementary American ideals of freedom and liberty and fair play.
America supported and continues to support ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and the crudest violations of our human rights on the ground that the victims are children of a lesser God and the oppressors are “the ethnic people of God who can do no wrong.”
George Bush and cohorts may claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. However, a quick glance at the man, his mindset and behaviors reveals that he is many light years away from the sublime teachings of Jesus, may peace be on him.
Indeed, a true follower of Jesus wouldn’t adopt this criminal and murderous discourse toward the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon and other Muslims.
I am sure that on the Day of Judgment, Jesus will turn his face away from murderers, hypocrites and liars like Bush who in the name of Jesus commit every conceivable crime and abomination.
12 August, 2006
See also Khalid Amayreh's excellent "War Shows There Will Be No Stability Without Resolving the Palestinian Issue."
George W. Bush, undoubtedly the most ignorant and mendacious President in American history, claimed this week that Americans were in a confrontation with “Islamic fascists” who he said hated American freedom. This is basically the same nonsense he uttered following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, ignoring decades of US involvement in promoting, effecting and sustaining oppression of Muslims in the Middle East and enabling and maintaining tyrannical regimes that oppress and humiliate Arab masses from Casablanca to Bahrain.
It is always very hard, of course, to reason with an ignoramus, especially if he is mendacious and fanatic, let alone if he happens to be the President of the United States.
Nonetheless, the truth must be proclaimed aloud, not so much in order to change the mindset of the sadistic fuehrer at the White House who apparently is unreceptive to common sense and prefers to parrot crass lies about just everything from the Ozone layer depletion to the latest Israeli aggression against Lebanon.
“Islamic fascism”
Bush’s use of the term “Islamic fascists” is a very serious calumny that can be compared to Adolph Hitler’s deliberate vilification of Jews prior to WWII. It is designed to make people hate and murder Muslims. And as everyone knows, collective hatred toward a specific ethnic or religious community is only the penultimate step toward the systematic persecution and possible extermination of that community.
Yes, there are Muslim extremists and terrorists who ought to be condemned in the strongest terms. There are also Christian, Jewish and other terrorists who commit far worse acts of terror and criminality. Terrorists are terrorists because terror has no religion or particular ethnic or cultural identity. George Bush himself, if truth is be told, is probably the greatest terrorist of our time.
However, to ascribe terror to a particular religion and to call Muslims terrorists and fascists is a grave and malicious misrepresentation of reality.
Nothing can be farther from truth. Ask any respectable academic, and he or she will tell you that “Islamic fascism” is any oxymoron because Islam and fascism are contradictory terms.
Fascism is characterized by its emphasis on racism, idolatry of the principle of leadership, its intolerance and one-mindedness as well as violence and despotism, whereas Islam is a religion whose very name is derived from peace and whose ideals are overwhelmingly similar to those of true Christianity and true Judaism.
In Islam, the ultimate criterion for salvation and success in this world and the hereafter is righteousness, not race or anything of this sort.
God declares in the Quran that “Oh Mankind, We created you from a single pair of male and female and made you into nations and tribes so that you may get acquainted with each other, the best of you in the sight of God, is the most pious. Verily God is well-aware of all that you do.”
In Surat al Asr (Time), the Quran further states that “by the passage of time, man is indeed in a state of loss, except those who have faith, do good deeds, and counsel each other to truth and counsel each other to patience.”
Does that sound fascistic, Mr. Bush?
I am not a theologian, but as an ordinary Muslim, I can testify that my parents taught me (which I later learned in school) that “there is no superiority of an Arab above a non-Arab save by piousness, good will and good deeds.”
We were taught to respect and venerate all the prophets of God, including Adam, Noah, Idris, Lut, Abraham, Issac, Ishamel, Joacob, Moses, Jesus and Muhammed and others and not to make any preference of one over another.
Yes, we are commanded to resist oppression, but we are exhorted to do so in proportion.
“And if you punish the aggressors, do it in proportion to the original aggression, but if you forgive, it will be better for the forgivers.”
Yes, I realize too well that there are many Muslims who do things that are starkly incompatible with the sublime teachings of their religion. I condemn them unhesitatingly. But the same can be said about adherents of other religions as well, who too ought to be equally condemned.
The early American settlers exterminated millions in the name of “manifest destiny.” In the past century alone, as many as a hundred million people were killed in wars waged and sustained by “Christians.” And, today, in the name of fulfilling Jewish nationalism, Israel, thanks to active American backing and support, is committing a slow-motion genocide against the Palestinian people on no other ground than the victims not being members of the “Chosen people.”
Indeed, the so-called Christian west prevailed, not because of the excellence of its ideas, ideals and even religions, but rather because it excelled in applying organized violence against militarily weak and undeveloped nations.
We the peoples of the Third World don’t forget this fact and will never allow ourselves to be duped and deceived by the western lie about democracy.
The rejection of Hamas’s election victory by the West has been a clarion testimony to western mendacity and hypocrisy about democracy.
The West, especially the US and UK, uses the issue of democracy and human rights as a ready-made tool in the service of its knaved strategic goals.
However, when democracy and human rights don’t concord with these goals, the west encourages and supports despotism and tyranny and police-state repression. Just look how the West is so comfortable with the police state regimes in the Middle East.
Why we hate America
In an article titled “Why I hate America” which I wrote a few weeks after 9/11, I pointed out that there were three main reasons for Muslim hatred of the US government.
These included America’s embrace of Zio-Nazism (Israel is a Nazis state because when Jews behave like Nazis, they become Nazis), America’s embrace and support of Arab and Muslim tyrannies from Morocco to Pakistan, and this evangelical Nazi-like hostility to Islam and its estimated 1.5 billion adherents which has assumed cynical proportions such as claiming that Muslims don’t worship the true creator.
As a Palestinian, who by the way received his college education in the United States (I received my BA in journalism from the University of Oklahoma and MA in the same field from the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale), I can’t possibly like a government that slaughtered a million Iraqi children in order to punish one man, Saddam Hussein. Nor can I view with indifference America’s Gestapo-like policies and practices toward my people.
People don’t like their tormentors, and American is par excellence the tormentor of the Palestinian people. America is the author of 39 years of death, bereavement, savagery, home demolition, roadblocks , persecution and repression of my people. America is to us what the Third Reich was to the Jews. America and Israel are the Nazis of our time.
During the so-called Oslo years, America gave us a police state without a state, and when elections were finally held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in January 2006 and Hamas won the elections, America suddenly turned its back on us, conniving with Israeli war criminals to impose a hermetic siege on three and a half million people.
Today, Israel, with enthusiastic American support, is denying 3.7 million Palestinians access to food, water and work. Moreover, the Israeli wehrmacht has destroyed, nearly completely, the infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon, including bridges, schools, colleges, power stations, streets and apartment buildings, all in the name of Jewish nationalism. If this is not Nazism, then what is Nazism?
America, where children are taught to “give me freedom or give me death,” consistently prevented justice from my people for nearly sixty years and actively supported policies and practices that go against the most elementary American ideals of freedom and liberty and fair play.
America supported and continues to support ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and the crudest violations of our human rights on the ground that the victims are children of a lesser God and the oppressors are “the ethnic people of God who can do no wrong.”
George Bush and cohorts may claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. However, a quick glance at the man, his mindset and behaviors reveals that he is many light years away from the sublime teachings of Jesus, may peace be on him.
Indeed, a true follower of Jesus wouldn’t adopt this criminal and murderous discourse toward the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon and other Muslims.
I am sure that on the Day of Judgment, Jesus will turn his face away from murderers, hypocrites and liars like Bush who in the name of Jesus commit every conceivable crime and abomination.
