"War on Terrorism" - is it hopeless ?

[El Presidente]

There is a lot of resentment towards America, part of which is justified and part of which is not.

America claims to be a democracy, yet the current president was elected by the supreme court and voting in the key state of Florida was overseen by his brother.

America is the Manchester United of countries, hads many good points, but is very rich, very arrogant and very unpopular

 

[Yorkie]

America is the Manchester United of countries, hads many good points, but is very rich, very arrogant and very unpopular

Good analogy El Pres. So would you support them in Europe?


Apology for the quip in a serious thread.

 

[bhaexpress]

Hmm, that about sums it up El Pres, yet another inciteful post. My take on the US is this: It's a great country if you have health and wealth but if you lack one or the other, and so often the two situations are linked, then it's a third world country.

Mind you slamming the US for it's imperialistic ways is very convenient for the PC brigade who clearly aren't prepared to look too closely at history or the various aspects and attitude of the 'opressed' nations.

Funny how Christians are persecuted in a lot of these countries isn't it ?

 

[Beach Hut]

There is a huge anti - American view at present.

Hardly surprising given recent events and all the deceitfulness over the Iraq War. It is difficult to know what is now being achieved in Iraq - it could potentially end up being a similar situation to Vietnam.

 

[Sorrel]

A couple of replies...

Kalimantan Gull:

I agree that all those things you list are great. But why can't we apply them to the developing world? working conditions are good here, in other places it means sweat shops owned by western companies

I agree with you about much of this, but I'm not sure how "we" can apply things to other countries without running them first. I was against the invasion of Iraq, but I can see that some of what we are now trying to do there could be good for the country - i.e. the British rule in southern Iraq. I bet the British ARE trying to improve things in Basra, and to me this is the sort of intervention that the "we" demands in your sentence above. I know military invasion is pushing it a bit, but how exactly can we apply things in other countries and both leave them alone at the same time?

Kalimantan Gull again:

A constitution should put itself above religion? Religion, in its purest forms, teaches tolerance, love, peace, justice. It is corrupt scholars of that religion, be they mullahs, priests or rabbis, who twist the words, incite the fundamentalists, for their own ends. Anyway, all our government institutions cite the word God in their covenances. The US government is trying to outlaw gay marriage as part of their constitution

I don't you can get away with both praising "pure" religion and then attacking the USA government because it puts religious ideas into practise. "Pure" religion is the basic religious texts themselves - a fundamentalist reading of the Bible or Koran. I don't understand where any other "pure" religion comes from. If you really believe in the religion you can't just pick and chose aspects of it you prefer.

London Irish

The only truly moral policy is to call for elections in EVERY SINGLE Arab despotic country, not just in the ones like Iraq who refuse to follow US orders.

And I agree with this too. The problem is in places in Algeria, where the elections returned a party who were committed to creating a religious state, and outlawing further elections. What should happen in this case? Should we just say that Arabs prefer to live in a theocracy, because that's their culture? I'd say that our values are better than that, and we should actively encourage a culture of democracy. But in this case we have to make a choice between the cultures, and prefer one over the other. And I'd go for a western style democracy - even with all the faults they have.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

A couple of replies...

I agree with you about much of this, but I'm not sure how "we" can apply things to other countries without running them first. I was against the invasion of Iraq, but I can see that some of what we are now trying to do there could be good for the country - i.e. the British rule in southern Iraq. I bet the British ARE trying to improve things in Basra, and to me this is the sort of intervention that the "we" demands in your sentence above. I know military invasion is pushing it a bit, but how exactly can we apply things in other countries and both leave them alone at the same time?

Well its simple really. As far as working conditions in sweat shops go, companies such as Gap own the factories, own the compounds the workers live in. They state in their literature that their workers there will have comparable conditions to their workers in the west, but this is plainly and blatently ignored. On a wider scale, conditions are given on loans. Now I don't approve of these loans, but take say, trade agreements, nothing wrong in principle. At the moment these loans are generally based on giving access to natural resources to western companies, privatising state-owned companies, dropping subsidies on subsistence agriculture and dropping import tarifs on the same. All of these things merely increase the human rights deficit. Anyway, this is getting a bit far from the initial 'causes of terrorism' debate, and theres plenty of other answers to this point in my existing posts, along the lines that all our intervetions are to promote regimes that help the west and don't care about the human rights situation in their own country. If we do it the right way in Iraq it'll be a first - but don't hold your breath, they've put more effort into trying to get the oil pipelines working than fixing the countries infrastructure.

Kalimantan Gull again:

I don't you can get away with both praising "pure" religion and then attacking the USA government because it puts religious ideas into practise. "Pure" religion is the basic religious texts themselves - a fundamentalist reading of the Bible or Koran. I don't understand where any other "pure" religion comes from. If you really believe in the religion you can't just pick and chose aspects of it you prefer.

Taken a bit out of context Duncan. Your point was that Islam was the basis of many countries legal systems, but not ours in the west, which is a ridiculous suggestion. I then went further by pointing out that even fundamentalist christianity was being put into the US constitution. I never denied that fundamentalist Islam was also being adopted by a few governments, but pointed out that this was a long way from blaming the religion itself, rather that some leaders of those religions twist it to suit their own, power-crazed, intentions. I'm not religious, and agree that it has developed to be the cause of many problems, in all the major religions (save Hinduism and Buddhism, to the best of my knowledge), but Jesus, Mohammed and the rest would be pretty horrified at the way their teachings have been used and twisted to justify killing, the polar opposite of those guys faiths.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

Funny how Christians are persecuted in a lot of these countries isn't it ?

Iraq is 35% christian with no problems, and before the second world war had one of the biggest Jewish communities in the world. Christians lived side-by-side with muslims in Indonesia no problems until army-sponsored terrorism in response to the armies humiliation in East Timor.

On the other side of the coin, would any of us have wanted to be a muslim in Britain following September 11th 2001?

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Democracy is a system of government that cannot be separated from the concept of the nation state. We talk about the benefits of free elections in Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the USA, etc, etc.

But many of these states are themselves artificial constructs, often created as a by-product of the abandonment by Britain (and other western European nation states) of their imperial role.

The idea that "the nation" can be the focus of a democratic system is a surprisingly shaky one over much of the islamic world. Do the Iraqi Kurds identify with a nation led from Baghdad? Or do they think they have more in common with Kurds in Turkey?

A European version of the same question is:- Do the Basque people think of themselves as Spanish (or French) first and Basque second?

One of the major consequences of Bush's "war on terrorism" is the weakening of allegiances to nations and the resurgence of pan-islamic solidarity. This hardly bodes well for democracy, particularly since the Koran emphasises the supremacy of dar ul Islam (the rule of Islam) over kilafah (the state with a just ruler).

 

[bhaexpress]

On the other side of the coin, would any of us have wanted to be a muslim in Britain following September 11th 2001?

Erm, and you know personally a moslem who had a problem ? I was working with more than a few moslems at the time of 9/11 but nobody gave them any hassle.

Conversely. a bunch of moslems who were celebrating 9/11 outside their mosque in North London got a somewhat hostile reaction when a load of Arsenal fans (on their way back from Highbury) walked by. A few heads got smacked.

Hard to have any sympathy. I personally found the TV pictures of moslems across the world cheering and dancing after 9/11 extreemly nauseating.

But, that's no better than the jingoism we see in the Western press.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

On the same theme as my earlier post this morning, here is an interesting extract from a website called Islam Online

The concepts may be unfamiliar, but they are not particularly difficult. I strongly believe that there is little hope for us in the west if we imagine that the issues that matter to Muslims are so inpenetrable as to make dialogue impossible.

Question and Answer Details

Name Iqbal - Mauritius
Topic Politics & Economics
Title Are we in dar ul-kufr?
Question Dear brothers and sisters, assalamulaikoum,

Two quick questions:

Are we living in a dar ul kufr (the rule of disbelief) right now and as such may die as kaffir(disbelievers)?

Do we have to have to have a kilafah (Islamic state for all Muslims with a single ruler) or will a just ruler suffice to bring us to dar ul Islam (the rule of Islam)?


May Allah reward you for your answer.

Date 2002/7/8

Name of Consultant Murad Hofmann

Content of Reply

Thank you for your questions.

I strongly advise against using the term dar-l-kufr , an un-Qur'anic concept which is as useless for seizing today's realities as the (equally un-Qur'anic) concept of daru-l-harb. A kafir is someone who refuses reality, literally by covering it, someone who, in Muhammad Asad's translation, is "bent on denying the truth and giving the lie to God's message". Yes, there are such kuffar or kafirun, respectively, everywhere. But there is no single country, region, or continent without people who do accept the truth and believe in God and His messengers.

Of course, one does not become a kafir for living among disbelievers - as Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and his companions did before their hijra (migration to Medina) . At any rate, let us not be grieved by kuffar (disbelievers) :

Let not those grieve thee who rush headlong into Unbelief: Not the least harm will they do to God: God's plan is that He will give them no portion in the Hereafter, but a severe punishment.

Surah 3 Verse 176

This is while remembering that it is Allah alone Who makes Muslims of people who, metaphorically, used to be deaf, dumb, and blind :

The parable of those who reject Faith is as if one were to shout Like a goat-herd, to things that listen to nothing but calls and cries: Deaf, dumb, and blind, they are void of wisdom.

Surah 2 Verse 171

After all, even our Prophet (pbuh) had no power to make people believe:

The same is it to them whether thou admonish them or thou do not admonish them: they will not believe.

Surah 36 Verse 10

So let us frequently recite Surat-al-Kafirun and let believe who wants to, and disbelieve who wants to:

Say, "The truth is from your Lord": Let him who will believe, and let him who will, reject (it): ...

Surah 18 Verse 29

As a minimum, Muslims should hesitate before applying the term kafir to any of the Ahl al-Kitab (people of the book – Jews, Christians, etc.,). True, some Qur'anic verses deal with Jews and Christians as those who disbelieve and disqualify them as a Muslim's friends:

O ye who believe! Take not for friends unbelievers rather than believers: Do ye wish to offer God an open proof against yourselves?

Surah 4 Verse 144

But, again, it would be wrong to pass judgment on an entire category of people, many of whom do believe in the One and Only God, the same one we call Allah.

The second question is not really relevant for what is essential; Whether we can be good Muslims while living in a non-Muslim country. The answer to this really crucial question is "yes". It is indeed immaterial for our individual chances of living the pious life whether there is a daru-l-lslam somewhere out there or not. (Indeed, that concept, too, is a non-Qur'anic misnomer because there simply is no single commonwealth around where Islam is fully practiced).

Against this background, it becomes fully academic to ask whether a daru-l-Islam requires a khalifah or may do with a just ruler. The Muslim world, most of the time had to manage without either, and did so. As Ibn Taymiyyah was aware, the preservation of the shari'ah (Islamic law) is more important than the preservation of the khilafah institution.

 

[Yorkie]

On the other side of the coin, would any of us have wanted to be a muslim in Britain following September 11th 2001?

I was working in Bradford at the time and my neighbours are predominantly Asian/Muslim.

There was no anti Muslim feeling either here or in Bradford.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

But that was two and a half years ago. Since then, we've had Bush and Blair whipping up hysteria about "security" and the shadowy methods employed by terrorists.

 

[El Presidente]

You can't kill a creature that has no head, so it's pointless even trying to destroy Al-Quieda

 

[bhaexpress]

Eh ? Who's this bloke that keeps making videos then ? Osauna Bin Carrier or something.

 

[Yorkie]

But that was two and a half years ago. Since then, we've had Bush and Blair whipping up hysteria about "security" and the shadowy methods employed by terrorists.

I'm no longer working in Bradford but the neighbourhood is still the same.

There is no antipathy against Muslims here. I think partly because everyone was shocked by the killing of 8 members of one family less than a mile away.
If anything, people are very tolerant here.

I am surprised by the 'pikey' stuff on this board because there is nothing like it at all up north.

 

[Row Z Creased Shirt]

All this crap about "terrorism" is a side issue puffed up by the Western elites and media to stop you looking at the real answer - Arab democracy and self-determination.

Al Quada is a tiny, nutty, fringe organisation that is given vast publicity by the West when in reality it is only a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself.

Sort out the real problem of poverty, injustice, lack of democracy and western economic dominance in the Middle East, and the support networks that sustain, nuture and reproduce Al Quada members will dry up. If your only policy is the Bush-Blair one of trying to kill a lot of Arabs while nicking all their oil, don't be suprised if a few of them come looking to kill us too.

Spot on LI. These are my thoughts exactly.

At the risk of sounding callous, I would suggest that terrorism is not greatest threat to the stability of the world at this moment. And by ignoring the big causes of mass suffering on this planet which are poverty, hunger, injustice and environmental degradation, we will do nothing to prevent the next generation of 'terrorists' finding a new cause to rally behind.

I know that to some it just sounds like the usual pinko anti us kneejerk leftyism, but it is not. It is trying to really assess the prioities for how we can all get along on this rather small planet of ours. A hell of a lot more sensible than dividing the world into goodies and baddies, and then bombing the crap out of a scapegoat to make us feel good about ourselves. The world just isn't that simple, and quite frankly our 'leaders' should bloody well know that.

As the atrocities continue to mount up you may notice that there is a common thread in the make-up of the death toll. All the victims will be innocent ordinary people, paying the price for someone elses action, be it a president, prime minister, general, mullah, rabbi, chairman of the board, priest etc etc.

The people who have the greatest responsibility in the world rarely suffer the consequences of their actions, they leave that up to us.

 

[Sorrel]

Kalimantan Gull:

At the moment these loans are generally based on giving access to natural resources to western companies, privatising state-owned companies, dropping subsidies on subsistence agriculture and dropping import tarifs on the same. All of these things merely increase the human rights

I agree with your end result (more or less), but I just have a different approach of how to achieve it. I think, to coin a cliche, that we need to be "on side" with the USA to improve things, rather than be what could be seen as against it. I don't believe in violent revolution, and without that change has to come from from inside the system.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I am surprised by the 'pikey' stuff on this board because there is nothing like it at all up north.

Indeed. And be thankful for that.

One of the least pleasant experiences I have on a regular basis is standing in the middle of an Albion crowd singing nonsense about northern slums or does the social know you're here?

This version (from Manchester United) is wonderful, though:-

In your Monaco slums,
You look in the dustbin for something to eat,
You find a baguette and you think it's a treat,
In your Monaco slums.

In your Monaco slums,
Your mum's on the tables, your dad's in the bank,
You sit in your mansion whilst having a wank,
In your Monaco slums.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

Well, some muslims were targeted. The point really is that bigots and racists exist on both sides of the 'divide', but you don't need me to tell you that.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

I think, to coin a cliche, that we need to be "on side" with the USA to improve things, rather than be what could be seen as against it. I don't believe in violent revolution, and without that change has to come from from inside the system.

Agree completely with the second sentence. Its what I've been arguing around all along. The sadness is that violent revolution in second- and third- world countries has been promoted for years by the US (and us, and others - see my first post on this thread) and is continuing today, to increase their hold on the world's economy, and by extension, imaintain and improve our (western) way of life. Its not even a matter of whether we are onside with the US or not, our government is just as guilty.