generalspeaking

How To Square Peace With Tradition?

When there exists an ancient written text purporting to be the word of God set down by his divine messenger to inform and instruct the faithful unto Eternity, what possible opportunity can there be for peace between historically adversarial people of today's world when that instruction leads to ongoing enmity?

One might feel that ancient enmities could be finally put to rest, that the world's people have finally matured in their emotions, their social interactions, to enable them to embrace the concept of a world communion, but time has done nothing to mollify humankind's primitive emotions of distrust, blame, hatred of the other.

That remains evident throughout the world, from Africa and Asia and the Middle East. The enmities that exist in Europe have also strained credulity, that ostensibly civilized and modern eastern Europeans could be capable of putting their humanity on hold for the greater function of waging war on their neighbours.

Yet other parts of Europe have ably demonstrated that a war-weary public and their political overseers can be capable of forging unity of purpose, eschewing future wars, working toward a common interest. Through a common union, geographic, political, social.

We've yet to see anything remotely similar occurring throughout Africa, aptly named the "Dark Continent". A huge land mass of plentiful natural resources, an immensely beautiful geography with breathless landscapes, and a wide array of creatures large and small sharing place with its diverse tribal populations.

Every tribe seeming to nurture and value aeons-old grudges against one another, simmering at some points, brought to the boil of bloodily violent eruption at others.
It's become simple to foment a tidal wave of hatred, one against the other.

Made vastly simpler through the use of modern technology, enabling those elites who harbour their self-availing agendas to stir the public, normally apathetic as a result of those same elites' misrule, to rise as one in a public outrage of blame against others for the parlous state of their poverty and disease-stricken reality.

And then there's the Middle East, with its festering collective pathology of suspicion, blame and hatred focused on the presence of a country that does not share the general politics, social culture and religion, although there is an echo of shared geographical and evolutionary tradition.

The countries of the Middle East, always in disagreement with one another, cradling their scorn for one another, meet in agreement over their displeasure at the unwanted presence of the State of Israel in their geographical midst.

While there has been a notable deviation from the general condemnation of Israel as a veritable encrustation of corruption on the geography of the Middle East on the part of a few of its neighbours, the remainder view its presence as an intolerable insult to Islam.

Israel's historical inability to come to a mutually agreeable settlement with the Palestinians over territory both claim as theirs, allows its neighbours to lay claim that the foreign element in their midst is the single sole disruptor of harmony in the region.

The truth is that both solitudes must agree to agree, both to make unwelcome sacrifices for the greater good of establishing peace. Yet from the Palestinian camp erupts continual violent attacks against the Jews who inhabit their midst.

And how can it be seen as helpful that both sides remain incalcitrant to meaningful and useful dialogue leading to reasonable and possible initiatives geared to settling issues that present as goads to ongoing misery for each?

Still, there remain issues that remain on the bargaining block that, if accepted, would benefit one side by vastly diminishing the other. Equally reasonably, it seems as though the intent is to evade decision-making in the hopes that matters will be resolved in other ways.

Against this backdrop there are Palestinian clerics who do their utmost to interpret instructions from the Koran as relevant to today's realities. Bringing wholesale into the modern era, the brutish tribal hatreds of historical antecedents as a template to be respected in the present day.

Whose revelation does nothing to bridge the gap of hatred, and everything to encourage and validate violent, deadly jihad.

A recent interview aired on Al-Aqsa Television with the Palestinian cleric Muhsen Abu 'Ita is revelatory. This man refers to chapters in the Koran which were given to Muhammad in Mecca, referring directly to Jews, who "incur Allah's wrath", appearing in the Al-Fatiha chapter.

Not Jews singly, but Jews in their collective, the entire presence, their very being and presence that present as an insult to Islam, incurring the wrath of Allah.

In this man of God's opinion, and flawless interpretation of times past, the Jewish presence must be obliterated. It will be only then that Palestinians - who were not even in existence as a singular group at that time - while there was an historical Jewish presence - find the solution to the land-dilemma facing them.

A dilemma that modernity foisted upon them; never were they seen by surrounding Arab countries as 'owners' of the land of Palestine. Each of the surrounding countries had their own plans to capture the territories and make them part of theirs. Egypt administering the West Bank, Jordan the Gaza Strip.

But now, we hear from this Palestinian cleric that "It talks about the Jews of our times, of this century, using the language of annihilation, the language of grave digging. Note that in this chapter, the Jews were sentenced to annihilation, before even a single Jew existed on the face of the earth. This Koranic chapter talked about the collapse of the so-called state of Israel, before this state was even established. From here stems the importance and oddity of this chapter."

It's incredible that such a representative of tribal hatred, a religious bigot, an historical ignoramus can be invested with the pretense of knowledge, conveying it to credulous listeners only too eager to accept his interpretation of scripture.

Jews inhabited the landscape alongside nomadic Arab tribes, faithful to their religion, thousands of years before the advent of the Prophet Mohammad and the introduction of Islam to the Arab world.

Of the three religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Islam is the afterthought, the last to be realized and constitutionally framed as a religious-social template particularly addressing a nomadic, tribal culture and tradition of the desert Bedouin.

Yet this cleric has the effrontery to express his interpretation of divine thought: "The blessing of Palestine is dependent upon the annihilation of the pit of global corruption in it. When the head of the serpent of corruption is cut off here in Palestine, and its octopus tentacles are severed throughout the world, the real blessing will come.

"The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God."

That this fatalistic fantasy is repeated time and again throughout the Muslim world by other clerics, and denounced by rational Muslims, yet clasped close to the heart of many others only too eager to obtain the blessing of Islam, by galloping into violent jihad remains the most pressing threat to world stability at this time.

Somehow, it has to penetrate the consciousness of the greater majority of Muslims that this celebration of Islam as the one, the only and true religion of the world garners them no credit.

That the constant belligerence emanating from fundamentalist Islamists, the threats of further mayhem and undiminished bloodshed of kuffirs is what is responsible for what the Muslim world decries as a growing phenomenon of "Islamophobia".

It's simply past time for that vast congregation of Muslims to rise up and decry the damage done to their religion and its peaceful, brotherly concepts in the warped minds of Islamist fanatics.

Labels: Realities, Religion, Traditions, Troublespots

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 28, 2008