generalspeaking

Barbarians

It is undeniably barbaric to consider other human beings antipathetic objects to be used and abused. It is barbaric when one ethnic or religious group targets another as inferior to their own tribe or clan, or religion. It is savage and uncivilized for one group to continually spread their pathology of hate and dehumanization against another group, slandering and attacking them.

Yet this is precisely what obtains in the larger Arab world, and the world of Islam.

Antipathy toward Jews, toward the State of Israel, toward the religion that preceded theirs, gave impetus to theirs, book-ending another toward which their hatred also extends, does not reflect a world vision, nor does it reflect the most basic concept of human beings living in harmony as most religions, including that of Islam, purports to instill in their faithful.

Islam and tribalism were historically inter-twined from the very inception of the faith.

And they have never strayed very far from one another. The civilizing precepts of accepting one's fellow man, and doing to them as we would wish done to us, does not appear to have made the impact on the sub-conscious of Muslims as one might hope it to have done. Defying that truth, there are millions of Muslims for whom concern for others not of their tribe obtains; human compassion and kindness remains their guiding light.

While no religion can claim to have a monopoly on goodness and justice, compelling its faithful through worship of a great unifying and caring Spirit that is omniscient and omnipresent, to aspire to emulate the angels and defy the devils residing in us all, Islam appears to have failed most spectacularly. Ignorance, disrespect and disregard for others - even among other Muslims - is rampant.

The vestiges of tribal cruelties of punishment and fanatic oppressions of the weak and the defenceless are seen in the scourge of continuing slavery, abductions of children, inducting them into terror and war, and the wholesale hatred and oppression of women, the deadly rejection of homosexuals, and of apostates. Death is the final and most absolute justice meted out for these social outcasts.

And it was a cruel and merciless death that was meted out to Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew, by The Barbarians. Abducted through the devices of a rude scheme to entice him by a young woman who was an accomplice of the gang of young Muslims, he was tortured relentlessly over a period of 24 days. His family was unable to raise the ransom demanded, despite the belief of the abductors of the wealth of Jews.

The gang calling themselves The Barbarians lived up to their name, and doubtless that was also indicative of their deranged pride. They sent video and audio messages to the family of Ilan Halimi, where his fearfully agonized pleas for mercy no doubt terrified his family, who were unable to raise the $720,000 demanded of them.

Mr. Halimi was finally released from his ordeal, left naked, handcuffed to a tree beside a railway track. En route to the hospital he died. His murderers are now on trial in Paris, the leader, Youssouf Fofana charged with murder, his 26 accomplices facing various other charges.

In Pakistan the Taliban behead their opponents, a common enough solution to a nuisance often faced by fanatical Islamists. Schools for children are burned down, their teachers slaughtered. Men are flogged for shaving, women for venturing into public inadequately covered by oppressive burqas.

As elsewhere in the barbaric world of fundamental Islam women are stoned, flogged, raped and murdered, due sentences, punishments duly delivered for infractions and infringements of Islamic sharia law. Honour killings are conducted by family members upon young women and girls who have brought disgrace to their families by their un-Islamic conduct.

And Israel's partner in the peace process, the Palestinian Authority, sentences a Palestinian man to death by hanging. Guilty of selling land in the occupied West Bank to Israeli Jews. Anwat Breghit has been found guilty of treason, of "selling Palestinian land to Israelis". The sentence cannot be appealed, but it could be repealed, should Mahmoud Abbas order it not be carried out.

Should Mr. Breghit be brought to 'justice' in this manner, he will represent only one of many. Many who have not been brought to trial, merely to justice, brutally killed, convicted in the opinion of Palestinian fanatics of having aided and assisted or being sympathetic to the Israeli oppressors.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Political Realities, Religion

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, April 30, 2009