generalspeaking

Friendly Relations

Radical Islam has presented as the 21st Century's single most dangerous and quite simply evil presence in a world already fraught with problems and dangers, threatening human existence. Radicalized Muslims, particularly young men, disaffected and restless, aggrieved and sociopathic in any society, have discovered the affective and effective pathology of violence born of hatred. This recognition of the power they hold over normal, regulated, free societies, let alone those of their opposite quality, has been found to be euphorically empowering.

Most particularly when they enthuse that their conniving and threatening deliberations result in achieving that which most claim God alone reserves for His own very special treatment. The power of life and death over human beings. Islamist jihadists celebrate their oneness with Allah; like Him they have the power of death-deliverance, an issue they take seriously indeed. It is their mission, a divinely-inspired one, for in delivering death they pay homage to Allah. In loving death, they represent themselves as authentic Muslims.

In the midst of these causal eruptions that surface from time to time in freedom-loving and -assuring societies, there is the additional issue of Muslim clerics, imams, ayatollahs, mullahs, declaring to the faithful that it is their duty to adapt themselves to the imperatives of Islamic traditions. Those traditions speak loudly of the pre-eminence of Islam, of the pitiable state and moral unworthiness of non-Muslims, and of the need to induct non-believers into the true Faith.

For those who prove resistant to the message of Islam, there is a solution. They may be sacrificed, for the greater good of Islam, to death. We speak of radical Islam, and then there is 'moderate' Islam. Moderate, for example, as in Saudi Arabia, which has, over the decades, funded and spread its fundamentalist Wahhabism world-wide. And, perforce, it is Wahhabi Islam that has bred such stalwarts of Islamic world deliverance as Osama bin Laden and his equally-dedicated cronies.

Moreover, Muslim countries of the world that have traditionally been mindful of their place among other countries, nations and religions of the world and which have acted accordingly, now find themselves slowly, inevitably turning toward political Islam. Confronting that state of nascent fanaticism is what brought NATO countries in a uniform declaration of intent into Afghanistan. Pakistan, once a socially-politically-balanced country, is now descending into chaos through the growth of Islamism.

Turkey, still attempting entry into the European Union, has devolved, under an Islamist government into something other than what Kamal Ataturk designated it should henceforth be in perpetuity. It too, is slowly, inevitably succumbing. Once a friend of the West, it now burnishes its fundamentalist Islamic credentials among other Islamic countries with sturdily offensive masses schooled to hate the West and, of course, Jews.

When 'moderate' Muslims realize that it is Muslims who are responsible for the slaughter around them, and the attacks throughout the world, they do not fully comprehend what their minds tell them, and they reject, outright, the possibility that Muslims would murder their own, let alone inflict mass murder on others. Instead, they react viscerally to the very hint of a Koran being desecrated by the West, or cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammad.

This kind of cognitive dissonance is reflected also in the Arab world's refusal to accept the verdict of the International Court indicting Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of genocide against the people of Darfur. Iran's stated intention on the world stage of destroying the State of Israel hardly raises an eyebrow in the international community. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has indulged in friendly overtures toward Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey's traditional good relations - rare for the Muslim world - with Israel, has been deliberately undermined by its new administration. Prime Minister Erdogan has denounced
claims against Sudan's Bashir, insisting that no genocide has taken place in the country. "A Muslim can never commit genocide", he explained. "It's not possible." He had himself visited Darfur and saw no evidence of such a crime. As for Israel, that country has committed genocide, he claims, against the Palestinians.

Which reflects the general consensus among the Arab countries in the Middle East, and among Muslim countries in general. Which accord of opinion rests squarely in the common religion and the texts in the Koran which have been deliberately manipulated to reflect a general condemnation of Israel, in the nazification of the area and the demonization of Jews in general. And where go the Jews, there will follow all other non-Muslims.

The reaction of the West, of democratic countries of Europe and North America, India and elsewhere in the East, has been lethargic. Surprisingly accommodating, in fact. Until they have themselves been threatened by very real and destructive events. And even so, it seems they cannot take the potential threat and its steady growth to reality seriously. Defensively alert to any whiff of a perceived racism or judgementalism in a general atmosphere of liberal-tolerance, they are sitting ducks.

The infiltration of societies who celebrate freedom and equality by agents of militant jihad is stealthy, steady and ongoing. Alert intelligence agencies are able to detect the presence of some groups, some individuals, to halt their exalted plans for martyrdom in the name of Islam, with the intention of taking as many infidels with them as possible. But violent jihad is a rising tide, and it will take a more fully alert and determined collection of countries determined to confront and neutralize it by whatever means possible, than what presents at the moment.

Labels: Human Relations, Middle East, Political Realities, Traditions

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, November 10, 2009