Sunday, September 16, 2012

Expectations Beyond Reason

"We've seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men.  We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.
"It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless and it is totally acceptable.
"The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob.
"Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts."  
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Appealing to the civility and conscience of those in the Arab/Muslim world incensed beyond the confines of mere annoyance at the provocation laid at their doorstep through the medium of mocking and denigrating Islam and the divine Prophet?  One appeals to reason when and where reason prevails.  The passions unleashed by the mobs in Muslim countries who don't really need much in the way of motivation and incentive to demonstrate their devotion to Islam and rancour against those who mock it, are not that readily defused.

There is so much tension in the Middle East within the Arab street against everything, including their autocratic rulers, their dissatisfaction with their lives that seem so different than those they see portrayed in the West with its freedoms and its depraved customs that enrage the pious believing themselves to be disadvantaged though they are worthy of the advantages that seem to be bestowed upon non-Muslims, that any pretext at rampaging violently to release that tension will do.

The 15-minute video that disparages Islam and the Prophet Mohammed merely takes its inspirational vantage from much that is known about the religion and its prophet.  The different perspective of the same picture is that one is faithfully accepting of whatever was and the other is morally critical.  Islam is accepting of the enslavement of women and multiple wives, and child-brides are part of the accepted heritage since Mohammed did all of that.

Its traditions revolving around the virtues of violent conversions, of constantly-enacted leadership disagreements and subsequent assassinations, the ongoing military campaigns for religious and political hegemony and the strains of varying sectarian interpretations reach back from the 7th Century to the present.  Much of it appears, to the outsider looking in, even through examining texts and histories, reflective of barbarism harking back to a nomadic, fragile, tribal-warfare existence.

People are dying in the chaos of accusations, inspiration to violence, and looting, burning, violence.  "We were attacked by Obama and his government and the Coptic Christians living abroad!"  All these backward people living exploited lives by their dictators in societies with mass unemployment, social and religious repression, occasionally go on a berserk celebration of their misery and resentment at their lives.  The words 'freedom' and 'democracy' are banded about as useful band-aids.

For their oppressing rulers it is always safer that the pressure-cooker of anger be released toward an outside source, leaving them perceived to be in agreement with a people whom they lead to vent their frustration at others, for their governments cannot be held accountable.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is surely facetious when she speaks of "reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries", but she well knows she speaks nonsense.

One might even venture to enquire how it is that Washington has established an embassy in Khartoum to begin with?  Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has an international warrant out for his arrest for genocide and crimes against humanity; the deaths and rapes and homelessness of countless thousands Darfurians among others, hangs over his head.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 16, 2012

Follow @rheytah Tweet