generalspeaking

Commit To Syria?

As in Iraq, so it is in Syria. Sectarian hatreds, tribal affects of distrust and paranoia. Cataclysmic descents into the maelstrom of brutal civil war, whee slaughter is the symbol of righteousness, each side convinced it will prevail because only it has the ear and the eye of god, and thus the right to pursue its sacred duty to expunge the other from the face of the Earth.

Suicide bombing, the syndrome of martyrdom at the ready,with the expectation that the name of the martyr will be forever enshrined in the annals of honour, courage, conviction and triumph of Islamist heroism, the impetus. Honour must be sustained. It will all come right in the end, Inshallah. The commentary is expressed as Allahu Akbar! Doing the will of God.

To demonstrate just how much determination can prevail, attacks are planned to take place just where the enemy feels it has devised protective devices to make security assured. And then, all is seen to be of little avail when inevitably, the successful infiltrator makes the end sacrifice to finalize his duty to the religion and the god whom all worship as the exemplar of peace.

In Islam, however, surrender to the word and the will of god brings peace only when the unbeliever is brought into the fold. An unceasing mission whose finality is never reached.

Any mode of persuasion in spreading the inevitability of the word of surrender will suffice; prosetylization by gentle words of promising trust, or the meting out of raging violence through bloody slaughter; each is capable of producing the goal, and each has its place in the armoury of effective conversion. Invitation or coercion.

Then there is the issue of the heretics among the faithful. For the Sunni, the Shia sect represents the unforgivable lapse from true Islamic belief. And for the Shia, the presence of the Sunni majority represents the utter failure of Muslims to divine the right path to Allah from the path leading to damnation.

Syrian rebels have demonstrated yet again how capable they -- or more to the point, the terror militias that have inveigled themselves among the secular types -- are of entering protected zones.

Another high-profile bomb, meant to strike a high-value target. As it happened, the high-value target that was meant to be delivered to the Angel of Death eluded his fate; instead others died. And Prime Minister Wael Halqi lives to see another day. The bomb that hit his convoy as it traveled within Damascus's neighbourhood of embassies, government officials and business elites, killed his guards and wounded eleven other people.

Even traitors like Sheik Mohammad Said Ramadan Buti, a Sunni cleric who supported Alawite President al Assad was sent to his untimely death when his mosque was targeted. Top Syrian officials, governmental ministry authorities, wealthy businessmen, they are all prospective fodder for the trademark Islamic radical attackers making their mark among the rebels, themselves ineffective, become reliant on the murderous trade of the jihadists.

So, does the West, say for example, NATO, the United States, really want to become involved yet again in a hateful maelstrom of Islamic incivility to each other? Based on the inevitable outcome of previous such engagements, the prospect does not appeal. Quite aside from the vast national treasuries sunk hopelessly into the bid to hasten the fall of one dictator after another only to see the sects fall ravenously on one another -- with another tyrant finally arising from the ashes of a devastated country -- the will is lacking, for the rewards are too meagre.

Humane societies look on in utter disbelief and despair at the wanton destruction of heritage sites, of national infrastructure, at the countless homeless refugees desperate to survive the reckless artillery fire, the inexorable bombing, wanting future for their children and mourning the loss of their country. As the numbers of dead civilians increase and nothing intervenes to halt the bloodshed, morale descends, guilt sets in.

To act, or not to react? To do either is to do nothing, for nothing detracts the viral hatred from spiralling and ascending and tearing itself inside out. This is the immense power of religious fanaticism and human stupidity.

Labels: Chaos, Conflict, Human Rights, Islamism, Revolution, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 30, 2013