The new approach to suppressing rights to free speech, and political expression is to call any speech or attitude that conveys disgust or moral outrage over the very obvious US and our ally’s violations of international law that have come to characterize the so called war on terrorism, radicalization.
If, when you hear that a drone has killed ten or twenty innocent people or more at a wedding or funeral in Pakistan in a military attempt to supposedly kill just one supposed terrorist, and you criticize that disproportionate and immoral use of force, you might be called radical, and extreme. It’s not because your gut instincts are naturally repulsed by what happened, that’s fine. You simply are not supposed to criticize or suggest that what happened was wrong, a violation of international law, or that it creates a desire and an excuse that justifies a similar use of violence by our supposed adversaries, in ways that might also be illegal and immoral.
If, when you hear that more than 1 million innocent people have been killed in a war where we were not fighting an army, or an enemy, but an insurgency that had a right to fight against a foreign invading and occupying military force, and that we not only killed those people, but also tortured them, raped them and destroyed their homes and then sent missionaries to provide them with Bibles in exchange for food and comfort. If you hear that, and you feel morally outraged that a certain faction in our country has used our troops and our money in this way, and you say or write anything critical about it, you might be considered by the powers that be, Democrats and Republicans and some so called independents, a person that has become radicalized.
Becoming radicalized can be compared to getting infected with rabies. If you hang out with, read, or agree with people who have already been infected with radicalism, and who write, speak, and do radical things like write letters critical of the war to newspaper editors, or submit op-eds to newspapers suggesting that the US is committing war crimes in these wars, etc., you can, and might also become radicalized. Like rabies, radicalization makes you appear angry. It can cause you to froth at the mouth as you debate simple concepts like human decency, law and justice and fair play with people who have been inoculated against radicalization. Such people are immune to radicalization due to injections of cash, jobs, appearances on cable TV, a mention in mainstream media as good people, and other perks, and pay offs.
The inoculated are absolutely incapable of understanding things like, you can’t lie your way into an illegal military invasion of a sovereign country, kill off its people, send in para-military groups to carry out slaughters, and then claim to be justified by the deaths of 3000 people, many of whom were foreign nationals and not even Americans, who were killed by other people, and not the people whose country you invaded and subsequently destroyed. Not only will the ambivalence and distorted sense of justice of the inoculated cause people who have been radicalized to froth at the mouth, it has been known to occasionally boil the blood to the point that a radicalized person will simply shut down, refuse to ever speak again and go into seclusion.
Radicalization, if it leads to frustration, can kill the spirit of even the strongest among us, when it reaches the point that logic shuts down, causing a person to believe the entire world has gone mad, and that it’s useless to say anything more, or to expect that anyone gives a damn, or that things will ever change. In such cases, the radicalized person might resort to bingo, and refuse to read newspapers or even to watch TV anymore.
Now, those who are involved in detecting radicalization and wiping it out or curing it, are not concerned that radicals might actually do anything violent, since it almost never happens. Yet, they must, and do suggest that radicalization leads to violence because it is the only way that they can get money to fight radicalization, or rather to fight free speech and expression and also the US Constitution that guarantees such rights as free speech and political expression. You see, no one can get government money to overtly undermine the US Constitution, or to violate our Constitutional rights. They can get millions, even billions to protect our country from the threat of terrorism.
This is why radicalization experts claim that the inevitable consequence of the dreaded disease, radicalization is politically motivated violence, or terrorism. Like rabies, it supposedly gives the appearance of mental illness, but can only be diagnosed as such if it is found in Zionists. Their violence and extremism is always the result of mental illnesses, or its self defense, while the common person’s moral outrage must be the result of radicalization. It is similar to a neurological disorder that prevents a person from being able to see evil as goodness, and goodness as weakness.
Radicakization is a type of moral dissonance that will not allow an infected person to believe that we are actually seeing our government and military act as an immoral and barbaric conquering force, completely ignoring the laws that we helped to impress upon the world as right and good and essential to peaceful co-existence. Laws like the Geneva Conventions. Yet, since moral dissonance has not been recognized by the AMA as a real mental illness, radicalization remains like rabies, a contagious neurological like disease that supposedly can only lead to violence, and so according to the experts, including the established religious experts who condone and support the war on radicalization, it must be eradicated.
Since aside from the Wall Street robber barons, our government is the only institution that can never run out of money, so long as it has a press that can print money, those who are part of the anti-terrorism industry must always have an angle whereby they can parlay their deep insights into the hearts and souls of the American sheeple, into cold hard government cash, formerly known as taxpayer money. Without much research or study, they know intuitively that enough outrageous behavior by our government and military will lead to the moral outrage of many American people. Eureka! What better way to make a buck than to bank on the fact that a free people will use their rights to free speech and political expression to criticize a government that claims to be representative, yet has clearly adopted a set of values and created for itself a law that is completely opposite of the values and laws of the people it claims to represent.
There is a cure for radicalization, but it doesn’t get much attention. You will almost never hear the word cure even mentioned by radicalization experts. Just like conspiracy theories surrounding cancer research and cures for other deadly diseases, the idea is that if radicalization is cured, the anti-radicalization industry will go out of business, and even worse, all of their lies will be exposed and they will lose credibility, maybe even be put in jail for lying to Congress and other crimes.
The obvious cure for radicalization is truth and accountability. To cure its radicalized citizenry, our government needs only reform, and to respond to the urgings of its people, and also the international community. End these wars; stop supporting dictators and violent despots who oppress their people in exchange for hand outs. Get rid of the double standards, the lying and the greed for power and replace it with common sense and a desire to co-exist peacefully in the world with others of varied cultures, skin colors, languages, religions, etc. Stop coveting the natural resources of others to the extent that rather than to depend upon free market economics, you will stoop to any level in smash and grab operations for oil and other resources that always fail miserably, leaving only hatred, death and destruction behind them.
Unfortunately, there is little hope that our government will opt for the cure anytime soon. So, we the people are left with two options. 1). Shut up and refuse to criticize the government, hide our moral outrage, and just go along hoping that the wars will eventually end and gas prices will one day be 1.50 a gallon or cheaper forever, or 2). Refuse to shut up, and demonstrate our moral outrage in every legal way possible, keeping in mind that the anti-radicalization forces in our Congress are at work trying to find ways to criminalize dissent, which is what radicalization was called previous to the wars. Since word dissent implies some type of patriotism and noble intent, it has been exchanged for the dreaded word, radicalization.
Keep in mind that if you adopt #2, that it is a war after all. If we adopt the mentality of our government and the insane faction of warmongers and imperialists now controlling our government, we will realize that there are no rules. They will either shut us all up, or we will shut their insane arses down. Power to the people.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Understanding and defeating the war against radicalization
The new approach to suppressing rights to free speech, and political expression is to call any speech or attitude that conveys disgust or moral outrage over the very obvious US and our ally’s violations of international law that have come to characterize the so called war on terrorism, radicalization.
If, when you hear that a drone has killed ten or twenty innocent people or more at a wedding or funeral in Pakistan in a military attempt to supposedly kill just one supposed terrorist, and you criticize that disproportionate and immoral use of force, you might be called radical, and extreme. It’s not because your gut instincts are naturally repulsed by what happened, that’s fine. You simply are not supposed to criticize or suggest that what happened was wrong, a violation of international law, or that it creates a desire and an excuse that justifies a similar use of violence by our supposed adversaries, in ways that might also be illegal and immoral.
If, when you hear that more than 1 million innocent people have been killed in a war where we were not fighting an army, or an enemy, but an insurgency that had a right to fight against a foreign invading and occupying military force, and that we not only killed those people, but also tortured them, raped them and destroyed their homes and then sent missionaries to provide them with Bibles in exchange for food and comfort. If you hear that, and you feel morally outraged that a certain faction in our country has used our troops and our money in this way, and you say or write anything critical about it, you might be considered by the powers that be, Democrats and Republicans and some so called independents, a person that has become radicalized.
Becoming radicalized can be compared to getting infected with rabies. If you hang out with, read, or agree with people who have already been infected with radicalism, and who write, speak, and do radical things like write letters critical of the war to newspaper editors, or submit op-eds to newspapers suggesting that the US is committing war crimes in these wars, etc., you can, and might also become radicalized. Like rabies, radicalization makes you appear angry. It can cause you to froth at the mouth as you debate simple concepts like human decency, law and justice and fair play with people who have been inoculated against radicalization. Such people are immune to radicalization due to injections of cash, jobs, appearances on cable TV, a mention in mainstream media as good people, and other perks, and pay offs. They are absolutely incapable of understanding things like, you can’t lie your way into an illegal military invasion of a sovereign country, kill off its people, send in para-military groups to carry out slaughters, and then claim to be justified by the deaths of 3000 people, many of whom were foreign nationals and not even Americans, who were killed by other people, and not the people whose country you invaded and subsequently destroyed. Not only will the ambivalence and distorted sense of justice of the inoculated cause people who have been radicalized to froth at the mouth, it has been known to occasionally boil the blood to the point that a radicalized person will simply shut down, refuse to ever speak again and go into seclusion. It can kill the spirit of even the strongest among us, when it reaches the point that logic shuts down, causing a person to believe the entire world has gone mad, and that it’s useless to say anything more, or to expect that anyone gives a damn, or that things will ever change. In such cases, the radicalized person might resort to bingo, and refuse to read newspapers or even to watch TV anymore.
Now, those who are involved in detecting radicalization and wiping it out or curing it, are not concerned that radicals might actually do anything violent, since it almost never happens. Yet, they must, and do suggest that radicalization leads to violence because it is the only way that they can get money to fight radicalization, or rather to fight free speech and expression and also the US Constitution that guarantees such rights as free speech and political expression. You see, no one can get government money to overtly undermine the US Constitution, or to violate our Constitutional rights. They can get millions, even billions to protect our country from the threat of terrorism.
This is why radicalization experts claim that the inevitable consequence of the dreaded disease, radicalization is politically motivated violence, or terrorism. Like rabies, it supposedly gives the appearance of mental illness, but can only be diagnosed as such if it is found in Zionists. Their violence and extremism is always the result of mental illnesses, or its self defense, while the common person’s moral outrage must be the result of radicalization. It is similar to a neurological disorder that prevents a person from being able to see evil as goodness, and goodness as weakness. It is a type of moral dissonance that will not allow an infected person to believe that we are actually seeing our government and military act as an immoral and barbaric conquering force, completely ignoring the laws that we helped to impress upon the world as right and good and essential to peaceful co-existence. Laws like the Geneva Conventions. Yet, since moral dissonance has not been recognized by the AMA as a real mental illness, radicalization remains like rabies, a contagious neurological like disease that supposedly can only lead to violence, and so according to the experts, including the established religious experts who condone and support the war on radicalization, it must be eradicated.
Since aside from the Wall Street robber barons, our government is the only institution that can never run out of money, so long as it has a press that can print money, those who are part of the anti-terrorism industry must always have an angle whereby they can parlay their deep insights into the hearts and souls of the American sheeple, into cold hard government cash, formerly known as taxpayer money. Without much research or study, they know intuitively that enough outrageous behavior by our government and military will lead to the moral outrage of many American people. Eureka! What better way to make a buck than to bank on the fact that a free people will use their rights to free speech and political expression to criticize a government that claims to be representative, yet has clearly adopted a set of values and created for itself a law that is completely opposite of the values and laws of the people it claims to represent.
There is a cure for radicalization, but it doesn’t get much attention. You will almost never hear the word cure even mentioned by radicalization experts. Just like conspiracy theories surrounding cancer research and cures for other deadly diseases, the idea is that if radicalization is cured, the anti-radicalization industry will go out of business, and even worse, all of their lies will be exposed and they will lose credibility, maybe even be put in jail for lying to Congress and other crimes.
The obvious cure for radicalization is truth and accountability. To cure its radicalized citizenry, our government needs only reform, and to respond to the urgings of its people, and also the international community. End these wars; stop supporting dictators and violent despots who oppress their people in exchange for hand outs. Get rid of the double standards, the lying and the greed for power and replace it with common sense and a desire to co-exist peacefully in the world with others of varied cultures, skin colors, languages, religions, etc. Stop coveting the natural resources of others to the extent that rather than to depend upon free market economics, you will stoop to any level in smash and grab operations for oil and other resources that always fail miserably, leaving only hatred, death and destruction behind them.
Unfortunately, there is little hope that our government will opt for the cure anytime soon. So, we the people are left with two options. 1). Shut up and refuse to criticize the government, hide our moral outrage, and just go along hoping that the wars will eventually end and gas prices will one day be 1.50 a gallon or cheaper forever, or 2). Refuse to shut up, and demonstrate our moral outrage in every legal way possible, keeping in mind that the anti-radicalization forces in our Congress are at work trying to find ways to criminalize dissent, which is what radicalization was called previous to the wars. Since word dissent implies some type of patriotism and noble intent, it has been exchanged for the dreaded word, radicalization.
Keep in mind that if you adopt #2, that it is a war after all. If we adopt the mentality of our government and the insane faction of warmongers and imperialists now controlling our government, we will realize that there are no rules. They will either shut us all up, or we will shut their insane arses down. Power to the people.
If, when you hear that a drone has killed ten or twenty innocent people or more at a wedding or funeral in Pakistan in a military attempt to supposedly kill just one supposed terrorist, and you criticize that disproportionate and immoral use of force, you might be called radical, and extreme. It’s not because your gut instincts are naturally repulsed by what happened, that’s fine. You simply are not supposed to criticize or suggest that what happened was wrong, a violation of international law, or that it creates a desire and an excuse that justifies a similar use of violence by our supposed adversaries, in ways that might also be illegal and immoral.
If, when you hear that more than 1 million innocent people have been killed in a war where we were not fighting an army, or an enemy, but an insurgency that had a right to fight against a foreign invading and occupying military force, and that we not only killed those people, but also tortured them, raped them and destroyed their homes and then sent missionaries to provide them with Bibles in exchange for food and comfort. If you hear that, and you feel morally outraged that a certain faction in our country has used our troops and our money in this way, and you say or write anything critical about it, you might be considered by the powers that be, Democrats and Republicans and some so called independents, a person that has become radicalized.
Becoming radicalized can be compared to getting infected with rabies. If you hang out with, read, or agree with people who have already been infected with radicalism, and who write, speak, and do radical things like write letters critical of the war to newspaper editors, or submit op-eds to newspapers suggesting that the US is committing war crimes in these wars, etc., you can, and might also become radicalized. Like rabies, radicalization makes you appear angry. It can cause you to froth at the mouth as you debate simple concepts like human decency, law and justice and fair play with people who have been inoculated against radicalization. Such people are immune to radicalization due to injections of cash, jobs, appearances on cable TV, a mention in mainstream media as good people, and other perks, and pay offs. They are absolutely incapable of understanding things like, you can’t lie your way into an illegal military invasion of a sovereign country, kill off its people, send in para-military groups to carry out slaughters, and then claim to be justified by the deaths of 3000 people, many of whom were foreign nationals and not even Americans, who were killed by other people, and not the people whose country you invaded and subsequently destroyed. Not only will the ambivalence and distorted sense of justice of the inoculated cause people who have been radicalized to froth at the mouth, it has been known to occasionally boil the blood to the point that a radicalized person will simply shut down, refuse to ever speak again and go into seclusion. It can kill the spirit of even the strongest among us, when it reaches the point that logic shuts down, causing a person to believe the entire world has gone mad, and that it’s useless to say anything more, or to expect that anyone gives a damn, or that things will ever change. In such cases, the radicalized person might resort to bingo, and refuse to read newspapers or even to watch TV anymore.
Now, those who are involved in detecting radicalization and wiping it out or curing it, are not concerned that radicals might actually do anything violent, since it almost never happens. Yet, they must, and do suggest that radicalization leads to violence because it is the only way that they can get money to fight radicalization, or rather to fight free speech and expression and also the US Constitution that guarantees such rights as free speech and political expression. You see, no one can get government money to overtly undermine the US Constitution, or to violate our Constitutional rights. They can get millions, even billions to protect our country from the threat of terrorism.
This is why radicalization experts claim that the inevitable consequence of the dreaded disease, radicalization is politically motivated violence, or terrorism. Like rabies, it supposedly gives the appearance of mental illness, but can only be diagnosed as such if it is found in Zionists. Their violence and extremism is always the result of mental illnesses, or its self defense, while the common person’s moral outrage must be the result of radicalization. It is similar to a neurological disorder that prevents a person from being able to see evil as goodness, and goodness as weakness. It is a type of moral dissonance that will not allow an infected person to believe that we are actually seeing our government and military act as an immoral and barbaric conquering force, completely ignoring the laws that we helped to impress upon the world as right and good and essential to peaceful co-existence. Laws like the Geneva Conventions. Yet, since moral dissonance has not been recognized by the AMA as a real mental illness, radicalization remains like rabies, a contagious neurological like disease that supposedly can only lead to violence, and so according to the experts, including the established religious experts who condone and support the war on radicalization, it must be eradicated.
Since aside from the Wall Street robber barons, our government is the only institution that can never run out of money, so long as it has a press that can print money, those who are part of the anti-terrorism industry must always have an angle whereby they can parlay their deep insights into the hearts and souls of the American sheeple, into cold hard government cash, formerly known as taxpayer money. Without much research or study, they know intuitively that enough outrageous behavior by our government and military will lead to the moral outrage of many American people. Eureka! What better way to make a buck than to bank on the fact that a free people will use their rights to free speech and political expression to criticize a government that claims to be representative, yet has clearly adopted a set of values and created for itself a law that is completely opposite of the values and laws of the people it claims to represent.
There is a cure for radicalization, but it doesn’t get much attention. You will almost never hear the word cure even mentioned by radicalization experts. Just like conspiracy theories surrounding cancer research and cures for other deadly diseases, the idea is that if radicalization is cured, the anti-radicalization industry will go out of business, and even worse, all of their lies will be exposed and they will lose credibility, maybe even be put in jail for lying to Congress and other crimes.
The obvious cure for radicalization is truth and accountability. To cure its radicalized citizenry, our government needs only reform, and to respond to the urgings of its people, and also the international community. End these wars; stop supporting dictators and violent despots who oppress their people in exchange for hand outs. Get rid of the double standards, the lying and the greed for power and replace it with common sense and a desire to co-exist peacefully in the world with others of varied cultures, skin colors, languages, religions, etc. Stop coveting the natural resources of others to the extent that rather than to depend upon free market economics, you will stoop to any level in smash and grab operations for oil and other resources that always fail miserably, leaving only hatred, death and destruction behind them.
Unfortunately, there is little hope that our government will opt for the cure anytime soon. So, we the people are left with two options. 1). Shut up and refuse to criticize the government, hide our moral outrage, and just go along hoping that the wars will eventually end and gas prices will one day be 1.50 a gallon or cheaper forever, or 2). Refuse to shut up, and demonstrate our moral outrage in every legal way possible, keeping in mind that the anti-radicalization forces in our Congress are at work trying to find ways to criminalize dissent, which is what radicalization was called previous to the wars. Since word dissent implies some type of patriotism and noble intent, it has been exchanged for the dreaded word, radicalization.
Keep in mind that if you adopt #2, that it is a war after all. If we adopt the mentality of our government and the insane faction of warmongers and imperialists now controlling our government, we will realize that there are no rules. They will either shut us all up, or we will shut their insane arses down. Power to the people.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
America's muderous double standards
There are some people who believe that things happen for a reason, and that everything has meaning. Such people reject the idea that things happen by mere coincidence, or that events and happenings have no relevance in respect to life’s big picture. Whether meaning is derived from the immediate emotional impact, or the symbolism conveyed through the details of such events, many people believe that everything has meaning and that understanding the meaning is where we draw benefit from even the most tragic circumstances.
When several young men attacked an American high school in Columbine Colorado years ago, killing many of their own class mates in a brutal massacre, the media acted in a way that at least appeared responsible. It distracted us from our natural desire to know more about the killers, and to hate them. The media did not dwell upon their religious beliefs or their cultural roots. In respect to the Columbine killings, the media kept our attention focused on the horror of the event, and how bullying and persecution of people can lead to tragic outcomes, like what happened at Columbine.
Very little main street media attention was given to the fact that the Columbine killers had trained, like young men on a mission, seeking proficiency in how to kill human beings with different types of weapons. They even recorded their preparation, and rehearsals as if they wanted to leave a how to book for other tormented souls supposedly seeking revenge against classroom bullies, while spitting into the face of society by killing our children in a coldly calculated, yet gruesome way, then committing suicide, denying society its right to choose to either take revenge or to forgive. The killers judged themselves and executed themselves, leaving the country to wonder who the real victims were, and then to conclude that we were all victims of a tragic set of events that seemingly began with hurt feelings and humiliation based upon a high school social hierarchy that is welcoming only to certain people, and extremely cruel to others.
It was not until several reporters published interviews they conducted with witnesses and parents of surviving victims, that we learned that the there was perhaps more to the Columbine story than what met the eye. As it turned out, the killers did indeed seem to have an ideology and a purpose. As more was learned about the killers, it also seemed that the meaning went far beyond how hatred, powerlessness and resentment can boil over into violent rage. As time passed we learned that the meaning of Columbine perhaps reached back into the religious culture of the killers, a religious culture whose primary feature is the mythical “chosen” status of its adherents, and the supposed gross inferiority, in fact inhumanness of all others.
The victim’s parents, survivors and witnesses told a different story of Columbine than the media. They told a story of heavily armed young men who stalked the halls of the school like mercenaries, questioning victims about their religious beliefs before killing them. One of the survivors said one of the Columbine killers walked up to her and asked “Do you believe in Jesus?” and when she answered “yes,” he shot her. Others said they also heard victims being asked before they were killed, if they believed in Jesus.
From the media we learned that the perpetrators were troubled youths who were victims of bulling and persecution. The media explained to us that these were young people who had perhaps been forced to the fringes of society because of the way they dressed, their choice of music or poor social skills. Listening to the media, it was obvious that its controllers wanted us to feel that in some way, we were as guilty as the perpetrators because we had not as a society acted to end bullying and to address the hazing that is all too common as rights of initiation among our young people, and especially in our high schools. It is also clear that the media did not want us to know that the Columbine murderers were Jewish teenagers who killed non Jews because they believed in Jesus.
Several days ago, an army officer and soldier of the Muslim faith was blamed with carrying out a massacre on a Texas military base. It was a massacre that left 13 American soldiers dead, and 30 injured, some with life threatening injuries. In stark contrast to how the media treated the Columbine story, this event was immediately given a meaning. The media wanted us to know that the alleged perpetrator is Palestinian, that he is Arab and that he is supposedly a devout Muslim. This information was the first and only information that was revealed about the accused shooter, aside from the fact that he was a psychiatrist, and that he was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan.
Immediately following the initial reporting of the incident itself, we were told that the perpetrator was killed and that two other suspects had been detained for questioning. After the FBI arrived, we learned that in fact the alleged perpetrator is still alive, after hours of being mistakenly dead, and that he is Arab, and Muslim. We also learned that the other suspects had been questioned and released, prior to an investigation. Was the real shooter killed, and an Arab and Muslim scapegoat, or rather sacrificial lamb, put in his place?
For hours following the supposed death and later the hospitalization of the alleged Fort Hood perpetrator, the media was saturated with anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic innuendo that while careful not to be too obvious, made it very clear that the media wants us to understand that the meaning of the event is that Islam is a violent ideology that leads its adherents over the top to the commission of violent acts against non Muslims, which is a lie. The tragic incident was also used to make the point that President Obama must send more troops into Afghanistan, that the Patriot Act is still necessary, that it is right for the FBI to send informants to poison the spiritual environment in the mosques, and to entrap young Muslim men into suspected FBI schemes aimed at creating and sustaining fear of Muslims and Islam, and that it was right to kill Imam Luqman. These were all issues our country was deliberating the week that the tragedy at Fort Hood took place, while a UN resolution to send the Goldstone Report to the UN Security Council, charging Israel with war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in Gaza, was also being debated and subsequently passed.
Later, on the day of the tragedy at Fort Hood, as a footnote to the bigger story, we were allowed to know that Fort Hood’s alleged killer was not dead, and had also been a victim of bullying and persecution, and that he did not fit the description of a terrorist or a person acting out for political reasons. We learned that previous to the killings, he had shown signs of anger about plans to be deployed to Afghanistan.
Moral of the story: If you are Muslim or Arab, there is a segment of the US population that wants you to live in fear and to feel guilty for crimes you had nothing to do with and no prior knowledge of. They want you to hide, and to feel ashamed and to be scared. They want you to surrender your Constitutional rights and to self censor, or fear their wrath. They want you to worship their false gods. They are bullies and persecutors mostly with political and even anti-religion agendas. These are the same people who did not want us to know about the possible real meaning of Columbine.
Columbine explains the double standards that we see increasingly in US society. We are a country whose standards of justice differ depending upon your skin color, your economic standing, who you know, and what you claim to believe, and who your victims are. Just as Columbine was very likely a cold and calculated act of religiously motivated terrorism against Christians and those who believe in Jesus, so too the media perpetrated demonization, and vilification of Muslims and Arabs and the subsequent violence resulting from these media stereotypes, against Muslims in the US and abroad.
When several young men attacked an American high school in Columbine Colorado years ago, killing many of their own class mates in a brutal massacre, the media acted in a way that at least appeared responsible. It distracted us from our natural desire to know more about the killers, and to hate them. The media did not dwell upon their religious beliefs or their cultural roots. In respect to the Columbine killings, the media kept our attention focused on the horror of the event, and how bullying and persecution of people can lead to tragic outcomes, like what happened at Columbine.
Very little main street media attention was given to the fact that the Columbine killers had trained, like young men on a mission, seeking proficiency in how to kill human beings with different types of weapons. They even recorded their preparation, and rehearsals as if they wanted to leave a how to book for other tormented souls supposedly seeking revenge against classroom bullies, while spitting into the face of society by killing our children in a coldly calculated, yet gruesome way, then committing suicide, denying society its right to choose to either take revenge or to forgive. The killers judged themselves and executed themselves, leaving the country to wonder who the real victims were, and then to conclude that we were all victims of a tragic set of events that seemingly began with hurt feelings and humiliation based upon a high school social hierarchy that is welcoming only to certain people, and extremely cruel to others.
It was not until several reporters published interviews they conducted with witnesses and parents of surviving victims, that we learned that the there was perhaps more to the Columbine story than what met the eye. As it turned out, the killers did indeed seem to have an ideology and a purpose. As more was learned about the killers, it also seemed that the meaning went far beyond how hatred, powerlessness and resentment can boil over into violent rage. As time passed we learned that the meaning of Columbine perhaps reached back into the religious culture of the killers, a religious culture whose primary feature is the mythical “chosen” status of its adherents, and the supposed gross inferiority, in fact inhumanness of all others.
The victim’s parents, survivors and witnesses told a different story of Columbine than the media. They told a story of heavily armed young men who stalked the halls of the school like mercenaries, questioning victims about their religious beliefs before killing them. One of the survivors said one of the Columbine killers walked up to her and asked “Do you believe in Jesus?” and when she answered “yes,” he shot her. Others said they also heard victims being asked before they were killed, if they believed in Jesus.
From the media we learned that the perpetrators were troubled youths who were victims of bulling and persecution. The media explained to us that these were young people who had perhaps been forced to the fringes of society because of the way they dressed, their choice of music or poor social skills. Listening to the media, it was obvious that its controllers wanted us to feel that in some way, we were as guilty as the perpetrators because we had not as a society acted to end bullying and to address the hazing that is all too common as rights of initiation among our young people, and especially in our high schools. It is also clear that the media did not want us to know that the Columbine murderers were Jewish teenagers who killed non Jews because they believed in Jesus.
Several days ago, an army officer and soldier of the Muslim faith was blamed with carrying out a massacre on a Texas military base. It was a massacre that left 13 American soldiers dead, and 30 injured, some with life threatening injuries. In stark contrast to how the media treated the Columbine story, this event was immediately given a meaning. The media wanted us to know that the alleged perpetrator is Palestinian, that he is Arab and that he is supposedly a devout Muslim. This information was the first and only information that was revealed about the accused shooter, aside from the fact that he was a psychiatrist, and that he was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan.
Immediately following the initial reporting of the incident itself, we were told that the perpetrator was killed and that two other suspects had been detained for questioning. After the FBI arrived, we learned that in fact the alleged perpetrator is still alive, after hours of being mistakenly dead, and that he is Arab, and Muslim. We also learned that the other suspects had been questioned and released, prior to an investigation. Was the real shooter killed, and an Arab and Muslim scapegoat, or rather sacrificial lamb, put in his place?
For hours following the supposed death and later the hospitalization of the alleged Fort Hood perpetrator, the media was saturated with anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic innuendo that while careful not to be too obvious, made it very clear that the media wants us to understand that the meaning of the event is that Islam is a violent ideology that leads its adherents over the top to the commission of violent acts against non Muslims, which is a lie. The tragic incident was also used to make the point that President Obama must send more troops into Afghanistan, that the Patriot Act is still necessary, that it is right for the FBI to send informants to poison the spiritual environment in the mosques, and to entrap young Muslim men into suspected FBI schemes aimed at creating and sustaining fear of Muslims and Islam, and that it was right to kill Imam Luqman. These were all issues our country was deliberating the week that the tragedy at Fort Hood took place, while a UN resolution to send the Goldstone Report to the UN Security Council, charging Israel with war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in Gaza, was also being debated and subsequently passed.
Later, on the day of the tragedy at Fort Hood, as a footnote to the bigger story, we were allowed to know that Fort Hood’s alleged killer was not dead, and had also been a victim of bullying and persecution, and that he did not fit the description of a terrorist or a person acting out for political reasons. We learned that previous to the killings, he had shown signs of anger about plans to be deployed to Afghanistan.
Moral of the story: If you are Muslim or Arab, there is a segment of the US population that wants you to live in fear and to feel guilty for crimes you had nothing to do with and no prior knowledge of. They want you to hide, and to feel ashamed and to be scared. They want you to surrender your Constitutional rights and to self censor, or fear their wrath. They want you to worship their false gods. They are bullies and persecutors mostly with political and even anti-religion agendas. These are the same people who did not want us to know about the possible real meaning of Columbine.
Columbine explains the double standards that we see increasingly in US society. We are a country whose standards of justice differ depending upon your skin color, your economic standing, who you know, and what you claim to believe, and who your victims are. Just as Columbine was very likely a cold and calculated act of religiously motivated terrorism against Christians and those who believe in Jesus, so too the media perpetrated demonization, and vilification of Muslims and Arabs and the subsequent violence resulting from these media stereotypes, against Muslims in the US and abroad.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Woman's NGO submits Goldstone Report to International Criminal Court
PRESS RELEASE
11/03/09
For Immediate Release
Contact:info@namaw.org
Muslim Women's NGO Submits Goldstone Report to International Criminal Court as part of Communication on situation in Gaza.
Washington DC: Today, the National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) submitted the "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict" better known as the Goldstone Report to the International Criminal Court at the Hague in the Netherlands. The report was submitted via e-mail, and also priority mail as documentation and evidence in support of a communication submitted by the group entitled, "Communication on the situation in Gaza and the Goldstone Report."
Under the rules of the International Criminal Court, non state parties can submit Communications to the court that are taken up for analysis and assessment the same as referrals from the UNSC or UN member nation/states. According to article 53 of the Rome Statute, the only difference is that the Court is not automatically complelled to initiate an investigation into the situation brought to its attention as it must when the referral comes from the UN Security Council. The International Court must now review the Communication and the supporting documentaion and evidence, and decide if there is enough probable cause, and supporting documentation to compel an investigation.
Considering that the UNHRC recently endorsed the report, which alleges that Israel committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in its December 2008 military assault on Gaza, the group is hoping that the court will find Goldstone's report sufficient evidence to compel an investigation, along with reports by the World Health Organization and international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Whereas the Goldstone report only called for action by the court if Israel refused to conduct an investigation of its own into the allegations made in the report, and failed to bring suspected persons to trial, the International Court is now seemingly involved as a result of the appeal made by NAMAW, a UN accredited NGO with the Division on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians, for a Court assessment of the alleged facts and an investigation.
NAMAW Chairwoman Anisa Abd el Fattah says that the group has received confirmation from the Court that the Communication was successfully received. What is left now, is to see if the Court will find the Goldstone report as compelling as many, including the US and Israel might fear.
Along with the allegations of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity as mentioned in the Goldstone Report, the NAMAW communication also alleges that the economic embargo being imposed upon Gaza by Israel and Egypt is genocide, and that Israel also used banned weapons in its December 2008 assault, that included White Phosphorous, Depleted Uranium and the DIME which shoots small metal shards into flesh that cannot be removed with serious damage.
NAMAW's Communication to the Court and the supporting documentation will be viewable at the website, namaw.org.
The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) is the United State's first and only Muslim woman's pro-life and pro-family organization. We are an accredited NGO with the UN Division on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians and members of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.
# # #
11/03/09
For Immediate Release
Contact:info@namaw.org
Muslim Women's NGO Submits Goldstone Report to International Criminal Court as part of Communication on situation in Gaza.
Washington DC: Today, the National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) submitted the "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict" better known as the Goldstone Report to the International Criminal Court at the Hague in the Netherlands. The report was submitted via e-mail, and also priority mail as documentation and evidence in support of a communication submitted by the group entitled, "Communication on the situation in Gaza and the Goldstone Report."
Under the rules of the International Criminal Court, non state parties can submit Communications to the court that are taken up for analysis and assessment the same as referrals from the UNSC or UN member nation/states. According to article 53 of the Rome Statute, the only difference is that the Court is not automatically complelled to initiate an investigation into the situation brought to its attention as it must when the referral comes from the UN Security Council. The International Court must now review the Communication and the supporting documentaion and evidence, and decide if there is enough probable cause, and supporting documentation to compel an investigation.
Considering that the UNHRC recently endorsed the report, which alleges that Israel committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in its December 2008 military assault on Gaza, the group is hoping that the court will find Goldstone's report sufficient evidence to compel an investigation, along with reports by the World Health Organization and international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Whereas the Goldstone report only called for action by the court if Israel refused to conduct an investigation of its own into the allegations made in the report, and failed to bring suspected persons to trial, the International Court is now seemingly involved as a result of the appeal made by NAMAW, a UN accredited NGO with the Division on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians, for a Court assessment of the alleged facts and an investigation.
NAMAW Chairwoman Anisa Abd el Fattah says that the group has received confirmation from the Court that the Communication was successfully received. What is left now, is to see if the Court will find the Goldstone report as compelling as many, including the US and Israel might fear.
Along with the allegations of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity as mentioned in the Goldstone Report, the NAMAW communication also alleges that the economic embargo being imposed upon Gaza by Israel and Egypt is genocide, and that Israel also used banned weapons in its December 2008 assault, that included White Phosphorous, Depleted Uranium and the DIME which shoots small metal shards into flesh that cannot be removed with serious damage.
NAMAW's Communication to the Court and the supporting documentation will be viewable at the website, namaw.org.
The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) is the United State's first and only Muslim woman's pro-life and pro-family organization. We are an accredited NGO with the UN Division on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians and members of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.
# # #
Sunday, November 1, 2009
African Union holds key to Rafah Crossing: "Will they use it?"
On October 29, 2009, the National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW), a US based NGO and member of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians, sent an appeal to all of the members of the African Union requesting that the African Union take jurisdiction over the Rafah Crossing, and provide the necessary military and security support to insure that the crossing is operated safely, and efficiently.
The African Union, which has adopted the UN Rome Statute as a guide for its own set of human rights laws, has the authority to take jurisdiction from Egypt, since Egypt is a member of the African Union, and bound by its human rights laws, and is subject to the African Union’s authority. It is clear that by keeping the crossing closed, and denying Palestinian’s humanitarian aid, including food, medicines and medical supplies, and also building materials and equipment, that Egypt is in violation of Articles 6 and 7 of the Rome Statute that prohibits genocide and crimes against humanity. Egypt is also blatantly violating the African Union’s human rights laws and principles.
It is clear from even a cursory review of the Rome Statute that both Israel and Egypt are in almost certainly in violation of article 6, which prohibits genocide. The Statute describes genocide as “acts committed to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group ...” The statute includes such acts as “ killing members of the group, causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
They are also likely in violation of Article 7, “Crimes against Humanity” which is described by the Rome Statute as “acts committed as part of a widespread or systemic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.” According to the Rome Statute such acts include, but may not be limited to murder, extermination, torture, rape, persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender or other grounds...”
Under the above mentioned definition, the Rome Statue also criminalizes apartheid, and “other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body, or physical health.”
Whereas much is being made of Israel’s history of alleged war crimes and refusal to abide by UN resolutions in respect to Palestine, and especially in respect to its continued and illegal economic siege on Gaza, little has been said about the fact that Israel’s embargo could not succeed if Egypt, a supposedly Muslim and Arab nation/state, was not providing full support and cooperation, making it possibly a co-conspirator with Israel in the conduct of these crimes.
Since there is little hope that either the EU or US will use their considerable influence over Israel, to lift the illegal embargo, it is clear that the only hope now is for the people of the Muslim and Arab world to come together to insist that Egypt end its possibly criminal cooperation with Israel, and act according to international law by opening the Rafah Crossing.
There must also be greater pressure applied by the international Muslim religious authorities who can call for Muslim and Arab boycotts of Egyptian goods, along with boycotting Israeli goods, should Egypt also thumb its nose at the African Union.
Muslim, Arab and African people are shocked by Egypt’s stubbornness in respect to permanently re-opening the Rafah Crossing, and many suspect that this stubbornness is being driven by a new lucrative industry that has sprung up in Egypt that is dependant upon illegally confiscated aid and goods intended for Gaza, along with bribes paid by activists who want to enter the strip for humanitarian causes, and also bribes paid by journalists.
Egypt has begun to auction off the goods intended for Gaza that it confiscates from tunnels under the guise of searching for weapons. If the goal is to prevent the re-arming of Gaza, why is food and equipment confiscated and why can’t these confiscated items be delivered by Egyptian security to the Gazans? Previously Egypt burned and even allowed donated foods to rot, rather than to allow the people of Gaza to receive and benefit from the humanitarian aid, illegally confiscated by Egypt at the borders and also in the makeshift tunnels. This shows that it is Egypt’s clear intent to deny the people of Gaza the sustenance and medical aid required for their survival, and that this denial is based purely upon the Egyptian, US, PA and Israeli desire to undermine the elected government, and to overthrow Hamas.
Hopes are high, that since Libya’s leader Muammar Qaddhafi, known for his fiery speeches in support of the Palestinian’s ongoing struggle, is the present head of the AU, that the Union will use its power and authority to end the illegal siege on Gaza by permanently re-opening the Rafah crossing, and possibly bringing charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Egypt in its own criminal court. The AU can also recommend to the International Criminal Court, that an investigation immediate into Egypt’s wrong doing get underway, while giving jurisdiction over the crossing, which is in Africa, to the African Union.
With winter and the cold weather approaching quickly, it is of the utmost importance that adequate shelter, clothing, food and medical care be made immediately available for the people of Gaza. The African Union holds the key to the Rafah Crossing; let’s pray that they will use that key to save the lives of the people of Gaza.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
NAMAW Condemns Junduallah attacks on Iran, calls for immediate UNSC action
PRESS RELEASE
10/20/09
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Anisa Abd el Fattah
NAMAW
anisa@namaw.org
National Muslim Woman's organization condemns terrorist attacks on Iran, calls upon UN Security Council to intervene and end all provocations for war against Iran.
Washington DC-Oct.20,2009
The National Association of Muslim American Women(NAMAW), the United State's first and only Muslim woman's pro-life and pro-family organization condemns the recent Jundallah attacks on the Islamic Republic of Iran, and calls upon the UN Security Council to intervene immediately to end all acts of provocation aimed at provoking war against Iran.
"We see this as an attempt to push Iran into retaliation and a proxy war with groups operating out of Pakistan," says NAMAW Chairwoman Anisa Abd el Fattah. Abd el Fattah went further, saying: "Failing to get outright US and EU approval for an Israeli or US attack on Iran, we see a new strategy for war. This strategy would provoke Iran into a proxy war with Western funded terrorist groups like Jundullah in Pakistan and the MKO, which has found sanctuary in Europe after being removed from Europe's list of terrorist organizations." "It is our position", said Abd el Fattah, "that these attacks represent an attempt to open a new battlefield in the so called war on terrorism, which many Muslims and others are convinced is merely a Western war against Islam and Muslim countries. Since Israel and its neoconservative supporters in the US, could not get US or EU approval for an Israeli attack on Iran under the false allegation of an Iranian nuclear weapon's program that threatens Israel, these interests seemingly have acted to attack Iran through a proxy. We ask Iran to be patient and not provoked, and to give time for the international institutions to carry out their obligation to do what is necessary to protect innocent civilian life from such attacks and to preserve peace."
We are also calling upon the UNSC to take the steps necessary to address this criminal act against the people of Iran, and to end all such criminal activity against Iran. The UNSC must act to prevent a proxy war that will likely escalate into a full blown war between Iran and the West, and possibly World War III. NAMAW is also calling upon all anti-war NGOs and organizations to step up their activism and to demand that an immediate investigation into these attacks be initiated in preparation for holding those who are responsible accountable before the International Criminal Court.
Finally, NAMAW is calling upon Muslims throughout the world to avoid being exploited by those who claim to be Islamic groups, but who act in the interest of the enemies of Islam. "We should not allow our personal sentiments or religious differences to cause us to assist our enemies as they escalate their war on the Muslim world. We must be wise," said NAMAW's Chairwoman. "The Qur'an teaches us to condemn injustice, even it causes us to be against our own selves. We must not allow the common enemy of Muslims everywhere, to use such crimes to split the international Muslim community and to turn us one against the other. We must stand steadfast for justice, and discourage internecine Muslim conflicts at all costs. We should have learned from our enemy's strategy in Iraq, not to allow sectarianism to split and destroy Muslims.
Until Muslims have functional international institutions of our own to protect our interests, we must encourage the international institutions that exist to act for the benefit of mankind, and to avoid war and to punish illegal and unjust acts of violence. We are also calling upon all Muslim organizations and institutions throughout the world to condemn this criminal attack on Iran and demand an end to all Muslim against Muslim violence.
We send our sincere condolences to the people of Iran as they mourn their losses and express our deep regret over these unfortunate events. Our hearts go out to them in their grief. May God guide and protect us all.
10/20/09
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Anisa Abd el Fattah
NAMAW
anisa@namaw.org
National Muslim Woman's organization condemns terrorist attacks on Iran, calls upon UN Security Council to intervene and end all provocations for war against Iran.
Washington DC-Oct.20,2009
The National Association of Muslim American Women(NAMAW), the United State's first and only Muslim woman's pro-life and pro-family organization condemns the recent Jundallah attacks on the Islamic Republic of Iran, and calls upon the UN Security Council to intervene immediately to end all acts of provocation aimed at provoking war against Iran.
"We see this as an attempt to push Iran into retaliation and a proxy war with groups operating out of Pakistan," says NAMAW Chairwoman Anisa Abd el Fattah. Abd el Fattah went further, saying: "Failing to get outright US and EU approval for an Israeli or US attack on Iran, we see a new strategy for war. This strategy would provoke Iran into a proxy war with Western funded terrorist groups like Jundullah in Pakistan and the MKO, which has found sanctuary in Europe after being removed from Europe's list of terrorist organizations." "It is our position", said Abd el Fattah, "that these attacks represent an attempt to open a new battlefield in the so called war on terrorism, which many Muslims and others are convinced is merely a Western war against Islam and Muslim countries. Since Israel and its neoconservative supporters in the US, could not get US or EU approval for an Israeli attack on Iran under the false allegation of an Iranian nuclear weapon's program that threatens Israel, these interests seemingly have acted to attack Iran through a proxy. We ask Iran to be patient and not provoked, and to give time for the international institutions to carry out their obligation to do what is necessary to protect innocent civilian life from such attacks and to preserve peace."
We are also calling upon the UNSC to take the steps necessary to address this criminal act against the people of Iran, and to end all such criminal activity against Iran. The UNSC must act to prevent a proxy war that will likely escalate into a full blown war between Iran and the West, and possibly World War III. NAMAW is also calling upon all anti-war NGOs and organizations to step up their activism and to demand that an immediate investigation into these attacks be initiated in preparation for holding those who are responsible accountable before the International Criminal Court.
Finally, NAMAW is calling upon Muslims throughout the world to avoid being exploited by those who claim to be Islamic groups, but who act in the interest of the enemies of Islam. "We should not allow our personal sentiments or religious differences to cause us to assist our enemies as they escalate their war on the Muslim world. We must be wise," said NAMAW's Chairwoman. "The Qur'an teaches us to condemn injustice, even it causes us to be against our own selves. We must not allow the common enemy of Muslims everywhere, to use such crimes to split the international Muslim community and to turn us one against the other. We must stand steadfast for justice, and discourage internecine Muslim conflicts at all costs. We should have learned from our enemy's strategy in Iraq, not to allow sectarianism to split and destroy Muslims.
Until Muslims have functional international institutions of our own to protect our interests, we must encourage the international institutions that exist to act for the benefit of mankind, and to avoid war and to punish illegal and unjust acts of violence. We are also calling upon all Muslim organizations and institutions throughout the world to condemn this criminal attack on Iran and demand an end to all Muslim against Muslim violence.
We send our sincere condolences to the people of Iran as they mourn their losses and express our deep regret over these unfortunate events. Our hearts go out to them in their grief. May God guide and protect us all.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The Third Player
Everyone is asking why the Democrats refuse to say that racism is what is driving the far right wing’s hatred of Obama. People are asking why the right wing hates Obama so much and why the hate seems to increase rather than decrease as time goes on. In a representative Republic that is as old as the United States, after more than half a year, we should be getting used to having a Black man in the White House, rather than getting angrier by the day.
The obvious answer is exactly what everyone is saying, that it’s better to ignore the race baiting right wing, because they are trying to incite a revolution that would drive the Democrats out of power, and put the Republicans back into power. The not so obvious answer is that the people on the right that are driving the hatred of Obama, and who are actually hoping to create an environment of hatred and polarization that might lead to civil war and/or Obama’s assassination, are likely the same group, with operatives on the left, who are misguiding Democrats to remain silent, allowing the hate speech and the incitement to continue unchallenged, perhaps in hope of the same tragic outcomes.
The right claims that they want revolution, and the left claims that it wants change, which is another word for revolution depending upon the amount of change and the method one chooses to bring that change about. Both are lying. It is clear to many people that what they both seem to want, is to pit American against American and to throw this country into chaos through a civil war. While the right wing screams about fighting socialism, the left screams about the rise of the south through the Republican Party, painting the south as a threat to the union and the cause of homosexual killings, the reason for no health care reform and an increase in racism against immigrants and minorities.
Zionists in this country are perhaps seeking to recreate the hatreds between the north and south that once turned brother against brother in this country, and that filled America’s fields and meadows with American blood, and the eyes of our people with tears.
Strange isn’t it that it’s the neoconservatives who run the Republican Party and the Zionists who run the Democrats who are absent from the political stage at this critical time in our country. We know why the neoconservative leadership is silent; they have the far right wing Christian Zionist fanatics to do their dirty work. These fanatics are more than willing to call Obama Hitler, and to claim that they are fighting socialism, as they hurl not so subtle racial slurs at the White House, because they believe they are serving God’s chosen people, the Jews. They don’t understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism.
The Zionist Democrats are also strangely silent, but possibly for a different reason. They don’t want to interfere with the good work of their Zionist brothers on the right. If the Democrat’s were to take up former President Jimmy Carter’s challenge to the country, to confront our racial fears and prejudices, it might lead to national reconciliation, which is not the goal. The goal is civil war, and the few of us who have not fallen under the spell of hatred and intolerance that was cast over our country after 9/11, have an obligation to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
Edmund Burke, one of the founders of the true conservative movement, in his critique of the French Revolution brought some important observations to our attention that might be relevant to our situation in the US today. One of those observations was that the antagonists, who were busy inciting hatred against the monarchy in France that led to the revolution, did so from the pulpits of the protestant churches in England, even though they were not Englishmen and were in fact strangers in the communities. Burke also observed that these preachers of intolerance and protestant religious fanaticism were not Frenchmen, and referred to them as the Old Jewry. Burke wrote:
It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about, in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, and apparently by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragicomic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed and sometimes mix with each other in the mind: alternate contempt and indignation, alternate laughter and tears, alternate scorn and horror.
It cannot, however, be denied that to some this strange scene appeared in quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other sentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in France but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom, so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety as to make it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing Machiavellian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the devout effusions of sacred eloquence.
On the forenoon of the fourth of November last, Doctor Richard Price, a non-conforming minister of eminence, preached, at the dissenting meeting house of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a very extraordinary miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some good moral and religious sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed up in a sort of porridge of various political opinions and reflections; but the Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the cauldron. I consider the address transmitted by the Revolution Society to the National Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the principles of the sermon and as a corollary from them. It was moved by the preacher of that discourse. It was passed by those who came reeking from the effect of the sermon without any censure or qualification, expressed or implied. If, however, any of the gentlemen concerned shall wish to separate the sermon from the resolution, they know how to acknowledge the one and to disavow the other. They may do it: I cannot.
For my part, I looked on that sermon as the public declaration of a man much connected with literary caballers and intriguing philosophers, with political theologians and theological politicians both at home and abroad. I know they set him up as a sort of oracle, because, with the best intentions in the world, he naturally philippizes and chants his prophetic song in exact unison with their designs.
That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in this kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encouraged in it, since the year 1648, when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Rev. Hugh Peters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at St. James's ring with the honor and privilege of the saints, who, with the "high praises of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, were to execute judgment on the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron".[1] Few harangues from the pulpit, except in the days of your league in France or in the days of our Solemn League and Covenant in England, have ever breathed less of the spirit of moderation than this lecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in this political sermon, yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.
Burke called these dissenters a Third Estate that was inciting the people of France against the French monarchy. Frenchmen, fighting against Frenchmen caused France to fall to Zionism. It was Edmund Burke who said to us that when two parties are drawn into conflict and there is a third party, the power of the two in conflict will fall to the third party. The French monarchy was the only barrier to Zionist rule because it was based upon blood lineage and not a popular vote. After the French revolution and the murder and exile of the royals, who claimed blood lineage to Jesus Christ, France was left to the Zionists who bought France with the power of the purse. In the United States today, Zionism is that same third party. Burke talked about the affects of Zionist rule in France saying:
They have found their punishment in their success: laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting, conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically subverted. Zionism is also the third party in the US today, and we are also feeling and witnessing these same effects.
It is interesting that the hatred of Obama, and the anti Obama rhetoric and gun toting symbolism and threats of violence and revolution, seem to grow in proportion to US calls for Israel to end illegal settlement building in Palestine and a reinvigorated peace process that would see Israel make concessions to the Palestinians that Israel does not intend to make, and also calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve.
It is also interesting that this is exactly how the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin took place. First right wing Zionists began the seemingly harmless verbal insults, calling Rabin a self hating Jew, etc. When Rabin refused to challenge the rhetoric, it got worse, until they were carrying signs in the street calling Rabin Hitler, and even went so far as to burn him in effigy. Soon after a few cries from the left went out for the rhetoric to tone down, Rabin was gunned down by a right wing Zionist settler.
Of course to some people,suggesting that Zionists are pushing the United States into a civil war, or even a revolution if that is the case, seems as crazy as calling Obama Hitler, and also as difficult to believe as the silence of the Democrats. The difference is that suggesting that Zionists are pushing the United States into civil war and chaos could save this country, if given serious consideration, and if the necessary steps are taken to stop the momentum that is pushing us in that direction. Neither Republican incitement, nor the Democrat’s silence can, or will do that.
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
The obvious answer is exactly what everyone is saying, that it’s better to ignore the race baiting right wing, because they are trying to incite a revolution that would drive the Democrats out of power, and put the Republicans back into power. The not so obvious answer is that the people on the right that are driving the hatred of Obama, and who are actually hoping to create an environment of hatred and polarization that might lead to civil war and/or Obama’s assassination, are likely the same group, with operatives on the left, who are misguiding Democrats to remain silent, allowing the hate speech and the incitement to continue unchallenged, perhaps in hope of the same tragic outcomes.
The right claims that they want revolution, and the left claims that it wants change, which is another word for revolution depending upon the amount of change and the method one chooses to bring that change about. Both are lying. It is clear to many people that what they both seem to want, is to pit American against American and to throw this country into chaos through a civil war. While the right wing screams about fighting socialism, the left screams about the rise of the south through the Republican Party, painting the south as a threat to the union and the cause of homosexual killings, the reason for no health care reform and an increase in racism against immigrants and minorities.
Zionists in this country are perhaps seeking to recreate the hatreds between the north and south that once turned brother against brother in this country, and that filled America’s fields and meadows with American blood, and the eyes of our people with tears.
Strange isn’t it that it’s the neoconservatives who run the Republican Party and the Zionists who run the Democrats who are absent from the political stage at this critical time in our country. We know why the neoconservative leadership is silent; they have the far right wing Christian Zionist fanatics to do their dirty work. These fanatics are more than willing to call Obama Hitler, and to claim that they are fighting socialism, as they hurl not so subtle racial slurs at the White House, because they believe they are serving God’s chosen people, the Jews. They don’t understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism.
The Zionist Democrats are also strangely silent, but possibly for a different reason. They don’t want to interfere with the good work of their Zionist brothers on the right. If the Democrat’s were to take up former President Jimmy Carter’s challenge to the country, to confront our racial fears and prejudices, it might lead to national reconciliation, which is not the goal. The goal is civil war, and the few of us who have not fallen under the spell of hatred and intolerance that was cast over our country after 9/11, have an obligation to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
Edmund Burke, one of the founders of the true conservative movement, in his critique of the French Revolution brought some important observations to our attention that might be relevant to our situation in the US today. One of those observations was that the antagonists, who were busy inciting hatred against the monarchy in France that led to the revolution, did so from the pulpits of the protestant churches in England, even though they were not Englishmen and were in fact strangers in the communities. Burke also observed that these preachers of intolerance and protestant religious fanaticism were not Frenchmen, and referred to them as the Old Jewry. Burke wrote:
It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about, in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, and apparently by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragicomic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed and sometimes mix with each other in the mind: alternate contempt and indignation, alternate laughter and tears, alternate scorn and horror.
It cannot, however, be denied that to some this strange scene appeared in quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other sentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in France but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom, so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety as to make it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing Machiavellian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the devout effusions of sacred eloquence.
On the forenoon of the fourth of November last, Doctor Richard Price, a non-conforming minister of eminence, preached, at the dissenting meeting house of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a very extraordinary miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some good moral and religious sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed up in a sort of porridge of various political opinions and reflections; but the Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the cauldron. I consider the address transmitted by the Revolution Society to the National Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the principles of the sermon and as a corollary from them. It was moved by the preacher of that discourse. It was passed by those who came reeking from the effect of the sermon without any censure or qualification, expressed or implied. If, however, any of the gentlemen concerned shall wish to separate the sermon from the resolution, they know how to acknowledge the one and to disavow the other. They may do it: I cannot.
For my part, I looked on that sermon as the public declaration of a man much connected with literary caballers and intriguing philosophers, with political theologians and theological politicians both at home and abroad. I know they set him up as a sort of oracle, because, with the best intentions in the world, he naturally philippizes and chants his prophetic song in exact unison with their designs.
That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in this kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encouraged in it, since the year 1648, when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Rev. Hugh Peters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at St. James's ring with the honor and privilege of the saints, who, with the "high praises of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, were to execute judgment on the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron".[1] Few harangues from the pulpit, except in the days of your league in France or in the days of our Solemn League and Covenant in England, have ever breathed less of the spirit of moderation than this lecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in this political sermon, yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.
Burke called these dissenters a Third Estate that was inciting the people of France against the French monarchy. Frenchmen, fighting against Frenchmen caused France to fall to Zionism. It was Edmund Burke who said to us that when two parties are drawn into conflict and there is a third party, the power of the two in conflict will fall to the third party. The French monarchy was the only barrier to Zionist rule because it was based upon blood lineage and not a popular vote. After the French revolution and the murder and exile of the royals, who claimed blood lineage to Jesus Christ, France was left to the Zionists who bought France with the power of the purse. In the United States today, Zionism is that same third party. Burke talked about the affects of Zionist rule in France saying:
They have found their punishment in their success: laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting, conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically subverted. Zionism is also the third party in the US today, and we are also feeling and witnessing these same effects.
It is interesting that the hatred of Obama, and the anti Obama rhetoric and gun toting symbolism and threats of violence and revolution, seem to grow in proportion to US calls for Israel to end illegal settlement building in Palestine and a reinvigorated peace process that would see Israel make concessions to the Palestinians that Israel does not intend to make, and also calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve.
It is also interesting that this is exactly how the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin took place. First right wing Zionists began the seemingly harmless verbal insults, calling Rabin a self hating Jew, etc. When Rabin refused to challenge the rhetoric, it got worse, until they were carrying signs in the street calling Rabin Hitler, and even went so far as to burn him in effigy. Soon after a few cries from the left went out for the rhetoric to tone down, Rabin was gunned down by a right wing Zionist settler.
Of course to some people,suggesting that Zionists are pushing the United States into a civil war, or even a revolution if that is the case, seems as crazy as calling Obama Hitler, and also as difficult to believe as the silence of the Democrats. The difference is that suggesting that Zionists are pushing the United States into civil war and chaos could save this country, if given serious consideration, and if the necessary steps are taken to stop the momentum that is pushing us in that direction. Neither Republican incitement, nor the Democrat’s silence can, or will do that.
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
Friday, August 7, 2009
Neo-conservatives, their town hall mobs, the media and America
Neo-conservatives, their town hall mobs, the media and America
It is both intriguing and also disheartening to listen to the cable TV punditry’s characterizations and frustrations regarding the anger of the US public over the health care debate. They are characterizing the people as a mob, and calling them political terrorists. I guess any group can be both, but to be a criminal mob they must be committing crimes, and to be terrorists they must be committing violent crimes aimed at political coercion. To talk loudly, to demonstrate anger and to demand that your elected representative show you at least the minimum of respect owed to taxpayers, is not yet criminal in the US. Of course, if the people harm or even cause another person to feel that their life or property is in any way threatened by the other’s anger and outspokenness that might be a crime, especially if threats of physical harm are made.
Now, let’s stop here for a moment and try to understand what is really happening in the United States. We have three hundred million people in the US of different races, religions and social-economic backgrounds. Politicians and especially neoconservatives are astute in the art of dividing and conquering this three hundred million people, almost at will, and without much effort. Good examples of this control and exploitation are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the neoconservatives decided that the country should go to war, they exploited the fear and anger of the public following 9/11, created a Muslim boogeyman to use as a scapegoat and whipping boy, and took the country to war. The people that the media are now calling the mob and political terrorists, were then the real America, the patriots and the good Christians, when they were needed to serve as a constituency that supported the war, and the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars per month to carry out an illegal act of aggression against a country simply because the people of that country are Arab and Muslim, who control natural resources like oil and natural gas.
Neoconservatives courted the far religious right, empowered them, and even adopted their religious jargon and lingo to create a political language of hatred against Muslims and Arabs that was powerful enough to engulf, and incite an entire world into participating with what they called a war on terrorism, yet what is increasingly being revealed to be a war on Muslims and Islam. This was done in spite of the US Constitution strictly prohibiting the establishment of a state religion, ideology or theology. To many people, this Constitutional prohibition includes a prohibition against showing preferential treatment to any religious group or groups over others.
Yet, since it served neoconservatives to empower and to exploit the far religious right, the preferential treatment the religious right received was overlooked even by many Democrats and people on the left who were benefiting politically and financially from turning their heads to the pro religious fanaticism, pro war, and anti-Muslim and Arab sentiment that was poisoning our country. Hatred of Muslims and Arabs grew to such an extent in our country, that our presidential candidates could not even allow Muslim citizens to be photographed at their gatherings without fear of neoconservative reprisal. In exchange for the support of the Christian Zionists, and neoconservatives, US politicians almost never attempted to reach out to Muslims and/or Arab Americans in any substantive way, in comparison to how they fawned over Zionists for endorsements and votes.
Today, these same people are filling town hall meetings throughout the US, shouting down politicians and expressing their fears, racism and hatred and not surprisingly, it is no longer welcomed by the mainstream media. It is not welcomed because they are no longer railing against Islam and Muslims, or demanding that Muslims and Arabs be tortured. Now they are railing against health care reform, increased taxes and an African American President that they refer to as Hitler. They are now calling the Obama administration Nazis and Obama Hitler, using language that is clearly aimed at inciting anger in Christian and Jewish Zionists, who make up the majority of the far right. In other words, the Frankenstein created by the political elite to serve their desire to invade and destroy Muslim and Arab countries hoping to wipe out Islam and to take control of natural resources, has turned against its government master, not because it no longer shares the desire of neoconservatives to destroy people who are not white and not Christian or Jewish, but because they are possibly angry that the same political elite which they served and even sacrificed their children in wars to please, allowed a Black man to be elected to the US presidency, and before a Zionist Jew was elected to that coveted post.
Neoconservatives are angry because their crimes against the US and the world are almost daily being exposed in the criminal activity of organizations like Blackwater, and the scientific proof that Muslims did not commit the atrocious crime of attacking the US on 9/11 as they had claimed. Their Frankenstein, the religious right is also angry because their role in all of this is exposed, and their political clout is waning. They are so angry that they are oblivious to the fact that the neoconservative politicians, left and right are still exploiting their racism, religious intolerance and hatred, but this time it’s not to incite a fake war on terrorism, but rather it is to insure that the far right wing creates enough political chaos here in the US to prevent a new investigation of 9/11, and to make sure there will be no audit of the Federal Reserve, and no real political reform in the United States, or political success for Barack Obama, which means that health care reform must be undermined.
That is only one side of the story, and it is a side that should not be underestimated for its potential to drag our country into a violent civil war. The other side of the story, though not as complex is equally, if not more important, since it is essential that the political elite get it right in respect to dealing with what is the real silent majority in this country who have decided to be silent no more. They are not Christian right fanatics. They are American citizens from the poor and middle class who are fed up with political corruption, elite entitlement and being ignored.
These are the mostly uneducated blue collar workers of our country and their children, whose manufacturing jobs were exported to Zionist owned firms in India and Israel, and to communist countries like China in globalization schemes. These are the people who lost their homes due to the many mortgage scams and fraud that only came to light once our economy was nearly pushed over a cliff by a failure in the housing and mortgage market that cost the US taxpayer, the same people who have buried nearly 5,000 of their children fallen on foreign soil in wars that have been shown to be wars of choice, more than 700 billion dollars, much of which went to pay bonuses to corporate fat cats who had nearly collapsed the US economy due to their greed. These are angry people who are not religious fanatics, but who are frightened by what appears to be a final push by the political elite to eliminate the middle class and to force them into greater poverty, servitude and desperation.
For the first time in their lives many of these people are on food stamps, and have lost their homes and jobs and most importantly, they have lost their pensions and fear that they are also about to loose Medicare should there be health care reform. They feel humiliated and betrayed by the government.
These people are showing up at the town hall meetings and asking questions that might sound stupid to the political elites and politicians because the elites have become accustomed to listening only to professional corporate lobbyists while eating $100.00 per plate dinners and lunches at fancy restaurants and fund raisers. They have forgotten the sound of the voice of the American citizen, poor and Middle Class because they never talk to these people until they need their money and then its through controlled environments like cable TV and orchestrated town hall meetings where people are pre screened, and allowed to ask only the right questions, or on talk radio where the hosts control the dialogue to serve the elites, while filling the listeners’ heads with propaganda mostly aimed at creating fear of one thing, or another. And in these so called public debates, the citizen is always told that the only way to be saved from the latest and most recent boogeyman, is to give away billions more of their hard earned tax dollars. These people are real. Their anger and fear and frustration is real. They are not all white, or Republican or right wing. They are all Americans.
If the media is sincere in its desire to tone down the anger of this group of Americans, they should first realize that talking angrily to your elected official is not criminal. It does not make you a right wing nut job, or a member of a mob, or a cult. It does not make them political terrorists, or religious fanatics or Zionists. They are the silent majority that Jerry Falwell ignored. These are the people who were content to go to work each day, watch the game or go shopping on weekends, and put their kids through college by working two jobs. Their vision of old age includes sitting on the porch watching kids and cars walk and ride up and down crumbling streets. They vote when it’s important, but most stay away from politics because they know that they don’t really understand much about what is going on, and they know that’s not by accident. Their elected officials don’t talk to them to educate them about the issues, only to indoctrinate them. The politicians, rather than looking for ways to understand better the needs of their constituents, look for ways to put distance between themselves and their constituents, while making themselves more accessible to corporate lobbyists. These Americans are showing up at town hall meetings because they are afraid and angry that their silence and their willingness to just go along, rather than being rewarded, is being punished by what they see as a government that simply has lost touch, and does not care about our country’s poor and working class.
It is important that rather than allowing the media to chastise, criticize and attempt to criminalize these people that we insist that the media and the political elite learn to listen to them. Media pundits are claiming that these people are shutting down the political debate on health care, knowing very well there was never any debate, or discussion taking place. The people have been purposefully silenced by the corporate owned media who regularly stage town hall meetings and decide who will be heard and who will not. The people are shouting because they have decided that they will be heard and that even if their elected representatives will not talk to them, and the media screen them out, they will talk to their elected officials, and if necessary, they will shout.
It is time for the political elites, and the corporate owned media to realize that the people of this country are waking up and they are angry. It would be wise to use this awakening as an opportunity for all of us to reconsider the direction in which our country is headed and to take the necessary steps to heal its rifts and to restore the power that has been usurped from the people, our civil rights and liberties and hopes for happiness. As for the neoconservatives and far religious right, it is time for them to realize that their reign has ended and sanity is returning to America.
It is both intriguing and also disheartening to listen to the cable TV punditry’s characterizations and frustrations regarding the anger of the US public over the health care debate. They are characterizing the people as a mob, and calling them political terrorists. I guess any group can be both, but to be a criminal mob they must be committing crimes, and to be terrorists they must be committing violent crimes aimed at political coercion. To talk loudly, to demonstrate anger and to demand that your elected representative show you at least the minimum of respect owed to taxpayers, is not yet criminal in the US. Of course, if the people harm or even cause another person to feel that their life or property is in any way threatened by the other’s anger and outspokenness that might be a crime, especially if threats of physical harm are made.
Now, let’s stop here for a moment and try to understand what is really happening in the United States. We have three hundred million people in the US of different races, religions and social-economic backgrounds. Politicians and especially neoconservatives are astute in the art of dividing and conquering this three hundred million people, almost at will, and without much effort. Good examples of this control and exploitation are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the neoconservatives decided that the country should go to war, they exploited the fear and anger of the public following 9/11, created a Muslim boogeyman to use as a scapegoat and whipping boy, and took the country to war. The people that the media are now calling the mob and political terrorists, were then the real America, the patriots and the good Christians, when they were needed to serve as a constituency that supported the war, and the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars per month to carry out an illegal act of aggression against a country simply because the people of that country are Arab and Muslim, who control natural resources like oil and natural gas.
Neoconservatives courted the far religious right, empowered them, and even adopted their religious jargon and lingo to create a political language of hatred against Muslims and Arabs that was powerful enough to engulf, and incite an entire world into participating with what they called a war on terrorism, yet what is increasingly being revealed to be a war on Muslims and Islam. This was done in spite of the US Constitution strictly prohibiting the establishment of a state religion, ideology or theology. To many people, this Constitutional prohibition includes a prohibition against showing preferential treatment to any religious group or groups over others.
Yet, since it served neoconservatives to empower and to exploit the far religious right, the preferential treatment the religious right received was overlooked even by many Democrats and people on the left who were benefiting politically and financially from turning their heads to the pro religious fanaticism, pro war, and anti-Muslim and Arab sentiment that was poisoning our country. Hatred of Muslims and Arabs grew to such an extent in our country, that our presidential candidates could not even allow Muslim citizens to be photographed at their gatherings without fear of neoconservative reprisal. In exchange for the support of the Christian Zionists, and neoconservatives, US politicians almost never attempted to reach out to Muslims and/or Arab Americans in any substantive way, in comparison to how they fawned over Zionists for endorsements and votes.
Today, these same people are filling town hall meetings throughout the US, shouting down politicians and expressing their fears, racism and hatred and not surprisingly, it is no longer welcomed by the mainstream media. It is not welcomed because they are no longer railing against Islam and Muslims, or demanding that Muslims and Arabs be tortured. Now they are railing against health care reform, increased taxes and an African American President that they refer to as Hitler. They are now calling the Obama administration Nazis and Obama Hitler, using language that is clearly aimed at inciting anger in Christian and Jewish Zionists, who make up the majority of the far right. In other words, the Frankenstein created by the political elite to serve their desire to invade and destroy Muslim and Arab countries hoping to wipe out Islam and to take control of natural resources, has turned against its government master, not because it no longer shares the desire of neoconservatives to destroy people who are not white and not Christian or Jewish, but because they are possibly angry that the same political elite which they served and even sacrificed their children in wars to please, allowed a Black man to be elected to the US presidency, and before a Zionist Jew was elected to that coveted post.
Neoconservatives are angry because their crimes against the US and the world are almost daily being exposed in the criminal activity of organizations like Blackwater, and the scientific proof that Muslims did not commit the atrocious crime of attacking the US on 9/11 as they had claimed. Their Frankenstein, the religious right is also angry because their role in all of this is exposed, and their political clout is waning. They are so angry that they are oblivious to the fact that the neoconservative politicians, left and right are still exploiting their racism, religious intolerance and hatred, but this time it’s not to incite a fake war on terrorism, but rather it is to insure that the far right wing creates enough political chaos here in the US to prevent a new investigation of 9/11, and to make sure there will be no audit of the Federal Reserve, and no real political reform in the United States, or political success for Barack Obama, which means that health care reform must be undermined.
That is only one side of the story, and it is a side that should not be underestimated for its potential to drag our country into a violent civil war. The other side of the story, though not as complex is equally, if not more important, since it is essential that the political elite get it right in respect to dealing with what is the real silent majority in this country who have decided to be silent no more. They are not Christian right fanatics. They are American citizens from the poor and middle class who are fed up with political corruption, elite entitlement and being ignored.
These are the mostly uneducated blue collar workers of our country and their children, whose manufacturing jobs were exported to Zionist owned firms in India and Israel, and to communist countries like China in globalization schemes. These are the people who lost their homes due to the many mortgage scams and fraud that only came to light once our economy was nearly pushed over a cliff by a failure in the housing and mortgage market that cost the US taxpayer, the same people who have buried nearly 5,000 of their children fallen on foreign soil in wars that have been shown to be wars of choice, more than 700 billion dollars, much of which went to pay bonuses to corporate fat cats who had nearly collapsed the US economy due to their greed. These are angry people who are not religious fanatics, but who are frightened by what appears to be a final push by the political elite to eliminate the middle class and to force them into greater poverty, servitude and desperation.
For the first time in their lives many of these people are on food stamps, and have lost their homes and jobs and most importantly, they have lost their pensions and fear that they are also about to loose Medicare should there be health care reform. They feel humiliated and betrayed by the government.
These people are showing up at the town hall meetings and asking questions that might sound stupid to the political elites and politicians because the elites have become accustomed to listening only to professional corporate lobbyists while eating $100.00 per plate dinners and lunches at fancy restaurants and fund raisers. They have forgotten the sound of the voice of the American citizen, poor and Middle Class because they never talk to these people until they need their money and then its through controlled environments like cable TV and orchestrated town hall meetings where people are pre screened, and allowed to ask only the right questions, or on talk radio where the hosts control the dialogue to serve the elites, while filling the listeners’ heads with propaganda mostly aimed at creating fear of one thing, or another. And in these so called public debates, the citizen is always told that the only way to be saved from the latest and most recent boogeyman, is to give away billions more of their hard earned tax dollars. These people are real. Their anger and fear and frustration is real. They are not all white, or Republican or right wing. They are all Americans.
If the media is sincere in its desire to tone down the anger of this group of Americans, they should first realize that talking angrily to your elected official is not criminal. It does not make you a right wing nut job, or a member of a mob, or a cult. It does not make them political terrorists, or religious fanatics or Zionists. They are the silent majority that Jerry Falwell ignored. These are the people who were content to go to work each day, watch the game or go shopping on weekends, and put their kids through college by working two jobs. Their vision of old age includes sitting on the porch watching kids and cars walk and ride up and down crumbling streets. They vote when it’s important, but most stay away from politics because they know that they don’t really understand much about what is going on, and they know that’s not by accident. Their elected officials don’t talk to them to educate them about the issues, only to indoctrinate them. The politicians, rather than looking for ways to understand better the needs of their constituents, look for ways to put distance between themselves and their constituents, while making themselves more accessible to corporate lobbyists. These Americans are showing up at town hall meetings because they are afraid and angry that their silence and their willingness to just go along, rather than being rewarded, is being punished by what they see as a government that simply has lost touch, and does not care about our country’s poor and working class.
It is important that rather than allowing the media to chastise, criticize and attempt to criminalize these people that we insist that the media and the political elite learn to listen to them. Media pundits are claiming that these people are shutting down the political debate on health care, knowing very well there was never any debate, or discussion taking place. The people have been purposefully silenced by the corporate owned media who regularly stage town hall meetings and decide who will be heard and who will not. The people are shouting because they have decided that they will be heard and that even if their elected representatives will not talk to them, and the media screen them out, they will talk to their elected officials, and if necessary, they will shout.
It is time for the political elites, and the corporate owned media to realize that the people of this country are waking up and they are angry. It would be wise to use this awakening as an opportunity for all of us to reconsider the direction in which our country is headed and to take the necessary steps to heal its rifts and to restore the power that has been usurped from the people, our civil rights and liberties and hopes for happiness. As for the neoconservatives and far religious right, it is time for them to realize that their reign has ended and sanity is returning to America.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
How Judeo/Christian jurisprudence failed the world, and why Islamic law might be our last chance for justice
Without doubt the jurisprudence of the Western world was inspired by the religions Christianity and Judaism. Secularists and atheists in the West have spent years trying to disprove the fact that indeed the laws of their lands were inspired by what is commonly accepted today as the Ten Commandments, other laws of the Old Testament and to a lesser degree the teachings of Jesus Christ.
As the laws of the West were being promulgated, it seems that Western lawmakers took the meaning of the law from the Old Testament, and their ideas of redemption and rehabilitation somewhat from the teachings of Jesus who preached love of enemies, mercy and redemption through God’s grace for all of mankind. Unfortunately in Western jurisprudence, Jesus’ ideas don’t come into play until the Old Testament laws have placed a person in prison where now as a convict, it is believed that the teachings of Jesus should have more bearing on his destiny than the judgment of the Pharisees.
There are those who believe that the term Judeo/Christian reflects the timing of the various periods of rule of these faith’s ideas, Judaism having preceded Christianity. In reality, it is quite possible that the juxtaposition of the terms reflects their position in respect to which commands the greatest amount of influence in our contemporary law and its interpretation. Even today, we find that our supposedly secular legislature in the United States looks quite a bit to the Old Testament for guidance, or at least inspiration in respect to its approaches to war, peace, justice and also punishments. There is practically nothing, either in federal or state laws that give the impression that we , as a country are any longer interested in rehabilitating or redeeming the soul of man except through the evangelicalism of the protestant church which focuses its zeal mainly on the Arab and Muslim world, and of course Africa.
The US Church has seemingly lost interest in saving its domestic flock, except when it’s time to vote. In both the Church’s and the Synagogue’s domestic politics, we find a lot of Caiaphas and very little Jesus in their attitudes on abortion, capital punishment, marriage, homosexuality and entitlement and the legislation passed by our Congress that regulate these customs. Even in respect to law enforcement, we find increasingly that the idea of a constabulary whose aim is to serve and protect the citizen, is giving way to a system where the police officer is seen as an agent of the government whose purpose is to protect the property and interest of the government authority from the citizen who is no longer innocent until proven guilty, but is rather guilty until proven innocent, which is straight out of the Judaism of Pharisees. This seems the case, in spite of the fact that the government owns nothing and has no interest that is not also the citizen’s property and interest.
Prisoners who languish in US prisons, a disproportionate number of which are minorities, African Americans and Hispanics, have been excluded from our American evangelicalism, except when it comes to competing with Islam for converts. Christian converts are given privileges and special treatments in prisons that other prisoners who convert to religions like Islam, or Buddhism are not. There have also been attempts to impose difficult requirements upon Muslim preachers and Imams who which to work in the prisons, and also their Muslim followers. The Church and Synagogue went so far in their attempts to chase Muslim preachers away from the prisons that they launched false and absurd charges that Muslim preachers were radicalizing prisoners against the government, and recruiting them to be domestic terrorists. Even though it has neither been said nor proven, it is my opinion that prisoners like Imam Jamil Al Amin who is being kept in solitary confinement in a super max prison for a crime that he very obviously did not commit, are denied Qur’ans, and the right to pray in congregational prayers because of such lies that were whispered into the ears of legislators, and subsequently the DOJ and Prison Wardens, by evangelicals in competition with Islam.
Of course the case of one man is not enough to support my argument that Judeo/Christian jurisprudence, once touted as the most fair, impartial and independent judicial philosophy and system in the world has failed. Not only has it failed, but it has fallen to the extent that its core principles, stated values and cause are barely visible anymore to the public’s eye, and it is the public’s eye by which any system of justice should be viewed, and not through the eyes of professional jurists, theorists and judges.
Perhaps the most glaring example of the failure of the Judeo/Christian judicial system is the United State’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. We need go no further to mention the backlash against Muslims and Arabs following 9/11. The rounding up of innocents who were placed in secret prisons where they were tortured, not to get information to protect civilization from the violence of religious extremists, but rather to coerce false confessions from innocent people, hoping to provide testimony to support the war on terrorism initiated by Israel prior to 9/11, is also a sign of moral and legal failure.
Following 9/11 our government, with the knowledge and assistance of Europe, rounded up young men, denied them their freedom because of their race and religion, tortured them and killed them because these governments were looking for false confessions about fake Muslim plots to carry out fictional acts of terrorism. This is not to mention that bodies of jurisprudence, like the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Law, Secret Evidence Act, and the Patriot Act which were adopted by our government, and similar laws adopted by government’s throughout the world who followed our lead as we enacted laws that stripped citizens of freedom, sought to deny people the right to self defense, that authorized illegal wiretapping and denied citizens the presumption of innocence and due process, all under the false guise of fighting terrorism.
The most persuasive sign of systemic failure is when a system fails to, or is incapable of responding to a crisis in a way that is consistent with its own self confessed values, principles and objectives. Judeo/Christian jurisprudence was not only incapable of rising to the challenge of blood lust and desire for revenge that permeated our society after the false flag attacks of 9/11, political appointees within our government were allowed to re-interpret and in some cases actually to rewrite laws to facilitate government lawlessness. US Prosecutors were dispatched with the command to round up Muslims and Arabs right here in the US to be deported, or arrested and tried sometimes twice or three times on the same charge until the prosecutor could find a jury that would convict people for acts carried out before laws were passed that criminalized past behavior.
The US judiciary became the primary battleground for the war on Islam being waged through our government by the Church and Synagogue, as war on terrorism, which is why our media never covered a single terrorism trial, except the trial of a French citizen named Mossaoui who shouted very negative and ridiculous claims about Islam to the jury during his testimony. He is a supposed Al Qadea operative that shared an e-mail with a US citizen of Jewish faith, who was killed in Iraq. It was reported upon the Jewish-American’s death, that his personal belongings included a Qur’an and anti-US propaganda that was littered with Qur’anic references, possibly to be left strategically at false flag crime scenes where Islam would be scapegoated as the usual suspect.
Instead of focusing on the crash of the US judicial system taking place before our very eyes, the media kept their lens focused on the illegal wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars kept American blood boiling and our fear level high enough to convince us that any challenge to our government’s errant behavior and the destruction of our judiciary was unpatriotic, undermining the troops, and making the US vulnerable to more attacks. Not until recently has the American public began to realize that the war on terrorism is a monumental hoax that has cost us billions in dollars, a priceless value in the lives of our young men and women who gave their lives in these crusades, and also those who have been injured and disabled for life. It also cost us our moral authority and our prestige and good standing in the world. Where were the judges, the lawyers, the great legal theorists and law professors? Why did they sit silently and not challenge those who were clearly undermining our judiciary and in fact our country?
The genocide in Palestine by contrast to Iraq and Afghanistan is a much more plain and convincing sign of the failure of the Judeo/Christian judicial theory and system of the West in my view. Through this conflict we have learned that Judeo/Christian law is not blind and equal if you are not Christian or Jewish, non white and rich. We also learned that there is no moral obligation either stated or implied towards those who are not Christian, Jewish European, or rich and famous. Keep in mind that the Ashkenazi Jews that rule Israel are white and European, and that it is their Talmud, even more than the Orthodox Jew’s and the Zionist Christian’s Old Testament that is undermining the world in respect to the rule of law and moral justice.
The fact that Israel has been allowed to implant itself through ethnic cleansing in the Muslim world based upon a fictional right supported by a suspect interpretation of their Old Testament historicism, should be enough to cause any jurist of any legal philosophy to cry foul. That this ethnic cleansing has been allowed to take place over 60 years, in violation of every law known to God and man is another proof that Judeo/Christian justice is not available to non Jews and non Christians, or Christians of the wrong race or culture. In fact Judeo/Christian law has proven incapable of recognizing the equal value of all human life and the equal potential for good of every human soul.
The most ironic and also the most disheartening fact in respect to the systemic failure of Judeo/Christian jurisprudence in respect to the colonization of Palestine by the European Ashkenazim, and the subsequent 9/11 failures, is that this is not the first time that it has failed so dramatically and destructively. It’s first historic failure of this magnitude was during the human slave trade of Africans to the West’s “New World” and the second was arguably the genocide against the Native Americans and then the periods of European colonization when neither the Church, or the European colonial governments were able to see or understand the evil of their project, even though their own judicial philosophy should have suggested to them that what was taking place in India, Africa and Latin America was not only a moral crime, but it was also the failure of Judeo/Christian jurisprudence to judge accurately and fairly the actions of its own society and leaders, and to hold them accountable.
It is important that we not only recognize this systemic civilizational failure in our lifetimes, but it is also important that we address it appropriately. The Judeo/Christian judicial philosophy has inspired and guided the establishment of independent judiciaries throughout the world, including many in the Muslim world. This judicial system of Judeo/Christian laws is arguably the single most significant cause of violence in the entire world, and might also be the cause of much of the world’s poverty, and much of the world’s crime. Its rhetoric fills the hearts and minds of people young and old with delusions of perfect justice that simply does not exist in the Judeo/Christian world and that could never be attained by a system, the very foundation of which is racial and class preference.
Anisa Abd el Fattah is the founder and Chairwoman of the National Association of Muslim American Women. She has a PH.D. in Islamic Jurisprudence from the Islamic College for Advanced Studies in London.
Friday, May 22, 2009
NAMAW to call for DOJ investigation of recent NY terror arrests
National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW)
Press Release
National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) calls for US Department of Justice investigation into alleged terrorism case targeting synagogues and airplanes.
Domestic war on terrorism tactics are likely unconstitutional.
Washington DC, May 22, 2009
The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) in response to FBI and NYPD allegations, and the arrests of six Muslim men who are charged with plotting to bomb synagogues and airplanes in New York, will ask the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to initiate an investigation to determine whether or not these men were entrapped in a year long scheme that was carried out to criminalizie these men in a plot that was in fact conceived, guided and facilitated by an FBI informant. This suggests to us that this was in fact an FBI plot, rather than a plot that was created and advanced by these men. According to the information released today there was neither any willful intent, nor were these men capable of carrying out such a plot without help from the FBI.
We believe that this supposed conspiracy was dreamed up by the FBI informant who coerced these men who reportedly have very limited intellectual abilities, one who is reportedly a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, to participate with him in a fake plot to blow up synagogues and an airplane in New York. The FBI said in its own statement that they allowed the informant to carry out a psychological campaign for a entire year, that was intended to make these men depressed and aggravated about the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. The informant then persuaded these men into believing that their religion obligated them to carry out acts of violence in the United States in retaliation for US war crimes being carried out in the Muslim world. Once the desired psychological conditioning was achieved, the informant supplied fake weapons and explosives to the suspects, and it was only then that the FBI and NYPD moved to arrest these men. In our opinion, this is a classic case of entrapment, and if what we believe is true, the FBI may have violated these men's civil rights, and the informant may in fact be guilty of criminal entrapment.
We feel that the case, and the questions raised by this case have created a need for further investigation and we hope that the Department of Justice will agree with us. We are in the process of retaining an attorney to guide us in our pursuit of the truth and justice for these young men, who may not be guilty of anything more than mental illness, retardation, and sympathy for other Muslims.
Our worse suspicion is that these men have been entrapped in an ongoing political campaign being carried out by the FBI that is aimed at creating the illusion that all Muslims are either terrorists or potential terrorists, thereby substantiating the use of racial and religious profiling on Muslims and Arabs, and the use of controversial and possibly unconstitutional "preventive" crime techniques exclusively on Muslims and Arabs. Just as we have recently learned that waterboarding was used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay to coerce false confessions linking Iraq to Al Qadea, hoping to create a false cause for war against Iraq, these types of domestic plots, arrests, and publicity might be intended to create fear in our society of Arabs, Muslims.and the religion of Islam. The intent might also be to create fear that might result in a willingness on the part of citizens to surrender rights in exchange for a false sense of safety, and to substantiate more funding for the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and to strengthen the rationale for perpetual preemptive war against Muslims, Arabs and Islam.
- END-
For more information contact NAMAW at: namaw01@gmail.com
The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) is the United State's first and only pro life and pro family Muslim woman's political action committee.
Press Release
National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) calls for US Department of Justice investigation into alleged terrorism case targeting synagogues and airplanes.
Domestic war on terrorism tactics are likely unconstitutional.
Washington DC, May 22, 2009
The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) in response to FBI and NYPD allegations, and the arrests of six Muslim men who are charged with plotting to bomb synagogues and airplanes in New York, will ask the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to initiate an investigation to determine whether or not these men were entrapped in a year long scheme that was carried out to criminalizie these men in a plot that was in fact conceived, guided and facilitated by an FBI informant. This suggests to us that this was in fact an FBI plot, rather than a plot that was created and advanced by these men. According to the information released today there was neither any willful intent, nor were these men capable of carrying out such a plot without help from the FBI.
We believe that this supposed conspiracy was dreamed up by the FBI informant who coerced these men who reportedly have very limited intellectual abilities, one who is reportedly a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, to participate with him in a fake plot to blow up synagogues and an airplane in New York. The FBI said in its own statement that they allowed the informant to carry out a psychological campaign for a entire year, that was intended to make these men depressed and aggravated about the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. The informant then persuaded these men into believing that their religion obligated them to carry out acts of violence in the United States in retaliation for US war crimes being carried out in the Muslim world. Once the desired psychological conditioning was achieved, the informant supplied fake weapons and explosives to the suspects, and it was only then that the FBI and NYPD moved to arrest these men. In our opinion, this is a classic case of entrapment, and if what we believe is true, the FBI may have violated these men's civil rights, and the informant may in fact be guilty of criminal entrapment.
We feel that the case, and the questions raised by this case have created a need for further investigation and we hope that the Department of Justice will agree with us. We are in the process of retaining an attorney to guide us in our pursuit of the truth and justice for these young men, who may not be guilty of anything more than mental illness, retardation, and sympathy for other Muslims.
Our worse suspicion is that these men have been entrapped in an ongoing political campaign being carried out by the FBI that is aimed at creating the illusion that all Muslims are either terrorists or potential terrorists, thereby substantiating the use of racial and religious profiling on Muslims and Arabs, and the use of controversial and possibly unconstitutional "preventive" crime techniques exclusively on Muslims and Arabs. Just as we have recently learned that waterboarding was used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay to coerce false confessions linking Iraq to Al Qadea, hoping to create a false cause for war against Iraq, these types of domestic plots, arrests, and publicity might be intended to create fear in our society of Arabs, Muslims.and the religion of Islam. The intent might also be to create fear that might result in a willingness on the part of citizens to surrender rights in exchange for a false sense of safety, and to substantiate more funding for the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and to strengthen the rationale for perpetual preemptive war against Muslims, Arabs and Islam.
- END-
For more information contact NAMAW at: namaw01@gmail.com
The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) is the United State's first and only pro life and pro family Muslim woman's political action committee.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The state of the Muslim Ummah (Community)
With the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
The State of the Muslim Ummah (Community)
As we look around at the world today, it is almost impossible to escape the feeling that something is tremendously wrong, and out of balance. Never before in our life times have things seemed more chaotic, while at the same time seeming to be orchestrated, shaped and imposed by a power or influence that is extremely dark and negative. Who ever imagined that one day the United States of America would be embroiled in wars whose aims are not to safe guard freedom, nor to address gross injustices or to defend itself from an imminent threat? Who among us would have ever dreamed that the United States of America would one day come to represent an oppressive, and occupying power that has set itself on a collision course with more than 1.5 billion people based upon what they believe. Who among us would ever have believed that the United States of America, a country founded by monotheists seeking a place where they could worship God freely and without fear of government persecution, would one day invade countries and kill people simply because they believe that there is only One God, and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah of Mecca is the last of His prophets, and that a Book called the Qur’an, that was revealed to that illiterate and humble man living in a desert over 1400 years ago, is God’s last Divinely revealed message to mankind. Who would ever believe that the United States of America would become the worldly power used to forcefully impose a New Secular World Order upon God’s earth, the aim of which is to reorder God’s creation, to abolish His laws, and to establish new man made laws whose purpose is to bring mankind into submission to the darkest inclinations of the human soul, which are greed for wealth, violence and lust for kingdom, dominion, and immortality.
A country whose Constitution once guaranteed the rights of all men to
believe in God freely and to express that belief freely openly, has become a country that goes to war and kills people because of what they believe about God, and his message to mankind. What is even more starling and unbelievable is that many Arab and Muslim governments have aligned themselves with these Secularists, and irreligious fanatics in their attempt to reorder the human society and to recreate it according to their laws and desires. They even help to kill and to starve Muslims and our children, looking for power, favors and protection from the godless.
A country whose Constitution was once the gold standard for social contracts that recognized and sought to protect the God given and inalienable rights of all human beings, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is now a country that spends days and weeks and months and years publicly debating whether or not torture works, and whether or not we should adopt and endorse the use of torture, even though it is against our laws, and traditions and is clearly not only illegal, but also immoral. Imagine that one of our country’s faith leaders would submit to that debate, the idea that we are not to contemplate what Jesus would do in a ticking bomb situation, but rather what Jesus would expect us to do and how far he would expect us to go to save innocent lives by torturing people to get information from them. This is the thinking and logic of one of the leaders of a religious organizations that professes the belief that Jesus Christ gave his life on a cross where he was tortured, because he would not forsaken his belief in One God, and in the message that he taught, which was revealed to him by that God. According to this imposters belief, Jesus Christ was tortured an died upon a cross for what he believed, yet he would expect his followers to torture to save lives. This failed logic also ignores the simple truth that you cannot know if someone has information about a ticking bomb unless you already have that same information. Even a lie detector test will fail in a situation where a person is being tortured. The truth is that they are sadist and they enjoy hurting others, especially Muslims.
The logic of that man is not the logic of Jesus, it is the the logic of the Pharisees, who felt that Jesus deserved to be scourged and killed because he refused to submit to their authority, and because he would not compromise his message to the Hebrew people, calling them to repentance for the false worship of men they had adopted after entering a covenant with God to worship him only, and to preserve the Book and the laws that had been revealed to the prophet Moses. Jesus gave hope to those of other tribes saying that God would send them a prophet, and described the prophet Muhammad (sa) who did receive a Divinely revealed and universal message for all of mankind.
This Secular World Order that is advancing like a storm, rumbling across the landscape of God’s earth has a history, and it goes back to the beginning, back to the story of creation where a disobedient entity that felt it had the right and power to challenge God for dominion over God’s creation said to God in rebellion, that he would not bow down to man, but rather should rule mankind because he was created of fire, and man from dust. These are metaphors representing the power to destroy over the power to procreate. It represents the power of fear used to subjugate mankind, in competition with the power of love as an incentive for life and the loyal worship of our Creator. Fire cannot create or give life, it cannot nourish or advance life, and it can only frighten and destroy unless it is controlled by a benevolent spirit that is of greater power. Thus, we have the quintessential battle between good and evil, acted out for us as the battle between Satan, the rebellious entity and Adam, the worldly father of mankind, created of love and dust, life giving and sustaining substances that are more powerful than fear of destruction, and lusts for kingdom and immortality in a darkened soul. So the objective of the rebellious entity is to prevent illumination, because the light shows mankind the pathway to God, our sustainer and source of real power.
Most of us who are familiar with religious texts and ways of thinking, look out at the world and see the fulfillment of prophecies, and those of us who seemingly recognize the times we are living in as the proverbial Last Days, will also realize, or rather remember that such days do not portend the end of the worlds, but rather they portend the coming of a day that the Qur’an says will be a Day that no one can put back, meaning it is Day that is unavoidable, the date for its arrival being fixed and will not be changed.
It is the arrival of this day that those who love God and who trust in Him await with fear, and it is a Day that the wicked and rebellious soul does not recognize, believe in, or fear, and it is this lack of belief or concern for the destination of their souls after death that will be the cause for their punishment and destruction. God told the prophet Muhammad in the Qur’an to remind the wicked of this Day, so they might learn to fear God. It is a day when every soul will be called to account for its violations of Gods laws and sins, and it is a Day where the righteous souls who have born the hardship of struggle towards God in a world wrought with evil, will find its relief, and its salvation.
The Qur’an says the angels will greet the righteous and say this is the promise of God fulfilled, so enter the garden with happiness in security. The righteous will return to the Garden from whence our father Adam was expelled as punishment for his disobedience. God’s promise to illuminate the path for those who desire to worship Him, will be fulfilled and the righteous will inherit the kingdom that Adam was temporarily denied. The Qur’an says those who enter the garden will be dressed in garments of green silk and brocade, and they will wear jewels, and sit upon thrones. The Qur’an says they will be fed the purest of foods and they will drink the most satisfying drinks while enjoying the companionship of the best and most beautiful of God’s creation. By contrast the wicked will be covered with burning tar that will cover their faces and bodies and they will burn until they are completely destroyed only to be reconstituted to be burned and destroyed over and over again. The Qur’an says they will drink a drink of the draining of wounds like puss.
The Muslim Ummah or community of Muslims exists in the world today as a sanctuary for those who believe, and who have the desire to return to the garden and to receive their inheritance and to live in peace in proximity to their Creator. I use the word sanctuary to suggest that within the company of Muslims it is accepted to believe in God, and to worship Him and to love Him, and to serve Him, unlike in the world without God. This ummah, which is not defined by geography or race, or color, but only by belief stretches across God’s earth. There is not a place on earth where there are not Muslims. We can imagine that this is due to the fact that we are carriers of something that no other people possess, and that is the truth, and the last message. What is that message? It is that mankind must repent and return from false worship of idols back to the worship of the One True God, or on the Day of Judgment the rebellious soul will be condemned to hell. It is the knowledge of God, His laws and His way that is the barrier to the complete dominion of God’s earth by the wicked and this is why they are at war with Islam. It is because darkness and light cannot co-exist. God said in the Qur’an that He hurled the truth and knocked the brains out of falsehood and that when truth arrives falsehood perishes because it is the nature of falsehood to perish. Falsehood is an illusion, like the power of Pharaoh, sorcery and illusion, while God’s power is real, perfect and complete, and it will not only destroy the Pharaohs of this world, it will destroy their sorcery and illusions, thereby freeing the human being from enslavement to falsehood and fear.
It is this message, this hope, this salvation that has made Islam the leading system of faith and life in the world. It is this power, this hope and opportunity that has caused Islam to be the fastest growing religion in the world. It is this brotherhood that is providing the comfort and the protection of the believers and it is this brotherhood that is organized to oppose and to defeat the forces of evil that seek to destroy belief in the One True God, and His laws, and to wipe out those who worship Him and Him alone.
The Hajj is a reflection of the state of the Ummat. When we see that it is well organized and orderly, and that the people are there in great numbers, it is the fulfillment of God’s promise to the prophet Muhammad (sa) where he said “Call them to the pilgrimage and they will come…” This is referring to the believing people. The Qur’an says they will come by any way possible, and will be lean on account of the distance and hardship of the journey. This doesn’t only that they are physically under nourished, but rather that they are a people who have traveled from a state of ignorance to truth and they have shed all of the excesses of life that impair the journey, or return to God, such as lusts and greed for anything except God.
The Hajj is the physical and spiritual manifestation of Ummah since it is where we gather in this world as we will, Insha Allah in heaven. We are all the same in dress, all the same in appearance, different only in name and experience and desire and need. We all come to Hajj for repentance, we all come to Hajj seeking nearness to God, seeking brotherhood, seeking peace, seeking forgiveness of sin, and also seeking guidance and restoration of our power. The rituals of Hajj are purifying because this ummah should be pure. We should not be committing sin and violation of God’s laws knowingly and purposefully. We should not be aiding others to carry out sin and to obscure the truth or to destroy and persecute the innocent. We should not be aiding the wicked to destroy God’s laws, or to abolish His order and replace it with a secular world order. We are a sanctuary and our presence should be saving and sustaining the believing people, and God’s earth.
In the Qur’an God cautioned the prophet Muhammad to be careful of the leadership of this Ummat. He told the prophet Muhammad to be careful about who is given authority in the mosques. He commanded the prophet Muhammad to replace the wicked, whose prayers are not answered and whose worship in the mosque is equal to whistling and clapping of hands, with the pure and pious who will strive and fight in the way of God, and not merely give water and creature comforts to pilgrims, and those who attend the mosques. The mosque is the center of Muslim ummat, and it must be kept clean, and it must be pure and it can only be led, and cared for by the righteous servants of God who have achieved proximity to God because God said about these people that he would hear their prayers and make their efforts successful, while he said about the hypocrites and the sinful unrepentant soul that it will be ineffective and all of its efforts would fail.
This ummat is in a perpetual state of Hajj, even when we are not in Mecca we are convening the lesser Hajj every Friday Jummah in the mosques. It is the time for repentance of sins, fellowship and guidance. It is the time for discussion of community affairs and settling disputes and distributing charity and visiting the sick and those who have been imprisoned.
The world is at war with Islam, but we are at peace. They are lying and hiding behind words that only fool people who have no God. The Qur’an says that those who God guides no one can mislead them, and those who God empower, no one can defeat them. The state of this Ummat is strong, yet it can be stronger. In spite of the loss of life and destruction of property, and the continuous attempts at our destruction, the believing people continue the journey, inviting every human being to take sanctuary with us, because God did create this Ummat as a sanctuary for mankind. As they kill millions of Muslims, the numbers of Muslims grow by millions. God says in the Qur’an about those who return to God in such circumstances, that even if they had been at home peacefully sleeping their beds and the time to transcend this life had come, they would have left us. It is only the circumstances of the illusion of their deaths that concern us, because these circumstances were allowed to challenge us and to test our abhorrence for injustice and sin, and mistreatment of the poor and weak. We will not exact justice because it appears that they died. We will exact justice because they were killed unjustly.
The prophet Muhammad (sa) taught us that no one should ever fear treachery from us, or theft from us, or violence and rudeness or offense from us. God told us in the Qur’an to even help the wicked and our enemies towards righteousness and cautioned us not to cause evil by provocation, incitement and misguidance.
It is very sad that Satan has sunk his stinger deep into the heart of the United States and other supposedly great powers and caused them to be used to attempt to wipe out Islam by killing its adherents and destroying their countries while attempting to confiscate our wealth and resources. They will never succeed, but worse and sadder is the fact that the innocent blood spilled has a price and the soul an owner who will demand His right and payment. Who will be able to pay?
We must remove our love and hearts from this world. We must enjoy the blessings of this life and the next, but not in sin. The material things should never mean more to us than salvation and nearness to God and eternal home in paradise. We must remember who we are as an ummat, and our purpose and we must be about this business of ours.
Make the word of God, which is the truth, available to all of mankind by every means except compulsion. Purify the mosques and establish the daily prayers. Attend the Jummah and use this day for all of its special attributes. No longer tolerate that any except the pure and righteous believers have authority over our mosques and our affairs. We must be guided by love, and desire for all of mankind to be spared hardship. We do this with charity, kind speech, personal and communal cleanliness, orderliness and minding our own business. The single should marry, and the married should procreate. Those burdened by vices and sins and addictions should never despair of God’s mercy and we should not cast them out for Satan to devour. Let them be part of the fellowship so long as they do not advertise or openly and promiscuously advocate sin and rebellion. In all of this let us remember that God said in the Qur;an that He has created a sanctuary for mankind so that mankind will be safe from being picked off and snatched away by Satan and the desires. We, this Ummat is that Sanctuary.
Allah bestows peace and blessings on the prophet Muhammad, his family and companions. Allah forgives this Ummat and guides us and blesses us. Oh Master, give us the wisdom and strength to bear the challenges with which you test and purify us and give us the grace to lead and protect the righteous. Make your Ummat a sanctuary for the sick, the poor, the frightened and the weak, and those who are seeking to know you and to worship you and you alone. Bless us with kind hearts and do not curse us to be cold hearted and violent. Make us exemplary to the world and a testament to your power and glory. Temper our anger and lusts for kingdom and immortality and make us accepting of your authority, your Decree, and your law. Make us successful, and give us refuge from the torment of the grave and from the hellfire. Ameen.
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