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Holy Currensy…
BY JOHN SMITH Even
though the consequences of publishing the drawings of the Prophet
Mohamed has
taken many turns up until now, somehow still all of them seem rather
standardized. Christian
fundamentalists are taking for themselves the right to insult an entire
civilization by publishing drawings of the Prophet, an act that is not
even
remotely connected to any form of freedom of speech that Westerners are
so
engaged in practicing. Muslims
around the world are getting all upset about this cheap provocation,
burning
flags, economically boycotting products from some Western countries,
showing
that for some people on this planet still some things are holy,
undebatably. While
this circle dance is spinning, over here everyone seems to know what
all this
is about; a bad forgery of what it means to practice our democratic
freedoms
like freedom of speech are going to the highest bidder. While Muslims
around
the World are demanding apologies for something we do not understand
why we
should give, the people who were fighting for centuries for these
freedoms we
are so heavily abusing these days are for sure turning in their graves.
Why? This just
one more time truly reflects how we no longer have any respect for
anything
that does not come in the form of hard, soft, or liquid -oil currency.
This is
also why we just cannot relate to the fact that they are burning
Western flags.
They are sending us the message that they would rather die of hunger
than put
up with our ignorance that yet again resulted in the completely
unnecessary
insult of an entire civilization. The whole
thing does not in any way help to diminish the already sharpened
conflict
between the civilizations, a conflict which we do not see as an actual
consequence also of our own actions, which therefore results also in
our
responsibility for the results of the very same actions. We are as
always very
quick to define them as fundamentalists, in order to contrast them with
us as
so much more progressive. In any event, we are presenting ourselves as
the ones
trying to make this world a better place, as the ones who know with
certainty
that the world would be so much better a place if everyone would just
give in
to the Western democratic model. Politically,
of course, while THE cause is up for grabs, the needy are in queue to
use it
for legitimatization of their own agendas that do not necessarily have
anything
to do with the issue as it is; but it in any case can prove to have a
bigger
than ever potential for pushing one’s own hidden agenda,
legitimating themselves
as true members if the progressive side of the world that is doing its
best to
reorganize the other side, the less progressive side, daily by the
occupation
of it, by bombing it into ashes, doing to it previously unthinkable
things
under the constant excuse of doing it for THE cause. I recall
not so long ago the same parody of an entire system of persuasion
demonizing
the entire population of After
all, there is no better way of mutating a disease then letting people
act out
of their own inherited paranoia about totalitarian dictatorships,
acting out of
one’s unreasonable fears about something that we can only
slightly compare to
the same original they were suffering under, since ruling the middle
eastern
countries or relating to an entirely different civilization about which
we know
so little, is so much more complicated anyway. We all
knew what was going to happen after the Americans invaded Iraq, since
Americans
had shown us now so many times in history what they are capable of
doing to
realize their goals while then assigning responsibility for it to
someone else.
So my question is why was it more important to act as if we did not
know,
despite the fact that history repeats itself and we all know to what
degree
American understanding of what is going on in this world does not fit
the
picture of reality that the rest of us share, and we knew very well how
American foreign policies have always been closely coordinated with
their
economic interests rather than ever using politics to coordinate world
peace or
anything resembling it, not even by a far resemblance as it were? The
answers
to which we might never find out. And media of
course is not of much help unless they are there to either
sabotage us or preferably to demonise us as much as the Norwegian
non-existent
ethics of journalism allow it to at any given time and at any
opportunity. For example, “Hvorfor,
Quafa?” a Danish documentary
series which deals with a vision of Islam from the Muslim point of view
created
by an originally Moroccan lady which had grown up in the Danish
integration
system is not of course transmitted on Norwegian television in any
suitable
program time slot which might tempt people to inform themselves and
learn
something. This program, even on the sate run NRK channel, is squeezed
in with
a series of children’s programs and stupid American dating
programs between the
late morning hours and lunch time on Sundays. Have you
really asked yourselves whether Muslim women are oppressed?
There are more rules in the Koran today which protect women from abuse
than
there are similar laws in the various European laws, which protect
women from
being maltreated. And if you think that they are then you should ask
yourselves
whether women in our secular as well as Christian marriages are any
better off
since there are no rules in the Bible that are specifically there for
the
protection of women only. And as for the arranged marriages, well just
take a
look around and make a note of how many people you know that married
for love
and how many that have married for whatever other reason? Those
‘whatever other
reasons’ are exactly the ones upon which the arranged marriages
are based. By
the way, the arranged marriage is not the same as forced marriage, and
any
average Per or Kari should have understood the difference between the
two by
now. The first
word in the Koran is ‘learn’ and it embraces an act of
which
we humans are capable of in the broadest sense possible, irrespective
of the
human being’s gender. Some
other questions that remain unanswered, but that still leave a trace in
an
empty space that still awaits for an awakening of the revolutionaries
who
continue turning in their graves are: Why is it
that we always seem to attack aspects of the religion that we are not
trying to
understand too much about, aspects that cannot be changed because they
are
simply holy? Why
aren’t we attacking the aspects that can actually be changed,
like the
treatment of women and children? Why
aren’t we attacking the aspects, which obviously are caused by
misinterpretations of the Koran and Mohamed scriptures? Identical
misinterpretations of the Bible that we have, and that we are still
living
daily, should be no big news for us. We used centuries to get over our
own
misinterpretations and to define them away as illegitimate due to the
intentional misuse of whatever people are willing to believe. On the
other hand, everyone should understand by now that something is
seriously
missing in this entire discussion. One voice is for some reason not
appearing
often enough. Where are
those voices that can explain to us that not all Muslims are
fundamentalists
and that not all the fundamentalists are Muslims? Is it
that after so many centuries of attempted domination over all other
continents,
our intelligence appears to be on such a low level that the only way we
can
think of others, the ones that do not resemble ourselves, is only in
absurd
generalizations? Why? Copyright © 2006 Dictum.noISSN 1504-5307 |