Holy Currency…

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 Eastern Europe as communists. Is our memory so short? Is our memory so selective? Or do we just choose to play ‘blind?’ Absolutely everything that was going on behind the Wall was defined and rejected as wrong, bad for us, and totally unacceptable, ‘red bandits’, and whatever else this side was able to pin on them, whenever whatever occasion might have allowed it.

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?

Holy Currency…

Copyright © 2006 Dictum.no

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