Certain facts about liberties and the ways they are guaranteed and cultivated by the Western world and the French in particular. a. Brigitte Bardot was fined by the French because she went to town proclaiming that Muslims were ruining French culture!!! This is the overarching sentiment of the Western nations. They cannot handle the reverse colonisation. It was fine when they diluted the cultures of their colonies and exploited them no end. b. The Hijab is banned. Enough has been said on the unfairness of this with regards to how it curtails freedom of expression. c. Pro-Palestine protests are banned. Freedom of expression the casualty again. d. Charlie did not lampoon Judaism much. Catholicism occasionally. Why the focus on Islam? e. In France it is considered rude to say anything personal to another person, anything about their clothes or their hair or even their pet. How is being rude to their religion considered so fine? f. France purports to be the crucible of the finer things in life, but they have a history of xenophobia. Their brutal treatment of Algerians, Moroccans, Moors bears testimony to this. Their treatment of other Europeans even. French are the most insular of societies. In 1922 they issued a postage stamp(see below) - it showed the heads of Moroccan soldiers killed in battle. Not very civilised I am afraid. g. They, along with the Obama administration supported the passage of a resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Council to create an international standard restricting some anti-religious speech (its full name: “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief”). Predictably, Egypt’s U.N. ambassador heralded the resolution as exposing the “true nature” of free speech and a recognition of the fact that “freedom of expression has been sometimes misused” to insult religion. He is not wrong. h. If you were to magically make Islam disappear tomorrow from everybodys minds, but letting nationalism remain, only that which is not driven by religion - you would still have Palestine or Kashmir. If you set a null hypothesis that Islam is all to blame - the hypothesis is falsified before you even start putting it down. If Islam is not all the problem then we have to look at causal effect relationships. If you have laid the null hypothesis that most terrorists are Muslim, then it will be true. But this hypothesis seen in conjunction with the previous one make it amply clear that we have to look further. Believing and focussing on Islam and Muslims as the problems alone is witch-hunting and not looking for solutions. And it is hypocritical. Fictional WMD, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, 26 regime changes effected in the ME by one agency alone - the CIA, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, pissing on the Koran, pissing on wrongfully detained prisoners, drones, torture, the list is endless. Unless the West sees reason in not prolonging the agony of civilisation, this will continue. For the simple fact is that the West by its own admission suffers from Islamophobia and to accept its wrongs and come clean would be the civilised thing to do. Without which not much progress can be made. Notwithstanding the most important fact, that Islam is ripe and Islamic nation states more so, specially the monarchies, for a revolution.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 19:02:40 +0000