I am a Muslim; I Did Not Do It: I Do Not Need to be Apologetic! By: Rajai R. Masri Sunday January 11, 2015 I am one of the 1.6 billion Muslims, nearly one quarter of the Earth’s population, who belongs to an educated class, multinational in both educational and citizenship background who is stupefied each time there is an act of violence or a crime committed by an extremely tiny fringe outlaws stand accused and Needs to make an apology. Fashionable these days are acts of senseless terror carried out by fringe Islamists termed Jihadist Salafists who were long bred in the laboratories of Western Intelligence Agencies; nurtured and fattened in the kitchens of foreign sponsors, mostly Western, to advance a “Politics of Expediency” disruptive plans in the service of Western Hegemonic designs. Nothing of the likes of nowadays Jihadist Islamists, often termed “Islamic Terrorists,” ever existed in the annals of the History of Islam. When Princeton University Professor Bernard Lewis, an ardent Zionist, looked around to find parallels in the long Islamic history to the nowadays bloody and murderous phenomenon of the Jihadist Salafists - the world expert on Islam he claims he; however, all that Bernard Lewis could find was going back nearly a thousand years ago to a small splinter outlaws renowned by the name of the “Assassins.” The Assassins were a mostly duped small terrorist group – where the name “Assassins” is derived from meaning in Arabic the “Hashasheen,” i.e. the duped lot. The Assassins were started and controlled by a Zealot Muslim of the Ishmaelite Sect by the name of Hassan El-Sabbah. The Assassins were a secretive group sworn to blind allegiance to their leader who took refuge in a remote inaccessible mountain in Asia Minor Region of nowadays Turkey. Hassan El-Sabbah was a contemporary of the famous Persian poet philosopher Omer El-Khayyam. The Great Arab-French novelist Amin Malouf did a great justice relating to that epoch and the fictitious story of the two prominent personalities of Hassan El-Sabbah and Omar El-Khayyam in his romantic fiction novel “Samarkand,” 1988. The Jihadist Salafists movement is entirely a Western Intelligence Creation phenomenon tracing its origin to the start of the Mujahedeen Movement in the early 1980s. The Mujahedeen Movement became known as the Arab Afghans was started by the CIA with the objective of enlisting Islam as a motivator to combat the Soviet Union’s troops present in Afghanistan. The enlisting of the Mujahedeen to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan was intended to serving a double whammy strategic objective in President Ronald Regan Administration’s plan to bleed the Soviet Union while simultaneously engaging the Warsaw Pact in an armament race that would divert essential economic resources from civilian applications, a strategy that eventually led to the exhaustion and the fall of the Soviet Union by the closing of the decade of the 1980s. The Islamic Mujahedeen featuring among their prominent leaders no other than Osama Ben Laden himself as one of the Arab Afghans leaders as Mujahedeen leaders were warmly received by the Regan Administration. In one occasion President Regan posed for a commemorative group photo in the White House Oval Office with some of the Mujahedeen visiting leaders. After the end of the first Afghan war the well-trained Mujahedeen were abandoned by their Western sponsors as some were imprisoned and tortured once they returned to their home countries causing deep bitterness as in the example of the current leader of Al-Qaeda Ayman El-Zawaheri the Right hand man of Osama Bin Laden who was imprisoned and tortured by the Egyptian security services upon his return to Egypt from fighting the Soviet Union troops in Afghanistan. After their years of estrangements and alienation after the end of the First Afghan war, the Mujahedeen under the command of Osama Bin Laden regrouped again in Afghanistan helping the Taliban to gain power and rule the country. The Mujahedeen of the so-called Arab Afghan then began the organization of the “Al-Qaeda” Movement with broadened plans and ambitions. In the more recent years, the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 provided the fertile grounds with the ensuing chaos; the abundance of abandoned weaponry for the Mujahedeen to expand their field combat training developing and enhance their assertive presence in Iraq as the war against the Anglo-American presence was raging. The Jihadist Salafists’ ambitions were further expanded to seeking to the creation of a long sought after Islamic Caliphate, an Islamic Empire that would anew be governed under the laws of Al-Sharia, the Islamic Jurisprudence. The Mujahedeen’s version of Al-Sharia follows the very strict Ash’ari, the Hanbali School that examples of which one can readily observe in the conduct of ISIS operatives in Syrian and Iraq. Failed states over so many decades in the Arab and Islamic countries, causing waste of national resources and inequitable distribution of wealth with rampant corruption beside maintaining an oppressive dictatorial rule resulted in wide spread poverty and fast widening gap between the selective few Haves and the great majority of the populations of the Have NOTs. Worsening socio-economic conditions and the senseless civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya that were mostly inspired by the intervention of the Western powers offered a serendipitous Bonanza for the Islamic Jihadists, with the ensuing chaos, generous funding and supply of weaponry by the Western powers’ allies, with the full consent backing and consent of the US Administration and the other Western powers who were intent on changing by force the Assad Regime in Syria and the Qaddafi Rule in Libya; all this after rendering Iraq a splintered nation that only added to the multiplication of the Jihadist Salafists. That is the genesis and the origin of the Jihadist Salafists that some of their apparent recruits stormed three days ago the offices in Paris, France, of the French publication “Charlie Hebdo.” Notwithstanding the increasing number of volunteers joining the Jihadist Salafist movements in the Arab and Muslim worlds, the number of these terrorists including their sympathizers among Arabs and Muslims is never exceeding, in the wildest of estimates, hundreds of thousands and even, in the worst case scenario, potentially one, two or even five or 10 million potential recruits and sympathizers. When measured against the number of the total populations of mainstream Islamic countries counting roughly 1.5 billion to 1.6 billion Muslims, the number of Jihadist Salafists remains so insignificant that could never represent in the worst case scenario of more than 0.05% of the total world’s Muslim population. However, despite the above facts, Islam and Muslims stand accused by Western propagandists as at the source of “Rising World Terrorism” and the security ills bewildering the world. This while overlooking the recent historic facts of the terrible role played and continues to be played by the Western polity in paving the grounds for the rise of the so-called “Islamic Terrorism” by short-sighted policies and poorly conceived strategies. Muslims, possibly of all mankind, are generally guided and are generally observant of high moral principles and enshrined family values as most attested to by the collective conduct and temperament of Muslim Europeans and Western Muslims. Violence, criminal conduct and terrorism are the very exception involving a relatively small disenfranchised minority among the large Muslim populations. Muslim scholars and academics; successful scientists and professionals; leading business men and business women; Muslim institution builders are in many cases at par even surpass some of their successful Western counterparts. Islamic Civilization (Please see attached “Islam, … The Overlooked Great Civilization,” 2003) is one of the greatest human civilizations that greatly contributed to the rise of modern Western sciences and technological discoveries. However, sadly true that worsening economic, political and security conditions in the Middle Eastern region, including what Israel represents as a security challenge and a source of permanent humiliation to generally proud Arab populations, are bound to still give impetus to the rise and the strengthening of the Jihadist Salafists movements. This, as Islamic jurisprudence long left lacking for centuries in keeping pace with the requisites of modern life and the need readjust to life and world changing realities. The endurance of these anomalies without a serious and a genuine plan of redressing them would increasingly cause these extreme Islamic Movements to grow in the absence of viable alternatives of meaningful balanced developments, effective programs for the eradication of poverty and improved living conditions. Nevertheless, notwithstanding my adherence to free thinking, as a Muslim I do not feel apologetic for crimes committed by misguided Jihadist Salafists in as much an average American or a Christian American would feel apologetic for a crime committed by a deranged Timothy McVeigh carrying a terrorist attack against innocent victims in the Oklahoma City Bombing of April 19, 1995. Having said that, the truth remains that short of a genuine Western and the Arab sincere cooperation in facing up to the socio-economic challenges and the need to start on a new different paradigm to facing the endemic challenges the Jihadist Salifists pose to both worlds, security solutions alone would never provide the answer alone as they would be very short-lived. The West needs to start from a radically different Paradigm to circumvent and eradicate the rising threat of the Jihadist Salafist Phenomenon. The Western Powers need to dramatically and radically change habits, the long old ways starting from a totally complete Package to addressing, radically and non-opportunistically, the enduring strategic problems including forcing Israel to heed and fully abide by the International Law. Israel would need to cease its aggression; colonization and violation of the Palestinians human rights. Israel and the West in Particular would need to recognize the Palestinians’ Right to Self-determination. In this “Global Village” world the Arabs and the Western World are facing a common threat that both need to symbiotically, genuinely and urgently address with open dialogue and frank exchanges with very well-defined Framework of Principles. The West and the Arab PEOPLE need to build mutual trust based on recognized and observed universal values and work towards common goals that would promote the genuine interests and the wellbeing of both peoples.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 08:49:19 +0000
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