Openings - Part Two
On page xxi of What’s Right With Islam, Imam Rauf says:
“...continuing news of suicide bombers in Israel,
and in Muslim countries such as Pakistan,
Indonesia, and Iraq, and more recently in
Saudi Arabia and Morocco, have further
reinforced American stereotypes about and
fear of Muslims.
"Fear breeds a number of things: hatred of
anything associated with ‘the enemy’ - from
ethnic appearance to clothing and religion -
and a circling-of-the-wagons mentality. This
country veered uncritically to the right.”
America did not just veer to the right, it was maneuvered in that direction. The generation of an atmosphere of fear has always been one of the main weapons of choice to use to whip the public into a state of compliancy with respect to the wishes of those who are in charge.
In the light of substantial historical evidence, such words and phrases as: “Remember the Maine”, the USS Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, the drug lord Noriega, the innocent college students at risk in Grenada, April Glaspie, the slaughter of the incubator babies in Kuwait, satellite photos showing Saddam about to attack Saudi Arabia, and weapons of mass destruction - all of these incidents have been shown to carry suspect pedigrees concerning the validation of events being what they were portrayed to be by the US government and its media outlets. In each of the foregoing cases, elements within the United States government have been implicated, either directly or indirectly, as helping to arrange for the perpetration of tragedies which enrage the people of the US and help render the latter target group more supple for purposes of further government manipulation.
Similar evidence exists with respect to the 9-11 attacks. If one doubts this, then, you might want to read The War On Freedom by Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed in which considerable evidence is put forth about how and why the United States was attacked in 2001 by remnants of al-Qaida.
One of the scandals of the 9-11 Commission is that it never really explored important aspects of the relevant, available evidence. There were vast areas of essential data which were either ignored or glossed over by the Commission, and there were a number of fundamental questions which were never raised by them in any rigorous fashion, if at all.
For example, why did it take over an hour and a half for US fighter planes to be scrambled in accordance with standard military operating procedure and FAA regulations? More specifically, both military and FAA authorities knew for more than an hour and a half before any of the commercial airlines reached their respective destinations on 9-11 that four planes had been hijacked and were not operating in accordance with their filed flight plans. FAA regulations and standard military operating procedure required that all four incidents were supposed to be 'eye-balled' by pilots on the scene whose duty was to intercept those flights and act accordingly once a determination had been made.
It only takes several minutes, once an order is given (and why was such an order only given an hour an a half after the fact of the 4 hijackings), to reach 27,000 feet from an unscrambled position. Why wasn't this done?
One also would like to know why the scrambled military planes came from Massachusetts rather than bases which were right next to Washington and New York city? The added distance subtracted valuable - perhaps, critical - reaction response time.
Michael Moore's Farenheit 911 has a lot of fun with the seven minutes of inaction when President Bush sat in a Florida classroom listening to children read rather than politely excusing himself and responding to the information he had been given about on-going events in the air. The fact of the matter is, however, news reports indicate President Bush knew about the hijackings before he ever went into the grade school classroom, and, so, the question which Michael Moore ommitted is why didn't the President do anything about the situation before he went into the classroom?
Only the President can give the order for commercial air planes to be shot down. Without a doubt, having to make a decision about whether to destroy innocent lives aboard those commercials flights rather than risk the potential of even greater loss of innocent lives on the ground would be a terrible burden for any human being - but if someone can give the order to attack Afghanistan with the understanding that innocent lives will be lost, and if someone can give the order to attack Iraq with the clear understanding that innocent lives will be lost, then, perhaps, someone should have been ready to make a decision that would have made subsequent decisions to attack Afghanistan and Iraq less easy than they appeared to be.
There may be entirely reasonable answers for all of these questions. However, one won't know this for a fact until all of this is given a rigorous public airing and critical scrutiny - something the media has not done to date, nor, as far as I can see, has the 911 Commission properly addressed - unless they did so behind closed doors and feels the US public has no right to know about issues which directly affect our lives, our sense of security, or our confidence in the integrity of government.
The foregoing is not an effort to foment conspiracy theories. Rather, it is intended to induce people to question the version of events which is put forth by authority.
Time and time again, people in authority have proven themselves unworthy of the trust of the people. In fact, due to the sheer quantity of prevarications on the part of all too many government officials for all too many years, the general operating procedure of the public should be that anything the government says should be handled through HAZMAT protective gear until one can establish that the information is not toxic or hazardous to one's health.
Just because some government employee or elected official offers an “official” version of events, this doesn’t mean the 'official version' is a true reflection of what actually happened. It may only mean that this sort of 'official verson' is what such government figures want the public to believe in order to advance ulterior, illicit machinations of their own.
None of the foregoing is to suggest that the terrible things which were transpiring in Muslim countries were not taking place, or that there were no reasons for a prudent person to be fearful about how events were spinning out of control almost everywhere. However, such events were only part of what is going on, and there is much need for something akin to when Paul Harvey says: “And, now, for the rest of the story”, for much has been kept from the eyes, minds, and hearts of the American people by its own government officials ... not just with respect to 9-11 but with respect to several hundred years of history.
I agree with Imam Rauf when he says, in relation to the aforementioned reactionary 'move to the right' of America, that it was largely uncritical (at least among large sections of the public, much of the media, and most of the politicians). However, there were many forces in play which were designed to shield events from the probing, curious eye of critical reflection, and, therefore, it was not just happenstance that events were ushered toward the right in an uncritical fashion ... there was a conscious intentionality guiding this move rightward into a reactionary state of fear.
In conjunction with the foregoing, Imam Rauf raises the question:
“Was Samuel Huntington right? Were we witnessing
a ‘clash of civilizations’ between the West and the
rest - in this case between Western civilization and
Islam?”
The short answer is ‘no’. What we were witnessing (which requires a much longer answer) were a series of staged events, or predictable reactions to staged events, that were designed to frame the understanding of the public in certain ways. The purpose of these attempts to frame people’s perception of reality was to enable various parties to have a pretext of justification, and/or plausible deniability, with respect to seeking to organize the world according to an agenda of hegemony - and this is as true for the fundamentalist religious zealots as it is for the fundamentalist capitalistic and military zealots, both of whom seduce their respective spheres of influence like a cat in heat.
According to Imam Rauf, the events of 9-11 changed him and his life.
“I went from refusing to get dragged into politics
because I saw it as a no-win situation to being
forced to explain myself and defend my faith.”
Unlike the author of What’s Right With Islam, I do not feel the need to explain myself or defend my faith. With respect to the latter matter, my faith is precisely that: ‘my faith’, and as such, it is not something which I have to defend to others. Of course, Imam Rauf may mean he felt the need to defend Islam, but here again Islam does not need any defense - it is what it is, and God defends it very well - which is why, among other things, there has been a long tradition of Prophets, some 125, 000 individuals long, who have been sent to human beings in order to help people understand the nature of spirituality and why, as well, there have been a number of Books of Revelation which were issued down through the ages.
Furthermore, I do not feel the need to explain myself to anyone. I didn’t fly those planes on September 11, 1991, I am not a member of al-Qaida nor do I support or endorse their activities, nor have I done anything to either subvert the Constitution of the United States nor to exploit the peoples of other lands or interfere with their lives.
Several decades before 9-11 ever occurred, I chose not to participate in US aggression against other peoples. I do not now countenance acts of aggression against the United States.
The exercise of violence solves very few, if any, problems. In general, and with the possible exception of defending one’s home or country against armed invasion, I tend to agree with the sentiments of Issac Asimov as expressed in his Foundation series when one of his characters says: “Violence is the last refuge of incompetence.”
In addition, for more than thirty years, I have been actively engaged in striving for truth in matters of: spirituality, justice, equality, freedom, peace, and human rights - with governments, universities, the media, Muslims, and non-Muslims.
Hostility and anger toward Muslims did not suddenly erupt on 9-11-01. I can remember in 1967 when I was working in the student center cafeteria at MIT.
The televison was carrying news coverage of the 1967 war between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors. With each advance and victory of the Israeli army, there was much cheering and jubilation which took place in the room where the television was, and as well, there was much jeering and contempt toward the Arabs and Muslims.
I was not a Muslim at the time, and I was not partial to either side. However, I do remember that hostility, contempt, and anger which were present and directed toward Arabs and Muslims.
During half of the 1970s and for much of the 1980s, I experienced, first hand, as a recent convert to Islam, the deep-rooted suspicion, enmity, and ignorance that existed in many parts of the West with respect to Muslims and Islam. More specifically, as a member of a Muslim organization which published a report that was critical of the offensive and inaccurate material concerning Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) which appeared in a number of school textbooks being used in the public school systems in the Province of Ontario, I went round and round the barn with all manner of alleged intellectuals, media types, and government officials about the many facets of prejudice.
During this period of time I received a remarkable education concerning the underbelly of Western ‘civilization’. I discovered there were many so-called experts of Islamic Studies who preferred error to accuracy and who were quite indignant that anyone should object to the way in which their lack of understanding and personal animosities or special interests would be used to validate ignorance. I encountered representatives of the media who believed it was there God-given duty to perpetuate ignorance and bias concerning Muslims and Islam. I negotiated with government officials who did what many government officials do best: evade, procrastinate, stonewall, lie, and manipulate.
I remember an instance in which a group of people from a local mosque were lodging an official complaint with business in the vicinity. The group had asked me to be its spokesperson.
When we were ushered into the office of the manager of the business with which we were concerned, the manager looked at me, and, then, he looked at the others (who were from Pakistan, Africa, India, and the like), and, then, he looked back at me. He whispered to me - because I was the closest to him - ”I know what they are doing here, but what are you doing here.” I pointed over to the group of people with whom I arrived and whispered back: “I’m one of them.”
Alternatively, I also recall a number of instances when Muslims actively voiced their hostility toward me and resented my presence because my skin color and spiritual pedigree were not to their liking. So, prejudice and bias are not the exclusive preserves of non-Muslims.
In the early 1980's, Sheik Ahmad Zaki Yamani, the Minister of Oil for Saudi Arabia, came to Canada. My Sufi shaykh, Dr. M. Qadeer Baig, sought a meeting with Sheik Yamani in an attempt to get support from him with respect to some of the textbook bias work we were doing and related matters.
Dr. Baig didn’t think we had much of a chance of meeting with the extremely busy minister, but my shaykh thought: ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’. To his surprise, we received a call back from the person managing appointments for the oil Sheik and said we had been granted a five minute audience with the Oil Minister on such and such day.
When we went for our appointment, the RCMP and Canadian officials who were present (but outside the room where Sheik Yamani was receiving people) were quite curious about just who we were and why we were seeing the Saudi Oil Minister. What was scheduled for five minutes, turned into a meeting of an hour or more. Whatever curiosity the Canadian authorities had prior to our meeting with the Sheik was quadrupled, or more, by the time our meeting was through.
It turned out that the Oil Minister was, and is, a great lover of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). When he discovered that we also were lovers of the Prophet, all formalities, time constraints, and official distance which might have been between us disappeared.
While he served each of us (there were four of us) tea in a very humble and attentive way, he talked about his family, some of the miraculous things which had happened to him, and much more. He invited members of the group to visit with him in Saudi Arabia as his guests, all expenses paid. He gave each of us a personal gift of some kind.
As Saudi Oil Minister and one of the leading strategists of OPEC’s 1973 price hike, he easily could have destroyed the West if he wanted to do so. He was not interested in doing that - rather, he simply wanted international economic arrangements which would establish as much distributive justice as possible for all parties concerned - Muslim and non-Muslim.
When the price hike came, people in the West were outraged with the OPEC countries. What right did OPEC have to do this?
These same people who were complaining would think nothing about mouthing the platitude of the law of supply and demand if they stood to benefit from the scarcity of a non-renewable resource. Moreover, these same people would lose absolutely no sleep over the hardships placed on nations through the economic restructuring pressures imposed by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund as conditions for getting loans, and, yet, these same people would howl in outrage when the quality of their lives is adversely affected due to the pressures of economic restructuring caused by the action of others - such as OPEC.
The events which ensued from 9-11 in relation to hostility toward, and hatred of, Muslims and Islam was more of the same of what has been going on for a long, long time. The only difference was that now Americans had been killed or were suffering, directly, or indirectly, as a result of the attacks, and, perhaps, for the very first time, Americans, as a people, had some visceral insight into how Muslims in other parts of the world have been feeling for several hundred years as imperial powers from the West killed, pillaged, plundered and raped their countries and peoples.
That people died in the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania gives expression to a great injustice against those innocent individuals. But, the people of America should get a grip on themselves and garner a little historical perspective, for such things have been happening with great regularity all over the world and our government is not innocent in such matters.
The fact that much of the American public is ignorant about these kind of issues (and intentionally kept that way for the most part) does not mean that similar, if not worse, tragedies have not been occurring elsewhere in the world. If someone screams in pain and no one hears it or pays attention to it, the fact of the matter is that the person who screams still feels pain.
If anyone needs to explain themselves it is the US government and all of those Muslim governments who have aided and abetted US and Western imperial aims. If anyone needs to explain themselves it is the so-called democratic countries which have bequeathed something other than democracy to its citizens. If there is anyone who needs to explain themselves, it is all the so-called Muslim leaders who have betrayed Islam and their compatriots by establishing something other than peaceful conditions in which a person’s pursuit of Islam can prosper without compulsion and oppression. If there is something which is demanded of the present situation it is for a resolute intention among all human beings to seek, as much as possible, the truth of things and not be satisfied with the shoddy, self-serving offerings of this or that government.
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