Sunday, February 12, 2006

My Final Comment on the Cartoon Controversy

Mobilize the masses in protest against a supposed insult to your Great Leader and distract them from the lack of democracy and need for reform at home. This then has been what the mobilization of Muslims world wide really has been about.

It was the cynical use of stale old cartoons that were eight months old, along with some suitable fakes, and the stupidity of the US Israel reaction to the election of Hamas and you have the gas and match to create a conflagaration that we have seen.
Blasphemy is in the Eye of the Beholder

The not so hidden hand of the Saudi's and other feudalistic regimes in the Middle East have of course encouraged these outrages using their religious arm of Wahabism and Shiaism.

It is an attack on secularism, democracy and reform. The appeal to the reactionary elements of Islam who fear living in a secular democracy, say like Lebanon, where theirs is NOT the state religion and state model of governance is the subtext of the global anti-cartoon protests. The protests have been a way of channeling genuine dissent against high levels of unemployment, poverty, underemployment, lack of democratic reforms, etc. etc. to the end cause of Islamic Fascism.

It was not about the cartoons it never was. It is about whether the Muslim dominated countries will move from authoritarian states and join the age of enlightenment three hundred years later.

The fallacy is that Islamic politics and the modern Islamicist movement are somehow different some how more Muslim, ancient, and the established politics of the Middle East. This simply denies the historical reality that the enlightenment is older than most of these Modern Islamic movements, none of which existed until the fall of the last great secular Muslim Empire, the Turkish Ottomans.

Modern Islamism is reactionary and fascist. It is not and has never been enlightened. It is the reactionary child of British, American and French Imperialism in the region and their artificial division of the Middle East into competing national capitals for the benefit of the Oil Cartels.

The Enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

Iraq and Al Qaeda, America and the KKK by Michael Wolfe (Beliefnet.com; June 28, 2004)

The British invented Iraq 80 years ago at a treaty table in Versailles. They installed a puppet Arab king, and instructed Harry St. John Philby to run the place and keep the books. There were Iraqis alive then as small children who are still living in Iraq today. Iraq has enough of its own history to shed light on present experience for its people.

We Americans have a history, too. It includes the several unpleasant similarities between Al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan and, in a later chapter, our own present-day terrorist underground distantly modeled on Jesse James, the late, still popular Tim McVeigh presiding.


The secular nationalist and communist movements of the Cold War were defeated by the American promotion of reactionary authoritarian political regimes like the Shah of Iran.

An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Iran

Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran - Empire? - Global Policy Forum


This is the key to the modern Muslim facist movement, it all began with the Shah and the fall of his regime. The ideals of Wahhabism of the Saudis then was used to mobilize an armed struggle in Afghanistan against the Russian client state, with the aid and funding of the CIA.

The Wall Street Journal and The Workers Vanguard Agree: Both Capitalists and Communists Conclude Afghanistan Better Off Under Soviets Than Northern Alliance

In Afghanistan the Russian supported government andits regimes in the region of all the Stans were more progressive and secular indeed modern than what has replaced it. And this too was a result of American geopolitical Cold War politics.

Following the Afghanistan war, the U.S. decided to provoke and promote a war with Iran using its client state; Saddam Hussien's Iraq.

Former agents celebrate 50th anniversary of CIA coup in Iran
Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam Hussein on an Iraq trip designed to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries. The photo was taken after the Halabja massacre in which Saddam "used chemical weapons on his own people."

Tucker and the other agents did not stick around to hear about how the rise of Saddam Hussein was made possible by weapons and funding from the US to counterbalance the fundamentalist Islamic government of Iran, which, itself, was a byproduct of the CIA coup 26 years earlier.

They were also not interested in talking about the Iran-Iraq war that killed 1 million Arabs or how the CIA armed both sides of the conflict and provided the intelligence to Saddam that was used to pinpoint the locations of Iranian troops to be sprayed with mustard gas.

Like todays accusations by the American State about Syrian involvement with Lebanon, and indeed their fear of Syrian relations with its neighbours, this relationship is part of the pan nationalism of the Nassar era which was also opposed by the CIA.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein

It was virtually taken for granted that, when al-Bakr relinquished the presidency, Saddam Hussein would succeed him. Nevertheless, his succession was not carried out without complications. Perhaps the two most important complicating factors were Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat's decision to make peace with Israel and Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad's bid for economic and political union with Iraq.

These two events were not unrelated. Arab unity had been a long-standing goal of the Ba'th Party in both Syria and Iraq, but Assad was prompted to call for union with Iraq only after Egypt's rapprochement with Israel in 1977.

The initial negotiations were very promising. Talks in October 1978 led to the signing of a "charter for joint national action," declaring the two countries intent to establish military unity. By 1979 it was clear that the eventual aim was full political union. Al-Bakr and Assad also cooperated with other ArabSadat. By March 1979, however, when Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel, negotiations for a Syro-Iraqi union had slowed. The main stumbling block was the question of whether the leadership of the unified state would be primarily Syrian or Iraqi. Relations between the two countries deteriorated. leaders in taking a firm stand against

On July 16, 1979, the eve of the anniversary of the revolution of 1968, al-BakrSaddam Hussein. On July 28 it was announced that a plot to overthrow the government had been uncovered. This announcement had been preceded, on July 12, by the arrest of Muhyi 'Abd al-Hussein al-Mashhadi, the secretary of the RCC. Mashhadi made a public confession, stating that he and other Ba'th leaders, including four other members of the RCC, had conspired to overthrow the regime. The Syrian government was alleged to have provided the funds for their activities. A special court was set up, and 22 conspirators were executed; a number of others were sentenced to prison terms. This development put an end to plans for union with Syria. officially announced his resignation. He was immediately succeeded by


The chickens have come home to roost in the Middle East. In Afgahnistan the regime change has been ineffective. In Iran the regime change has been ineffective, and the old delayed conflict between Iraq and Iran for geopolitical regional security is once again in play. Pakistan, America's new ally in the region has merely changed the military uniform of authoritarianism for the business suit. The Suadis remain in power, with the tacit approval of the Americans whose base of military operations in the Middle East is there. Osama bin Laden Inc. is still operating.

Today backwards fuedalistic religious movements are the alternative to American and European Imperialism,and have identified Imperialism with the revolutionary ideals of the enlightenment. Until these two are divorced, there can be no revival of a secular movement of the left to counter the fascist movements in the Middle East.

The humanist enlightenment required in the Middle East is NOT the values of capitalism and imperialism. It is the values of the freethinkers the humanist radicals who recognized that values cannot be imposed on but must originate from cultures and their struggles to overcome their own internal contradictions between dominance and freedom, the individual and the social, rapacious greed and fraternity and solidarity.
The Need for Arab Anarchism

So far the debate has been one of conflict between the West and the Middle East, a conflict that began with the Crusades and continues today with the Bush Doctrine. But the very source of humanistc ideas in the West were the Arab thinkers and traders, along with the Jews. The Orientalism that Edward Said identified as the undercurrent in modernism.

Another humanist Orientalist is Dr. Ali Shariati whose utopian ideals for a Non European, non capitalist Middle East echos the works of Said and Chomsky.
It is in his and Said's works we can find a new cultural matrix that supercedes the Medivalist retrogression of what he calls the Black Shia'ism and the Imperialist ideals of the Bush Doctrine. A humanist ideal that is rich in the cultural heritage of the Levant.


We who live in the East always speak about Western colonization, but I would like to explain that this does not mean that Western colonization only colonizes or exploits the East. It is a world-wide power representing a class of people that exploit and colonize both the East and the West. If I had the opportunity, I would explain that this power has alienated the European masses even more than the Eastern masses. The European has been overtaken by colonialism's legacy of unemployment and misery and will continue to be in the future. They will continue to be victims of anti-colonialism. This ruling colonial power influences Eastern people in many ways, such as placing emphasis upon unimportant, sensational and emotional matters; spreading rumors, discrimination, and hypocrisy; and sowing discord and pessimism, to keep Easterners occupied with mundane and unimportant issues. By these means Easterners are kept in a state whereby they are unaware of what Western colonization is doing to them, unaware of their fate and destiny. These conspiracies then cause young Europeans, likewise, to become alienated and destructive, and commit more deception and crime. All of these actions are taken in the name of the colonization of Eastern countries without the Easterners realizing it...
Our Expectations of the Muslim Woman
A lecture by: Dr. Ali Shariati, 1933 - 1977


Reflections of Humanity is one of Ali Shariati's important works which concerns the role of culture in human life. It defines culture and barbarism and how it is discussed in the light of the "Islamic Doctrine". He defines Modernity and its role in the vital issues confronting Western and more importantly Islamic nations. He argues that modernity has been imposed on non-European nations in the guise of civilization by the west and that they have persisted in calling it "ideal". He begins by defining certain terms:

  1. Intellectual: "An intellectual is one who is conscious of his own "humanistic status" in a specific social and historical time and place. His self-awareness lays upon him the burden of responsibility. He responsibly, self-consciously leads his people in scientific, social and revolutionary action."
  2. Assimilation: "This is at the root of all the troubles and constraints facing the non-Western and Muslim countries. Applies to the conduct of an individual who, intentionally or unintentionally, starts imitating the mannerisms of someone else. A person exhibiting this weakness forgets his own background, national character and culture or, if he remembers them at all, recalls them with contempt. Obsessively, and with no reservation, he denies himself in order to transform his identity. Hoping to attain the distinctions, and the grandeur, which he sees in another, the assimilator attempts to rid himself of perceived shameful associations with his original society and culture."
  3. Alienation: "The process of forgetting or becoming unfamiliar with or indifferent to one's self. That is, one loses the self and directs perceptions from within another person or thing. This grave social and spiritual illness manifests itself in many different shapes and forms and depends on many factors."

External links

“I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be Shariati's.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)



Also see:

Bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism

Ibn Khaldun 14th Century Arab Libertarian

No Suitcases At Mecca


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