For the biggest form of blasphemy that we all almost always commit is to force another to live in fear for believing, speaking, thinking and sometimes even existing, as we justify it in the name of our faith or stand silent as we bear witness.
No videos, sketches or hate speeches have hurt Islam more than the reckless army of blood thirsty goons justifying vandalism in the name of religion.
As I have said in previous articles, a devout government must always support such principles as libertarianism, modernity and valuing women, beauty, art and science. It must not allow the slightest pressure or measure or reference reminiscent of pressure. It must turn its back on the possibility of radicalism and, as a “devout” administration, must apply democracy in the most perfect manner. We must admit that Mohamed Morsi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have made errors on this.
The World Wide Web has turned out a global mirror. Signal sent — signal returned: in language, we see ourselves as others (not always remote) may see us.
If the latest sentiments out of Pakistan and Turkey prove sustained, that thing called “The West” may have to resign itself to following rather than leading in the realm of ethical and moral investigation and righteousness, no doubt, however, while welcoming the competition.
For the time being, Obama and NATO may be taking the heat in relation to the assembly of Syria’s civil war and its mix of ends, including the neutralization of Iran, and interests, including expansion of Sunni influence in the middle east.
However, the old Soviet relationship with the Assad regime and whatever updates or transformations have attended Vladimir Putin’s time at the helm of the Russian Ship of State will most certainly haul Putin back to the hot lights on the world stage.
At this time, he has gotten the Russian Navy out of Tartus and enabled Russian civilian citizens in Syria to leave en masse over time.
If Putin wishes to promote Russian influence with the Syria to come, if he wishes to one day leave a good record of his accomplishments for Russia (that as opposed to having the phantoms of his enemies emerge to steal that light from him), he’s going to have to intercede soon on behalf of the humanity affected, and this especially in light of measures taken to equip the Assad regime to remain at war to this point.
This is not to ascribe to Putin responsibility for Assad excesses or rebel barbarism, which latter he has used well to embarrass Obama; it is to suggest he take some measures in concert with others to damp the Syrian furnace or, alternatively, involve Russia immediately in broad humanitarian amelioration of the effects of the war.
On supply of Russian humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees in the territory of Syria
On July 11, two aircrafts of the Emergencies Ministry of Russia delivered 70 tons of urgent humanitarian aid to Latakia for Palestinian refugees in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, including food and other essentials.
The government of Palestine, as well as the Palestinian refugees with deep gratitude perceived this Russian humanitarian action effected with proper level of security on behalf of Syrian authorities.
The Russian Federation will continue providing required humanitarian aid to the friendly Palestinian people both in the bilateral format and in the line of specialised international organisation.
Has this movie not been shown before?
I thought it had ended about 21 years and seven months ago even though to some it would seem like only last week — or as if it didn’t happen at all.
Be that as it may, while the world, much less “the government of Palestine” (which one?) most certainly appreciates the shipment to Syria of other than shore-to-ship missiles, one might expect a little more effort on general terms from the modern Putin-guided (one way to put it) democracy.
Having become apprised of the “knowledge of good and evil,” Adam and Eve leave Eden equipped with human consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience as well as perhaps rather fashionable skins sewn for them by God Almighty Himself (Genesis 3).
The arrival of that language — inspired, invented, disseminated, borrowed, and twisted — within the monotheist psyche sets the stage for progressive awakening across time, for we know ourselves to be conscious, self-conscious, and possessed of conscience, and there is nothing quite like the expression of all of that in legal code to tell the character of separable related cultures along psychological axis made plain through reflection in the eyes of others.
Until today in the Arab world, it was perfectly fine to arrest the complainant in a rape incident, find her guilty of having in various ways tempted the man or men by way of behaviors forbidden by Koranic edict, and sentence her to a term in jail.
Enter Marte Deborah Dalelv, that shameless hussy who broke the first rule by which dictatorships are sustained: silence!
“The AP does not identity the names of alleged sexual assault victims, but Dalelv went public voluntarily to talk to media.”
It sounds so harmless “to talk to media.”
What Dalelv did by doing so was drag Dubai’s ethical, legal, and moral confusion out into the sunlight, and while not for the first time in the vicinity — the 2008 setup and gang rape of Alicia Gale at a Starwood Hotels outpost in the United Arab Emirate played in the news earlier this year as a related lawsuit with publicity made its way into the courts — it has proven such an embarrassment (remember: God made us self-conscious and possessed of conscience) that Dubai, ever conservative — or inclined to mask its shame for the time being — maintained Dalelv’s “conviction” but truncated her 16-month sentence with a swift pardon.
Whether or not Dubai’s legal atmosphere and code change to align with a modern philosophy of human rights, and whether slowly or swiftly, we shall see, but to judge by the Dalelv case, it may be on its way, for if nothing else, Dubai wants to push this latest eye-roller away from its brand.
Dubai, however, cannot push the same away from its consciousness or conscience.
By the graces of the World Wide Web, the world’s largest social feedback system, it’s greatest mirror, it’s learning what it looks like in and through the eyes of others.
I will add British Secular Muslims to the sidebar here and otherwise note the difficulty involved in redrawing conflict lines along intellectual edges. Nonetheless . . . .
British Secular Muslims reject apologist and obfuscating stance of British journalist Mehdi Hasan on global terrorism by Wahhabi Deobandi Islamists.
Mehdi Hasan is a presenter of Al Jazeera Television and a political editor of UK version of The Huffington Post. British Secular Muslims are worried that a journalist and opinion maker of his stature
In less than 20 minutes, Malala Yousafzai has done what few to none of Pakistan’s politicians have ever done: pushed Pakistan to the forefront of ethical and moral progress in the world.
But on July 12, when a young Pakistani woman wowed the entire world by her simple yet powerful views, I let go of trying to look logically at the other view — I saw the tear that fell out of Malala’s mother’s eye and I felt what had caused it. Malala’s mother, purported to be a CIA agent, was crying because the little girl who she had carried in her womb for nine months and nurtured for 15 years was finally able to speak with her characteristic vigour after surviving a bullet to her head.
Described by some foreign relief officials as a ‘”five-star camp”, the Emirati-funded operation is a study in contrasts with Zaatari, the chaotic, sprawling UN-run camp that is home to 120,000 and is described as Jordan’s fifth-largest city.
Jordanian soldiers in riot gear try to keep order in a crowd desperate to get back to Syria. More than 9,000 headed home in June, according to the official Jordanian count.
Deborah Amos reports Jordan as hosting today 500,000 Syrian refugees.
**
The UN says nearly 90,000 Syrians have registered with the High Commissioner for Refugees in Egypt.
But the actual number of Syrians who have sought refuge in Egypt is believed to be much higher, in part because the country did not require Syrians to have visas until this week.
According to figures obtained by Kirisci from government sources, Turkey is currently hosting close to half a million Syrian refugees. As of mid-June, over 200,000 reside in one refugee camp, while nearly 290,000 live outside these camps. Around 100,000 internally placed Syrians are reported to be awaiting entry into Turkey.
Also Monday, the newly elected head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Ahmad Jarba, told Reuters news agency he expects advanced weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia to reach rebel fighters soon, strengthening their military position.
The fall last week of President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt prompted a defiant Assad to proclaim the defeat of political Islam. The Brotherhood’s Syrian branch, already under pressure from more radical opposition groups, was dealt a psychological blow that comes on top of delays to promised supplies of weapons from Washington.
Qatar and Company, heavily backing the Syrian Revolt (so far — Assad’s still in Damascus and his army is still fighting), have also plunged some money into producing a somewhat comfy, modern, and well administered model refugee camp for families (single men have to drift with the riffraff elsewhere) while remaining confident that some adjustment in the arms mix will hasten the end of the Reign of Assad.
Assad himself seems to remain a believer.
I have much, much less confidence in those confident that they will win . . . something.
Within Islam as al-Nusra and others may have it, “winning” will not lead to freedom but rather the imposition of their own sanguine tyranny.
For most involved in developing and sustaining the abysmal crisis in Syria, their history will not be written by “the winners” but rather by dowdy old historians poring over casualty figures, displacements, communique, rhetoric, bank transfers, arms shipments, manufacturer’s labels, newspaper clippings — or online ones like this one — and weighing within their independent souls the various causes and effects.
Some may stumble upon the role language has played in the nightmare, for Syria, perhaps more than in any corresponding contemporary conflict, points out a failing in language and mind by way of the beliefs and rhetoric driving toward so much suffering: that “content of mind” has had little to do with anyone’s day to day experience in living and the many challenges encountered, from making some money to attending to the happiness and security of children.
Instead, black and white thinking, extraordinary greed, unbridled egotism, and magical thinking all look away from the horror created by their possession or diminish the same — more than 90,000 dead, upwards of four million internally displaced or refugee — by way of language attending deflection of responsibility and the denial of the depth of the misery and depravity involved.
Is the good cause Alewite, Shiite, or Sunni?
Is it about cash in the till for a family and everyone else depending on that family be damned?
Is it about nobility?
What matter the purity of the white robes where the soles of the sandals remain always wet with blood?
The civil war, noble cause, revolt, and revolution — all deeply anachronistic, anarchic, confused, disorganized, and disorganizing — will go on.
“Geneva in these circumstances is not possible. If we are going to go to Geneva we have to be strong on the ground, unlike the situation now, which is weak,” al-Jarba said July 7 after returning from the northern Syrian province of Idlib, where he met commanders of rebel brigades.
But most importantly, the deaths are going to galvanize the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters. Rather than help calm the situation, the incident will almost certainly result in many thousands of Egyptians challenging the military’s authority.
But the military said it was forced to fire when an “armed terrorist group” tried to raid the headquarters. An Interior Ministry statement said two security force members — a lieutenant and a recruit — were shot and killed.
While Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood seeks to restrict the conversation, perhaps to the point where the only voices it hears are the echoes of its own, and the military with its provisional governments seeks to expand the same, so that but a few and manageable voices may come from many, the fight on the street will start to draw in greater energies.
For one thing, we media focus on it.
I could be writing about Egyptian basic services, tourism, history, and food, but benign and charming as those may be, they’re not quite as stimulating: with conflict, we don’t want to see its development, but we do want to watch.
The other question is how to let something go.
A slight is a slight, and one can shrug that off; a light injury may increase the insight but also provide for bragging rights — ask the 1960s kids around here about that; but a death in combat, Republican Guard vs. Pro-Morsi Protesters, may not be seen that way.
*****
“Before they had used any kind of teargas they resorted to live fire.”
Three days ago, BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen seems to have caught a few pellets of “bird shot” as a crowd got rowdy toward the end of a day of demonstrating.
Where were those Republican Guard tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and water canons and such so familiar to other policing forces and spoilers and rioters worldwide?
The answer is that through all the Mubarak years involving the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the state appears not to have prepared for violent dissent on its streets by the constituents it claimed to represent.
“If a given state lacks the means, the doctrines, and the training for homeland defence and internal security missions, that government is more likely to use lethal means that are disproportionate,” said Steven Adragna of US defence consultancy Arcanum.
Actually, we didn’t clear up anything: how was it possible that so common a policing concern as “riot control” should not have been of concern in this middle east state?
The attenuation of violence or control of a “violence spectrum” may become of interest when a state balances its want of defense against the well being of its internal challengets, i.e., when it doesn’t want to kill those expressing their opposition but rather prefers to stall them in their tracks and channel the same for arrest on the spot or dispersal altogether.
Crowd and riot control would seem arts, specialties, perhaps, within the “art of war”, which in the Islamic Small Wars becomes also the art of managing, for the most part, popular protests and myriad bands of deadly fighters.
This next comes from the earlier anti-Morsi rally days (remember those?):
Near daily, the demonstrations have turned into clashes with police, resulting in the killing of around 70 protesters. Each death has increased public anger against the security forces.
Some protests have turned into stone-throwing attacks on security agency buildings, and many protesters accuse Morsi of giving a green light to police to use excessive force. Their outrage has been further stoked by reports of torture and abduction of some activists by security agents.
Of course, those 70 deaths were attributed to Morsi-backed police!
The devil’s probably grinning.
For sure, I am.
If “deadly force” — a catch-all term for a suite of military technology and lethal methods — is what one has at hand, “dead” are what will be found “down range”.
With riot controlling technologies widely distributed elsewhere around the world, the absence of the same on the roiled Egyptian street may point to a distinct lack of concern for others.
Where was the love when precinct quartermasters were drawing up budgets and wish lists to protect their troops and their public and control the level of violence that might take place — and now has — on the streets around them?
When a phalanx of Ohio National Guardsmen marched shoulder to shoulder up Blanket Hill 40 years ago to break up an antiwar rally at Kent State University, they carried basic battlefield gear and a military mindset.
Their World War II-era M1 rifles were tipped with bayonets and loaded with .30-caliber bullets that could fly nearly two miles.
Compassion leads to “Kevlar vests and plastic shield . . . bean bags and canisters of stinging pepper gas.”
In those attempting an assault on an Egyptian Republican Guard property and those repelling the same with “live fire”, this concern for others — whatever mix of affection, compassion, empathy, and imagination might comprise and express that virtue — would seem to have been missing, and “barbarism”, which is always a conclusion, obscures the story of the evolution or stalling within the language culture and behavior leading up to it.
In consideration of the previous post, the binary choices for Egypt should seem clear.
If the economic benefits and humanism of modernity suit, the medieval complex in self-concept and tyrannical rule will cease; if not, Islam, as “Islamists” would have it, goes so against the grain of humanity that Egypt will suffer as every region has that has hosted, tolerated, or succumbed to this deeply programmed form in political narcissism: from Afghanistan to Somalia, Islamism as Al Shabaab or Boko Haram and others install it serves primarily themselves . . . until it just does not and they are booted by all of the forces they are most accustomed to blaming, this always excluding their own contribution to their own fate (” . . . and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits . . . .’).
However I may continue with this blogging, I’m inclined to become increasing informal with it in the interest of becoming more timely and, in some respects, more flexible with these hot summer days.
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