Hamas, the United States, and Terrorism

I've seen many CAIR officials stumble on this question. I understand why and what the motivation is. As Ibrahim Hooper said, CAIR is not going to try to pass a pro-Israel litmus test. It shouldn't have to.

The motivation behind the question

When FOX News or Joe Kaufman or some other right wing, pro Israel proponent asks Muslims or Arabs or anyone who is for the freedom and self determination of Palestinians that question, the motivation is to destroy any element of justified Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, murder, and brutality.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and all the other groups that use violence against Israel are all labeled anti-Semetic, and pursuing the destruction of Israel.

Now, does CAIR support Hamas and all these other groups? More precisely, does CAIR support everything these groups do? Such as killing innocent people, etc? Of course not. That's why CAIR condemns suicide bombings, rocket attacks, etc. The Messenger of God was clear on such issues - Muslims are forbidden to kill people who are not engaged in battle, especially women and children and the elderly.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and other national liberation movements use every means at their disposal to fight occupation or oppression. It's wrong to kill innocent people. It's wrong to fire rockets indiscriminately at towns and villages. But that does not mean because they commit such actions that Hamas and Hezbollah are completely and utterly devout terrorist organizations, as the mainstream press here in the US likes to label them.

Both organizations are deeply involved in the political processes of their respective nations. Both provide immense social services to their communities. Both have a long history of fighting and speaking out against Israeli occupation and violence. none of this is reported in the mainstream US press.

This is precisely why they are labeled in the US press as terrorist. Anyone who opposes US hegemony is a terrorist. Castro, Chavez, Ahmedinajad, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. That's the whole troop right there, pretty much. If you agree with anything one of these entities say then you are by the media's definitions a terrorist sympathizer. If you denounce them then you are classified as a "moderate." This is how the game has worked for a long time.

The Terrorism of Current World Powers

What does our nation do? What does Israel do? By our own definitions of terrorism - "The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological" (US Defense Department definition) - the US is a terrorist state.

Take the Iraq War. The US is a member of the UN. We adopted the UN Charter. By our Constitution we are obligated to follow the rules and regulations of the Charter. By the UN definition, the Iraq War was illegal. The UN did not sanction the war and by our own law, the US was waging an illegal war based not just upon the UN Charter, but also the US Constitution. Therefore we were involved in an illegal war using "unlawful violence" not just intimidating the Iraqi government and society, but the world generally. Oh, and we had goals of course - to topple the Iraqi regime ruling the country (this was the second reason provided by the Bush administration for illegally invading Iraq once no WMDs were found). That's a political motivation that falls under the DOD definition.

What about Israel? Their list of crimes against humanity are so lengthy it's not even worth discussing, really. But I will just mention a few terrorist actions Israel has taken up in the past few years, such as bombing Gaza's main electrical plant causing severe damage to a population already facing a humanitarian crisis due to Israel's illegal occupation (yes, they are still the occupying force of Gaza despite its attempt to drop responsibility of Gaza by "pulling out" in 2005). The West Bank has fared just as bad. Recently, Israeli soldiers demolished a Palestinian village between the Green Line and the Israeli wall or separation barrier in order to clear out unwanted Palestinian residents who were selfishly living on the land of their ancestors and not allowing the Israelis to steal their land.

Yes, those are the stalwarts of democracy and freedom. If we followed our own definitions of terrorism then Bush and Co. would have been jailed with the key flushed down the toilet a long time ago and their sympathizers would be indicted as "co-conspirators."

The Rights of Muslim Women

The World Economic Forum recently released its report on the status of gender equality in the world. The report showed that Muslim nations faired the worst in its statistical breakdown of countries that gave women the best resources for health, education, and jobs/economic advancement.

I think a more precise way to break down the statistics is through which countries in the world have the best democratic institutions that allow women (and people of color) to advance in the work place and in other sectors of society. The US was in the 31st position of some 100 countries. That's not very good in my opinion.

For Muslim nations the fact of the matter is that most of the Arab countries are ruled by monarchs or dictators. Pakistan fits right in with that assessment. There is little democratic rule in the Muslim world. This reflects on the situation of women's rights, religious freedom, education, etc.

The United States plays a major role in all of this. How? Because the US heavily supports many of these undemocratic regimes. Which ones? Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Morocco just to name a few. These are all traditional US allies in the Muslim world with Egypt being the exception - only obeying US power once Gamal Abd al-Nasser was out of the way. Iraq and Iran were also part of this equation for much of their post-WWII history as well.

But not all blame can fall on the US - obviously much of it falls on the leaders of these countries and the Muslim scholars who kiss their feet. Traditionally the ulema would never dare be caught seen with the rulers of state. This was always frowned upon. For some reason in today's world, Muslims think the ulema are supposed to make religiously based rulings and run the state. That is a false perception in relation to how most of Islamic history went about.

The scholars of the religion - the ulema - were usually off to themselves. They were a balance of power against the state/khalifah/sultan. Has everyone forgotten how all four of the Great Imams - Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi'i, and Ahmad - were tortured by the caliphs of their time for opposing them on some legal or theological grounds? So today we have states like Iran that believe the scholars should run the whole show. Iran is run by Shiite scholars, so their religious/political outlook is quite different than the Sunni majority/orthodoxy that has been the hallmark of Islamic history. But you see the phenomena everywhere in the Muslim world. Many Muslims believe that Muslim countries should be run by Shariah and Western observers report this unquestioningly. What the heck does that mean exactly?

It is such a blaze and generalist approach to forming the law of a society that so many Muslims in the Islamic world advocate for Shariah law. The Taliban, when they were in power, and the pseudo-Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia currently fit the description of following "Shariah."

In a nut shell, if we had a brand new Muslim country and everyone in it wanted Shariah to be implemented, which one would they pick? Because there is not some ideal/classic form of Islamic law. It's not generic. It's not one size fits all. It's different, in fact. It's different everywhere Muslims went. Do people think that the law implemented in Muslim Cordoba was the same followed in Muslim Delhi? It's such a complicated issue it's actually making my head hurt a bit.

Bottom line: there is no such thing as "Shariah" law. It's such an oversimplification that it makes the person who says it sound like a complete moron.

As for Muslim women: their hope lies in the development of true democracy in their nation-state or the coming of the Mahdi. Whichever comes first. I don't feel very optimistic at all about the issue. The main problem I see in the Islamic world is the fulfillment of a prophecy of God's last Messenger, peace and prayers be upon him:

'Abdullah b. 'Amr b. al-'As reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: Verily, Allah does not take away knowledge by snatching it from the people, but He takes away knowledge by taking away the scholars, so that when He leaves no learned person, people turn to the ignorant as their leaders; then they are asked to deliver religious verdicts and they deliver them without knowledge; they go astray, and lead others astray.

There are just too many stupid Muslims with the nerve to say they can give legal judgments when they are not qualified to do so.

Sicko

I recently saw Michael Moore's latest movie, Sicko. It was very informative and also very depressing. I am seriously considering at some point in my life moving to either Canada or Europe. I currently do not have health insurance myself because I just got out of school and my current job does not provide me with health insurance. I am feeling the same anxiety that many other Americans feel about getting sick or injured, God protect us.

There is not really much to say on the issue. Our health insurance system is absolutely terrible. It is quite obvious to most Americans that our government and our representatives in government do not care about the people of this country. The insurance companies themselves are private corporations working to make as much money as possible by denying Americans the help they need to live. Doctors are complicit in many regards to this terrible system of greed.

We might like to think the system is broken, but in fact the system works exactly how it is supposed to, exactly as it was designed. The insurance companies make tons of cash, politicians are paid off to ensure that free universal health care never exists, and Americans die from treatable illnesses and injuries because insurance companies find loopholes to deny them service. That is exactly how it is supposed to work because when we are denied service by our health insurance companies they save money. It's a business, plain and simple.

I cannot think of a more pressing domestic issue than health care. Both domestic and foreign, health care is the most pressing issue for Americans of every age group. If you get sick in the most powerful country on earth, you might be denied medical services and end up dying from a treatable illness or injury.

All of that makes me want to jump on a boat to Cuba; it's only 90 some miles away from my home. Viva Fidel.

Missing the Point: Reporting the Crimes of Other States

August 9, 2007

The propaganda machine known as the US media usually separates victims of US atrocities into two distinct categories: worthy and unworthy victims. Anyone familiar with the writings of Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, or Howard Zinn and David Falk, knows very well that those the United States slaughters are not to be publicized in the mainstream US media. Instead, those innocent people who are harmed or killed by states who are declared enemies of the US or who do not share friendly, cordial relations with the United States are to be memorialized and their deaths are to be turned into a propaganda effect whereby that particular enemy state that committed the crime will be ostracized by the US media for its grave breach of indecency and its criminal act.

Another major problem related to the US media’s inability to fairly report world news is how, in many cases, news of global events are left unreported when it has to do with a criminal act perpetrated by the United States. Far be it for the US propaganda machine to leave out the news of criminal acts committed by enemy states. Yet, when the United States eradicates a large number of people from this earth, the propaganda machine is left silent. News of civilian deaths that are the responsibility of the US are no where to be found in the mainstream American press. A concerned US citizen has to search foreign or alternative media for news of what the United States has done or is doing. Peace initiatives, democracy building, and the like are the cornerstone of the mainstream press’ coverage of the US role in the world. What is left out is extremely crucial towards understanding the United States’ position in the world. An example of what is reported and what is not reported by the mainstream US press will provide insight into the way the US propaganda machine works.

On late Thursday night, August 2, 2007, NATO air strikes reportedly killed as many as two hundred Afghani civilians in an attempt by NATO to decimate a group of Taliban commanders located in the southern Helmand province of Afghanistan. Al-Jazeera reported the story as did many other international news agencies, such as Reuters and the AFP. Such a large civilian death toll would figure to be reported heavily in the U.S., but the story was conspicuously missing from the headlines of American news web sites, such as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.

The New York Times’ web site reported the story, but relied mostly on US official reports as to what occurred. The NYT relied on the same source as Al-Jazeera, Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, Helmand police chief, but Andiwal’s testimony to Al-Jazeera was missing from the NYT report as to how many civilian casualties occurred in the NATO air strike. Al-Jazeera reported Andiwal as saying that “We have heard of heavy casualties too and have sent a team to investigate this.” The problem underlying the possibility that hundreds of civilians were killed is that the United States does not count the innocent people it kills in such air strikes. Its propaganda machine, the US media, goes right along with unsubstantiated reports of civilian deaths, never digging for the truth of how many innocent dead the US led war machine leaves in its wake. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has monitored how miserable mainstream US media has been in reporting civilian deaths in Afghanistan.[1] Their report noted that killing innocent civilians has been a common theme of NATO strikes in Afghanistan, not an aberration as the US media has reported it from their official US sources.

The rumor of two hundred or so civilian casualties did not merit a mention on the most prestigious American news web sites. Their web pages are reserved for far more serious news, such as the crimes of other states, and not of their own. On Tuesday, August 7, the nation of Georgia claimed that Russia, its former master, had flown illegally over its air space and dropped a missile near a small village by the Georgian capital. There were no casualties. This story merited the front page of the NYT web site and as the top story of CNN’s World News section. No one killed, one wrongfully placed missile, and a dispute between a former super power and its former client state merited front page coverage on America’s leading newspaper’s web site. This small anecdote demonstrates the lack of credibility the mainstream US press has in critiquing our military’s atrocities or even supposed atrocities. Even more importantly, it clearly demonstrates the priorities that the mainstream US press works with.

The responsibility of the media is to critique the government. In its watchdog role, the media is to play an important part in balancing the perspectives presented to the US public. Instead, in the real world of corporate news, the media plays the role that is assigned to it by the powerful, which is to protect the powerful from anything that might smudge their image. The United States is governed over by rich and powerful people and it is not in their best interest that its media be allowed to report on the atrocities it commits. The lack of news in the mainstream media on the possibly two hundred dead Afghani civilians demonstrates that quite clearly, as does the focus of the mainstream media on the Russian-Georgian dispute. Quite simply, if the reverse situation had occurred in both instances – if the US had dropped a missile on Georgian territory and the Russians had killed two hundred or so Afghanis – then the mainstream US media would have reported these stories quite differently. It is only a logical conclusion.

The best way for Americans to understand the world in which they live is to check foreign or alternative media sources. By contrasting how the news is reported in the mainstream US media in relation to alternative and foreign media an American citizen can gain a significant understanding of the high levels of propaganda they are exposed to on a daily basis. It is important not to simply turn off CNN, Fox News and other cable news channels for alternative news sources. It is a duty to watch these channels occasionally in order to be able to decipher the propaganda messages being flashed across them. It is important to understand what the rich and powerful want the masses to believe. Once a person realizes that they are not being told the truth by the mainstream media, the quicker they will come to understand that two hundred dead civilians killed by their government merit more attention that a missile dropped by another country on another country’s territory that killed no one.

---

[1] http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1666

Pakistan - Musharraf and the US

Well, not too big of a surprise that General/President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf declared an emergency situation in Pakistan that suspended the constitution. This entry does not advocate that Musharraf is a good guy, by any means, but an objective look at the situation says that this was not all that bad for Pakistanis considering the other available options out there.

The United States has been demanding that Musharraf start taking out Taliban/al-Qaeda forces along the Paki-Afghan border for quite some time now. Why is that a problem for Musharraf? Because if he does that then he loses the support of the vast majority of the military, who are either ethnically related to the people they would be killing or supportive of what the Taliban/al-Qaeda are doing. It's no surprise then that Musharraf's life has been in jeopardy many times since 9-11. No head of state has had as many attempts at his life in the past six years as Mr. Musharraf. It's not something he is likely proud of despite making light of it when interviewed by John Stewart on the Daily Show. As things stand right now, the military, which has run the country since its birth, does not seem to look at Musharraf too highly. He is not in the mold of General Zia ul-Haq, who was, besides a religiously fanatical dictator, a religiouslly minded individual. Musharraf is secular, but understands why he is in power and thus caters to the interests of his constituents (who are not the Pakistani people) by tolerating religious leaders he would otherwise have jailed with the lawyers who have protested against his rule.


The Bhutto Factor

Benazir Bhutto is a hell of a lot worse of an option than Musharraf. Any sane minded Pakistani knows that much. She will do Washington's bidding at all costs even if it destroys the country she would be in charge of. Musharraf, while definitely pandering to the US as much as he can in order to gain Bush, Dick, and Condi's love and affection, is not stupid enough to go after the Taliban in the NWFP. Why? Because if he were to do so then Pakistan will end up looking a lot like Iraq does now. This is the opinion of many experts on this issue. This is probably why the Bush administration has been largely quiet on this issue (imagine if Iran were to do such a thing?) knowing full well that Musharraf has been pinned into a corner and has reacted to the situation like any dictator would - by acting like a dictator.

Bhutto has been talking a lot of smack about taking care of business in regards to the Taliban. The Lal Masjid incident of a few months back would likely be the result of such a mission by Butto, but on a much larger and grander scale likely consuming most of the large cities of Pakistan. Pakistan has become a safe haven for terrorists. There is no doubt about it. Caution must be taken in regards to who is in control of the country. Musharraf, while a dictator making sure than the military runs the show, is the more sane choice regarding who controls Pakistan - and its nuclear weapons. Bhutto escaped an assassination attempt on her life the first time she came back to Pakistan. She would likely not be as successful as Musharraf in avoiding assassination attempts on a regular basis.

Prognosis?

Military rule seems to be the forecast for quite some time. The military (along with the ISI) will not be relinquishing power any time soon, but their grip on power is tenuous if they do not continue to follow through with Washington's plan for the NWFP. But the condition the US finds itself in does not seem to favor a short term for the Pakistani military and Musharraf. The US is stuck in both Iraq and Afghanistan - those are big reasons the US has not done anything in regards to Iran. Adding Pakistan to the list of countries up for regime change seems unlikely. In the end, General Musharraf can rest assured he will be in power for quite some time unless he somehow irritates his constituents.

Islamica Magazine Peeved

Islamica Magazine got in touch with me yesterday regarding my comments about them not publishing my article (or any article) on the devastating situation in the DRC.

I was a bit surprised by how defensive they got about my comments, but I guess I would have done the same if someone said I didn't care about innocent people being slaughtered.

Nonetheless, I was told by them that despite my article not being published that other articles were in line to be published on the topic (not clear if that meant for this past issue or for the next one). I pointed out that I did not care about my own article not being published; it was a decent to good article at best. But I was very surprised that the entire topic did not make it into their magazine. Despite them stating that they do in fact care about "dead black people," in my opinion they didn't care enough to actually raise awareness about the issue. This simply reinforced my belief that some issues are more popular or media privy than others, even if they are less important.

Islamica has raised awareness about Darfur and other atrocities, but the largest problem in Africa is obviously in the DRC. The mainstream US press has entirely ignored the issue. So far, Islamica Magazine has, too.

The reason American involvement is so desperately needed in the Congo is due to the facts I mentioned in my article below: US corporations getting rich off Congolese minerals, US backing of Rwanda and Uganda's occupation of eastern DRC. Helping Darfur is great, but that issue has only been highlighted by our government due to the fact that our enemies (China specifically) are profiting from Sudan's resources.

The original email they wrote me was quite rude. I will say that. I will leave it at that also. Islamica Magazine is a very well done magazine. I will not stop reading it and I will not unsubscribe either. My only problem is that they did not address the topic of the DRC. I pray they do in the future.