Dr. Mohamed Khodr
Tragically, in today?s world, humanity has surrendered its faculty of reason and independent thought to the monopolizers of images, sound bytes, and crass commercialism. Materialism for the “me” has supplanted the morality for the “us”. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell eloquently stated: “Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.”
So many of us waste our lives on superficial pleasures, wilfully blind to the crimes we commit and the lies we use to sustain our indulgences.
Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, taught that “God hath not created anything better than Reason, or anything more perfect, or more beautiful than Reason. God?s wrath is caused by disregard of it.” Yet, ignorance of one?s faith, as well as the faith of the “other”, blankets the majority of the followers of the three Abrahamic faiths. Religious scholarship, like political policies, have been left in the hands of the “few”.
God?s final revelation to humanity, the Qur?an, was revealed through the angel Gabriel to Islam?s Blessed Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, during the final twenty-three years of his life in seventh century Arabia. Unlike the Bible, which was written over a period of 1600 years, and usually centuries past the events it records, the Qur’an was written as it was revealed during the Prophet’s lifetime.
Islam was the universal message to all of humanity, comprehensive in scope, merciful in its doctrines, peaceful in nature, and all inclusive of previous revelations that emanated from the same, single, unified source ? God. The Qur?an reaffirmed that the single message throughout all time and all previous revelations was the same: “Worship the One God, Creator and Master of the Universe”. Yet in his arrogance, selfish desire, and lust for power and the world?s wealth, man continued to stray from this message with the audacity to even pervert and corrupt God?s revelations for self interest.
Throughout history, religions have been corrupted, and their teachings distorted, to serve racist aggression, exploitation, and colonisation.
Despite its inclusion and recognition of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, Islam was attacked, demonized, rejected, and blasphemed against with lies, myths, and accusations of falsehood and plagiarism by the very “People of the Book” ? Jews and Christians. The Qur’an came to return man to the “Straight Path” of “submission and surrender to the One God”. That is the meaning of Islam, and thus all who submit themselves to the One God throughout all time are called “Muslims”, including all Prophets from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus, and finally, the Seal of the Prophets, Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon them all. One God is the only reasoned explanation acceptable to the human mind for the perfectly created ordered universe, singular in purpose and function.
The sum of mankind’s scientific endeavours have failed to account for life and the universe, as convincingly as does a belief in one God.
Tragically, the animosity of the Jews and Christians to Islam, the Qur?an, and the Prophet, that began in seventh century Arabia during the Prophet?s lifetime continues to this day unabated. Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, became the “Devil Incarnate”, the Son of the Devil, a false prophet, a fornicator, a “terrorist”, a “demonic possessed pedophile”. Islam became a “false religion”, a sect of Christianity taught to Muhammad by Jews and Christians, an “evil religion”. The God of Islam was a “false God”, an invention of Muhammad?s, peace and blessings be upon him. To explain the lightning spread of Islam, out of a desert no less, Muslims were called “primitive, backward, tribal, nomadic, blood thirsty terrorists.” Such prejudicial words, accompanied by the “smart swords” of old and the “smart bombs” of today, are not new to Islam.
Both Jews and Christians claimed that Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, plagiarized and modified the Qur?an from their own Scriptures. Here?s what the Jewish Babylonian Talmud says of Islam ? and Christianity:
Islam was not only perceived as a theological threat to both Judaism and Christianity, but as a political, economic, and military threat to Europe as well.
The white northern hemisphere?s creators and justifiers of western civilization?s afflictions upon the dark uncivilized inhabitants of the ‘southern’ hemisphere historically marketed their actions as a form of “humanitarian colonialism”. However, in reality what permeates the words and actions of the civilized west ? crowned with political correctness since WWII as the “Judeo-Christian” tradition ? upon the indigenous inhabitants of far away lands, are the uncivilized traits of Ignorance, Arrogance, Racism, and Denial.
Instead of glorifying our supposed ‘superiority’, a humble recognition is in order, of the barbarity upon which our present dominance is built.
The “white man’s burden” was blessed with a divine “Manifest Destiny” to civilize the dark ignorant heathen by greedy expansionism, with force, if necessary. Such “manifest destiny” saw light in European colonialism, in America’s expansionism westward, and finally in the biblical epitome/political ideology of such a doctrine ? Zionism. Such a humanitarian and civilizing destiny was “altruistically” implemented for the basic human lust for land and wealth. The western Judeo-Christian conscience was eased by claiming that “God” demanded such imperialism, along with the hollow motto: “It’s a land without People, for People without a Land.”
Throughout their history, indeed, the “benign Judeo-Christian” world found in their biblical scriptures and beliefs a “manifest destiny”, whereby the Bible itself was the instrument of justification for a “God-mandated” colonialism of the dark world, beginning with the “ethnic cleansing” demanded by Yahweh (God) of His own personal “Chosen People”, the Hebrews, upon the inhabitants of Canaan.
If the Scriptural truths didn?t suit this “manifest destiny?, then the religious elite simply “perverted”, “corrupted”, “lied”, and “re-wrote” the suitable justifications for unending western crusades upon the hapless dark natives. Truth was simply an obstacle in the path of genocides, war crimes, plundering and raping the lands and treasures of the dehumanized dark heathen, infidel, and barbaric “other.” Today?s truth emanates from the real so-called “Judeo-Christian” religion, i.e. the media and money that finances political campaigns to ensure genocidal policies upon the new “enemy du jour” - Islam.
The universal God became the “exclusive” property of the “Chosen Peoples”, both Jews and Christians, each claiming their “chosenness” to the exclusion of the other and all humanity. Jesus, the Semitic “God” from Palestine, was re-painted in the west as a white man, blonde and blue eyed - after all, God forbid, he should look like “them.” Image, not substance, is everything in the western mind.
Why Do “They” hate “Us”?
Although the west discovered this question post-9/11, millions of victims across time and the geography of the ‘southern’ hemisphere, from Mexico, to Indonesia, and to Australia, have been asking this question with their last dying breath at the hands of their western “civilized” victimizers. Today the question still resounds in the hearts and minds of the impoverished, the weak, the sick, and occupied masses, whose lives are shot by the missiles and bullets, the cigarettes, the alcohol, the defective drugs, the polluted air and water, the slave wages, the trafficking of women and children, and the child labor ? all enriching the pockets of the “Judeo-Christian” masters of today’s world.
’Manifest Destiny’ sustains itself on the creation and exploitation of a class called ‘them’, which must of necessity grow ever larger and poorer.
The world has ceased to see, hear, or feel for the down-trodden victims of their own corrupt governments, the liberating observers of human rights in western capitals, the rapers of land, wealth, resources, and lastly of cultures and faiths. Only in such a “civilized” world do the possessors of guns and bombs, of words and vetoes, of money and votes, indoctrinate their masses to believe they are the hapless victims of “Muslim rage.” It all boils down to historical prejudice.
In today?s world, ?he who controls the news, controls the views.” Given the overwhelming dominance of the western media, the uninformed western mind is more concerned with pets and the latest “sale”, with a demoralized empty soul indoctrinated with worldly pleasures and an inherent prejudice of the “other”. It?s easy to comprehend why Muslim lands from Palestine, Iraq, to Afghanistan, are occupied by the “Judeo-Christian” world; despite Bush?s denial that Iraq was involved in 9/11, 69% of Americans still believe Iraq was behind 9/11.
That?s the power of the media. That?s total indoctrination of an otherwise na?ve, uninformed, generous population. The western media must be considered the “mirror of the mind? that reflects societal norms, priorities, and intellectual laziness. The western material and technological advancements at the expense of the moral soul prove that such progress is accompanied with moral degeneration. Henry Miller captured this sense of degeneracy into which civilization can fall when he wrote in 1939: “Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, and insanity”.
The terrorism of 9-11 didn?t initiate Islamophobia, it merely legitimized it. Bush?s crusadic response to that repulsive un-Islamic attack was taken literally out of the Bible. His September 24th 2001 speech was replete with Biblical images and passages, from his characterization of history as a struggle between “good and evil”, to America?s crusade against the “evildoers” who seek to destroy western civilization, to his famed quote of “You are either with us or against us” paraphrasing Jesus: “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew: 12: 30). A Christian fundamentalist President launched his “Judeo-Christian” re-election crusade against Islamic fundamentalism. Iraq was the scapegoat, the victim for Bush and his mostly Jewish Neo-cons.
Since its founding in 1948, Israeli lies have meant Americans and Muslims die. Islam became America’s enemy only after Israel’s founding and it’s ethnic cleansing and atrocities against Palestinian Muslims and Christians. The Holocaust victimized millions of Jews, and tens of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs, the truth, and ultimately America’s foreign policy ? which has provided Israel with $3 Trillion (2) in aid since 1948, the latest weapons, and automatic vetoes at the United Nations that have made the “Chosen People” rise above international law and legitimacy.
Peace in the Middle East ? in fact with the entire Muslim world ? depends on America’s courage and willingness to seek independence from Israel’s hegemony upon Congress and its foreign policy. America?s arrogance and ignorance is the real threat to humanity?s future.
NOTES
(1) “The History of the Talmud”, Chapter 8, by Michael Rodkinson, 1903.
(2) “The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: $3 Trillion” by Thomas R. Stauffer, June 2003; pg. 20-23, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
This article was kindly submitted to the World Crisis Web by the author.
I wish I had found this article earlier. I especially liked that part about bush using the bible scripture for his inhuman purposes. What a wonderful world it would be if there were more people like you. How many have to suffer for this to stop?
