By Mohamed Khodr

02/08/2001

As an Arab American Muslim living in the comfort and security of the United States, I was enraged and furious at the spectacle of Israeli soldiers attacking worshippers on the holy ground of al-Aqsa Mosque. Palestinian Muslims besieged in Islam's third holiest site had only their shoes and slippers by which to defend themselves against heavily armed soldiers and police. Scores of Muslims were injured, beaten, or forcibly arrested defending our holy Mosque on behalf of the silent, defeated, demoralized, cowardly, impotent and incompetent world of 1.3 billion Muslims, almost a quarter of the world's population.

I wouldn't have seen this depressing slap in the face of Muslims if it wasn't for the extraordinary reporting of al-Jazeera television. Watching American television or reading American newspapers one gets the impression that Israeli forces were simply defending innocent Jewish worshippers at the Wailing Wall against the "violent terrorism" incited by Arafat. The pictures shown were of fleeing Jewish worshippers and not of the storming of a holy site. The fact that this was instigated by what the American media terms "ultra-nationalist" Jews wishing to simply place a cornerstone for the eventual building of the Third Temple only served to heighten the innocence of these Jewish faithful against the inherent genetically driven "violence" of Palestinians, Arabs, and of Islam itself.

As I sat watching with a lump in my throat and tears streaming down my face I could only think of the "QUIET" of the Muslim world in the face of this attack and denigration of al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharon's repeated insistence and demand of a "QUIET" time from the Palestinians somehow managed to intimidate and silence the entire Muslim world (notice that I say Muslim world, and not the Islamic world, for today's Muslims dishonor, and are devoid of the glory and truth of Islam).

In the West I only hear Israel's version of history, truth, and narration of events. Where is the Arab/Muslim viewpoint, their version of events and of history? Israel hires public relations firms to package its story, to color its rifles, and to sanitize murder. It sends eloquent spokesmen to speak to the media and its diplomats and representatives initiate the story by engaging the media; they send faxes, emails, make phone calls, harness a unified simple message like a successful commercial that easily infiltrates the minds and hearts of America and Europe. For one hundred years Zionism has hijacked, manipulated, formulated, and rewrote a history full of romanticism, idealism, mythology, and an emotionally persuasive story full of Biblical connections that resonates with the Christian world. Zionism set the agenda, the timetable, the parameters of the conversation, and the talking points. In effect, it put in place a process so ingenious that the West simply could not refuse.

Let's place this Zionist campaign in history. For two thousand years the Christian world persecuted Jews. Jews were "Christ Killers". Hitler almost eliminated the entire race. Jews do not believe in Jesus (peace be upon him), and in fact Orthodox Judaism displays a virulent abhorrence and distaste for Christ.

Prior to the Holocaust there were only 18 million Jews worldwide. Yet within 50 years of Theodore Herzl's book "The Jewish State", Zionism succeeded in hijacking Palestine, forming a Jewish state, displacing and murdering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, silencing the West with campaign donations (carrot) and a powerful media unhesitant to slap the "anti-Semitism" label on any fool critical of Israel (stick), creating the fallacy of a Judeo-Christian pact against the common enemy of "Islam", sidelining the United Nations and international laws, disregarding any treaties and agreements, making America its financial, military, and diplomatic doormat (73 vetoes since 1974 in the U.N. Security Council), carried out repeated military aggressions to conquer more Arab land and water, making Israel the "gateway" to the West (especially the White House and Congress), but above all else….turning the entire Muslim world into an introverted, cowardly, compliant, voiceless, autocratic jelly mass whose uneducated, incompetent, greedy and un-Islamic leaders dance to the Zionist tune of divide and conquer in three ways: First, oppress their own people. Second, buy Western arms to fight each other. And lastly, compete for Israel's and America's attention, approval, protection, ego stroking, and monetary compensation.

In short, our Muslim world has abandoned its faith, its dignity, its honor, and perhaps its very existence and future given the rapid capitalistic evolution of the Western world and its subtle long-term determination to undermine Islam as the last and only remaining vestige of moral resistance. Like any nation, Israel and America are simply looking out for their own strategic interest. It's too simplistic to conclude that Israel is solely responsible for America's strategic behavior in the Middle East. Israel is America's whipping bully to keep Arab puppets in check so that it could protect its oil imports, control the Suez Canal, Bab al-Mandab and the Hormuz Straits, as well as prevent any rise of a truly Islamic resistance or government that may jeopardize the cheap oil and vast income generated by the American military-industrial complex that sells us alcohol, cigarettes, pornography, bullets, tanks and fighter planes. With Israel's military and technological superiority guaranteed by the U.S., the moronic Arab states have no choice but to continue making the Middle East the prime real estate for arms sales.

Thus, what are the national interests of the Arab/Muslim world? It is advantageous for our leaders to keep the Muslim world ignorant, poor, engrossed in tribal and feudal conflicts, heavily distracted with media lies and hyperbolic speeches, and absorbed in emulating the Western culture, particularly American culture. The spread of American clothes, pop music, television, movies, magazines, cultural passions for money, sex, drugs, violence, and individuality at the expense of faith, family, and community values, are rapidly infiltrating the minds, bodies, and souls of young Muslims under the apathetic eyes of governments, parents, and religious institutions. Islam and Arab culture are imploding under an overpowering new form of Western Colonialism termed globalization.

Globalization is nothing short of the powerful few Western nations (the G8: "Group of 8", or the "Globalizing 8") colonizing other nations of the southern hemisphere (mainly Muslim) not with arms, but with financial, banking, trade, informational, educational, and cultural tentacles that ensure a compliant and obedient free market for Western goods. Through the tender of loans, the West buys the very soul of impoverished nations and people. The North-South dialogue becomes a terminal monologue of northern dictates to southern enslavement. The past is indeed prologue where northern white Christian nations now materially and culturally colonize the dark skinned world…a world where Islam thrives. Globalization creates a world of winners and losers, of haves and have-nots, with an ever-expanding wealth gap where the world's populace majority are condemned to a life of poverty, illiteracy, and poor health. Statistics show that the world's poorest fifth's share of world income dropped from 2.3% to 1.4% between 1989 and 1998 with the richest fifth's share rising.

Globalization is in essence the corporate rape of poor nations' resources, a brain drain of their human potential, and the degradation and pollution of their environment. In other words, globalization is the huge "sucking sound" of the Greedy Western Eight Nations (G8) of the wealth, human and environmental resources of already impoverished nations. The rapid technological, information, and communication explosion makes institutional structures such as governmental, educational, and religious barriers obsolete and irrelevant. An individual in the privacy of their home connected to the world net can bypass local, national, and international laws and norms to participate in the Western dominated world of "me and my business", damn the outside world, and damn the consequences. Thus, globalization is primarily an affair with the dollar and not an affair with the mind, heart, and conscience of individual or collective humanity. Such rapid exchanges of goods and services can only serve to undermine local businesses, customs, cultures, languages, ethics, and most importantly, the religious and community values so cherished in Islam.

While the Western world is moving at lightening speed in the arena of information technology, the Arab/Muslim world is consumed by feudalism, tribalism, illiteracy, poverty, corruption, and an almost total ignorance of their own faith - Islam. Muslims now believe that "Islam" is the constraining factor to their progress, how else does one explain Western wealth? Only when the West separated church and state did they progress. Such pathetic excuses and assessments only serve to reflect the Muslim world's jealous susceptibility to Western propaganda. Muslims not only do not "READ" or use the "PEN" but have tragically surrendered their intellectuality, their independent thought and reasoning, in order to simply emulate and seek worldly wealth, all the while forgetting the forbiddance of emulation in Islam and forgetting the reasoning power of "IJTIHAD" and the greater struggle against worldly passions, "JIHAD".

Muslims have succeeded in adopting the very superficial aspects of Western "civilization" that the West itself is trying to abandon and correct. We have adopted the "ME FIRST" mentality; we seek instant gratification in our world of sensual stimulation; we accumulate wealth regardless of its immoral or illegal acquisition, we collect "stuff" and chase the newest gadgets; we spend our time shopping in malls; we want the latest "anything" first; we compete with each other to buy for our children; we import almost all our foods and drinks; we smoke and drink more; we drive fast cars while chasing and impressing young women; we have more illegitimate children and abortions; we now have more crime in our cities; we can now watch pornography in the privacy of our satellite dishes; we all must have cellular phones and pagers in countries where sewers still line the streets; we have now become "civilized" as we fall prey to Western epidemics of mental disease with our dependence on "Pills" like Prozac and our own private "Therapists"; we trample upon our own languages with the interjection of American phrases; our use of toilet paper has risen; all the while the muezzins (the one who calls to prayer) cry out for worshippers five times a day seeking to remind Muslims of the "straight path", but alas, the azzan (prayer call) is not heard or heeded above the loud music of Madonna and Ricky Martin bursting from walkmans and headphones.

I thus call upon all Muslims to save themselves the agony of guilt, despair, and the tribulations of Islamic pretense and simply succumb to our human instincts of wants and desires. Let's forget and ignore the voice of an Islamic conscience that simply tortures us with impotent guilt against the greater powers of the West and Israel and let us surrender and submit to the reality that we are weak and they are strong, and let's simply live and let live. As the American saying goes: "If you can't beat them, join them." We're simply too tired of defeat; too tired to believe anymore; and too tired to care. It's been centuries and we've gone nowhere but down. Let's be honest. We don't like each other much; we have little trust and respect for each other; we could care less if an African, Indonesian, Malaysian, Bengali, Pakistani, Afghani, Kashmiri, Chechen, Iraqi, Iranian, Saudi is hungry, sick, killed or raped. What can anyone of us do about any of this? So let's just abandon this concept of ummah (the Muslim nation). It only exists in the minds of fanatics who savor Islam by inflicting pain on anyone who disagrees with their ideology. Yet, at least they have some passion. As for the rest of us, just leave us alone.

I don't want to hear of hungry sick Muslim refugees who need help. Stop sending me letters and emails about someone needing a transplant operation. I don't believe it anyway. I have a hard time believing a Muslim who's not a known friend of mine.

If Israel wants Al-Aqsa mosque, let them have it. It's just real estate. We don't care if they march on Mecca or Medina to be honest. Even in those holy cities, Muslims will rob you blind, or step on you, or shove you violently to the side to get to the stone. Islam, like religions in the West, should be an individual's choice and prerogative. Whether Muslims pray or not is there business. Don't call me to pray on Fridays when I'm watching a soccer game. As for zakat (a tithe on income), most of us are poor so let us be. Besides, you think our corrupt government really spends that money on the poor? The leaders are corrupt, our ulamas (Islamic scholars) are corrupt and seek the ruler's money and blessings, and everyone is seeking their own benefit, so don't come to me with the cry for an "ISLAMIC INTIFADAH". We are humans, no different than American Christians or Israeli Jews. Everybody has used religion for their own political power and wealth.

Just look at the statistics below and you'll see why Muslims don't care. We're getting poorer, while our leaders are getting richer. How many palaces does a Muslim leader need? We're getting poorer while the West is getting richer. It must be because they have abandoned religion. No matter what Muslim nations do, or how hard Muslims work, our debt and burden to the West gets larger. Praying five times a day does not buy my children pizza, McDonald Big Macs, Coke, or Nike shoes. Why should I make my child read the Holy Qur'an when Bill Gates' Microsoft Internet web can reveal the world to him. Muslim leaders and mufti's (Muslim jurist) do nothing for our roads, schools, hospitals, water and sewage systems, which are not even fit for animals. They, and us, deserve each other.

Ironically, it is Western men and women who protest against globalization on behalf of the poor in the southern hemisphere (which includes Muslim nations). It is Western men and women, Christians and Jews, who protest on behalf of the injustice and aggression committed against Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, and Kashmir. It is Western men and women, Christians and Jews, who speak out against the vilification against Islam in the Western media. It is western men and women, Christians and Jews, who speak out against the autocracy of Muslim rulers and who campaign for freedom, democracy and human rights for Muslim men and women. It is Western men and women, Christians and Jews, who write the articles, books, and appear on radio and television defending Muslim nations against Western supported aggression. The question that must be asked is: Where are the Muslim men and women who defend their faith, their land, and their rights? 

Tragically, according to a recent survey, only three percent of American Muslims are actively engaged in the political defense of Islam and Muslims in America. That means 97% are either apathetic, ignorant, or truly don't understand the enormous responsibility and duty Islam places on them to actively implement and pursue Islamic ideals, even to the point of defending their faith with death. Western politics and policies are mainly dependent on money. We hear that American Muslims are mainly professionals with good income. Where is that money on behalf of the faith? Can't we each spare ten dollars a year to defend our faith? Imagine what $70 million a year could accomplish in the arena of education, dawah (missionary work), building of schools, mosques, hospitals; providing for the defense of Muslim civil rights, public relations - such as a national Islamic satellite/cable channel - and political muscle. If the educated professional Muslim elite in the West doesn't care, let's not blame our people back home.

Obviously, even in the West Muslims have adopted the "Western" model of worship - an occasional attendance of prayer on the Sabbath (Friday), and then only more for social appearance and respectability than for worshiping Allah (SWT).

It's so convenient and refreshing that after a Muslim finishes his umrah (non-hajj visit to Mecca) he can walk out of the Masjid al-Haram and go eat at Burger King across the street from the Kaaba and have a Whopper with Coke. When a Muslim visits the Mosque of the Holy Prophet (SAW) in Medina he can go and have a meal in McDonald's, then go back to the hotel and order a stimulating movie in the privacy of his hotel room.

Given the state of affairs in the Muslim world, I once again urge all of us to surrender our faith, land, honor and wealth to the only important power in the world: the globalized dollar.

So, bro, see here… I got my jeans, my t-shirt, my credit cards, my burger and fries, my Coke, my uppers and downers, my video cam, my rap CD's, my Mazda, my tickets, and my woman. Where you heading at? Man, I'm chilling out in Jerusalem with some of my Zionist friends at the al-Aqsa Cafe.

Some Characteristics of Globalization:

Facts & Figures:

• According to the World Bank, a sixth of the world's population (primarily the people of North America, Europe, and Japan) received nearly 80% of world income, an average of $70 per day, in 1998 - at the same time, the 57% of the world's population in the 63 poorest countries received only six percent of world income, an average of less than $2 per day (p.1).

• Worldwide, 1.2 billion people subsist on less than a dollar a day. This number has remained roughly constant from 1987 to 1998, the most recent year for which data is available (p.1).

• A quarter of the world's population, 1.3 billion people, live in severe poverty - nearly 800 million people do not get enough food, and about 500 million people are chronically malnourished. More than a third of children are malnourished (p.4).

• The net wealth of the 10 richest billionaires is $133 billion, more than 1.5 times the total national income of the least developed countries (p.4).

• The cost of eradicating poverty is 1% of global income (p.4).

• Effective debt relief to the 20 poorest countries would cost $5.5 billion - equivalent to the cost of building EuroDisney (p.4).

• Providing universal access to basic social services and transfers to alleviate income poverty would cost $80 billion, less than the net worth of the seven richest men in the world (p.4).

• Six countries spend $700 million in nine days on dog and cat food (p.4).

• Today's world spends $92 billion on junk food, $66 billion on cosmetics and nearly $800 billion in 1995 for defense expenditures (p.4).

• According to United Nations estimates, every man, woman and child in Africa owes the developed world $562. Rwanda, in central Africa, spends the equivalent of its health and education budgets combined paying interest on debt; in Indonesia, 30 cents of every export dollar earned is spent repaying foreign debt (p.37).

• In 1999 the World Bank estimated that the world's 42 poorest countries collectively owe the developed world $310 billion (p.37)

• Despite having repaid $1.5 trillion in debt between 1983 and 1990, the debt burden of all the world's developing nations rose from $1.25 trillion in 1983 to a present level of about $3 trillion (p.37).

(Source: "Issues in Society": Foreign Aid and World Debt Volume 134; Editor: Justin Healey Year 2000)

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