The inhuman treatment meted out to the al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners by the United States should serve as an eye-opener. The treatment has been so inhuman that even America’s European allies have protested against it. The human rights groups, too, are up in arms but their protest is proving to be a cry in the wilderness. The American arrogance verging on cruelty is in full display today.
Far away from the American theater the Middle East is witnessing Israeli brutalities which the US justifies shamelessly. Their’s is the argument of arrogance; their ‘madness’ is self defence and the madness of the fringe elements of the Muslim world is Islamic terrorism. There are feeble voices in the West which condemn this naked double standard. But who listens to the sweet and gentle voice of a nightingale in a world full of hissing snakes and croaking frogs.
Both the US and Israel are sending a message to the Muslim activists, and also to the reluctant Muslim leaders, that they are capable of committing unmatched cruelties. That they can commit crime with impunity, and would also claim the mantle of being civilized. That the Muslim world should accept Pan Americana and the domination of its protege in the Middle East, Israel or be ready to face the consequences.
The American and Israeli arrogance is not new; the books of history are replete with such follies. The Pharaohs of Egypt had once sought to eliminate the fore-fathers of Jews through a novel method of cruelty. That they would kill all boys born to Jewish mothers and keep their daughters alive. The idea was to keep the children of Israel in perpetual enslavement. The scheme, as we know, failed miserably. Destiny saw to it that Pharaoh would bring up his enemy, Moses, who ultimately liberated the children of Israel.
Today American domination is perhaps more complete than Pharaoh’s. The US scheme is to keep the world particularly the oil-rich Middle East under its control and paralyze its enemies, the so called fundamentalists, to an extent that they would become impotent and powerless to pose any serious challenge to its supremacy. The scheme is more cunning than Pharaoh’s; they would shower bombs, fire and destruction on those who dare to oppose them militarily, they would buy “agents” to do their dirty works and, finally, they would hire “Muslim intellectuals” to trot the globe and applaud the civil society of the United States. This they want to pursue as long as the Middle East has oil; once the oil wells are dried out the region would be left to itself to wage their feuds as they used to do in the pre-oil days.
What the American establishment is unable to realize is that ideas of freedom, as also of revenge, do not die, as do human bodies. Bombs can kill men, they can never kill ideas. The fight against injustice that the US and its stooges are committing against the Muslims is an idea, a movement born out of a feeling of renaissance that pervades the Muslim landscape all over. This idea is being nourished in the minds and hearts of millions of people. No bomb would ever be able to kill and no walls of a jail would ever be high enough to imprison it.
Islam is a religion of peace in essence. The Quranic sanction for fight is primarily for self-defence or against injustice. This fight can be conducted in many ways. Some people think that it can always be done only through an armed struggle. The truth, however, is that armed struggle is the last phase of the battle called Jihad. Jihad is a perpetual process; even intellectual preparation for a fight is the part of Jihad. The US-led West has been practicing double standard; they have a set of rules for their people and quite a different one for those whom they regard as their potential prospective rivals. The values they cherish such as liberty, freedom, democracy and respect for human rights are dear to truly believing Muslims as well. But when the same good values become a part of Western strategy for their domination the world over, they must be resisted. Right now ours is an ideational resistance, a movement of minds and hearts that can neither be killed nor chained.
[February, 2002]
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