What is Fitna in Islam's Narrative ?

By Sodium

Fitna is an Arabic word, derived from the Arabic past tense verb, " fatana. "   With very few exceptions, all words in the Arabic language are derived from their respective past tense verbs, made of only three corresponding alphabet letters which make the past tense verb. In other words, the ROOTS of every word in the Arabic language is its respective past tense verb which must be made of only three Arabic alphabets. To make this point clearer, the English word, " ate, " is an excellent choice to comprehend what has already been said about the ROOTS of the Arabic words. Just for the sake of simplicity, let us assume all English words have their ROOTS exactly as in Arabic and the English word, " ate, " fits beautifully for serving our purpose, here:

~  Because " ate " is a past tense verb in the English language.
~  Because  " ate " is made only of three English alphabets: a, t and e.

Now, let see what can be derived from this word, " ate " as the real ROOT for all English words that can be derived from " ate "

*  Eatery: is a derivative of  " ate " as long as it is assumed that the language rules in English and Arabic are the same.

*  Eats: like in, " he eats " is a derivative of  "ate " as long as it is assumed that the language rules in English and Arabic are the same.

*  Eating: like in, " he is eating " is a derivative of " ate " as long as it is assumed that the language rules in English and Arabic are the same. Of course they are not.

Since we know now the " ROOT " of  the word, " fitna, " let us try to define it:

Most people, in the know, would define "fitna " as a " civil war, " especially among groups of Muslims. I have no disagreement with such a definition because it is a civil war. However, I prefer to dig in the Arabic-Arabic Dictionary and find out what " fitna " really means. And I have found the meaning of " fitna " in the AL-MUNJID which is a huge Arabic-Arabic Dictionary. According to AL-MUNJID, "fitna " means the following:

FITNA: " Ekhtilaf  Elnas Fi Al-Ara'e Wama Yaqa'o Bynahom Min Al-Qital. "

Translation:

FITNA: " Difference/disagreement in opinions among people and what results among them in fighting/killing."

In other words, when people allow their disagreements/differences in opinions overwhelm their common senses and rationality and become passionately and emotionally captives to their opinions, whether such opinions  right or wrong, people get involved in fighting and killing, which really means a civil war, when such disagreements and differences take place among people who follow the same religion or belong to the same ethnicity or citizens of the same country. Examples:

*  When Aisha's forces and Ali's forces fought near the city of Basra, Iraq and what had/has been known in history book as the Battle of the Camel, after Ali ibn Abi-talib was declared the Fourth Caliph and Aisha bint Abi Bukr Elsidiq and widow of the Prophet Muhammad did not like the idea of Ali becoming a Caliph.. That was a bloody battle which Ali won and gracefully took good care of Aisha after he defeated her forces soundly. Muslims fighting Muslims was truly a FITNA.

*  The Shii-Sunni split in Islam is profoundly a FITNA, since both Shi'a and Sunna practice the same five pillars of Islam and follow fundamentally the same tenets of Islam, but have originally political disagreements, as to who should have been the Caliph after the Prophet Muhammad's death.

*  In the 21st century, what have been going on in fighting, in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen are horrible three FITNAS, in three Muslim Arab countries. All three FITNAS seem to be instigated by a regional and international geopolitical struggles for hegemony, some of it has been instigated regionally and some of it has been instigated by big powers competitions to make sure such big powers' interests are protected and served in a region rich in natural resources.

* The American Civil War in which the citizens of the same country fought each other with profound passion for what they believed in. As a result of that war, there were more than six hundred thousand dead, ( 600,000 ), and perhaps as many wounded. That is the largest number in human lives loss America has suffered in all its wars, including the First and Second World Wars..

As it may be seen, FITNA is a terrible and horrible thing, for any country or a group of people, to endure.

END.     

( 16 ) Conclusions Derived From Reviewing " A World Without Islam "

By Sodium

Graham Fuller, author of the book, " A World Without Islam " has divided the content of his fascinating book into the following three categories:

~  Category One: " Heresy And Power "
~  Category Two: " Meeting At The Civilizational Borders Of Islam "
~  Category Three: " The Place Of Islam In The Modern World "

The following conclusions are mainly based on the three categories cited above, ( I may quote Graham Fuller, when and where I may see appropriate ):

~  The world has existed since time immemorial and certainly before the appearance of Islam on the world stage. And the world has been suffering from violence and conflicts before Islam came into existence. Therefore, pointing accusing finger on Islam for the current violence in this world does not really hold water. In short, it is fundamentally the human conditions that have produced violence and so many recorded conflicts, not religion per se. Religions have been used, till present time, to either cover-up achievements of well-defined political agenda, or as profitable instruments for cash-flow by certain " religious " institutions.

~  All three Abrahamic religions, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are connected by certain and well specified theological facts, based upon their respective and fundamental tenets. Yes, indeed, there are differences, but the similarities are well recognized. Hence, tolerance can be achieved, if the concentrations are directed on the similarities instead of the differences.

~  Both Judaism and Christianity have their own internal and external problems. There is nothing really new for Islam to have its internal and external problems also.

~  Because of so many heresies founded in Christianity due to so many different views on the nature of Jesus Christ, (Christology ), so many different Christian Churches had evolved and developed. Islam has well recognized and well established four main, " Mathahib, "  meaning, " Schools of Thought. "  They are:

               Hanafi School of Thought.
               Maliki School of Thought.
               Shafi'i School of Thought.
               Hanbali School of Thought.
               
~  All three Abrahamic religions have been used by rulers, political leaders and governments to achieve their geopolitical agenda through out human recorded history.

~  On page 139 of the book, " A World Without Islam " Graham Fuller has made the following statements and I quote:

         " Samuel Huntington, in his book, THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS, employed the infelicitous phrase " Islam's bloody border."  In a world that is fairly bloody overall, it's worth remembering that it generally takes two to make a border bloody. "

It seems to me that was an extremely brilliant response to Huntington's subjectivity, or, most likely, Huntington's obvious bias against Islam.

~  As Islamic civilization had gradually declined, The Western world's Reformation and Age of Exploration had moved on the world stage, as a potent trend which eventually became a potent force that conquered and colonized the Islamic world. The firm adherence of Muslims to their religion across the globe, including the Muslim minorities that are living within some major countries of the Western World had created the animosity between a declining civilization and a rising one. But this apparent religious animosity has nothing to do with Islam or Christianity as much as with geopolitical struggles. Once more, Graham Fuller makes this point clearer by the following statements of his; and I quote them as they appeared on page 245 of his great book:

      " Religious Muslims tend to agonize over a possible loss of a moral direction in the decline of their civilization, but there are indeed other more objective reasons that must also be cited in the relative decline of the East and the rise of the West. These factors have little to do with Islam and a great deal to do with political and geopolitical changes in the world, as well as other objective external factors. In short, If Islam had not existed, it seems very like that the course of most of these events would not have been significantly different. We witness, for example, civilizational exhaustion in cases like China in the late nineteenth century as well."

Based upon the above quotation, it seems to me that the ruling class in the imperialist West must have a big enemy to keep, what President Dwight Eisenhower called, " The Military Industrial Conflict, " functioning profitably. Communism was the enemy before the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the demise of the Soviet Empire which was considered the " Evil Empire " by the ruling class in the West, a big enough new enemy must be found to replace Communism and its protector, the Soviet Union. As I inspect the map of the globe, I could not see bigger than the Islamic world that qualified to be the new enemy that could match the old enemy, communism and Soviet Empire, in bigness. Hence, the ruling class of the West has decided to make Islam and the Muslim World as the new enemy, for other reasons beside bigness.

 ~  To put it as clearly as possible, it will not serve justice, nor will it serve reality to " Islamize " the current violence the modern world is encountering and making it institutionalized in the Western institutions, while the real and huge violence is currently being committed by certain Western powers against the Muslim World. In short, the West must look in the mirror long and hard before pointing its accusing and bloody fingers, stained with Muslim blood, at Islam and Muslims. The proof is consisted of so many criminal acts of violence that have been committed by certain Western powers against innocent Muslim population across the globe: (A) destruction of Iraq, in 2003, as a functioning human society and a major Arab Muslim country, (B) what Western military powers have been doing to the innocent Afghani people, by the mighty military strikes and especially by the DRONES, military airplanes without pilots, and (C) lastly, but not least, the killing of innocent Muslims, across the globe, has been done in the name of what seems to be an endless War on Terrorism, while the imperialist West is the greatest terrorist of them all.

Final Words:
=================
The cited conclusions in the foregoing are the main conclusions which one may be able to deduce from reviewing the book. But they are not the only ones that could be derived from the whole book. In fact, the number of possible conclusions that can be derived from the book, as an integrated whole, are almost endless. However,  the intent, here, is mainly to provide the interested readers, who have no access to the book, a degree of understanding of what the book is all about. It is hope that such an intent has been achieved and accomplished.

END.          

.

 

( 15 ) " What to Do? Toward a New Policy with the Muslim World "

By Sodium

This is the outline of the review of the last chapter of the book, " A World Without Islam " by Graham Fuller. Hence, it means that it is the last topic of the series of topics entitled as " A World Without Islam, " As Reviewed By Sodium. What remains, in this connection, to outline is the conclusion or conclusions which might have been reached in the course of the entire reviews from the first topic through the last one. I may summarize such conclusions in the next topic. But now let me outline what Graham Fuller has written as to this topic, ( 15 ) " What to Do ? Toward a New Policy with the Muslim World. "

Graham Fuller has started this topic by critically questioning the lack of agreement on the definition of terrorism, in the international community as a whole. However, his hardest criticism is directed on the definition of terrorism as put forward by the Defense Department of the United States. He has quoted such a definition as follows:

" The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological. "

And Fuller's response to the above definition is as follows:

" The political hooker on this statement (definition) is the phrase "use of unlawful violence."  No definition is offered for the term "unlawful," but it appears to mean "not sanctioned by government." Yet isn't this precisely what political struggles usually revolve around lawful?  Modern Western thinkers tend to define the state as possessing the sole legitimate monopoly on the use of violence. Thus "state" = "lawful."  That equation may be appropriate in most Western democracies where governments rule by consent, but it is a far shakier argument in authoritarian states that exclude and persecute political opposition and where change often never comes about except through some kind of  "unlawful" activity. Such governments seek to ensure that all opposition is "unlawful." And such activity is often encountered by what, in effect, are forms of state terrorism directed against a significant group of its own citizens. "

He goes on to make the following important facts about the Muslim and developing worlds:

" In the contemporary Muslim World-and we are not just talking about Muslims, but about the entire developing world---there are at least three conditions under which the use of political violence becomes arguable: overthrow of despotic regimes, struggle for national liberation, and armed resistance against foreign occupation."

It seems to me that Graham Fuller has totally and completely repudiated the definition of terrorism offered by the United States Department of Defense.

It also seems to me that Fuller is a strong believer in the "Principle of Cause and Effect." In other words, terrorism is an effect resulting from a real cause. And unless the cause or causes of terrorism is or are well understood and well defined correctly by the whole international community, all efforts invested in fighting terrorism will not stop terrorism. And it has become clear to me that by writing this topic, as the last chapter in his great book, he faithfully is trying to help his own country and the rest of the Western world to overcome terrorism by eliminating its causes. And in his attempts to persuade his fellows Westerners, he offered the following strategic thoughts:

* Western military and political intervention in the Muslim world-all highly provocative to Muslims-must cease so that the area can begin to calm. That means withdrawal of all US and Western forces from Muslim soil

* Efforts to identify and stymie terrorist acts must be carried out through intelligence and police work; capture of terrorists should be the prerogative of international organizations or local countries, and not by the United States operating on an illegal extraterritorial extension of its sovereign rights to capture and assassinate individual at will.

* The United States must withdraw its special support from pro-American dictators that discredit the US, give the lie to US-stated commitments to democracy, and only lead to the buildup of more explosive political environments and anti-American resentment.

* Democratization must be allowed to proceed in the Muslim world, but Washington must not be the vehicle for its implantation. Ideally, Washington must keep its hands off the process so as not to tarnish it, as has been the case in the past, through association with US Self-interest. Past selective and instrumental use of democratization by Washington for pursuit of US strategic goals has discredited the very concept of its democratization programs.

* An early solution to the Palestinian problem must be found. It is perceived across the Muslim world as the single most egregious case of foreign imperialism, which has displaced local people and cast them into desperate living conditions in refugee camps, imposed second-class citizenship upon them in Israel, or pushed them into exile---for more than sixty years. Palestinian suffering has grown, accompanied by a radicalization that has spread beyond Palestine. The crisis demands a quick solution, the general outline of which are well known to all parties. The Israeli colonization efforts in Palestinian territories must end and be reversed.

* If only a tenth of the potentially one trillion plus dollar squandered by Washington on Middle East wars, which have sown death and destruction with little to show for it, could be devoted to building schools, universities, hospitals, clinics, and training institutes, the region would be transformed, the US image would soar, and huge progress could be made in living conditions.

* Enlightened US policies could soon bring an end to international and transnational sources of violence and radicalism; domestic sources of violence in individual in individual countries require separate analysis and treatment in accordance with local conditions, and, in any case, pose a lesser immediate problem.

* Only Muslims (i.e.., locals) in the end will be able to find solutions to dealing with Islamic (i.e., local) radicalism.          

Final Words:
================
I have tried not to burden the readers with lengthy reviews as much as I possibly could. Whether or not I have succeeded in my attempts I really could not tell, one way or the others. My intent from the very beginning of these reviews has been to provide the readers a clear idea about the content of this great book, " A World Without Islam." Whether I have succeeded in fulfilling my intent or not, that is not for me to say. Only the readers who read carefully all the entire reviews from the very beginning till the end are the most qualified jury in this connection. And I accept their verdict, whether it is positive or negative. I have done the best I could for dedicated readers of this website.

However, I have said it in the very beginning of the reviews that the best way to get a profound feeling what Graham Fuller, the author of the book, has tried to convey to his readers was ( and is ) to read the entire book from cover to cover. There is no other alternative, regardless how hard I try to help out. Well, at least I have tried to help those who have, for different reasons, no accessibility, whatsoever, to the book, let alone reading it from cover to cover.

At any rate, I wish to express my profound thanks to those dedicated readers who had encouraged me to continue my attempts in publishing the series of the reviews, at a time I almost had given up on the whole project of the reviews of this fascinating book, because of the serious technical difficulties I had encountered, in the middle of the reviews. Without their encouragement, patience and understanding of the dilemma I had encountered and which was beyond my control, the planned reviews of this series of topics would not have been achieved and completed, at all. To them and them alone is due all the credit and my profound thanks and appreciation.

END.    

On The Death of Ariel Sharon of Israel.

By Sodium

Based upon what I know about Ariel Sharon, a former prime minister of Israel, and a well known war criminal, ( Sabra and Shatela's massacre in 1982 in Lebanon, and Qibya's massacre in Palestine in 1953 ), he deserves no eulogy from me, or from any other self-respecting human being who sanctifies human life. In fact, I say bluntly, to anyone who cares to listen, his death is a GOOD RIDDANCE.

All those world's leaders who eulogized him are nothing more than a bunch of liars, because they know, as well as I do, that he was a warmongering psychopath and thief; and above all, a war criminal who should have been brought to International Court of Justice to face justice, for his accumulated criminal acts against humanity.

I publish this post to remain, hopefully without deletion, as a witness and reminder, for all future generations, across the globe, to read and be well aware of who really Ariel Sharon was, in spite of what the self serving political eulogists had said, in compliments, over his death..

I say it once more: his death is a GOOD RIDDANCE.    

On The Occasion Of Christmas Of 2013.

To: All My Relatives and Christian Friends Who Are Still Alive, and to All Christians Across the Globe.
 
From: Sodium.

I wish you all  Merry Christmas and a Happy and Most Successful 2014 and beyond.

May the future be kind to everyone of you, in all aspects of your daily life, especially the health aspect, since nothing is really more important than being in good health, or, at least, in an acceptable health . Believe me, nothing is more important.

Sincerely,
Sodium

( 14 ) " War, Resistance, Jihad, and Terrorism. "

By Sodium

The question that one may raise when it comes to the Middle East is this: Why the Middle East region has been a point of attraction for Western's adventurism for expansion and eventual colonization and exploitations, at all levels, economically, politically and even culturally ?

Although the answer to this question is well known to most readers who are interested in following events, as they occur in the Middle East, it is only appropriate to read what Graham Fuller, author of the book, " A World Without Islam " has written with regards to the above question. Fuller has mentioned the following reasons as an answer to the "Why " in the above question:

~  Proximity of the Middle East to Europe, especially the colonial powers of Western Europe.
~  Abundance of energy sources, such as petroleum and natural gas, in some countries of the Middle East.
~  Financial hugeness in the hands of some Middle Eastern countries.
~  Strategic location of the Middle East, as the cross roads to Africa and the Far East.

In addition to the above reasons, I have my own reasons as an answer to the " Why " in the above question. I will keep my own reasons to myself, at this point of time. I may release them, at some point in the future, as timing dictate to do so. At this point, I will adhere firmly to reviewing what Graham Fuller has written in the chapter of this topic.

Because of the reasons Graham Fuller has mentioned, as cited above, he says that no other region in the world has suffered from Western's adventurisms as the Middle East has suffered. And because of such an adventurisms,War, Resistance, Jihad, and Terrorism have been the by-products of the Western exploitations and colonialism of the Middle East. The following quotes may provide the interested readers of what Fuller has to convey to them, with regards to the by-products of Western adventurisms to, exploitations and colonialism of the Middle East:

Quotation One:
=================
" Probably no other region of the world has endured such intense and sustained intervention from the West than the Middle East. "

That is so, of course, because of the reasons specified in the foregoing outline.

Quotation Two:
=================
" The cumulative anger, frustration, and radicalism that this history of interventions has produced are abundantly evident. The question perhaps is not how 9/11, ( date of Osama bin Laden's attack on the trade Twin Towers in New York and the attack on the Pentagon in Washington DC. ), could have happened, but instead, why did not happen sooner ?   As radical Middle East groups articulate their grievances in our globalized age, why should we be surprised that they ultimately carry their struggle to the heart of the West ?  It takes little brilliance, then, to have anticipated some kind of pushback, resistance, a sharp or even violent response to long-term Western actions. It is particularly disingenuous for the West at this point to run around and speculate on what is wrong with the Muslim world, or with Islam, that the West should be witnessing a violent response from the Muslim World. It borders on obtuseness or willful ignorance not to acknowledge any impact or role of its own policies over the last two centuries or more in stimulating the range of current responses from the Muslim world. "

Quotation Three:
===================
" So it becomes analytically shaky to suggest that somehow Islam, madrasas, or radical ideology is the ultimate cause of the resistance. "

Quotation Four:
===================
Hence the need to demonize the enemy and paint the struggle in black-and-white moral terms. Modern communication complicates the problem further when the course of the war can be viewed on television and the Internet from multiple perspectives. The administration of George W. Bush managed to impose serious ( self ) censorship upon American media in covering the bloody details of the Iraq War. Indeed, to Washington one of the great outrages of the Arab satellite station Aljazeera was its regular, on-site, and graphic portrayal of the impact that bombing and combat were having on real people on the ground in real neighborhood. Pictures of American dead, sometimes even civilian casualties, are often termed" obscene " in American Media, partly in order to prevent from being witnessed. And the acts that produced  the pictures are likewise obscene. War is most easily fought when its human consequences remain distant, invisible, abstract. "

Quotation Five:
==================
" In the Qur'an and the Hadith, Jihad has many meanings. The basic root of the word jihad in Arabic means " effort " or " struggle. "  It is widely used to refer to the struggle of the individual to live a virtuous life, to uphold religious values in one's personal life, to help propagate Islam through personal effort by way of personal example and promoting the Faith. In that context the word jihad for Muslims retains quite positive religious connotations of personal devotion toward betterment. It is also routinely used in colloquial Arabic simply to mean " I'll make an effort, do my best."  That the " great jihad, " or personal jihad, as defined by the Prophet."

" Leaser jihad, " as defined originally by the Prophet, came to refer to military efforts in a context of military struggle in which the key obligations were defense and preservation of Islam and umma, (community or nation. )

Quotation Six:
==================
" Acts of  terrorism and suicide operations have now entered into Western vocabulary of Muslim actions in the context of war.

" Does the problem reside primarily with Islam ?  Or are there political and social origins of these issues that require more complex policy analysis and treatment ?  Clearly this book argues that the problem is not basically " Islam, " but the legacy of geopolitical and social issues that affect Muslims who are indeed adopting weapons of the weak. Terrorist operations have a long and venerable history in different places and times, but in the last century, some of the more dramatic cases of such operations have included the Vietcong, the BASK ETA, Shining Path in Peru, PKK ( a Kurdish organization in Turkey ), MJK ( an Iranian group operating against the Islamic Republic ), Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Sikh in India, the Communist Party in India, Naxalites in India, the IRA in Ireland, Kach in Israel, Red Brigades, Aum Shinrikyo, FARC in Columbia, and so on. In racent decades, however, the number of Muslim organizations on the list has increased dramatically with the new confrontations with the West. "

Final Words:
=================
For those readers who are interested in exploring more about Jihad, it is recommended to read an old essay published on this website, about three years ago, under the title, " The Meaning Of Jihad In Islam."

END.

Next topic will be the last topic of this series and will be topic ( 15 ) What to do ? Toward a New Policy with the Muslim World.

           

       

( 13 ) " Colonialism, Nationalism, Islam and Independence Struggle. "

By Sodium

The chapter that has dealt with this topic ( 13 ) is not easy to outline after reviewing. Such an uneasiness stems from the fact related to the total contents of the chapter which, in reality, touches the lives of 1.6 billion human beings who have happened to be Muslims. Hence, in order to provide the readers with a precise account of  such a chapter, one must quote the entire 23 pages that comprised the chapter. Such lengthy quotes will certainly be taxing on this essay's writer. Therefore, it is out of consideration.

What is then the solution?

The solution lies with the title of  topic ( 13 ) which embodies the following words:

~  Colonialism
~  Nationalism
~  Islam
~  Independence Struggle.

By independently outlining comments made on each of the above list, one maybe able to provide adequate information on each and at the same time leave it to the readers to make the necessary connections amongst them to see the whole complex picture:

Colonialism:
=================
Graham Fuller, author of the book, " A world Without Islam, " has quoted what Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner and  a chief economist at the World Bank had said about past and present colonialism. Stiglitz's quote sums it nicely about the colonialism of the Western colonial powers' deeds in the countries they colonialized:

"   Colonialism left a mix legacy in the developing world-but one clear result was the view among people there that they had been cruelly exploited .... The political independence that came to scores of colonies after World War II did not put an end to economic colonialism. In some regions, such as Africa, the exploitation-the extraction of natural resources and the rape of the environment, all in return for a pittance-was obvious. Elsewhere it was more subtle. In many parts of the world, global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank came to be seen as instruments of post-colonial control. These institutions pushed market fundamentalism ( " neoliberalism, " it was often called ), a notion idealized by Americans as " free and unfettered markets. "...free market ideology turned out to be an excuse for new forms of exploitation."

"   Above all, the Muslim world's oil and energy resources have been a key driver for incessant Western intervention over ownership, of the oil, control of the oil companies, pricing policies and shares of prices, political manipulation of leaders in order to obtain the best deal on oil, and political and armed intervention. "

In short, nothing has really changed.

Nationalism:
=================
As one thinks of nationalism in the Muslim world, Arab nationalism comes to mind, as expressed in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire. So does the Algerian revolt against the French's annexation of Algeria and the on-going Palestinian struggle against Zionism in Palestine.

Graham Fuller writes: " When Arabs finally broke with the multiethnic Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, Islam obviously played no role in the event; it was, after all, a Muslim versus Muslim struggle. When the conflict entailed Arab versus Turk, only ethnicity could serve as a rallying cry, not Islam. Ethnic nationalism achieved prominence in the Arab world, for example, under Egypt Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s as the basis of resistance against European intervention and neo-imperialism. But in the face of ultimate weaknesses of the Arab nationalist movement, nationalism became discredited as a force and the Islamic identity took its place--a stage that has not yet ended. "

Islam:
===============
The author of the book, " A World Without Islam, " raises the following question:

Why the Expanding Role of Muslim Identity?

And he answers his own question by so many fascinating meticulous details of which the following quote may suffice for the purpose of getting an idea of the topic at hand:

"   At a time when the whole Muslim world is felt to be under siege, the Muslim identity has often become paramount for most Muslims. Muslims in Malaysia watch Palestinians being killed on TV, Kashmiris watch Chechens, Nigerian watch Iraqis, Afghans watch Somalis. Most other identities lose importance when communities are dominated by violence and the Global War on Terror. But this is not the normal state of affairs. The excessive prominence of the Muslim identity over other elements of identity primary emerges in times of hardship. Islam then becomes an expanded and international rallying cry."

That is why the " Expanding Role of Muslim Identity " passionately and spontaneously takes hold in the international scene, especially whenever a crisis arises that touches slightly or profoundly the mistrust that has existed, since time immemorial, between the Muslim and Western worlds. Islam, in this case, is the most effect instrument to upturn injustices.

Independence Struggle:
======================
In addition to what has already been outlined under the heading "Nationalism " above, the following quote will add more light for a more profound comprehension of what has been going on between the people of the Muslim world and the neocolonial powers:

" Imperialism invariably endangers anti-imperialist reactions. Anti-imperial movements have embraced varying ideologies at different times to attain their ends. After World War II, it was leftist nationalist ideology that dominated the ideological scene in the Middle East. Nasser's national message from Egypt still has a familiar ring: denunciation of intervention in the Middle East, a demand for Muslims to exercise sovereign control their own energy resources, the elimination of Western military bases in the Middle East, and a call for a just solution to the running sore of the dispossessed Palestinians.

"   We forget that in the 1950s and 1960s, it was Arab nationalism that was viewed as the predominant threat to Western interests in the Middle East, stimulating the United States and Britain into covert operations to overthrow leaders in Iran and Syria and to manipulate the Egyptian political scene. ( The United States disastrously continues to believe, into the twenty-first century, that it can ignore and override Arab, or other, nationalism--which is what crises with Iraq and Syria have been all about. ) And in an earlier time, as astonishing as it may seen today, the U S and U K often identified the Islamists as the weapon with which to weaken Arab nationalist leadership and local Soviet interests."

In the opinion of Graham Fuller, "all these policies are ultimately counterproductive in that they stir anger within the countries in question, weaken the prestige of their rulers, and stimulate local radicalism and violence. This kind of long term political and economic interventionism has taken on rawer form in the Middle East than in almost any other part of the world: since the beginning of the Global War on Terror, it has extended and deepened its roots, causing emotions to boil over and making extrication difficult. "

And the Independence Struggle Continues against the warmongering profiteers, economic exploitations, and neocolonialism agenda; all of which serve only the ruling class, across the globe, on the expense of the middle classes and the poor of this entropic world of the 21st Century.

Final words:
================
This website has published an essay entitled, " Thoughts on Edward Said and T.E. Lawrence." Date of publication was March 19, 2010. It is highly recommended to the interested readers to read it, since its content is closely related to this topic.

END.

Next topic will be topic ( 14 ) War, Resistance, Jihad, and Terrorism.