THE violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) can be attributed to five separate dynamics – western hegemony, Zionist colonialism, revolutions, political Islam and sectarian violence.
From 1991 till now, in non-stop hegemonic control, the US/UK axis has been responsible for the deaths of over a million people in Iraq in the west’s various sieges and wars.
Even now, the legacy of the west is reflected in the thousands of Iraqis who are affected by cancer and birth defects from the use of radioactive depleted uranium-tipped bombs.
What does one expect after nearly 100 years of continual interference and hegemonic control?
During WW1, the combined forces of Britain, France and Russia dismembered the Ottoman Caliphate as part of its strategy to “divide and rule” the Muslim world, to colonise it, to humiliate it, and to steal its land and oil resources.
Colonisation and the “seven sisters” were the vehicles used to rip off oil wealth from the MENA region. Now the west profits from unfair terms of trade with the third world and selling obsolete military equipment.
Arab dictators in turn use these weapons to suppress their peoples and to extract economic rent by the barrel of the gun.
Europe has been the most violent continent over the past 900 years witnessing pogroms against Jews, crusades against Muslims, the endless wars for empires and colonies, the religious wars, the inquisition torture chambers, the revolutions, the civil wars, national wars, the ethnic cleansing of millions of Muslims from Spain and the Balkans, the two world wars and culminating in the mass murder of 200000 Bosnian Muslims.
“All Europeans are not violent, but all violence stems from Europe” is more plausible than “all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim”.
Islamist inspired terrorism in itself is an asymmetrical response to western hegemony and Zionist apartheid. The west waged its cold war against communism not on its own territory, but in other people’s backyards – South America, Africa and Asia. It used the mujahideen to fight its war against the Soviet empire in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In a classic blowback al Qaeda evolved from the mujahideen who promptly declared war on the west for its support of Israel and Arab puppet regimes and 9/11 was the result.
In 2003, the west invaded again and Iraq became a power vacuum and into that power vacuum stepped tens of thousands of radicalised Islamic State of Iraq and Syrian gangsters. These monsters are weaned on a diet of Wahhabi, Deobandi and Taliban-inspired extremist ideology where symbols are more important than substance, where Quran recitation and memorisation trumps Islamic ethics.
What is the use when people recite and memorise the Quran, but fail to understand its message?
Even if Hamas recognises Israel and scraps its charter, nothing will change. The establishment of Israel in 1948 did not comply with any of the requirements of international law – land, people, government and recognition.
For land, the Zionists had to flatten hundreds of Palestinian villages, for people they had to illegally smuggle in boatloads of Jews from Eastern Europe and for recognition even Haiti was offered a $5-million bribe to vote for Israel.
Both the one-state and two-state solutions are mirages – when you go in search, there is nothing – only the desert of ethnic cleansing.
Any deal forced on the hapless Palestinians will not be recognised – an agreement made under duress will be set aside one day when the shoe is on the other foot.
A people’s militia with homemade rockets have gone “toe-to-toe” with an advanced army with the latest military technology for 50 days. Juxtapose that with the 1967 war when Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in six days. How things have changed and will change even more.
Europe is Islamising at breakneck speed due to its falling European birthrates, increased Islamic immigration and proselytisation: support for Israel will evaporate.
No one believes Zionist propaganda anymore (besides the Zionists themselves) and propaganda plays no role in the world of realpolitik, only power does.
But as Hamas seeks a balance of power with Israel; in contradistinction, the west cannot find a balance of power with ISIS.
Like communism, Islamic extremism cannot be defeated by war, only by a better idea. Here one needs a balance of ideas, not a balance of power. Capitalism defeated communism with a better idea. Similarly, it will be up to moderate political Islam to defeat the ideology of ISIS.
“We have made you a moderate nation so that you can be an example to other nations and the Prophet an example to you” (Quran 2:143).
Many more thousands of radicalised youth will be attracted to Iraq and Syria.
The hatred comes from western double standards (assisting non-Muslim Yazidis with airstrikes but not Muslim Syrians) and the humiliation comes from Zionists using illegal weapons against civilians such as white phosphorous, incineration and flesh shredders – when American bunker buster bombs drill down to the ground floor of a four-storey building and wipe out a whole family.
This hatred and humiliation is further fuelled when settlers from New York build their illegal settlements on hilltops in the West Bank and let their sewage and garbage spill down onto Palestinian farms below with impunity.
If Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires, then history will judge Iraq to be the graveyard of civilisations – the western civilisation.
Naushad Omar is an East London resident
What is behind all the violence in Middle East
From 1991 till now, in non-stop hegemonic control, the US/UK axis has been responsible for the deaths of over a million people in Iraq in the west’s various sieges and wars.
Even now, the legacy of the west is reflected in the thousands of Iraqis who are affected by cancer and birth defects from the use of radioactive depleted uranium-tipped bombs.
What does one expect after nearly 100 years of continual interference and hegemonic control?
During WW1, the combined forces of Britain, France and Russia dismembered the Ottoman Caliphate as part of its strategy to “divide and rule” the Muslim world, to colonise it, to humiliate it, and to steal its land and oil resources.
Colonisation and the “seven sisters” were the vehicles used to rip off oil wealth from the MENA region. Now the west profits from unfair terms of trade with the third world and selling obsolete military equipment.
Arab dictators in turn use these weapons to suppress their peoples and to extract economic rent by the barrel of the gun.
Europe has been the most violent continent over the past 900 years witnessing pogroms against Jews, crusades against Muslims, the endless wars for empires and colonies, the religious wars, the inquisition torture chambers, the revolutions, the civil wars, national wars, the ethnic cleansing of millions of Muslims from Spain and the Balkans, the two world wars and culminating in the mass murder of 200000 Bosnian Muslims.
“All Europeans are not violent, but all violence stems from Europe” is more plausible than “all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim”.
Islamist inspired terrorism in itself is an asymmetrical response to western hegemony and Zionist apartheid. The west waged its cold war against communism not on its own territory, but in other people’s backyards – South America, Africa and Asia. It used the mujahideen to fight its war against the Soviet empire in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In a classic blowback al Qaeda evolved from the mujahideen who promptly declared war on the west for its support of Israel and Arab puppet regimes and 9/11 was the result.
In 2003, the west invaded again and Iraq became a power vacuum and into that power vacuum stepped tens of thousands of radicalised Islamic State of Iraq and Syrian gangsters. These monsters are weaned on a diet of Wahhabi, Deobandi and Taliban-inspired extremist ideology where symbols are more important than substance, where Quran recitation and memorisation trumps Islamic ethics.
What is the use when people recite and memorise the Quran, but fail to understand its message?
Even if Hamas recognises Israel and scraps its charter, nothing will change. The establishment of Israel in 1948 did not comply with any of the requirements of international law – land, people, government and recognition.
For land, the Zionists had to flatten hundreds of Palestinian villages, for people they had to illegally smuggle in boatloads of Jews from Eastern Europe and for recognition even Haiti was offered a $5-million bribe to vote for Israel.
Both the one-state and two-state solutions are mirages – when you go in search, there is nothing – only the desert of ethnic cleansing.
Any deal forced on the hapless Palestinians will not be recognised – an agreement made under duress will be set aside one day when the shoe is on the other foot.
A people’s militia with homemade rockets have gone “toe-to-toe” with an advanced army with the latest military technology for 50 days. Juxtapose that with the 1967 war when Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in six days. How things have changed and will change even more.
Europe is Islamising at breakneck speed due to its falling European birthrates, increased Islamic immigration and proselytisation: support for Israel will evaporate.
No one believes Zionist propaganda anymore (besides the Zionists themselves) and propaganda plays no role in the world of realpolitik, only power does.
But as Hamas seeks a balance of power with Israel; in contradistinction, the west cannot find a balance of power with ISIS.
Like communism, Islamic extremism cannot be defeated by war, only by a better idea. Here one needs a balance of ideas, not a balance of power. Capitalism defeated communism with a better idea. Similarly, it will be up to moderate political Islam to defeat the ideology of ISIS.
“We have made you a moderate nation so that you can be an example to other nations and the Prophet an example to you” (Quran 2:143).
Many more thousands of radicalised youth will be attracted to Iraq and Syria.
The hatred comes from western double standards (assisting non-Muslim Yazidis with airstrikes but not Muslim Syrians) and the humiliation comes from Zionists using illegal weapons against civilians such as white phosphorous, incineration and flesh shredders – when American bunker buster bombs drill down to the ground floor of a four-storey building and wipe out a whole family.
This hatred and humiliation is further fuelled when settlers from New York build their illegal settlements on hilltops in the West Bank and let their sewage and garbage spill down onto Palestinian farms below with impunity.
If Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires, then history will judge Iraq to be the graveyard of civilisations – the western civilisation.
Naushad Omar is an East London resident
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