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Condemned
to Violence?
By Joseph De Matteo
While
watching the recently aired “Muslims”
on Frontline
(PBS),
many facts, which had been relegated to “assist” status to
my visceral response mechanism, were brought back to the
position of readily available data.
The many interviews covered a wide variety of educated
people from a number of countries and professions.
The interviewees spoke frankly, sharing both their
thoughts and feelings. The only aspect lacking is the thoughts
and feelings of working people, and of the poor.
The
program contained some welcome news, but it also presented some
very frightening realities.
US
and BBC Media coverage of the just held elections in France and
Holland (spring 2002) reports on the fear factor with such a
lack of insight that one would think it is not fear at all but
bigotry that has many citizens of those two old nations
screaming for help and assurance.
One could ask, “what is really going on there?”
Muslims
shows us an American and a Malaysian who articulate how Muslims
are willing to live with, and respect, non-Muslims.
It
also shows us that many Muslim not only refuse to live in a
secular society, but are totally intolerant of non-Muslims.
What’s worse, Dr. Akbar Muhammad, an associate
professor of history and Africana studies at New York’s
Binghamton University, tells us that there are large numbers of
Muslims that believe a Jihad against all non-Muslims is called
for when Muslims anywhere are under attack by
non-Muslims. Muslims
are “…saying that what they did (attack on the World Trade
Center), and what they do (continued attacks), is justified in
Islam.” May I
also add that as a non-Muslim, a New York City born and bread
man in his fifties, I could not tell if Dr. Muhammad was, at
this point, speaking as one of them or one of us.
Dr.
Muhammad goes on to say that this attitude, this interpretation
of the Koran, is not widely accepted among the general
population of Muslims. This
is good news, but isn’t it understandable that some people
(non-Muslims) are afraid?
In
the European countries mentioned above, the fear of many in the
electorate was flamed because many Muslim immigrants refuse to
assimilate.
As
a factual aside: In the early 1970s I belonged to the Sons of
Italy in America. This is an old organization (established on June 22, 1905) of
Italian Americans and Americans of Italian descent. Each meeting started with a ceremony that included a
highlight of the by-laws. One
of which was a statements proclaimed that it was the
responsibility of every member to assimilate, or to help newly
arrived Italians to assimilate into America.
This was in line with the attitude of both of the
immigrant families that I am a descendent of.
Continuing,
this well-done documentary presented us with a Nigerian attorney
Sani Hanga Muzzammil, who ends his statements
with the sentence, “People should be allowed to believe what
they want to believe.” This
after telling us that the conflict with Western culture is
because westerners believe in Human Freedom (individual freedom)
and that Islam believes in Communal Harmony instead.
He shows us the proactive measures they took in the
northern states of Nigeria. With the downfall of one regime and the start of another, the
majority Muslim population was able to replace civil law with
Shiria law (Muslim law), and civil courts with Muslim courts.
Therefore,
“allowing people to believe in what they want to believe
in”, translates in reality to allowing Muslims to practice
their beliefs to the exclusion of the beliefs of non-Muslims.
I
have a friend, an African, who is a priest in Kenya.
He works (building and managing hospitals and clinics) in
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
This gentle, tolerant man told me what happened when some
Muslims moved into a location that had a Christian majority.
On their arrival they asked for help and tolerance.
However, once their mosque was built and more of them
arrived in the town, they became militant and very intolerant.
At our last conversation, the relationship between the
two groups is one of pure conflict.
The fact is that most of the Christian community is
intimidated by the aggressive behavior of the Muslims; they
don’t want to live side by side as good neighbors, they want
to dominate.
To
be sure, religious intolerance and extremism are not limited to
Muslims, but one cannot shrug off a people who at the very least
turn a blind eye to the militants among their numbers who, after
they blend into an area, murderously attack civilians, including
women and even the innocent, the children; doing so with
complete disregard for even their own lives.
Is
this not something to fear, to prepare against?
What
is bothersome to many Americans it the fact that there has been
no hue and cry, no outrage against Muslim terrorism coming from
official Muslims Americadom.
When they do condemn, they condemn the outcome, not
actions, and they do so with what we perceive as reserve; it’s
as if they are leaving open a backdoor.
With only one exception I saw this throughout the program
Muslims.
I
also heard, many times, that the West does not understand the
Muslim world. Okay,
maybe that’s so, but it’s obvious that (generally speaking)
there are quite a few Muslims that don’t understand America or
Americans. This
fact seems to have escaped everyone.
Or is it that old double standard, which, if taken to its
logical end, paints us Westerners as superior intellects who
have to make allowances for our mentally handicapped neighbors.
The
program also showed a group of Illinois (I believe) suburban
locals, Muslims and non-Muslims, who have gotten together, at
the insistence of a judge, for the purpose of “getting to know
each other,” and thereby finding a common ground.
The
problem is that none of the people at the meeting we were shown
were the fanatics we fear. (With the exception of some jerk, a
Christian who couldn’t grasp the elementary fact that the
three major religions believed in and worshipped the same God.)
These were just people of good will who happened to
belong to different religions talking about their religious
beliefs with each other. These
folks certainly got to know each other, but these were not
people in a mortal conflict. The fanatics, the intelligent and
the ignorant, the planners of terror and the drones that carry
out the attacks were missing. But this feel good solution, even if it included the fanatics
was doomed to failure. How
can one reason with a man who is cut from the same cloth as the
man who went into the bedroom of a 5-year-old Israeli child and
shot it, and the man who, while holding an airline stewardess
from behind, runs a razor blade across the width of her neck in
order to cower the passengers in the planed destined to be flown
into a building in America on September 11th?
I’m
sorry to say that I don’t have the answer.
And if I did, you wouldn’t want to hear it; I’m a
hothead by nature. God
forgive me, an unforgiving hot head.
My
personal characteristics not withstanding, we cannot sit back
and hope for the best. We
must act. Certainly the war on terrorism is valid, but what of the
minds that are being polluted by the evil ones who hate? What of the children who’s futures are being cast by hate
filled people?
Over
the years since the formation of Israel those Palestinian
“politicians” in power kept their people in refugee camps.
Their only economy was based on the economy of the
country their leaders told them must be destroyed.
Murder and destruction was the path to “Utopia” was
taught to every child. God
forgive us all, they brainwashed their children into being
bombers, murderous suicide bombers.
Which of these children could have found the cure for
cancer? Which of
the ones who blew themselves up in a murderous blast could have
be the parent of a child whose hug could make all the suffering
disappear?
What
chance does a real peace have with two generations of people who
have been taught to hate so deeply?
Something drastic must be done to introduce the rewards
of a peaceful life building a family and a nation with a good
economy into the minds of these people who have been used as
pawns by so many.
The
solution I recommend would start with the aggressive
intervention of the United States into the Palestinian
territories and would include:
·
Help and guidance with building of a local economy
·
Have Arab American businessmen help existing and
want-to-be local businessmen make connections in the US and
Europe for markets or sources of goods.
·
Guidance with putting together the government
bureaucracies needed to do business.
·
A program which would bring Palestinian families
to the US for 6 month periods in an effort to let them see
America and its people living, working and going to school.
Let their children attend our schools and make friends.
Let the parents shop in our stores and see the way we
work and do business, and get along with each other.
Let them see our hospitals and neighborhoods, our parks,
cities, suburbs and farmlands.
Then bring their knowledge back to their homeland and
implement what they have learned.
This
program would exclude our forcing our culture on them, rather we
would let them decide to what parts of our culture they want to
adopt. Let’s not
have the first thing they see of us be scantily clad people
selling everything from soda to cars.
Let Coca Cola or Pepsi or Nabisco or any of a hundred
other products go there and set up a group to operate a bottling
plant or bakery. Let’s
get Hollywood involved and have some of these caring people go
there and help them put together a small movie industry.
And for goodness sake, let’s let them design their own
ad campaigns.
This
is how we can export peace, and get modern health care and
infer-structure to Third World counties.
Now we’d be doing something instead of just using
people or ignoring them. And
we’ve got the perfect place to start.
We can insure that the new nation of Palestine gets
started on the right foot.
Joseph
De Matteo
Copyright
March 2022 Joseph De Matteo all rights reserved.
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