Monday, October 09, 2006

The Jewish question

Can there be any doubt whatever that the people who scream the loudest about the death of Muslim civilians don’t care one bit about Muslim civilians and their horrible deaths? What concerns the leaders of Islamic nations is the Jewish question; the question of how these people can be kept as far away from walking on the sand they own and breathing the air that blows over it.

Of course the entire world would rather ignore the deaths of millions of Muslims and concentrate on those that can more easily be blamed on Israeli and US aggression, but even the growing tactical fiction that the slaughter in Darfur is directly traceable to – you guessed it – the Jews, isn’t enough to stimulate the Saudis, the Kuwaitis or the UAE with all their vast wealth to get up off their high knot-count Isphahan carpets and do something. It isn’t enough to prompt the Jihadists to jihad their behinds down to the Sudan where they could do some good in the world. The slaughter of Muslim African farmers by Arab militias just doesn’t matter. Arab governments stand behind, cover up for and support the government of Sudan, support the Iranian quest to destroy Israel and defame Jews whatever its cost in human life might be.

Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, has presided over a genocide that is nearly halfway to the high water mark set by Adolph Hitler. Next to this reeking pile of porcine excrement, the crimes of Saddam Hussein and the tyranny of the Taliban smell like roses. Hassan the Butcher simply shrugs off the bloodstains and calls the whole thing a “fiction” sold to us by Jews. Any horror can be denied or hidden by referencing the Jews.

Religions, like viruses, do not exist by themselves. They exist in the acts and practices and words of those who profess to speak for them. The values of a religion are the values of those who act in the name of that religion, not what is written in old books and as far as I can see, those values we see publicly consist of ignoring and even praising the most evil acts of the most evil people while raising holy hell at any criticism or imagined lack of respect.

The fact that there are millions – many hundreds of millions of Muslims who don’t buy into the madness, who aren’t ready to slaughter people for drawing a cartoon or writing a book or for merely existing, doesn’t mean much if they do nothing and say nothing and look instead for scapegoats. Nothing means much if the only value placed on any human life depends on that life’s ability to be used to get what you want, whether it be land or money or power.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree. It is very shrewd and crass political manipulation designed to focus the attention of the people on imagined external enemies in order to disguise the rot within.

It succeeds because of the closed and stagnated nature of Arab societies. In countries where news and political life is tightly controlled to the point where rulers construct new forms of reality, the wildest conspiracies find succor. In that type of situation, people find comfort and plausibility in a historical telos that explains everything as a product of the interaction of powerful hidden figures.

People like Bin Laden and Bashir understand that and milk it for all its worth. Sadly, it works most of the time.

Capt. Fogg said...

Ah yes, powerful hidden figures: Orwell's Goldstein, Hitler's Elders of Zion, the GOP's vast liberal conspiricy and George W. Bush's Saddmosama. There's Falwell's Antichrist and Coulter's Godless Liberals and even the real characters have a mythical evil doppelgänger, as John Kerry the hero is shadowed by John Kerry the traitor.

Anonymous said...

Yes. Have you read Richard Hofstader's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics?". That's a great overview of the language of the Right.

Intellectual Insurgent said...

Well said.

When the massacres were happening in Bosnia, I heard of Muslims from the US volunteering to go fight and defend the Bosnians. Not a peep about protecting the people of Darfur.

Capt. Fogg said...

Adam,

I have now! It's a subject I'm quite interested in, but the use of paranoid extrapolations and such isn't the provence of the Right wing alone. Many organizations thrive on telling us some disease will infect us all, ordinary people with guns will kill our children and so will booze cars, sex, drugs and rock & roll. (they may be right about hip-hop)
_____________________________

I.I.

And to top it off, al Bashir threatens to make it much worse if infidel/jew/crusader/Americans set foot in the place.

The line between religion and insanity doesn't seem so fine to me, nor the line between faith and evil.

Anonymous said...

Yes, political paranoia is quite bipartisan. It can be found everywhere on the political spectrum.

I brought up the essay because the Right has effectively used paranoia to stay in power--"Eurabia," Willie Horton, and the silly fixation on George Soros are solid examples.