for once, i differ with sandhya. i fear sandhya allows her distaste for the us to propel her in somewhat strange directions. although i would agree with her general sentiments about the christist lunatic fringe in the us. i can certainly see an american-australian plan to declare india's northeast an 'oppressed' area where christists are discriminated against.
the funny thing is that the reality is that the christists are oppressing hindus there. who has heard of bineshwar brahma, a hindu writer, a bodo, shot to death by christist terrorists? where was the international outcry about the death of a hindu priest -- who was not even named by the newspapers -- dragged out of his temple and killed by christist fundamentalists of the NLFT? how about the banning of durga puja by these christist madmen?
every time someone starts shouting from the rooftops about graham staines -- who was apparently a rather shady character -- it would be good to ask them what they did to bring the killers of bineshwar brahma and the unnamed priest to justice. the answer -- you know it -- is: nothing.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sandhya J
Pioneer-27December2005
Islam for Security Council
Sandhya Jain
As the White House resorts to intellectual demagoguery to manipulate world opinion on Iran, Iraq, and the United Nations, some things need articulation. One is that despite the intensity with which a 'demonize Islam' project is being promoted worldwide, real engagement with the 'religion of peace' is being vehemently discouraged, thus promoting a peculiar impotence aimed at facilitating American unilateralism.
Even more disturbing is the way Washington is trying to browbeat the UN by withholding dues, and justifying the armed occupation of Iraq and intended action against Iran in language reminiscent of the despicable 'White Man's burden.' The artificial escalation of the Iran crisis suggests we are witnessing a drama scripted by the Bush administration's 'Dirty Tricks Department,' and given the denouement over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it will be a crying shame if the international community again permits America to indulge its lust for free oil.
UN reform is imperative to end its West-centric bias and make it more egalitarian, or at least more representative of world power equations. Ideally, the Security Council should be abolished and all issues decided by majority vote in the General Assembly. I view the Security Council as an oligarchy of Western (essentially Christian and imperialist) nations; Russia was included due to its emerging superpower status, but also as part of a policy of containment of Communism through engagement. China made it to buttress the millennarian Communist 'religion' to which Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru wished to convert India. The fact that all permanent members of the Security Council are nuclear weapons states underlines its inegalitarian ethos.
The Security Council reflects the pro-Western balance of power after the Second World War. Its proposed expansion to accommodate the economic might of Japan and India is a ruse to accentuate its pro-Western tilt, and is hollow because of an intellectual failure to admit the necessity to politically engage Islam as a growing and assertive world force. To be relevant and credible, the Security Council must acknowledge the burgeoning sentiment against the evangelical-cum-neo-colonial agenda of the dominant West, and offer other major religious groups a seat at the high table. To begin with, the General Assembly can either extend statehood status to all billion-strong religious groups, or terminate the special privileges of the Vatican.
India deserves recognition as representative of the worldwide billion-plus Hindu community, not as a Western dhimmi state. Among Islamic nations, Iran alone makes the grade. However startling this proposition may appear, it merits serious consideration. Radical Islam, a nomadic entity backed by several Islamic States, is a tangible threat to the non-Islamic world; giving it a political address could facilitate dialogue and accountability.
In fairness, it must be conceded that after European Jews, Muslims of the oil-rich Gulf have suffered grievously at the hands of the Christian West (only the forms of exploitation differ). The land was fractured arbitrarily and handed over to pro-Western potentates; that democracy was considered inconvenient can be seen from the coup that installed Reza Shah Pahlavi after Mossadeq tried to harness Iran's oil wealth for the benefit of the Persian people. Today the Iraqi people and Saddam Hussain are suffering for similar insolence.
The recent remarks of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be seen as an Islamic quest to engage the world more equally. Certainly the Holocaust happened, but Mr. Ahmadinejad is within his rights to question why land for European Jewry was not found on the European mainland where they suffered centuries of brutal persecution long before the advent of Adolf Hitler. When the British Raj instigated Muslims to secede from India, they were not asked to move to the sands of Arabia. More recently, when oil-rich East Timor was systematically converted to Christianity and instigated to secede from Indonesia (the religious demography changed from 12.2% Christians in 1900 to 91.4% in 1990), the Timoreans did not move to Bethlehem. Thereafter, White Australian companies grabbed the oil, and this can only aggravate the Muslim grievance with the modern world.
Mr. Ahmadinejad senses that his country is going to be subjected to the crippling sanctions that killed millions of Iraqis; the secret uranium enrichment sites are as bogus as the Iraqi WMDs. Western analysts were long aware that America was lusting for a rapacious oil deal with Baghdad, on the lines of the 60-year deal that President F.D. Roosevelt sewed up with the Saudi royals in return for protecting their parasitical lifestyles in international hotspots. Now, with Saddam Hussain in custody and a Vichy-style regime in place, the Texan oil majors are having a ball.
Iran put itself on America's hit-list by deposing the Shah, but Washington could not contemplate physical action until public opinion had built up against the excesses of the mullahs. Now with the Iraq action sparking off Shia resurgence in the region, the situation has become volatile. Accordingly, the client state of Israel has been asked to prepare for a pre-emptive strike against Iran's allegedly secret uranium enrichment sites (The Sunday Times, 11 December 2005), and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El-Baradei has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
This is a thinly veiled bribe to vindicate the proposed US action against Iran. Anyone doubting the veracity of this statement has only to recall that the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo of East Timor, and secessionist leader Jose Ramos Horta. In 1998, the US Catholic Conference pressed for making "the promise of the 1996 Peace Prize a reality…"; in 2002, East Timor became independent. El-Baradei is already echoing the US view that the world is "losing patience" with Iran.
America's tragedy is that only Shia Iran, secure in the memory of its ancient Persian civilization, medieval Islamic might and modern oil wealth, can mitigate the force of radical Islam. Shias sought to link the legitimate succession to the Prophet to his direct descendants and clan; this alone can give Islam stability and rootedness, and enforce limits upon it. The Sunni denial of weightage to the blood tie gave Islam its fabulous appeal to nomadic adventurers, and made it a powerful ideological tool in the hands of mobile jihadi squads like Al Qaeda, which can be funded by rich and effete regimes like Saudi Arabia, but cannot be controlled by them. Even Gen. Musharraf needs protection from mujahideen who dislike his proximity to America.
Modern Israel is a compensation for Western racism, but serves as an outpost of Western imperialism. India should recall Israel's rush to establish ties with Pakistan, source of all terrorism in the subcontinent, and realize that it has no stakes in the survival of the Jewish state. Tel Aviv has cold-shouldered India's concerns, giving a clean chit to nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan. In fact, President Musharraf's motorcades are reportedly equipped with signal-jammers to thwart remote controlled blasts, which have been secretly provided by Mossad at the instance of Uncle Sam.
New Delhi must realize that a nuclear Iran discomforts Israel; India's insecurity comes from a nuclear Pakistan, which continues to get the latest military hardware from America and Israel. Our salvation lies in recognizing our Hindu identity and strenuously protecting it from evangelization and infiltration. Whether or not the UPA leadership appreciates this, only a Hindu India can take its rightful place in the comity of nations.
EOM
No comments:
Post a Comment