Run Osama, run!

2005-05-30 10:18

What is it that the west, and America in particular, have against Islam and Muslim countries?

Plenty, I believe, as does a noted political-analyst friend of mine whom I will not name because he does very sensitive work for the government.

First, it was the shame of Guantanamo Bay and the barbaric torture of blindfolding of shackled, red-uniformed Muslim prisoners from Afghanistan, who were brutally tortured in barbaric instances which were fully condoned by George Bush and his former secretary of state, Colin Powell.

Then came the destruction of Iraq against all sane admonition by sensible people from around the world.

A litany of lies was cooked up by the Pentagon, and so-called weapons of mass destruction were conjured up to justify bombing Iraq for its oil and toppling its president, Saddam Hussein, and murdering his two sons.

Then followed Lynndie England with her infamous poses for photographs with naked Iraqi prisoners and her completely barbaric methods of humiliation, while laughing and smoking a cigarette.

As if that were not enough, just a little over two weeks ago Newsweek magazine ran a shocker of a story, which was corroborated by the military. The infamous Guantanamo Bay detention centre became the place where the Americans, trying their utmost to extract information from suspected "terrorists", embarked on the worst type of humiliation to a Muslim: they took a copy of the Holy Qur'an and flushed it down a toilet.

'Muslim world has a right to be angry'

It sparked, what I believe, was justified retribution throughout the Muslim world.

Anything and persons suspected of collaborating with the Big Satan were attacked, and Condoleezza Rice was verbally attacked Newsweek for its coverage.

The editors later apologised for their "error"!

To cap the Guantanamo Bay fiasco, someone sneaked out pictures of Saddam Hussein in prison and released them to western newspapers.

The shocking explanation of those papers was to claim that Saddam had "killed 300 000 people" and it was therefore meaningless for anyone to bemoan that his dignity had been violated.

Clearly the Americans have it in for Muslims - the same Americans who have sympathisers in this country and elsewhere, who start crying foul when the so-called "Islamist fundamentalists" hit back!

I pray - yes I do - that Osama bin Laden will not be so stupid as to get himself caught by the Americans, dead or alive, for the Americans will outdo even their sordid selves to humiliate him.

The problem(s) with America

Says my friend the analyst: "The whole American fixation with humiliating Islam and Muslims springs from the core American politico-economic self-interest, which is loaded with long-standing tensions exacerbated by the fact that oil states are generally powerful, religious states.

America has for a long time claimed to hold the moral high ground, and that has included its pursuit of the politico-economic invasion to attack Islam, because they see it as barbaric, uncivilised and inferior."

Those, he says, were precisely black people who were taken into slavery in the first place because their human worth and dignity was looked down upon; the same parallel explains why the apartheid oppressors in South Africa had no qualms about murdering activists and having braais at the same time.

Some people have been decrying the "unfeeling" west for its treatment of Saddam, while I see it as extremely provocative and insensitive: if indeed he did all those terrible things, do we as presumably "civilised" and therefore more cultured people, descend to the level of petty common thugs by ill-treating him?

I had definite feelings on 9/11 because I felt the way those towers were attacked was gross. I am not so sure anymore, and America needs to seriously question its brand of "morality".

Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.

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