Woolwich killing and the truth that sets us free

The report begins with an explanation that while the two pictures on the left and right show Sunday morning services in churches in East London, the third one in the middle is that of a crowded mosque on a Friday with hundreds of worshippers prostrating out in the street.

"The difference in numbers could hardly be more dramatic," points out Guy Walters, author of the report. "What these pictures suggest is that Christianity in this country is becoming a religion of the past and Islam is one of the future.

One day, in a few decades, St George's may well again be packed with worshippers - but they will not be Christians."
I hardly need to add that the context for these pictures and accompanying report splashed across the Daily Mail's front page is the recent attack on a British soldier, Lee Rigby, hacking him to death in broad daylight in a London street apparently by two Al-Qaeda sympathizers.

The Woolwich killing will be remembered long for its chilling, casual savagery. No wonder it has horrified the believers everywhere as much as it has shocked the British society. Muslim scholars have slammed the killing in strongest terms possible.

Dubai's Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Al-Haddad insists the killers do not speak for believers. "Islam is the religion of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and all prophets. The first principle of the faith is asserted in Chapter 16/124 of the Qur'an: "Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best.' Another oft-quoted verse warns that taking one innocent life is akin to killing all of humanity.

We have been here before of course. Every time terror strikes we visit and revisit this debate, as we recently did after the Boston bombings. Yet no matter what Muslims and their scholars say in the defense of their faith, the world will judge them on the basis of their actions - not words. It puts their religion in the dock, as the Daily Mail has, and most Western media and pundits, do again and again.

More disingenuous ones choose to credit the blessed Western civilization and its democracy and freedom. Even the usually levelheaded Max Hastings thinks that Woolwich is a result of the "hatred of the enemy within for our tolerance." How different is this from the Bush worldview that "they hate our way of life?'
This may make the Bushes and Blairs feel good about themselves and greatness of the white, Western civilization but it won't address the problem. This is not an ideological tug of war between Christianity and Islam either, as luminaries like Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis insist.

At the heart of this conflict lies the long history of Western role in Muslim lands, peaking in the past couple of decades with various wars and invasions. What the empire is facing today is the blowback effect of its hubris. If you are to prevent more Woolwichs and Bostons, totally indefensible as they are, you cannot shy away from the fundamental reality of this conflict. You know, the old cause-and-effect question.

If Bush and his cronies thought they could get away with murder - of more than a million people and counting - and fancy wars over fictitious grounds, his successor remains remarkably loyal to the script after all those soul-stirring speeches and solemn Yes-We-Cans. It's hard to believe it's the same man who gave the world the "audacity of hope" and talked of Palestinian children's right to freedom and dignity. The only audacity Obama has shown so far is in targeting defenseless men, women and children in Muslim lands.

In his recent "policy guidance" speech, the president tried to present his "soft side" once again claiming he is "haunted" by the loss of innocent lives. Yet he stuck to the use of unmanned killing machine in the face of international outrage and laws.

In the same breath, Obama called for shutting the Guantanamo Bay prison saying it has become "a symbol for an America that flouts the rule of law." As if anyone could really stop a US president if he wants to have his way.
Pundits are linking Obama's new spin on the 12-year-old war to the fact that the US will soon be pulling its troops out of Afghanistan. So Washington is trying a more subtle approach to protect its interests in the region and beyond.
In a fine piece on Syria this week, Conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan explains how the Middle East is unraveling fast along sectarian and ethnic lines thanks to the imperial policies and plots. In 1915, to win Arab support for its war against the Ottoman Turkey, Britain promised independence of Arab lands from the Red Sea to the south of Anatolia in the north and the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Gulf.

In November 1917, the wily British promised to carve a "Jewish homeland" out of the same Arab land. Between these clashing commitments in 1916 a secret deal was struck between Britain's Mark Sykes and France's Francois Georges-Picot.

With the silent approval of Czarist Russia, which was promised Turkey, Muslim lands were carved and gobbled up by the British and French. France got Syria and Lebanon. Britain took Transjordan, Palestine and Iraq carving out Kuwait. It was only when Lenin discovered the Sykes-Picot treaty in the Czar's archives and published it that the world got to know what the Great War was all about. Imperial hypocrisy stood naked and exposed, as Buchanan notes.

The former presidential hopeful thinks that nine decades on, the Sykes-Picot map of the Middle East is about to undergo another dramatic transformation, and a new map, its borders drawn in blood, emerge, along the lines of what H.G. Wells called the "natural borders" of mankind. The natural map of the Middle East has begun to assert itself.
It's not just Syria that faces disintegration with the unmitigated disaster presided over by Bashar Assad already claiming more than 80,000 lives. Already, Syria's neighbors Lebanon and Iraq are practically split along sectarian and regional lines. And who knows who will follow next.

The Middle East now appears perched on the precipice of a catastrophic civil war and disintegration along long-dormant tribal, regional and sectarian identities and loyalties. The region has never witnessed anything like this since the dawn of Islam. The faith had united the ever-feuding Arabian tribes, Turks, Persians, Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites under one flag. That is history now. After long decades of imperial realpolitik and wars, the gates of hell are ready to open.

What happened in Woolwich is but a minor blast from the past. It's the chilling legacy of years of war, tyranny and injustice. The chickens have come home to roost. Of course, the Woolwich killing was truly disgusting. But was it any more appalling, as Andrew Alexander asks, than the spectacle of an Afghan or Pakistani child with its limbs blown off? What will it take for the empire to realize that this isn't about Islam or its followers but about its own hegemony and hubris? Facing the truth will set us all free, as the Bible counsels.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

Source: ARAB NEWS