Who do they fear?

Submitted by Abir Chaaban (Canada), Feb 14, 2006 at 12:51

I think that the moderates live in fear of the governments that are in control of their affairs, the moderates are not afraid of the Islamists. The Islamists gain the support of the moderates only because the Islamists are the only ones who are capable of shouting against existing governments. These are the legitimate dictators in the International legal order of states. Once Egyptians, Syrians and Saudis could have the channels that will allow the moderates to express their discontent without being detained by governments and not Islamists, then maybe the Islamists will not be the only choice for progress in the Middle East. The choice today is clearly the dictator's corruption versus the democratic extremism.

The west wonders, why the moderate majority in the Arab world is silent, and why this moderate, middle to upper class community of intellectuals and professionals is not rejecting the oppressive policies of governments and voting for the extremism of the Islamists. The moderate majority in the Middle East is a group that contains both the religiously conservative and secular and socially liberal individuals, who are also Muslims; these groups come with arguments that will include religion and the moral values of religion in shaping who they are and what they believe in. This majority is vocal about their criticism about how the religion of Mohamed has been distorted by the fundamentalists and radical Islamic groups, when they talk amongst themselves and they do try to explain by bringing in the values that they want to clarify from the very essence of the religion in which they believe. In Western cultures the dissenters of the Muslims are viewed as those who reject the religion of Islam and attack it, and not those who reject repressive governments and attack the government's manipulation of religion to presume a divine position to dictate and rule. These are the dissenters who will make the list of Western heroes of Islamic dissenters, Irshad Manji, (Middle East specialists of Canada, who holds an undergraduate degree in European history), and Salman Rushdi (the man who rejected the Koran) are to name a few, who make headline news of dissenters. In the West Muslim dissent is the monopoly that is controlled by the left and the leftists' conceptions of religion and equality.

I have never heard about a western country that is praising some moderates rejection to oppressive governments that are actually controlling their affairs, it seems as if "Islam" is the problem in the Middle East when the real problem is governments that are supported by the West and are in continuous violations of the human rights of this very religious moderate silenced majority. This silenced majority finds itself supportive of the Islamist calls for abolishing corrupt governments, who are actually nothing but Western puppets that are running their daily business by the mere repression of their own people. Muslims are requested to reject their faith if they are to fit in the accepted category of the dissenters since dissenters should and must attack the religion of Islam that is perceived as the cause of this problem and not the governments that are sitting in their positions day after day gaining the support of International organizations like the UN, where their sovereignty and control is protected under international law.

Could a dissenter be a religious Muslim, a secular also Muslim, who is not dissenting against religion but against governments, and could a person who opposes the radicals be a practicing individual? This is the million dollar question that should be addressed in the Western World.

The Cartoons of Mohamed is a good incident that just happened in today's world of dissent and the silenced dissenters. Muslim leadership ( such as Afghanistan and others) is paying lip service to the fanatics so that they could keep the calm, and everyone wonders since when did the Syrians become such good Muslims when they enthusiastically burnt down the Danish Embassy, I think that this all fits in the farce of cartoons and cartoonists.

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