Exaggerated scare tactics

Submitted by Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai (India), Oct 7, 2006 at 15:22

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Dear Mr. Daniel Pipes

This refers to your article: NATO fights the Jehadis

I feel there is something very spurious and unconvincing about the choice of Islam or the so-called radical Islam that can threaten the western world the way it is made out. It seems it is highly exaggerated notion of a potential enemy. Your idea of NATO and the chosen group of nations around the world appears to be very arbitrary and does not hold up to any inherent logic of association, if the idea is just to confront or subdue Islam, or Muslim countries.

Ever since the disintegration of Ottoman Caliphate, Muslim world has remained very docile and had neither the will nor the means to fight the colonial powers on any pretext whatsoever. Of course, the newly liberated colonies had started their freedom struggle after the WWII had already exhausted Western countries and the colonials themselves found it costly to hang out to their empires. But the struggle for freedom everywhere was not as bloody as say Algeria, where France chose to inflict brutalities on an enraged population. While West chose to fight communism as their mortal enemy, due to its ever-growing firepower and economic growth, the third world had never together posed any collective threat to Western world.

For Aznar to formulate a whole plan to marshal forces against Islam and Muslims, on the basis of train bombings in Madrid, is not very convincing and it is difficult if the people in the West will not caught on to the spurious nature of the exaggerated threat. In war on all fronts, where virtually millions lost their lives, an aggregate number of dead not surpassing a few thousands, does not constitute mortal danger to the entire western world. I can cite the case of India, where such violent clashes between the State and opposing forces had been going on since independence sixty years past; there is never a sense of panic that has ever gripped the ruling political parties. India's integrity has never been threatened.

Even now insurgencies of menacing proportions are in action all over the nation, there is hardly any sense of emergency that would appear to bother the governments. At least, there is no state of anxiety parallel to a comparable panic that seems to have gripped the West by a few series of bombings here and there. If the fact, that West cannot always get its will imposed on some rebellious nations, which had earlier been managed by the West through tame proxies,

is the real motivation to whip up a frenzy of scare stories, then the Western policy makers are playing a big fraud on their people. I am sure, whatever adverse propaganda may be launched demonizing Muslims, the truth will dawn on the people much faster than would have been the case in the past, when the world was not so heavily wired and connected. ...

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

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