May Allahﷻ help this Ummah but we are living in very difficult times. The biggest challenge seems to be to maintain emotional and psychological equilibrium in the midst of the battering as if in a storm. While we are battered by storms, some of our own making, we still have to keep walking on the path of life, trying to make sense of whatever little we can see through the haze and fog and keep hoping that when we step off into the darkness of the unknown, there will be something solid to stand on or we will be taught how to fly.
In times like this it is only natural to fall into the trap of defining ourselves in the terms that the propaganda wordsmiths set for us and to respond in their language without realizing that by definition, it is to our disadvantage.
Language has and will always be a weapon in the hands of the experts to be used to color the picture in the hue of their choice. For example, British historians called the 1857 War of Indian Independence, “The Sepoy Mutiny”. Intrinsic in the term being the need to legitimize the colonial rule. If you call it a ‘Mutiny’ then any draconian measure to crush it becomes justifiable and that is precisely what they did. Of course, to our own eternal shame as Indians, Maratha and Sikh troops fought under the command of British officers and did the deed and literally hundreds of thousands of brave Indian patriots, Hindu and Muslim, were brutally murdered. Same story in the infamous Jalianwala Bagh massacre where on the orders of Col. Reginald Dyer troops of the 2-9th Gurkhas, the 54th Sikhs and the 59th Sind Rifles, fired on a gathering of Sikhs. Ask how and why Sikhs killed Sikhs? The power of language and how it can brainwash you so that you no longer know friend from foe.
Today the same tactics are being used where freedom fighters are called ‘insurgents’ and ‘terrorists’. Their brave attempts to fight an overwhelmingly superior force invading and illegally occupying their countries are called ‘acts of terrorism’. And the real terrorizing of the whole world is called ‘War on terror’ and the people committing these terrorist acts are called ‘democratic forces.’
When they die in this unequal fight at the rate of about 1 to every 100 of the freedom fighters (ICH: as on August 29, 2007 – 3732 US troops to 1,025,092 Iraqis) their death is called ‘heroic’. And when whole neighborhoods and cities are wiped out in genocidal acts, this is called ‘collateral damage’. When random acts of violence happen where misguided people take the law into their own hands and attack innocent civilians, their actions are and are called ‘dastardly’. But when bomber pilots of the so-called ‘Democratic Forces’ shoot missiles that destroy hospitals, schools, mosques, bomb shelters with men, women and children smashed to rubble it is called a ‘surgical strike’. I can go on but won’t.
The point I want to make here is not about what the wordsmiths of the fascists do. But about our own people falling into their trap. For example, as we speak Buddhists in Myanmar are carrying out a state sponsored genocide of the Rohinga people who are inhabitants of Burma/Myanmar for centuries. Men, women and children are being slaughtered, burnt alive and their homes, mosques and schools are being torched. All this while the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama are silent witnesses who don’t even speak a word against the oppressors. I believe it is essential to look at the reality and stop fooling ourselves if we want to find a solution to the problem. As long as we keep calling it a problem of Islamic fundamentalism there is no solution to the problem. Once we accept that the problem is to do with the ongoing push for Western Imperialism (albeit today in the name of ‘democracy’) push for global domination, then we will be well on the way to solving the problem.
Frankly I am not even against the idea of global domination because I recognize it to be the natural outcome of economic and military power. However, it is the means adopted to dominate which must be questioned. When these means sow the seeds of global suffering and slavery hiding behind a veritable fog of lofty ideals, then they must be resisted and exposed for what they are. For a nation to seek markets is not wrong provided others can share in its economy and are not reduced to abject slavery albeit in another name. However, the West, which is the ideological heir to the Roman Empire, continues to use the language of Julius Caesar and Imperial Rome – ‘bringing civilization to barbarians in the name of the Republic’. That enabled them to create a state which was based on the logic of perpetual war which was the engine behind their commerce and trade. I believe that for anyone wanting to understand global politics today, reading a history of the Roman Empire is essential.
To return to our subject of how language is used as a tool, even weapon, of domination, unfortunately we see independent journalists also using the language of the oppressors when defining Muslims and calling them ‘Islamist’, ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ and so on. This is a big mistake and an indication of mental subjugation that many of us have become the victims of.
Muslims or Muslim countries have not invaded any other country. They are not the ones who are imposing their economic, religious or moral system on anyone. They are not the ones stealing others’ assets, looting their countries or attempting to overthrow their governments. They are not the ones who are imprisoning others for no cause, torturing them in heinous ways or passing life sentences on them because they demanded justice and spoke against oppression. The citizens of these countries, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and others, who happen to be Muslims are fighting for their rights. The right to life, to dignity, to not being murdered, tortured or raped. The right to education and clean water not contaminated by depleted uranium or sewage from the illegal settlements deliberately being dumped into the Palestinian aquifer that is the only source of their drinking water. The right of their children to play in the street without being picked off by snipers taking pot-shots at human beings. Yet they are called fundamentalist terrorists, most painfully of all, by their own simple-minded brethren.
We as bystanders have a very important task. One that history will hold us accountable for and which we will answer to our Creator for on the Day when all will be called to account for what they did. And that is the task of bearing witness. Being truthful recorders of what is happening. We may not be able to change what is happening or to stop it from happening. But we can bear witness to it and name the beast correctly. This is a sacred duty of every citizen, irrespective of nationality, religion or race. To bear witness to the blatant oppression that has been unleashed on the world. Remember my friends to bear witness truthfully and not to use the language of the oppressors when you do it.
Call genocide, genocide. Not ethnic cleansing or riots. Call bombing cities and killing civilians as such, not collateral damage. And call Muslims, Muslims, not Islamists, Talibanists or Fundamentalists. ‘Terrorism’ is bad English. Terror is not an ‘ism’ – and ideology but a tactic used by various ‘isms’ to achieve their own ends. Anti-Semitism is to speak against Semitic people. While one may argue the purpose of isolating a single race to become the target of the world’s love, if one is to accept that Anti-Semitism is a crime, then to say anything disparaging about the Arabs will be a crime as Arabs are as Semitic as Palestinian Jews while European Jews are not Semitic at all. As in the story of the white bull, we die not on the day they come for us, but on the day we fail to raise our voice against the first innocent killed. The greatest cowardice is to stay silent in the face of injustice and the pinnacle of faith is to speak the truth in the face of the tyrant.