We live in dangerous, confusing times and inhabit a mentally disturbed world.
Our politicians are experts in turning disagreements into conflicts, conflicts into wars and wars into slaughterhouses. Instead of spending time, money and efforts on improving social services, resolving differences, saving lives and promoting stability and security in war-torn countries, they push the poor soldiers into battlefields to kill or to be killed. They make decisions that increase the number of poor, dead, injured and homeless. They squander the human, natural and financial resources, which should be directed toward improving the quality of life in every continent.
Decision-makers, whose children are well-fed, well-educated and safely tucked in comfortable beds, who have not experienced poverty, have never felt the pain of bereavement and have never come close to the dangers of armed conflicts, often take decisions that spread chaos and fear, and inflict misery on millions of helpless children, men and women around the globe.
Warmongers follow the breaking news from the battlefields with the zeal and pleasure of fans following their favorite Olympic games. Sitting comfortably in their luxurious offices or living rooms, sipping coffee or champagne and munching on chips or nuts, they cheer the rising number of dead and hail the injuries and the humiliation and devastation inflicted on “the enemy” in distant lands.
A few devilish reporters, thinkers, journalists and so-called intellectuals are exploiting the prevailing confusion. They publish books and articles that promote hatred, distort history, create local, national and international divisions and raise suspicion and tension between the America and the Muslim world. No doubt their aim is to create instability in the Middle East, cause serious cracks in the social and political fabric of Muslim countries, wreck the friendship between the West and the Muslim world and set us all on a fast track to a clash of civilizations.
Honest historian will tell us that the Palestinian-Israeli problem is political and man-made, not holy and religious. When Jews were persecuted in Europe, they were living in peace with Christians and Muslims in the Middle East. The term “Semite” refers to Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes, a fact often intentionally or unintentionally overlooked when Arabs are accused of “anti-Semitism”!
Shiites and Sunnis follow the same faith, worship the same God, believe that the Qu’ran is the word of Allah and that the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, is His messenger. They fast the month of Ramadan and turn toward Makkah five times a day to pray. They stand together on Mount Arafat when they perform pilgrimage. They are brothers and sisters in Islam.
Shiites and Sunnis are conscious of covert attempts to separate them, place them in two different categories and promote hatred and hostility among them. Arab Muslims and Arab Christians share one culture, speak one language, and worship the same God. They are aware of few ongoing attempts to plant seeds of discord between them.
American policy in the Middle East never ceases to amaze and infuriate Arabs and Muslims. It says that it should make more efforts to win Arab and Muslim minds and hearts, yet in the same breath it allows Sharon to build more illegal settlements and grab more Palestinian lands. America’s constant use of its veto power to shelter Israel from the wrath of the international community and the thick stick it brandishes to Arab governments whenever they turn to the Security Council for justice, reinforce the perception in the Arab and Muslim world that the road map is a cul-de-sac and that America cannot be an objective mediator.
While world conflicts are spinning out of control, a new game called “spin” is at full swing. It does not give us time to focus, analyze, reflect and form unbiased opinions and objective judgments. Instead, it gives us “political vertigo” and bouts of depression. It blurs our vision and confuses our minds.
We have hijacked religions and cultures. Instead of blaming the mess we are in on our folly and our insatiable greed, we blame them on the religions we embrace and cultures to which we belong. We have committed unforgivable mistakes and we will reap the consequences. We have secured ourselves a prominent place in the dark pages of history.
