Bending the Protocol

...Yes, I know it is not politically correct to openly criticise the Islamic Fundamentalists (except when they bomb the western world)...however there is a thing or two I’d like to share...yes, sir...I understand...I will take it into consideration...thank you... 

I often watch the Doha Debates (on BBC World); because I am very much interested in knowing the opinion of the Muslim world on current issues. The show is well set up, the questions brought to the table are good...the TV programme endeavours to reveal how open the Muslim world, in the Middle East, is to debate and willing to critique itself. However, it seems to me that the conversations always converge to the same idea: trash the Western Life-Style.

So far so good. I mean we know that we are not perfect, and we welcome criticism. However when the ones criticising us are those who benefit from our system and life-style; we can’t stop but wondering “Why don’t you go and live in the Muslim World, then?”

The Doha Debates always invites Muslim women (with squeaky voices) to defend the radical points of Islam (Note: former Christian women, converted to Islam & living either in England or the US); and complain of how unfair, hypocritical, immoral westerners are; and how much the Muslims have been humiliated by them. Then they pick on the Palestinian issue to attack Israel, even if the topic at hand is not the Israeli-Arab conflict. So, where did the willingness to self-critique go?

Moderate Muslims (often the ones living in Western countries), always defend that the present Islamist politics is belligerent and goes against the very definition of Islam (peace); and that Muslims around the world should join hands and turn things around – now, this argument (the right one, in my opinion) scares the few (yet more sounding) Islamic radicals in the room, and around the world...it is as if their culture is being threatened. But is it, in sooth? I’d say that the moderates are proposing an enriching change (so that we can all live in peace).

The problem is, the radicals are always extremely well prepared with sound (yet insane) arguments to sustain their thesis; whereas the moderates (although with reason on their side) fail to transmit the right words that stick to people’s minds.

Radicals accuse us of having humiliating them, and use it as an excuse for trashing our life-style; bombing our cities; threatening our peace; injecting fear and paranoia into our societies; and gagging westerners (i.e. journalists, artists & thinkers). I could expand on this, but since this is not a political thesis; I’ll address just one more crucial element...Should the radical Islamic world really speak of humiliation? Because when I hear that word, I think of:

1. Black people: slavery, cultural assimilation, discrimination, racism & disrespect (for example, in Sudan; a black African country; the Muslims want to see it “Zorka free” meaning “free of Negro Africans”. Result: the present genocide occurring there).
2. Jewish people: slavery, expulsion from their own land, persecution, forced conversions, discrimination, racism, Holocaust, disrespect.
3. North American Indians: misappropriation, cultural assimilation, ostracism, discrimination, disrespect. 
4. East Indians: racism, disrespect, despisal.
5. Latin American Indians: forced conversions, discrimination, disrespect, forced acquisition of Western diseases.

Do we see these people using their stark history as an excuse to blow themselves up & terrorise others? No. So, I suggest the following: get over it, stop being belligerent, stop disrespecting your women, implement democracy and develop your nations (on every level). 

And to think that, in school, we were taught that the Arabs were great conquerors, honourable adversaries; artists; fair, proud people, and intellectuals whose legacy is very much present in the Portuguese culture. However even the brave Arabs, of the past, would vomit before the mass victimisation that has become the Muslim world. 

Image: Consolation by Alajos Györgyl