The events in the Middle East have upset me no end: I see in these 'people's insurrections' the death of Muslim civilisation.
Over 1,400 years, Muslim thinkers from Ibn Hanbal to al-Ghazali to ibn-Jamma have painstakingly, bit by agonising bit, built up an edifice of political thought: the repeated injunction of that body of thought has been that one must not resist a leader.
In Bangladesh, a land of 140 million Muslims, it has become received wisdom to celebrate the overthrow of a military ruler. I know pious Muslims, who say their prayers five times a day and observe every fast during Ramadan, who accept calmly and casually an insurrection against a Muslim military ruler. These people have wholly, knowingly or otherwise, accepted the odious political philosophy of John Locke. Indeed, it is to be doubted if these people are Muslim at all.
It seems that the west has conquered us with its ideas, money and military might - the first copiously assisted by the latter two. We have been bought and bribed. I fear that the murder of Muslim civilisation by the west is not far distant.
However, recent events elsewhere give me pause and hope: China once embraced a disgusting western philosophy which led to the death of millions of Chinese. But today China is beginning to cast off its slavery to western ideas, and has happily rediscovered its Confucian roots. Will such a rebirth happen in the Muslim world?
Perhaps it will; perhaps it won't. Either way, by then, I will be six feet under the earth.
Showing posts with label John Locke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Locke. Show all posts
Friday, February 4, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
Zahra's Paradise - Zahra’s Paradise
Zahra's Paradise - Zahra’s Paradise: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for Iran's middle- and upper-classes. They hate Arabs and Palestinians; they hate their government for building hospitals in occupied Palestine; for supporting Hamas and Hezbullah - in short, for supporting the Umma. And, of course, they love the Great Satan.
Let's be precise: according to independent pollsters everywhere, Ahmedinejad would have won the election anyway. It was just the scale that the regime wished to expand. For, the truth is, Iran is split between an America-loving middle-class and an Iran-loving people. An Iranian journalist once asked me "Why doesn't America drop a nuclear bomb on Cuba?" She meant to say that America is so good that it refrains from nuking the small island. And this was a journalist talking. No wonder her paper was banned! America won't use nukes because then others will up the nuclear ante, simple as that. Besides, Cuba's too close to shore...imagine all the noxious radioactivity killing the fish on the Miama beaches.
John Locke observed that revolutions would be rare events, for he was advocating them. He was wrong. Today, revolution has become a habit - and with it coercion. In Kyrgyztan, there have been two revolutions in five years. In Bangladesh, there is perpetual revolution. Thailand is having a long-drawn-out revolution after regime change in 1992. The removal of Estrada in the Philippines was a shabby middle-class triumph.
As for elections, they are there to be rigged. Take the US election of 2000. According to S.E.Finer, rigging elections is one of the pathologies of democracy. In Bangladesh the Carter Center and the EU actively connive at rigged elections. The 1994 election in South Africa was rigged. In Africa today, western governments turn a blind eye to rigging - because there's just too much of it around, and without rigging there would be even more violence.
The Iranian middle-class has plainly become ungovernable. If they want paradise on earth, then they should wait for paradise - including Zahra.
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for Iran's middle- and upper-classes. They hate Arabs and Palestinians; they hate their government for building hospitals in occupied Palestine; for supporting Hamas and Hezbullah - in short, for supporting the Umma. And, of course, they love the Great Satan.
Let's be precise: according to independent pollsters everywhere, Ahmedinejad would have won the election anyway. It was just the scale that the regime wished to expand. For, the truth is, Iran is split between an America-loving middle-class and an Iran-loving people. An Iranian journalist once asked me "Why doesn't America drop a nuclear bomb on Cuba?" She meant to say that America is so good that it refrains from nuking the small island. And this was a journalist talking. No wonder her paper was banned! America won't use nukes because then others will up the nuclear ante, simple as that. Besides, Cuba's too close to shore...imagine all the noxious radioactivity killing the fish on the Miama beaches.
John Locke observed that revolutions would be rare events, for he was advocating them. He was wrong. Today, revolution has become a habit - and with it coercion. In Kyrgyztan, there have been two revolutions in five years. In Bangladesh, there is perpetual revolution. Thailand is having a long-drawn-out revolution after regime change in 1992. The removal of Estrada in the Philippines was a shabby middle-class triumph.
As for elections, they are there to be rigged. Take the US election of 2000. According to S.E.Finer, rigging elections is one of the pathologies of democracy. In Bangladesh the Carter Center and the EU actively connive at rigged elections. The 1994 election in South Africa was rigged. In Africa today, western governments turn a blind eye to rigging - because there's just too much of it around, and without rigging there would be even more violence.
The Iranian middle-class has plainly become ungovernable. If they want paradise on earth, then they should wait for paradise - including Zahra.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
To Dance Upon The Air
http://www.opednews.com/articles/To-Dance-Upon-The-Air-by-Iftekhar-Sayeed-091231-260.html
(click above for article)
Five former army officers will hang within the next few weeks in Bangladesh, raising deep questions about a people's right to protection from a tyrannical executive in the context of John Locke's political philosophy.
Excerpt:
"Seven High Court judges refused to hear the lower court's verdict: they declared themselves 'embarrassed' without explaining why. The names of these High Court judges should be engraved in gold – not golden – letters in the premises of the High Court. To any student of law, the reason for their refusal was transparently obvious – they did not wish to embroil the judiciary in a moral issue that had no legal redress without, at the same time, politicizing the judiciary. The distinction between law and morality has been clearly drawn by Immanuel Kant. The best illustration of the discrepancy was provided by Chief Justice Taney. A devout Catholic, he had emancipated all his slaves; yet, when the Dred Scott case came up, he had to assert that 'a black man has no rights'. This decision undermined the prestige of the Supreme Court: yet Taney was merely stating the law, keeping his deeply held belief that slavery was an evil to himself. The seven judges of the Bangladesh Supreme Court similarly, no doubt, wished to draw a line between morality and the law: this, they felt, was a moral issue, not a legal one, certainly not an open and shut case of murder. "
(click above for article)
Five former army officers will hang within the next few weeks in Bangladesh, raising deep questions about a people's right to protection from a tyrannical executive in the context of John Locke's political philosophy.
Excerpt:
"Seven High Court judges refused to hear the lower court's verdict: they declared themselves 'embarrassed' without explaining why. The names of these High Court judges should be engraved in gold – not golden – letters in the premises of the High Court. To any student of law, the reason for their refusal was transparently obvious – they did not wish to embroil the judiciary in a moral issue that had no legal redress without, at the same time, politicizing the judiciary. The distinction between law and morality has been clearly drawn by Immanuel Kant. The best illustration of the discrepancy was provided by Chief Justice Taney. A devout Catholic, he had emancipated all his slaves; yet, when the Dred Scott case came up, he had to assert that 'a black man has no rights'. This decision undermined the prestige of the Supreme Court: yet Taney was merely stating the law, keeping his deeply held belief that slavery was an evil to himself. The seven judges of the Bangladesh Supreme Court similarly, no doubt, wished to draw a line between morality and the law: this, they felt, was a moral issue, not a legal one, certainly not an open and shut case of murder. "
Monday, December 21, 2009
western education and brainwash
I'm afraid my admiration for the western education system has multiplied several fold of late. It is a very efficient system - it can make you forget your cultural roots and origins faster than the famed Soviet-era psychiatrists who removed your memory!
It has taken me more than 40 years to realise the simple fact - not even a theory, but a fact - that the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) was a military ruler. Ditto the Khalifa-i-Rashidun. Omawiyah was the author of the Muslim navy (the English word "admiral" comes from the Arabic "amir-al-bahr", Commander of the Sea). And every sultan and emir and khalifa since then has been a military ruler. Initially, of course there was no standing army - the citizen body itself was the army - just as there was no bureaucracy. Later, of course both army and bureaucracy developed together. Whoever had military power had civil power as well, and never the other way around.
In fact, al-Ghazali went so far as to defend despotism completely. He said that it was a religious duty never to overthrow a ruler "no matter how mad or bad". Ditto al-Mawardi. Take General Ershad: he was bad, I guess, with his harem of women and his corruption. But al-Ghazali would have forbidden us to overthrow him: "better twenty years of injustice than one hour of chaos". Therefore, what has been happening since the General was toppled would be construed by him as a product of sin - for treason and sin were synonymous for al-Ghazali. - all the rapes, the murders, the acid attacks, etc.
And all this time I have had to DEFEND military rule against my westernised friends and acquaintances who say it is barbaric - are they saying that Muslims, from the beginning, were barbaric? They must be! Are they saying that our entire civilization was barbaric - they must be? That leaves West Europeans as the CIVILISED race - and at this point I am reminded of what Gandhi said when he was asked," And what do you think of western civilization?" He replied: "That would be a good idea".
Western military might (= western civilization) and the spread of western ideas has gone hand in hand. Ibne-Khaldun, the Arab historian, observed 600 years ago that a race, once conquered, loses all self-respect, and tries to imitate its masters (the Mozarabs, Spanish Christians, back then).
This is what has happened to us - the rewards and penalties that emanate from the West have made us intellectual serfs.
It is fascinating how the education system selects even which WESTERN ideas we are to acquire. How many times have I heard some old idiot repeat what Churchill, the imperialist ("I will not preside over the dismantling of the British Empire") had said about democracy, or what John Locke (the slave-trader and philosopher) said about "civil society" and "tolerance" and man's "inalienable rights"; or what Jefferson (who sired numerous slave children through his slave-women) said about "the people".
I am yet to hear one educated person here repeat what Plato said about democracy ("the madness of the majority") or what Thucydides had to say about the viciousness of Athenian democracy ("the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"); or what Socrates said about democracy: "If I had engaged in politics long ago, I would have been dead long ago".
If western education is so successful as to get us to parrot SELECTIVELY what their OWN civilization has produced, then think how successful it has been to get us to exclude aspects of OUR own civilization!
Nowadays we have the doctrine of "universal values" championed by the UN, Amnesty International and Amartya Sen (to name a few). That means there are no particular cultures. And universal values is what an anthropologist must deny: Stanley J. Tambiah, the Harvard anthropologist, true to his profession, denies the existence of universal values. Honest man - very rare!
So you have organisations like the UNESCO pushing "universal values" - and what happens to our culture?
There was another guy pushing universal values - his name was Karl Marx. EVERY society, he argued, follows universal principles of evolution. To counter Marx, Max Weber came up with the idea of "verstehende" - trying to understand each society on its own merits. I have met very few anthropologists or sociologists who are faithful to their discipline, like doctors breaking the Hippocratic oath. They usually work for donors like the UN or Action Aid to try and change our society.
And they are very successful - after all it took me 40 years to realise that our civilization is based on military rule and despotism.
It has taken me more than 40 years to realise the simple fact - not even a theory, but a fact - that the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) was a military ruler. Ditto the Khalifa-i-Rashidun. Omawiyah was the author of the Muslim navy (the English word "admiral" comes from the Arabic "amir-al-bahr", Commander of the Sea). And every sultan and emir and khalifa since then has been a military ruler. Initially, of course there was no standing army - the citizen body itself was the army - just as there was no bureaucracy. Later, of course both army and bureaucracy developed together. Whoever had military power had civil power as well, and never the other way around.
In fact, al-Ghazali went so far as to defend despotism completely. He said that it was a religious duty never to overthrow a ruler "no matter how mad or bad". Ditto al-Mawardi. Take General Ershad: he was bad, I guess, with his harem of women and his corruption. But al-Ghazali would have forbidden us to overthrow him: "better twenty years of injustice than one hour of chaos". Therefore, what has been happening since the General was toppled would be construed by him as a product of sin - for treason and sin were synonymous for al-Ghazali. - all the rapes, the murders, the acid attacks, etc.
And all this time I have had to DEFEND military rule against my westernised friends and acquaintances who say it is barbaric - are they saying that Muslims, from the beginning, were barbaric? They must be! Are they saying that our entire civilization was barbaric - they must be? That leaves West Europeans as the CIVILISED race - and at this point I am reminded of what Gandhi said when he was asked," And what do you think of western civilization?" He replied: "That would be a good idea".
Western military might (= western civilization) and the spread of western ideas has gone hand in hand. Ibne-Khaldun, the Arab historian, observed 600 years ago that a race, once conquered, loses all self-respect, and tries to imitate its masters (the Mozarabs, Spanish Christians, back then).
This is what has happened to us - the rewards and penalties that emanate from the West have made us intellectual serfs.
It is fascinating how the education system selects even which WESTERN ideas we are to acquire. How many times have I heard some old idiot repeat what Churchill, the imperialist ("I will not preside over the dismantling of the British Empire") had said about democracy, or what John Locke (the slave-trader and philosopher) said about "civil society" and "tolerance" and man's "inalienable rights"; or what Jefferson (who sired numerous slave children through his slave-women) said about "the people".
I am yet to hear one educated person here repeat what Plato said about democracy ("the madness of the majority") or what Thucydides had to say about the viciousness of Athenian democracy ("the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"); or what Socrates said about democracy: "If I had engaged in politics long ago, I would have been dead long ago".
If western education is so successful as to get us to parrot SELECTIVELY what their OWN civilization has produced, then think how successful it has been to get us to exclude aspects of OUR own civilization!
Nowadays we have the doctrine of "universal values" championed by the UN, Amnesty International and Amartya Sen (to name a few). That means there are no particular cultures. And universal values is what an anthropologist must deny: Stanley J. Tambiah, the Harvard anthropologist, true to his profession, denies the existence of universal values. Honest man - very rare!
So you have organisations like the UNESCO pushing "universal values" - and what happens to our culture?
There was another guy pushing universal values - his name was Karl Marx. EVERY society, he argued, follows universal principles of evolution. To counter Marx, Max Weber came up with the idea of "verstehende" - trying to understand each society on its own merits. I have met very few anthropologists or sociologists who are faithful to their discipline, like doctors breaking the Hippocratic oath. They usually work for donors like the UN or Action Aid to try and change our society.
And they are very successful - after all it took me 40 years to realise that our civilization is based on military rule and despotism.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Freedom and FREEDOM
http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~acsrrrm/entertext/5_3/ET53SayeedEd.doc
FREEDOM AND FREEDOM (Article)
Individual freedom has been a recurring theme in western literature and society. The essay argues that the word freedom connotes individual freedom in western culture and literature because of the experience of slavery. Since Asia lacked this experience, freedom in the sense of individual freedom has no meaning here. In Asia the word freedom connotes collective freedom in keeping with its colonial experience. Present day implications for the cultural and political transmissions taking place are profound.
FREEDOM AND FREEDOM (Article)
Individual freedom has been a recurring theme in western literature and society. The essay argues that the word freedom connotes individual freedom in western culture and literature because of the experience of slavery. Since Asia lacked this experience, freedom in the sense of individual freedom has no meaning here. In Asia the word freedom connotes collective freedom in keeping with its colonial experience. Present day implications for the cultural and political transmissions taking place are profound.
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