Thursday, September 30, 2004

Free to live as the West dictates-religion or politics by another name.

Weekend Australian –September 25-26, 2004-09-28

“Iraq is now the crucible of freedom”- Editorial-Matthew Spencer

Ostensibly the invasion in Iraq was to search for weapons of mass destruction that remain to be found. The war that ensued became a war on terrorism. Subtle shifts in nonclamenture but ideologically far apart.



The construct of Spencer’s (editor of the letters to the editor) argument is reminiscent of the rationale for all crusades of right. The Iraqi extremists ‘are grotesquely evil’ whilst the west supports those ‘of all faiths, or no religion …who…will always endorse the politics of individual freedom and personal prosperity and the right to live their lives as they choose.”

Emotive phrases that are connotative of clear divisions of right and wrong are used to imply that if the reader does not agree with the point of view, perhaps they are dangerously erring on the side of demonstrating a lack of value systems. Exemplary of this is the following “Terrorists who believe that their opponents are the enemies of God are rarely inclined to compassion”.

Words such as ‘crucible, chaos, murder, religious zealots are used to describe the Iraqi opponents to Western interventions. The opponents are described as using ‘twisted tenants’ of their religion to justify their actions. To engender a passionate response from the reader the author states “This is manifestly a fight the free world must win...”

Featured in the same paper another author (unidentified) clearly identifies the impact of media in engendering emotive support, “And the way to influence the public mood is clear: play on the emotions, stage the terrifying life dramas…heighten the sense of pity and fear each of us send out to the trapped, bound individuals we see”.

This unidentified author from the feature section ‘The Weekend Inquirer’ extends his observation to include the terrorists when he states ‘ the goal of the terrorists, of course, is (that) their humiliated victims must be humanised, named, filmed for us, made to plead’.

As the US, Britain and Australia continue in their fight for the free world (Spencer 2004 weekend Australian) have they considered that non-terrorist Islamic Iraqis may view a theocracy just as valid as the western democracy. In a transcript from a press release in 1999, the United Nations stated in an Internet conference that the Internet might also cause an Islamic Reformation, in that Islamic women would have equal access to the new technology, and there would be greater possibilities for democratising the theocracy. The issue being not the statement itself, but the assumption that Islamic women would welcome the move to a democracy.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told the U.N. audience (2004 The Herald –USA) there is an urgent need to stop the tarnishing of the Muslim world by unfair stereotypes. Issues like violence and intolerance have nothing to do with Islam, he said.

“We need to clear the confusion of linking the problems faced by some Muslim countries with Islam the religion,” he said. “For us our multi-ethnicity and cultural diversity is a national asset.”

Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka in a UN sponsored speech in 2002 raised this salient point when speaking of his own country as a caution;

“This is a nation where successive presidents and military dictators - Christian or Moslem - never did attempt to turn the nation into a theocracy. Thus what we are witnessing today goes beyond religion. It is simply politics by other means.

“Let us boldly - because truthfully - assert that as many faces of Islam as there are of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism or Orisa worship. In our resolve to cohabit and associate therefore, it behoves us to choose, among several interpretative options - a code of socio-religious usage that does not militate against or degrade our human inheritance - an inherent dignity - that is the common denominator of our very humanity - no matter what religion we espouse.”

Therefore, the issue remains one of political clarity and honesty among western leaders. Consultation with Iraqi leaders must have discourse that includes theocratic underpinnings if this ‘democratising of Islam’ is to occur.

Transpose this onto the Christian hope of the return of Jesus Christ and the ushering in of His millennial reign. One has to wonder whether or not the descendant of Bush will insist on democratic elections.

Spencer describes the coming elections in Iraq as a ‘crucible of freedom’. This phrase has literary connections to the play by Arthur Miller about the 1692 witch trials held in Salem, USA. Miller wrote the play to highlight the extremes occurring in the 1950’s American denouncements of communism (Missouri-Kansas School of Law). The editorial author has assumed here that his readers are primarily of an educated, European background and will be familiar with his allusion to the play. However, the allusion may be flawed if the American response is perceived as that of the witch hunter rather than the hunted.

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Phew. And there you have it. It's not as pretty as I'd hoped, but you get that. I'll try and whack in the image to make it slightly more aesthetically pleasing, but it just looks so much better in word format. More news-like.

I know there must be one or two spelling mistakes/punctuation errors, feel free to drop me a line about it. As long as you're not smarmy about it, I'll greatly appreciate it.
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