By: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis [ Enlarge ] Before 212 years, Turkey controlled an area of almost 8 million km2 in Africa; under its antecedent state form, e.g. the Ottoman Empire, vast African territories from the confines of Algeria to Somalia and the East African coast down to Tanzania were reporting to the Sultan at Istanbul, who was the Caliph of all Muslims worldwide. Ottoman-controlled territories and lands ruled by principalities that recognized the imperial authority of the Sultan totalled no less than one third of Africa.
Ottoman Empire: the Sole African Superpower
If we take into consideration the fact that at those days, the colonial penetration (Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and England) had not covered more than narrow coastlands, and if we bear in mind that the other two thirds of Africa were divided into hundreds of small African kingdoms, principalities, and independent realms, we safely conclude that the Ottoman Empire was indeed the sole African Superpower.
Quite unfortunately, the Sultan himself did not realize this geo-strategic evidence, and worse, his administration failed dramatically to conceptualize first and contextualize afterwards the ensuing policy tasks and practices.
Before Napoleon’s arrival in Alexandria (or to put it better, Abuqir), more territories were under the Sultan’s control on African soil than in Asia. The Ottoman dominions throughout the Black Continent were more sizeable than the Asiatic landmass that was under the control of the Sublime Porte.
From Oman’s and Yemen’s coasts to the Mediterranean shores of Phoenicia (criminally re-baptized ‘Lebanon’ as per the evil colonial, Freemasonic interests) and Palestine,
from the Emirati and Kuwaiti coasts of the Persian Gulf to the mountains of Georgia and Abkhazia,
from Basra to the Black Sea shores of Turkey, and
from the Sinai peninsula to the Asiatic coast of Istanbul, the Ottoman territories totalled ca. 5.5 m km2 — only.
The European territories of the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans) were even smaller, although they irreversibly consisted in a very large of the European continent.
But in Africa, either directly or indirectly, the Sultan represented the supreme political and religious authority for populations undeservedly scattered today to so many fake states: Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, Chad, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Abyssinia (the modern fake state of ‘Ethiopia’), Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania.
Certainly, not the entire territory of all the aforementioned modern states reported to the Istanbul Caliphate; but this does not reduce in anything the reality that the Ottoman rule controlled ca. 8 million km2 in Africa.
We have good reason to believe that they were all happy and voluntarily ascribed their lives and fates to a state that they deeply felt as theirs, although — paradoxically — its capital was outside Africa.
African Love for Islam and the Ottoman Empire
Indicatively, I mention here that the Egyptians rejected the French in 1798, and rightfully hated the cruel and criminal soldiers of Napoleon; they decisively opposed them, and when the Freemasonic tyrant of France imposed an Albanian soldier, named Muhammad Ali, as chief ruler of Egypt, the entire body of Egypt’s supreme religious, judiciary and educational institution, Al Azhar, opposed the villainous schemes and plots of the French and their puppet of Muhammad Ali. In one voice, all the sheikhs of Al Azhar denounced the French conspiracy that provided for Egypt’s secession and colonization. And all the sheikhs of Al Azhar were indigenous, Egyptians — not from another continent like the traitor Muhammad Ali…..
The aforementioned situation and the characteristic love of Africans for the civilized, peaceful and benevolent Ottoman rule was attested in dozens and hundreds of cases; in Algiers, indigenous Berbers rejected and actively opposed the French curse of colonialism that befell on them in 1830.
In Somalia, indigenous Somali elders and sheikhs opposed the evil Freemasonic English colonials and called East Africa’s greatest, most civilized and most radiant nation to epic rebellion against the barbaric soldiers and agents of the Satanic queen Victoria. This explains only partly the evil US — UK intentions of revenge carried out against Somalia over the past 20 years.
In the last years of the 19th century, the Russian officer and explorer Bulatovich who visited one of the last Oromo Kings, Aba Jefar, reported the great affection, love, esteem and respect that the faraway King had about the Ottoman Empire to which his faith and allegiance as Muslim was eternally given.
”We renewed our interrupted conversation. The king asked me about Stambul (Turkey) and Mysyr (Egypt). He wanted to know if it was true that Stambul was the most powerful state in the world”. More analytically: ” The Oromos Need Aba Jefar’s Mysticism and Piety, not an Alliance with the Incestuous Amhara” (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/the-oromos-need-aba-jefars-mysticism-and-piety-not-an-alliance-with-the-incestuous-amhara.html).
This situation is not strange at all; there was no racism and no discrimination under the Ottoman Empire throughout its African territories. Black people moved often to the Ottoman province of Arabia for pilgrimage, and there they were greatly respected; Africans travelled often to Istanbul to study and they were so respected that they were promoted to positions of instructors, professors, scholars and leading academics.
Perverse History and Falsifications: All Due to Anglo-French Freemasonic Colonialism
There is another hidden reality: colonialism in Africa is basically tantamount to a war undertaken by the Freemasonic gangsters of England and France against the Ottoman Empire. This statement would have been wrong, if at the times of the colonization there had been other African states as sizeable as the Ottoman territories on African soil; but there was none.
This hidden reality has indeed a double face; the aforementioned describes only one part of the reality. The rest is summarized as follows: colonialism in Africa is basically tantamount to a war undertaken by the Freemasonic gangsters of England and France against Islam. This statement would have been wrong, if at the times of the colonization there had been other African religions as widespread as Islam in Africa; but there was none.
Added to the number of falsifications diffused by the Anglo-French and American academia is also the false mapping of Ottoman provinces in Africa. Well-prepared in Freemasonic ateliers and Orientalist institutes, these false maps depict the Ottoman provinces of Africa as extending only alongside the Mediterranean and the Red Sea coasts; they thus exclude from the Ottoman control the inland territories that were very wide indeed. The fake Western cartography of the African Ottoman territories helped the Freemasonic vicious plans of discord dissemination, cultural disintegration, and identity loss for the hundreds of millions of people who happen to live on the said territories.
A more crucial fallacy diffused by the Anglo-French colonial authorities among their few, selected and promoted, African subordinates who helped them implement the colonial subordination of Africa is the falsehood that Islam is not an African religion. This was due to the accurate knowledge of the indigenous perception of them, of which the colonials were fully aware; the Anglo-French have always known that they were and still are alien to Africa. They have perfect understanding of the fact that they have no right to exist on African soil, and they feel indeed guilty for the dreadful, criminal and absolutely inhuman deeds they had planned to perform and did actually perform on African soil; simply they manage to hide this feeling of theirs, which is an additional revelation of their evil nature.
Islam is indeed a genuine African religion; contrarily to Islam, Western Christianity is alien in Africa. Only Orthodox Coptic Christianity has a real historicity on African soil; but the Coptic literature is abundant in rejections, refutations and anathemas against Constantinople and Rome. This irrevocable reality concludes the case for the fake missionaries who preached a fake Jesus among Africans.
Even worse for them, their initial preaching was a systematic and evil lie; they promised a moral Christian society in Africa, and they delivered colonization, natural resources’ exploitation and robbery, immorality, cultural disorientation, westernization, Freemasonry and corruption, fallacious Greco-Romano-centrist dogmas, racist Humanities, and anti-African History for Africans.
The coverage was Christian preaching and the end result was the propagation of the Freemasonic incestuous practices in Africa. The Anglo-French criminals targeted at the same time the core of African Identity and the political — religious prevalence of Islam in the African North.
Why the Ottoman Empire Lost Control of its African Provinces?
Before examining the case for a Turkish African Policy, one has to confront a key question; the response to this question is the only criterion to apply on today’s possible Turkish Africa policy making. The question concerns the reasons for which the Ottoman Empire lost control of its most sizeable part — the African provinces.
This subject was never discussed in Modern Turkey; and this reality is part of the problem, because as situation, it contradicts the new ideas and the spirit brought forth by Kemal Ataturk.
In fact, the decadence of the Ottoman Empire had started long before Napoleon anchored at Abuqir. For long historical processes like that of the rise and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it is almost impossible to identify a date — turning point with accuracy. When the Ottoman army besieged Vienna in 1683, Istanbul was still viewed as a powerful and vast state. In reality, it was not. At that very moment, the Ottoman Empire was left behind in many sectors, particularly research and knowledge. In fact, it had already stopped coping with the rising forces of the West.
The reason the African provinces of the Ottoman Empire were lost and the reason Istanbul entered into a long period of decadence are absolutely identical. An anti-Islamic conception of the world, of Islam, and of human life itself, an evil and barbaric pseudo-theological system, and a lewd and coarse behavioural system had gradually risen to prominence.
This process was slow, and in the beginning, it did not concern the Ottoman Court; however, as the system was greatly propagated, it infiltrated the Sublime Porte and imposed its viewpoints on the Sultans, who could not (or rather feared to) oppose it without creating a great schism within Islam. This theological system is totally unrelated to the Seljuk sultanates and the early period Ottoman Empire.
But when the Sultans incorporated Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Yemen, and furthermore expanded in Africa in 1517, the socio-religious milieu of the backward and anti-Islamic theological group became part of the Ottoman Empire and could therefore most easily and almost uninterruptedly spread throughout the vast territory.
This barbaric system was founded by a heretic and ignorant sheikh, named Ibn Taimiya, whose faith was based on an earlier ignorant, heretic, and barbaric sheikh, named Ibn Hanbal.
Both Ibn Hanbal (780 – 855) and Ibn Taimiya (1263 – 1328) were imprisoned in their times respectively, which shows that they were overwhelmingly rejected by the rulers, the intellectuals, the scholars, and the religious leaders of the peak times of Islamic Civilization.
So viciously heretic Ibn Taimiya was that the elite of the then Islamic Scholarship and Philosophy described him as introducing anthropomorphic concepts into Islam which is tantamount to sheer polytheism and reflects an effort to christianize Islam.
For a theoretical offspring of Ibn Hanbal, such darkness could only be normal.
What was even more disastrous for Islam was Ibn Taimiya’s enmity for Knowledge, Research, Erudition, Art, Imperial Power and World Hegemony. Similarly catastrophic was his disregard and ignorance of the others, his admonition for self-focus his call for ignorance of the rising competition with the West, and his behavioural reductionism which is at the origin of today’s idiotic sheikhs who teach that Islam is limited into the Coran, the Hadith, and the so-called five pillars of Islam.
The ideas of Ibn Taimiya are not ideas, and at his times, he was dealt exactly in this way.
Ibn Taimiya’s ‘ideas’ turn empires to dust, Erudition to barbarism, Art to cannibalism, and desecrate any mosque and medressa (religious and academic school of the Islamic times) whereby they happen to be discussed.
It is not mere coincidence that today’s uneducated extremist sheikhs, who have read not a single page of Ibn Sina or Mohyeldin Ibn Arabi, speak with so high esteem of the ignorant and silly sheikh of the 13th century.
The diffusion of Ibn Taimiya’s pseudo-theological school in the expanded Ottoman Empire is the central reason for the Caliphate’s decadence. Although we cannot select a specific date as beginning of the decadence, we can certainly indicate a symbolic date as that of the prevalence of Ibn Taimiya’s school among the ruling elite of the Ottoman Empire.
The destruction of the Istanbul Observatory by the filthy, barbaric and pseudo-Islamic mob is the date of End of Islamic Civilization, and marks the beginning of the End of the Ottoman Empire. This occurred in 1580, just three years after the chief astronomer Taqi al din Effendi had convinced the Sultan to have it erected so that the Caliphate preserves its competitive edge over Western Europe.
The Sultan, despite his great admiration for Taqi al din Effendi, did not dare to use military force and exterminate to the last these barbaric animals, as he should have done. By opting for social peace, the Sultan allowed the flowers of evil propagate further and further until they covered the entire vast empire whose days were unquestionably numbered.
However, so great the empire was that it took more than 340 years to completely disintegrate. In parallel, the Islamic Civilization gradually disappeared, and the interest for knowledge was replaced with the misery and the barbarism of the impoverished mob — all those who limit Islam into five prayers per day, fast during Ramadan, and abstention from alcohol and premarital sex.
With the darkness of Ibn Taimiya spreading overwhelmingly, no correct judgement could be effectuated as regards the possible targets of the French and the English, the internal socio-political and cultural developments in the two countries, and the eventual effective defence line that the Ottoman Empire could adopt against them. The sheikhs of darkness advised the Sultan to stupidly disregard England and France but Allah would save him…….
When the first Orientalists reached India, Iran, Egypt and Africa, it was too late for the Sultan (as well as the Shah and the Great Mogul) to react and preserve their territories from the foreign attack which was fed by the ignorance spread throughout the Caliphate (as well as Safevid / Qajar Iran and Mogul India) by the idiotic followers of Ibn Taimiya. In few decades, the Orientalists collected an enormous amount of data and information about the historical past and the terrible situation of darkness that prevailed over all the territories controlled by Istanbul, Ispahan and Delhi.
It would merely take a few more decades for them and their disciples to setup an environment of total dependence of the undefended and ignorant Muslim populations who were thus exposed to colonialism, further dependence, lack of identity, and impossibility to react due to ignorance.
This situation has prevailed until today; it was only opposed by Kemal Ataturk in the Ottoman territories that he managed to save out of the vicious Freemasonic control of the Anglo-French. But the founder of Modern Turkey ruled peacefully only for ca. 15 years, and dedicated his energy into the rebuilding and the reassessment of the territories under his control.
Unfortunately, his associates, disciples and followers failed to expand his thought and use it as an analytical instrument for understanding what happened in the other Ottoman territories that were under colonial control in 1935 or 1945, and what Turkey’s response to that situation should be.
Conventionalism and conformism prevailed, and convenient modesty became the supreme advisor; subsequently, the Kemalist establishment denied to study how to carry out Kemal Ataturk’s policies on Ottoman territory outside Turkey. Quite unfortunately, this would be badly needed not only for the political establishment of Ankara but also for the colonized populations in Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Sanaa, Medina, Algiers, Tunis and elsewhere.
The Turkish secular establishment, by disregarding Africa, simply betrayed Kemal Ataturk himself; had they made of him the example of modern state founder for the Berbers, the Tuareg, the Hadhramawtis, the Aramaeans of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, the Palestinians, the Egyptians, the Oromos, the Somalis, the Afars and the Sudanese, they would have offered really strong chances for development and independence to those nations whose ancestors shared the same, wealthy, politically independent, highly civilized and human state as theirs.
Today’s Turkey has an obligation to the Black Continent (if not in its entirety, at least for all the Ottoman territories in Africa): to help all these nations achieve identity preservation, cultural integrity, national self-determination, and historical reassessment without the presence of the evil Anglo-French colonials. In this regard, the Turkish government will be an auspicious ally of oppressed nations, persecuted ethno-religious groups, and all those who reject the fake borderlines that currently exist in Africa.
There is only one wish for all the African Muslims whose ancestors lived on Ottoman territory or Ottoman dependencies’ lands: One Secular State for the entire North-eastern Africa that underscores its Hamitic — Kushitic historicity and its Islamic faith. On this subject, I will expand more specifically in a forthcoming article.
Note
Picture: the fake borders of the Ottoman Empire in Africa have been drawn by colonial historiographers in their evil and desperate effort to minimize the unprecedented Ottoman prevalence throughout Africa. From: http://staff.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/~cwalton/World%20Two/ottomanmap.jpg
By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis [ Enlarge ] Due to orchestrated misinformation which has been overwhelmingly diffused worldwide over many successive decades, the global public opinion has been left in mysteries as regards the root causes of the interminable Middle Eastern conflicts.
For the perpetrators of the misinformation campaign to achieve their targets, the easiest way was to create an entirely fake scene of theater with the opponents plunged in ignorance about their true identity. The introduction of new identities was not a process to be completed in a few years. In fact, it took more than one century to complete the preliminary stage.
Effectively, accurate information can be quickly and easily obtained by anyone seeking to understand the Oriental problem. Above all, it’s a problem of fallacious terms, fake identities, ideas projected on enemies, and prevailing confusion. In fact, the entire problem hinges on the Anglo-French colonialism and expansionism at the prejudice of the Ottoman Empire that before just 212 years controlled the entire are between Morocco and Iran, every territory between Caucasus and the Horn of Africa, and all lands stretching between Oman and Austria.
To destroy the Ottoman Empire, the Freemasonic, Anti-Christian regimes of England and France introduced a wide range of tactics, establishing a link between the academic disciplines of Humanities (mainly specialized in the various provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Iran and Mogul India) and the political – military intelligence. From this successfully financed project emanated many fake terms that did not exist before and are indeed by themselves meaningless.
These terms would subsequently be “exported” (along with the entirely fake interpretation of the past and present, which was coined as “Orientalism” and accommodated in many disciplines) to selected youth, mostly belonging in minorities and /or targeted ethno-religious groups; this colonial policy was geared to make the targeted groups believe a version of History totally opposite to the reality and absolutely unfavorable to the interests of the world Islam and the Ottoman Empire.
Exemplary fake terms are precisely the nonsensical “Middle East,” “Near East” and “Far East” that define vast circumferences as per their position with respect to another area, namely “Western Europe” which is considered — idiotically and discriminatorily — as the “center”. In fact, there is no Middle East; “Middle” as per what? “Near East” is another fake term to describe parts of the Ottoman Empire in Western Asia, and with more frequent use for periods of the Antiquity.
If fake geographical and chronological terms set the stage for chaos and drama, it is sure that fabricated ethnic / national terms make it possible for thunderstorms to gather.
Arabs vs. Israel: Two Fake Terms for a Century of Conflicts and Bloodshed
Most of the people allover the world imagine that all troubles in the so-called area of the Middle East are due to the Arab — Israeli conflict. There is no more inaccurate and more false perception of events and developments than this.
In fact, the so-called Arabs are not Arabs, and the so-called Israelis are totally unrelated from Israel.
This reality has been systematically kept under silence by the Anglo-French Freemasonic academia (the Orientalists) and diplomacy.
Arabs exist only in Hedjaz — There is no Arab outside Arabia.
In fact, throughout the Atlas (Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria and Tunisia), Libya, Niger and Mali, the totality of the local populations are Hamitic Berbers (Amazigh) and Tuaregs. Either they speak both languages, Amazigh and Arabic, or only one of them, they are Berbers who came to (eventually) learn Arabic because they accepted Islam. This phenomenon involved can therefore be described as linguistic arabization, and it has no impact on the ethnic or cultural levels.
Similarly, in Egypt, the bulk of the population are Egyptians, namely Copts who at a certain moment accepted Islam, and have been progressively arabized at the linguistic level.
The Nubians either in Egypt or in Sudan speak Nubian and Arabic, but have never been arabized; Arabic is merely their religious language.
The Sudanese Arabic speaking people (ca. half the country’s population) are not Arabs either; they are Kushites (indigenous in Ancient Sudan, which was called Ethiopia by the Greeks and the Romans) who, after being Christianized (4th — 5th century CE), progressively accepted Islam (9th — 16th century CE), and learned Arabic.
The Yemenites and the Omanis are not Arabic either; they are descendents of the Ancient Yemenites and Omanis, and Mahrani, Soqotri and Dhofari (the latter in Oman) are the surviving forms of the pre-Islamic Yemenite languages that have been mercilessly persecuted by Yemen’s and Oman’s colonial Pan-Arabist regimes in the same way Amazigh has been mosntrously discriminated in NW Africa.
Finally, the central part of the Ottoman provinces, today’s pseudo-states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the Emirates are not inhabited by Arabs but Aramaeans who have been linguistically arabized following their islamization (7th — 18th century CE).
In all these cases, the different modern idioms used (and falsely called as Modern Arabic dialects) are different linguistic amalgamations of the aforementioned (different per area) indigenous languages with Arabic. Furthermore, the official languages used in the administration and the mass media originate from a fabricated form of Modern Arabic that was composed in the 19th and early 20th century in Egypt (the Ottoman province that was under colonial tutelage longer than any other). Useless to add, the various dialects are totally disdained as “slang” by the Pan-Arabist regimes, and consequently all these populations do not truly have a national language of their own.
Useless to add that ethnic amalgamation did not truly take place following the Islamic expansion, as the Freemasonic Anglo-French forgers have long pretended, because the Arabs, who moved out of Hedjaz and settled in various parts of the early Caliphate, were very few if compared with the local populations. The total population of Arabia at the times of Prophet Muhammad was less than the population of just one significant Egyptian, Aramaean, Persian or Roman city.
The so-called State of Israel is a fake; its correct name is Judah
On the other hand, the Jews who returned to Palestine according the Zionist plan have nothing to do with the Ancient Israelites, who after Solomon’s death (930 BCE) formed the Northern Hebrew state Israel with ten (10) tribes and capital at Samaria; the Jews are the descendents of the Southern Hebrew state Judah (with two tribes and capital at Jerusalem) that was taken to exile at Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar (587 BCE), returned to Judea after the Persian invasion of Babylonia (539 BCE), setup a state (named Judah) that was finally annexed by the Romans, who after the suppression of the Jerusalem revolt, dispersed them out of that land.
Contrarily with the Jews, the Israelites, the ten tribes of the Northern state had been taken to exile by the monotheist emperor of Assyria Sharrukin, relocated at the north-easternmost confines of the Assyrian empire (721 BCE) and thence migrated to the northwest (ca. 640 BCE), along with the entire population of the Assyrians, who were the ruling elite of the immense empire. After the end of Assurbanipal’s reign (625 BCE), Assyria soon collapsed (614, 612, 609 BCE), and the invading Babylonian armies found only a few Assyrian garrisons. Assyrian was never written after 612 BCE because simply there were no Assyrian scribes and people in the wider area of Mesopotamia; the same is valid for the Israelites who remained known as the ten lost tribes. According to Biblical prophecies, they will return at the End of Times — but of course this concerns them, not the Jews who never lost their identity, language and religion.
As a matter of fact, the Biblical precision is absolutely sufficient of its own, and one needs vicious religious swindlers and preachers of Satan to manage to have it greatly altered and widely misunderstood.
The prefabricated pseudo-return of the Zionist Jews in Palestine has been totally disregarded by all Biblical prophecies that do not speak of it at all — in striking contrast with what preach today various Evangelicals and other pseudo-Christians who, hiding their evil Freemasonic identity, emphatically pretend that Christians have to be tolerant toward the Jews. Of course, these false prophets are disqualified by 2000 years of genuinely anti-Jewish Christianity, as a matter of fact, they deserve no further effort of refutation.
Freemasonic Trickery “Arabs vs. Israel”: A 19th Century Machination
The Freemasonic Anglo-French plan of decomposition of the Ottoman Empire was the World History’s most execrable, most perverse, and most ominous plan and deed. In fact, it turned the vast area ruled in peace by the Ottoman Empire to an interminable chain of vicious conflicts, hysterical hatred, inhuman rancor, and bestial vindictiveness that will all be taken into account in the forthcoming, merciless dismantlement of the wicked, pseudo-Christian Western world.
The different inhabitants of the targeted and threatened Ottoman provinces, even if these provinces were detached for some time (illegal occupation of Egypt by the French in 1798 — illegal proclamation of vice-royalty by Muhammad Ali who was totally rejected by the entire religious establishment of Al Azhar and all the Egyptians — illegal disembark of the French at Algiers in 1830), would soon make revolution against the French (and their pseudo-enemies, the English who played their role hypocritically pretending to oppose the French but having in mind to further engulf the Ottoman Empire into wrong policies and catastrophic tactics) in order to eliminate the inimical presence from their lands.
To avert an indigenous reaction and revolution that would drive them away, and to plan for hundreds of years of supremacy and exploitation, the Anglo-French had to
a. systematically carry out practices of extensive financial corruption and bribery in order to force individuals with weak personality to deviate and betray their own country, e.g. the Ottoman Empire, and
b. compose a vast cultural — socio-behavioural — educational — academic — intellectual — ideological system of alteration that, without making of the locals true anthropological copies of the Anglo-French citizens (already devious from Christianity due to the already effectuated Freemasonic penetration of the Western European societies), would condemn them to a permanent socio-behavioural — educational — cultural — academic impasse that would later make the local societies explode.
Then started the extensive practice of “Bon pour l’ Orient” which means that for every sector of knowledge in Orientalism there would be three levels of conclusions:
1. the disturbing truth — this would become known to the Anglo-French Freemasonic Orientalists, researchers and explorers but would be kept hidden for all the rest, due to its catastrophic impact for the Freemasonic olans, if publicly and widely admitted.
2. the ordinary falsification of truth — this would be diffused / disclosed by the Freemasonic Orientalist scholars in order to become widely known as an element of academic knowledge, average education and public culture of the Western citizens; and
3. the advanced distortion of the truth — this would be diffused among students originating from the colonized countries, detached provinces of the Ottoman Empire, African territories, Iran, India, China, etc., in order to make of them perfect tools in the hands of their dishonest professors and the respective diplomats back in the students’ countries; the latter would support the students and help them obtain positions in their own pseudo-countries in order to thus continue the “official” diffusion of the Orientalist distortion and associated theoretical falsehood.
The Fabrication of Pan-Arabism
Long before driving Michel Aflaq to the point of preaching Ba’athism and Arab nationalism (for those who were not Arabs), the Anglo-French Orientalists had to and did effectively create the fake “Arab” of theirs, in Alexandria, Algiers and Beirut first.
Before Napoleon’s arrival, no one among the various populations of the Ottoman Empire from Mosul to Khartoum and from Oman to Algiers considered themselves as Arabs, except of course the inhabitants of Hedjaz and the desert Najd; for more than two centuries (17th and 18th), numerous English and French travelers moved throughout the Ottoman Empire and reported about the prevailing situation in the vast territory.
It is not by coincidence that Napoleon traveled to Egypt (1798) secretively and accompanied by an unprecedented number of French scholars, researchers, explorers and engineers. The hit against the Ottoman Empire had been planned to be multifaceted. These same scholars examined the prevailing situation and compared it with the earlier collected data.
Islamic Disintegration and Ottoman Decadence due to Ibn Taimiya
Their conclusion was true; by miracle, Islam did not exist anymore! Certainly, the outright majority of the inhabitants were looking like Muslims, praying five times per day and fasting in Ramadan, but the driving force of the Islamic world, namely the Islamic science, the Islamic philosophy, the Islamic knowledge, the Islamic art had disappeared. In their place, a barbaric pseudo-theological system had become predominant, plunging the entire society into absolute barbarism, ignorance, disregard for the art, philosophy and knowledge, and — worse — hatred for science (even for what Islamic science had been for more than 1100 years). This minimalist, genuinely un-Islamic, system imposed total disrespect for the “Other” and, even more catastrophically, absolute indifference for what Islam had been as a theoretic — intellectual — cultural — academic system.
For the — apparently pseudo-Muslim — sheikhs who were in control of the widely analphabetic masses, this fake Islam was just limited in the Quran and the Hadith (Prophet Muhammad’s sermons and admonitions, interpretations and discourses). This paranoid system imposed a catastrophic “model,” namely the tiny and unimportant village of Mecca of the times of the Prophet, and not the greatness of Baghdad of Harun al Rashid or other magnificent centers acknowledged for scientific, cultural, intellectual and political supremacy and prestige at the times of the Islamic Golden Era, such as Seville, Granada, Samarqand, Kairouan, Ghazna, Maragheh, Caesarea, Ganja, Delhi, Cairo, Soltanieh, Bukhara, Shiraz, Esfahan, Konya, Damascus, etc. It was clear that the ignorant and uneducated sheikhs were determined to reduce their audience to absolute imbecility in order to easily control them. They therefore discredited by themselves and with no restrain the quasi-totality of the Islamic phenomenon that they ignored beforehand.
Certainly the environment around the Sultan in Istanbul was different, but the influence of these sheikhs was predominant there too, reducing every interest for science, knowledge, art and philosophy to extreme. It was clear that a very negative theological system had prevailed, eliminated all the rest, and threatened the entire phenomenon of Islamic Civilization with extinction and the imperial elite (the Sublime Porte) with overthrowing. Of course, they would never terminate the Caliphate, but by controlling the key position of Sheikhulislam and by getting involved in the education process of the Sultan’s sons, princes and crown princes, these ignorant, barbaric and virtually un-Islamic sheikhs could almost control the Ottoman Empire from within.
Today we know that this system started with Islam’s most idiotic, execrable and filthy “theologian” Ibn Taimiyah, a crypto-Christian who intentionally attempted to aptly de-Islamize and covertly Christianize Islam. Ibn Taimiyah’s imprisonment (based on accusations for anthropomorphism) is certainly one of the most unfortunate moments of the Islamic History; he should have been lynched in streets and cut to pieces alive as the worst enemy of the Islamic Civilization, and as a determined and accomplished Satanist.
It is questionable whether the early European travelers and Orientalists really identified the origins of the system they were confronted with in the daily life throughout the late 18th – early 19th century Ottoman Empire. But of course, this would matter little to them. What was of primordial importance was the fact that the situation offered them an otherwise unexpected and greatly important tool of decomposition of the Ottoman Empire.
The Projection of the Theory of Nation throughout the Ottoman Empire
To first destabilize and then destroy the Ottoman Empire, the Anglo-French Freemasons used the same tools that they had already used against the “absolutist” monarchies; the replacement of the concept of “subject” with that of “citizen,” and the diffusion of the early form of liberal (John Locke) and/or romantic (Johann Gottfried Herder) nationalism, which was closely associated with the theory of “public sovereignty”.
The imaginative concept of the “nation” was effectively used by the Anglo-French and their agents and puppets in the various targeted parts of the Ottoman Empire in order to create fictional nations that would be (due to their elites who were “educated” in Paris and London) perfect tools of destruction of the Ottoman Empire. In South Balkans, Albanians, Southern Slavs, and Vlachians were suitably described as “Greeks”. A modern Greek language was fabricated on the basis of the Common Alexandrian Greek dialect of the Late Antiquity (New Testament Greek) and brutally imposed on all the unfortunate populations that happened to be enclosed within the borders of the so-called “Greek” state in 1829.
The formation of the concept of ?Arab’ started in Alexandria after Muhammad Ali (an Albanian origin officer from the Macedonian province of the Ottoman Empire) was supported by the Anglo-French to covertly detach from Sultan’s control a land that was not his.
The concept of “Arab” incorporated all the socio-behavioural attributes that the Anglo-French Orientalists (had) attested in the local populations. Indeed, the socio-behavioural parameter of concept of “Arab” is far stronger than the linguistic one. This happens because the socio-behavioural parameter is an absolutely fictional element.
The socio-behavioural attributes of the populations first encountered by the Anglo-French Orientalists in Alexandria, Egypt and the Phoenician coast were
1. neither original (Egyptian or Phoenician)
2. nor Islamic (as attested in many places during the Golden Era of Islam)
3. nor Arab (as attested in Arabia before Prophet Muhammad).
They were merely degenerated attributes and elements of a socio-behavioural system heavily influenced by the diffusion of the barbarizing system of Ibn Taimiya (1263 – 1328).
Here, it is essential to stress two critical points:
1. Due to the preaching of Islam by Prophet Muhammad among the Arabs, the marginal nation of Arabia have been culturally, religiously, spiritually, intellectually, and socio-behaviourally de-arabized and overwhelmingly aramaeanized (in the sense that the Aramaean culture and socio-behavioural system had incorporated Biblical and New Testamentary beliefs, narratives, concepts, ideals and values).
However, Muhammad failed to totally uproot the pre-Islamic barbarism of the Arabs (effectively coined as Jahiliyyah) and when rejection against the Prophet became impossible to utter (after Muhammad’s return to Mecca), the real opponents of Islam went hiding as Muslims and started diffusing (within Islamic theoretical context) various anti-Islamic concepts that were difficult to detect as they evolved around issues pertaining to Arab identity and socio-behavioural system.
2. For many centuries after Islam’s early diffusion, several concepts and elements of Arab identity and socio-behavioural system (considered as explicit barbarism by the true Muslims either they were of Arab or non-Arab origin) survived within Islam because they repeatedly became effective tools at the hands of Muslim theologians who were virtually anti-Islamic but dared not refute Islam in public. Amalgamated with a strong dose of conservatism, tribalism, and excessive anti-dialectical (kalam) theorizing, Ahmed ibn Hanbal’s system became the recipient of all anterior forms and surviving concepts of Arab socio-behavioural system.
Ahmed ibn Hanbal (780 – 855) was never considered as an important theologian while alive, back at the times of Islam’s Golden Era; he was marginal and despised as of extremely poor skills in philosophy; this was the reason of his anti-dialectical diatribes. He was imprisoned as he was considered as threat against the progress and the prosperity of the Islamic Caliphate, and as a menace for the Islamic Civilization. If he is today considered as the founder of one of the four important schools of Islamic Jurisprudence, this is due to the fact that Ibn Taimiya himself was a Hanbalite, and the diffusion of Ibn Taimiya theological doctrine strengthened the system from which it originated.
The aforementioned makes it clear that the socio-behavioural attributes of the populations that the Anglo-French Orientalists first encountered in 18th — 19th century Alexandria, Egypt and Phoenician coast were degenerated and perverted elements that constituted a dramatic drawback for the Islamic Civilization, an unstoppable decadence for the Ottoman Empire, and an inevitable destruction for the nation whose profile would be composed around them.
The nationalist concept of the “Arab”
This was precisely what the Anglo-French Orientalists, researchers and diplomats managed to carry out; they cultivated these socio-behavioural attributes that clearly belong to nomadic people of the pre-Islamic era. The most uneducated aspect of Arab Bedouin was therefore promoted to “expression of identity” for the Aramaeans of Damascus and Baghdad, the Phoenicians of Beirut and Lattakiyeh, the Egyptians of Alexandria, and the Berbers of Algiers. This was the epitome of the Anglo-French evildoing.
The formation of the nationalist concept of the “Arab” evolved around the following axes that had been elaborated by the Anglo-French Orientalists and diplomats:
1 – Accentuated disregard for the pre-Islamic past of their native lands — for all populations targeted with the “Arab national identity projection” plan.
This occurred of course in striking contrast with the Anglo-French attitude toward “nations” that they planned to promote and help expand, such as Greeks, Serbs, Armenians, Persians, Abyssinians; among these “nations,” the Anglo-French Orientalists promoted an excessive interest for the falsified past, a real archaeolatry, and diffused falsified versions of History that intentionally and distortedly over-magnify the said nations’ past.
Indicatively, suffice it to state here that the disregard of the Egyptian past, which was triggered in Egypt by the Angklo-French, had as result that for more than 100 years after Champollion deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphics, there was not a single Egyptian scholar able to read Classical Egyptian.
2 – Advanced dissociation from their native but forgotten tongue (Aramaean, Mahrani, Socotri, Kushitic, Coptic, Berber — as per the respective geographic area); to this measure were later added the “needed” arabization campaigns that prove by themselves that the targeted populations were not Arab of origin.
3 – Weak and discredited educational system
4 – Indifference for reading, wide culture, encyclopedic education, cultural activities, intellectual life, personal improvement
5 – Servile admiration of the technological achievements of the Western world
6 – Slavish attitude toward the colonial diplomats, military and academics, combined with a parallel but disproportionate egoism and arrogance toward indigenous people of lower classes
7 – Absolute lack of civic sense
8 – Absence of any familiarity with (daily) life in urban centers
9 – Indifference for the ?outer world’ which means inability to demonstrate interest for anything beyond the narrow circle of life (the community in which every ?Arab’ lives). Here I have to stress that I mainly refer to the formation period which is the 19th century; inability to cope with movements like that of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey underscored this attitude among ?Syrians’, ?Iraqis’, ?Palestinians’, Arabs, Yemenites and Egyptians during the period 1920 – 1940. The statement may look exaggerated if referring to our global world, but it is still very valid. Who considers possible in today’s Saudi Arabia for a university to offer courses on Pre-Columbian Mexico, Assyrian — Babylonian Cuneiform or Manichaean texts from Central Asia?
10 – Creation of a divide among the local populations’ mindset and attitude: those, who admire and are attracted by the Western lifestyle, mindset and attitude, fail to understand the underlying concepts and principles whereas those, who oppose them, fail to perceive (let alone express) their rejection in terms of concepts, principles and values.
Certainly, the Anglo-French Orientalists and diplomats did not generate this lack of concepts, principles and values in the minds of their victims; these had already been transformed into mere rules during the long period of diffusion of Ibn Taimiya’s system and disintegration of the Islamic Civilization. But the emergence of a socio-behavioural system whereby the subjects of a country act on the basis of rules and prescriptions (and not concepts, principles and critical thinking) is greatly beneficial to those attempting to manipulate that society, as it eliminates unpredictable developments, and thus facilitates the overall game.
11 – Exploitation of the aforementioned divide and the ensued clash between those attracted by the Western lifestyle, mindset and attitude and those opposing them.
A. The former, due to their attitude (as per above), never reached the level of proper evaluation and real understanding of the Western lifestyle and mindset; as they constituted a small social minority, they relied on Western support totally, and because of this, they never put conditions for their readiness to betray their country in order to further ensure the “privileges” that they had due to their cooperation with the Anglo-French Orientalists, diplomats, and businessmen. They thus failed to ever understand the functionality of the Western lifestyle and truly make it work for themselves — the only exception in this regard was Kemal Ataturk. And this made the great difference between Turkey and the miserable pseudo-Arab states for so many decades.
The Western attitude toward the 19th century Ottoman citizens who were attracted by the Western lifestyle and mindset demonstrates that the colonial powers did not want to “correct” the Islamic world and merely make their model common to all but simply intended to infiltrate and destroy, spread chaos and conflicts.
In fact, in not a single part of the colonized Ottoman Empire (between 1798 and 1918) can one detect an effort deployed by the Anglo-French Orientalists, diplomats, and businessmen in order to truly educate the pro-Western elements of the local societies and make of them integral and genuine Western individuals. The Anglo-French interest villainously and perversely evolved around the two axes:
• exploitation of the natural resources and
• destruction of the Ottoman Empire.
That’s why the historical role for the pro-Western elements proved to be calamitous and ominous.
B. The latter, due to their attitude (as per above), never formulated their opposition to the Western lifestyle, on the basis of a pertinent perception and proper evaluation of the Western lifestyle and mindset. Their rejection was not a properly speaking theoretical reaction, based on comparisons between different concepts and principles; it was merely an instinctive reaction that helped only reassert the main elements of their socio-behavioural system, stress their characteristics, and consolidate their barbarism. The phenomenon was repeated very often, and it thus had a disastrous impact on them over the span of two centuries.
As they constituted the majority, they represented the epicenter of the Anglo-French Freemasonic colonial policy making; although deprived of power (which would allow them express their reaction in a disastrous manner mainly for them), they would basically be allowed to shape the developments — according to the wishes of the Anglo-French colonial elites.
The importance of the majority of the depersonalized, ignorant and misguided populations of the Ottoman provinces for the Anglo-French Freemasonic colonial policy making consisted mainly in the need of the colonial powers to avert the true search for identity, conceptual approach to facts and developments, and in general, everything that would make of them a force of Ottoman (and Islamic) renaissance.
Finally, the model of the fabricated “Arab” was ready at around the end of the 19th century. The Anglo-French Orientalists realized that they would consolidate it with a dose of Islamism, which not only would be totally unrelated to the Golden Era of Islam but also form a further step in the degeneration of Islam.
It goes without saying that the situation of the Islamic faith and society further deteriorated during the 19th century because of its own downward dynamics. The rise of the Wahhabism, the absurd barbarism of Abdelwahhab, a heretic Arab of the Nejd desert, was widely accepted among the disoriented masses of the Arabic speaking Aramaeans of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and the southern coastlands of the Persian Gulf. The Anglo-French colonial agents and diplomats did everything they could to help diffuse both, Wahhabism itself and several of its constituent elements among the non Wahhabi populations of Egypt, Atlas and India.
The addition of selected elements taken from the degenerated ?Islamisms’ of Jamal al-din al Afghani (1838 — 1897; Freemason and teacher of the next mentioned), Muhammad Abdu (1849 — 1905; the Freemason Mufti of Egypt!), Hassan al Banna (1906 — 1949, a declared Hanbali of Egypt) and Sayyid Qutb (1906 — 1966) onto the final portrait of the “Arab” helped the Anglo-French Freemasonic Orientalists deliver an extremely inconsistent model that undoubtedly destroys every people on whom it may be projected. With the materialization of this policy and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the path was open for the fake but explosive “Middle East” to be incepted. When Michel Aflaq (1910 — 1989; another Freemason), an Ottoman Christian citizen of Aramaean descent who belonged to the Greek Antiochian Orthodox rite, studied in Paris in the 1930s, the fake tableau of the Middle East was available and ready to accommodate additional pseudo-theories (like Ba’athism). Furthermore, the “Arab” pseudo-states were about to be proclaimed in order to exclusively serve the nefarious interests of the Anglo-French Freemasonry.
Fake State of Israel and Pseudo-Arab States: the Two Faces of the Same Coin
Following the end of WW II, the colonial establishments of France and England set in motion the next major operation, namely the formation of a great number of pseudo-Arab states that were geared to clash with the equally fake state of Israel.
Due to the overwhelming propagation of the Pan-Arabist fallacy, very few people are now able to understand that the fake state of Israel simply could not exist without the parallel existence of the fake “Arab” states.
The reason for which the fake state of Israel expanded in 1948 and 1967 has a name: “Arabs,” i.e. a fake nation composed out of numerous states and ignorant and besotted populations – victims that fail to imagine their true identity, understand the historical realities, and achieve an accurate perception of the current situation. Only “Arab” pseudo-states, administered by blinded, ignorant, idiotic and barbaric magistrates, can fail to identify the plausible solutions that can apply in the case of the fake state of Israel.
The extensive demonization of the “Arabs,” the fallacious identification of Islam with the non existent “Arabs,” the identification of the “Arab” and the (associated) “Muslim” with an unknown but barbaric “Other” and the irritation of the Western and global audiences with vilifying narratives about appalling practices and lifestyles that typify the “villainous other” are all methods of justification of the illegal presence of the non Israelite, and definitely anti-Jewish, Zionist state of fake Israel.
But if the “Arabs” had not been fabricated, all these methods would not have been carried out, and the absurd existence of the all-threatening and none-protecting pseudo-state Israel would not have been justifiable to anybody.
In fact, if a diverse reality of Berbers, Egyptian Copts, Kushites, Yemenites, and Aramaeans, along with the Hedjaz (real) Arabs existed in the wider area between the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, who would prepare the comical and fake maps of a huge threatening Arab League territory with the adjacent minimal portion of the fake state of Israel which becomes thus “justifiable”?
Who could ever attempt to vilify the Phoenicians and portray the Aramaeans as perilous?
How could Egypt be denigrated if Muslims and Christians spoke Coptic?
What possibly negative impression could have a Berber Algeria ever made to people in Europe and America?
Who among the Western nations would not love Sudan if Africa’s largest country were named Ethiopia and included in its modified territory the Oromos who are the Kushitic brethren of today’s Arabic-speaking Sudanese?
And is it not evident that Yemen, divided into Sheba (North) and Hadhramawt (South), would radiate in peace?
Who prevented this peaceful and human situation from coming to existence?
Who disseminated discord and pestilence throughout the united and peaceful Ottoman territory?
Who propagated among the Western nations the ceaselessly repeated arabization plans that have been undertaken by the dictators of all the pseudo-Arab countries?
Le Monde, Le Figaro, Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Economist, New York Times, Time, Los Angeles Times, L’ Orient Le Jour, Daily Telegraph — and all the other Freemasonic mass media that supported the Zionist fabrication pseudo-Israel.
Their fake “Arab” is an inexistent nation born to be the scapegoat of all defamation campaigns, the tool of extermination for so many countries and peoples absorbed within the fake “Arab” melting pot and the fallacious “Israeli” — “Arab” maelstrom.
The arabization projects for the Berbers, the Tuareg, the Copts, the Aramaeans, the Yemenites, the Omanis, the Nubians and the Kushites are the antipodes of the Jewish Holocaust, an unspeakable multi-genocide carried out against more than 230 million people.
In Syria, the arabization project took also the form of persecution of the Aramaic language and eradication of the Aramaean Heritage. Last deplorable measure was the shutting down of the Aramaic Institute in Damascus. I republish herewith an insightful published in the leading Aramaean portal Aram Nahrin, I will further expand in several forthcoming articles.
On 2nd of April 2010 an article was published by the Christian Science Monitor entitled “Easter Sunday: A Syrian bid to resurrect Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ” (see below) on the closing of the Aramaic institute initiated in 2007 at the university of Damascus.
The reasons seem to be the deep-seated hatred and paranoia towards Israel. A newspaper in Syria published an article saying that the used square Aramaic characters resemble the Hebrew alphabet used now in Israel. Because the hatred towards everything which is ?Jews’ or ?Israel’ seem so huge, that the university of Damascus decided to freeze the course for the time being. This is a monumental insanity that goes beyond any imagination!
Most probably this horrendous blind hatred towards Israel will at the end lead not only Syria, but also other Islamic “Arabic” countries to fire and destruction. And probably it is this insanity and blind hatred that finally will lead to the prophecy of Isaiah 17:1-3 to be carried out, “The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from [being] a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. 2 The cities of Aroer [are] forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make [them] afraid.
Historians tell that Damascus is the only city which continuously has been inhabited during its existence. In the prophecy of Isaiah we are told about the total annihilation of Damascus resulting in ruinous heap which never will be inhabited. There has been suggested that when a war will start in the Middle-East between Israel and it’s mainly Islamic “Arabic” neighbours (prophecy Psalms 83), Damascus probably will be completely annihilated by nuclear bomb or Scalar weaponry (Amongst those who posses the scalar weaponry are Israel, Russia, China and few other countries. The US posses the less advanced HAARP system).
In the article of Christian Science Monitor David Taylor is being quoted. On the closing of the Aramaic institute he says, “It would also be a travesty for Syria”. Worse, it would be a monumental travesty.
More than 1,5 million Arameans in Syria
Syria is one of the less countries where the Arameans relatively enjoy freedom. Although the Aramean cultural heritage is being oppressed (many of them being assimilated and “Arabised”), yet on the religious level the various Aramean denominations in Syria are able to exercise their faith in freedom in contradiction to for example the situation of the Copts in Egypt who suffer terrible under fanaticism and barbarism (see also our letter to the president of Syria, Bashar Assad on 6-7-2009)
Hafes Assad (president 1971-2000), the father of present president of Syria, Bashar Assad, ruled Syria with discipline and tight hand. Fanaticism, like for example in Egypt, was not tolerated and suppressed mercilessly. The same method of combating fanaticism and intolerance was also applied in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. The power of the both rulers, Saddam and Hafes, was based on the secular Ba’at party, something which opened the way for the Aramean Christians to climb on the political ladder. An example was the East- Aramean Chaldean minister of Iraq Tarreq Aziz.
The various Aramean denominations in Syria always enjoyed certain degree of freedom of religion. To build and to restore of churches, schools and other buildings in Syria is very normal in contrast to some other Islamic countries where even building a wall is forbidden.
There are in Syria more than 1,5 million Arameans of various denominations, namely: Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Syrian Melkite Catholic, Syrian Melkite orthodox, Nestorian Chaldeans, Nestorian Assyrians and Syrian Maronites.
In the West Syria is heavily being criticized and have been put on black list of “rogue” states. The same qualifications was attributed to Iraq of Saddam Hussein. The West would bring so-called “civilization,” ?democracy” and “respect for human rights” to Iraq. Result: bloodbaths, uranium poison, more than million Iraqis killed, malformed children, thousands orphans and widows, million homeless, broken families, destroyed churches, homes and other buildings.
The vast majority of the Iraqi people is looking with outrage and condemnation to the “liberation” and “bringing democracy and human rights” to Iraq by the West. The sympathy for the Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe to George Bush during his visit to Iraq, is a vivid proof for the condemnation of the Iraqi people for what in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” has been done to their country. Obviously, the Aramean Christians are not interested to bring similar “democracy” and “human rights” by the West to Syria. Under regime of Saddam Hussein, the Aramean Christians enjoyed respect, honor and occupied high positions in the politics, the army and flourished economically very well. After “civilization,” “human rights” and “democracy” was brought to Iraq by the West, the majority of the Aramean people left Iraq, have lost their social, political positions, are marginalized and are a easy prey for fanatical groups and ordinary criminals. Of course nobody is interested in this kind of “democracy” and “human rights”.
Jesus Christ is remembered on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but the language he spoke is all but forgotten. A controversial new language institute in Syria seeks to save Aramaic.
Malula, Syria
While millions will commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ this Easter Sunday, only a handful of people could discuss his works in the language of his day: Aramaic.
Nearly all of them live in three Syrian villages, the last outposts in a region largely swept by the Arabic of Islam. In a bid to preserve its ancient heritage, Syria launched a series of language courses in 2007 to bolster the fading influence of a 3,000-year-old language that once reigned supreme in the Middle East.
And so it was that an Aramaic institute joined the cluster of buildings that cling to a rocky spine in the village of Malula, about 35 miles northwest of Damascus. But the program ran into trouble recently, when a Syrian newspaper suggested that the alphabet being used to teach written Aramaic bore an uncanny resemblance to the Hebrew characters found in modern-day Israel.
Worried that a flagship heritage scheme might in any way be associated with the country’s neighboring enemy, the government-run University of Damascus, which established the institute, acted quickly to freeze the Aramaic program.
“There were some people in the press trying to cause trouble,” says George Rezkallah, an elderly villager from Malula who runs the institute. He is hopeful that classes will be able to resume this summer.
The origins of Aramaic
Speaking from his flat overlooking the village’s higgledy-piggledy hillside houses, Mr. Rezkallah says that while the two alphabets do have similarities, it is Aramaic which first began using square lettering around the 12th century BC.
The Hebrew now used in Israel, he said, was formulated 700 years later after the restoration of the ancient kingdom of the Jews in the 5th century BC.
“The Persians adopted Aramaic. The Babylonians adopted it and so did the Jews. It then prevailed as the language of the Middle East until 700 AD.”
David Taylor, author of “The Hidden Pearl: Aramaic Heritage of the Syrian Orthodox Church,” adds that the Jewish people adopted the square Aramaic alphabet — which had become the lingua franca of the entire Middle East from about 700 BC — after they were exiled to Babylon in 587 BC, before which they had used a Palaeo-Hebrew script.
The fact that it has survived in Malula today is nothing short of a “miracle,” says Gene Gragg, professor of Near Eastern Languages at the University of Chicago.
“It would be something of a linguistic tragedy if this splendid survivor were allowed to disappear,” he added.
It would also be a travesty for Syria, says Dr. Taylor.
“Aramaic is a constant reminder of the international importance of Syria in the ancient world, when it was a beacon of learning and culture that had a profound impact worldwide,” he says. “It mirrors the cultural, linguistic and religious diversity that has always been of such great importance in Syria and is key to its long-term success.”
A last remnant of Jesus’s language
Modern branches of the language are still spoken across southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwest Iran.
But the dialect spoken by its inhabitants — as well as the residents of two nearby, mostly Muslim, villages — is the only survivor of Western Aramaic, the closest modern descendant to the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples.
It would, in all probability, have been spoken by the Christian martyr St. Thecla, a disciple of St. Paul whose tomb in Malula draws pilgrims from around the world.
“It’s quite extraordinary,” says Annyck Wustyn, a 63-year-old visitor from France. “In our country, where we are mostly Catholic, Aramaic is like a myth. Now I know it is a reality.”
Pushing forward with the program
Undeterred by the move to shut down his Aramaic institute, Rezkallah plans to introduce a new course this summer which, for the first time, will include a textbook using Aramaic to English translations — effectively opening up the institute to non-Arabic speaking students for the first time since it was founded.
According to Rezkallah, the dispute over the Hebrew similarities is still “being discussed,” but the institute has trained an extra nine teachers this year in anticipation of an extension of the program. The new textbook will, however, use Syriac script from the second century BC in lieu of square Aramaic lettering.
For the likes of Atallah Shaib, a young man working in his father’s restaurant overlooking the rickety houses of Malula, the fight to secure his language’s future is as important as ever.
“Aramaic is not a normal language,” says Mr. Shaib, his rolled-up sleeves revealing a series of inky blue Aramaic tattoos on his forearms. “It’s Jesus Christ’s language, and that’s the most important reason why we should keep it alive.”
Note — Picture: Muhammad Ali and Freemasonic diplomats in Alexandria ruling a “country” that was not theirs and against the will of the indigenous populations who all wanted to be part of the Ottoman Empire. Painting by David Roberts
America can no longer continue to impose its will on the world community. Nor can it suppress Islamic fundamentalism or its spread by its military power alone. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism with its current ferocity is a problem for the Muslim populace as well. But they will be reluctant to join the fight with true conviction unless America is willing to change its attitude towards Muslims and correct its past mistakes. Unless America plays its cards right, the consequence of its military exercise in Afghanistan will be just as futile as the war in Vietnam.
By: Prof. Mahfuz Chowdhury America has often fought the wrong war, at the wrong time, and against the wrong people. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan would seem to fall into such categories. Although, apart from the human tragedy, the enormous economic fallout of the Vietnam War might be imagined, the full outcome of the Iraq war must be awaited as it is not over yet. However, the debate on the launch of the Afghan war has only begun and it would take many more years to assess the damage, assuming the war is not going to end anytime soon. This war is also affecting neighboring Pakistan and creating a great controversy in terms of its economic cost and more importantly about whether it is winnable. Opinions vary, but those who doubt that the war could be won seem to be gaining ground.
Here are some of their arguments. Afghanistan was such a sectarian and unmanageable country that super powers like the Soviets and earlier the British failed to control it. This country has not changed much since those days. The enemy that America is fighting in Afghanistan is elusive and the situation on the battleground itself is very erratic and unpredictable. The daily news of horrors such as the recent killings of the chief CIA operative including 6 other colleagues in Afghanistan, and the unprecedented and ever increasing human carnage in neighboring Pakistan should provide some important clues. In fact, the escalating conflict and mayhem in Pakistan, a nuclear country, is now adding to the genuine fear that its nuclear weapons are not safe in the hands of its government.
Is America’s goal to contain terrorism or to oppose organized Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan? If the fight is to contain fundamentalism, winning this war in Afghanistan alone is not likely to achieve it. The skeptics should only look at the unrelenting and vicious terrorist activities as well as the outright defiance that is spreading not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and many other countries, including America itself. (Notethe recent shooting rampage by an American army psychiatrist in Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives plus many more injuries). Clearly, there are innumerable signs that the conflict is spreading. Indeed, after the failed 2009 Christmas Day bombing plot on a flight from Amsterdam, the U.S. government imposed intense screening of passengers at airports worldwide from 14 terror suspect nations. America had thought that it had found a willing partner in the Yemeni government that would support the deployment of American troops to fight the rising Islamic militants there. But it has been reported that the government of Yemen has rebuffed the idea for fear of losing popular support.
Religious fundamentalism is nothing new as it has been in existence since the birth of religion itself. The main theme of every religion was supposed to guide people to lead a noble life. Yet human society has experienced enormous oppression, suppression, violence, crime, brutality, fatality, and war in the name of religion. No religion is immune from the appeal of fundamentalism, and fundamentalist practices are still very much in existence, though subtly in some cases and violently in others. Without a doubt, Muslims have had their share of religious violence, and the present situation is no different. But to blame only Muslims for what is happening now would be morally wrong. How could one justify what Jews are doing to Muslims in the Middle East? Does not anyone see how Israel is provoking the Muslims?
Every heinous act of terrorism is a serious crime, and it must never be condoned under any circumstance, be it individual or collective. But, instead of looking or treating every terrorist act equally, if society condones or overlooks one and tries to punish the other, it only intensifies violence. This is precisely what seems to be the case with Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.
Islam is a world religion with a great following, and it certainly deserves respect. Yet the Muslim community always felt that they were being treated unjustly by the affluent west. The Arab-Israeli conflict has kept that feeling alive and very intense. The Muslims believe that the creation of Israel and the continued atrocities that are being perpetrated by Israel is nothing but a big conspiracy by the west to suppress them. They also believe that the Iraq and Afghan wars initiated by the United States are all part of the same conspiracy. And the religious fundamentalists are taking full advantage of public sentiment to create havoc and spread terrorism everywhere.
America claims itself to be the promoter of human rights and preaches self determination of all people. But it utterly fails to help the Palestinian cause. Why? The most difficult and painful situation for Muslims and other rational people, is to see and accept the sufferings of their fellow brethren in Palestine. The Muslims squarely blame America for the present tragedy because of its unequivocal support of Israel. After many years of armed struggle, the Palestinians have agreed to live peacefully with Israel in the internationally recognized pre 1967 border of Palestine. But Israel steadfastly refuses to compromise and continues to thumb its nose against world opinion by brutally suppressing the Palestinians, using American weaponry.
The best case for the Palestinians has probably been made by none other than the former U.S. President and a Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter, who argues in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” that Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East. The Israeli blockade of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents for the past year?as a collective punishment, which has drawn many international condemnations including allegations of war crimes?is a glaring example of actions that openly provoke Muslims to resent America, which refuses to intervene and stop such Israeli atrocities.
There are other issues of contention for Muslims. America supports Saudi Arabia, an autocratic country with no democratic rights, while it refuses to recognize the democratically elected Palestinian representatives of Hamas in Gaza. By the way, America along with Israel once supported the Hamas in Gaza as a counter to the Fatah movement. On the other hand, many believe that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring fundamentalism by providing financial help to religious schools in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.
Additionally, America went to war in Iraq under false pretexts and different agendas, though it now claims that the purpose was to save the Iraqis from the brutality of Saddam Hussein. Muslims believe that the main purpose for invading Iraq was to protect America’s oil supply. And they have plenty of facts to justify their claim that America is driven by its economic greed. They look at the situation in Darfur, Congo, Myanmar and other countries where America failed to prevent atrocities or promote democratic rights.
Muslims even question the American policy of allowing Israel to hide its nuclear weapons and maintaining its own nuclear stockpile, while it rallies its western allies to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Ironically, America’s success against Iran would depend entirely on the co-operation of China and Russia, which might not be forthcoming as they too have their own world agendas to pursue.
The above exemplifies the ways that America has alienated Muslims over the years. Now the new generation of educated Muslims is getting impatient with American prejudices, and is effectively using the internet to communicate with and receive feedback from each other. The fundamentalists are successfully indoctrinating these young people to resort to violent tactics in the name of “Jihad“, a religious word for martyrdom. America and the rest of the world have already witnessed some of their brutal suicidal acts during and since 9/11. If the core issues are not addressed, even if America wins the war in Afghanistan, it might not dampen the spirit of young Muslims around the world to pursue their resistance. American suppression is likely to embolden the fundamentalists to embrace new or more dangerous tactics of terrorism. Violence begets violence, and it would be impossible for America to monitor, invade, occupy or control every Muslim militant country in the world.
Although it is the sole remaining super power, America seems to be losing its grip on its economic power. The country has yet to recover from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate is hovering around 10 per cent, the federal debt has already surpassed $7.5 trillion, and the federal budget deficit was $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2009. There are other emerging economic powers now, who are preparing to compete and check American hegemony in the world. In fact, America can no longer continue to impose its will on the world community. Nor can it suppress Islamic fundamentalism or its spread by its military power alone. It clearly needs to reassess its overall foreign policies if it wishes to rein in the fundamentalists and remain an important international player.
The rise of Islamic fundamentalism with its current ferocity is a problem for the Muslim populace as well. But they will be reluctant to join the fight with true conviction unless America is willing to change its attitude towards Muslims and correct its past mistakes. A speedy and just settlement of the Palestinian crisis would be a good start. It should then be followed by a quick withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and a winding down of the Afghan war as fast as possible. Unless America plays its cards right, the consequence of its military exercise in Afghanistan will be just as futile as the war in Vietnam.
About The Author: Professor Mahfuz R. Chowdhury teaches Economics at C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, New York, USA.
He has published articles on various issues of Bangladesh and other economic issues, which are posted on numerous web sites. He has wide ranging experience in international business and commerce, and has written on failure of communism & problem with developing countries.
What’s the biggest mistake Barack Obama could make in his first six months in foreign policy? PostGlobal asks what mistakes Barack Obama should avoid during his first 6 months in office. The answer seems crystal clear to observers from Damascus. Ask any ordinary Syrian, and he or she would reply: turning a blind eye to Israel’s war machine in the Arab world would ruin Barack Obama’s image in the eyes of ordinary Arabs.
That is especially true after the Israelis savagely destroyed Gaza since late December, killing over 1,100 Palestinians, under the watchful eye of the Bush White House. Obama needs to show the world that he is a man who will uphold justice. Some claim that the only former U.S. president to have such a large basked of problems sitting on his White House desk, the day he assumed office, was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Obama has a financial crisis, and FDR had the Great Depression, which held Americans by the throat. But Obama’s problems surpass FDR’s in their severity. FDR had no significant foreign affairs problems to deal with; America on his Day One was passing through a period of isolation, very distant from the affairs of Europe or the Middle East. Obama has an America that is occupying war-torn and oil-rich Iraq. He has an ally in Israel, which he has promised to protect. He has an enemy in international terrorism, which was made all the more dangerous by the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Thanks to Bush, Obama has failed states in Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. He faces an incredible genocide that has taken place in Gaza. In short, he has plenty of dangers–and opportunities–awaiting him at the White House.
When asked to comment early on in the crisis in Gaza, Obama replied, “There is only one president at a time.” That was seen as a smart answer by most observers, who sensed that he did not want to commit himself to a crisis he did not create, yet would have the difficult task of ending once he assumes office on January 20. As the bloodshed in Gaza snowballed, Obama said that he feels deeply for the human misery coming out of the Middle East, and would work to prevent the senseless loss of life on both sides.
Having said that, Arabs are no fools and have no illusions that Obama will be a savior to the Arab world. He would not come out and harshly criticize Israel for its use of excessive force in Gaza. There is belief however, that he will live up to his commitment to start withdrawing from Iraq in 2009, and be completely out by 2011. He will also commence on political dialogue with the Syrians and turn a new page with Damascus by sending an ambassador to Syria, for a post that has been vacant since 2005. The real challenge will be how Obama will react to the Palestinians.
Obama will be in charge of finding a solution to the crisis in Gaza. Any solution would need an honest American broker. As the Bush team packs up and prepares to leave office (with the exception of William Burns and Bill Gates,) it won’t be able to come up with any solution to Gaza. Obama starts his tenure with a rising death toll in Gaza and the task of putting a real end to the bloodshed. Obama needs to end the human suffering, which means opening the Rafah Crossing, with or without consent of Israel. If Egypt shows resentment, Obama should use his influence to get Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to yield, for humanitarian if not political reasons.
President George W. Bush once asked Condoleezza Rice, in early 2004, what the single obstacle was to peace in the Middle East. Without hesitation, she replied: “Yasser Arafat!” Well, Arafat died in November 2004 and the Arabs waited to see what Rice and Bush could offer the Middle East in the post-Arafat era. On November 12, 2004, Bush shattered Arab hopes for a new approach to the Middle East crisis when he said; “I believe that the responsibility for peace is going to rest with the Palestinian people’s desire to build a democracy.” Bush’s answer, and Rice’s previous one regarding Arafat, confirm that unfortunately neither of them ever fully grasped the core of the problem in the Middle East.
Today in 2009, they still miss the real problem Arabs face. It was not about Arafat. Nor is it related to Hassan Nasrallah or Hamas. The real keys to peace in the Middle East can be found in three golden words: land, freedom, and justice for the Palestinians.
Arabs will only begin to have faith in the U.S. when peace is brought to the Palestinians, security is maintained in Iraq (followed by a complete U.S. withdrawal), and occupied land, like the Syrian Golan Heights, is restored to its rightful owners. The road to peace in the Middle East runs through Jerusalem, however, not Baghdad.
As Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s colonial department, said in 1940:
“We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way [other] than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries – all of them! Not one village, not one tribe should be left.” In 1948, there were 475 villages in Palestine, 385 of which were bulldozed to the ground by Israel. In 1938, the “founder” David Ben Gurion told the World Council of Poale Zion, “The boundaries of Zionist aspirations include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today’s trans-Jordan, all of the West Bank and Sinai.” Ten years later, as premier of Israel, he said, “Our aim is to smash Lebanon, trans-Jordan and Syria. We shall establish a Christian state [in Lebanon], and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate trans-Jordan, then Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.” (Taken from Michael Bar Zohar’s Ben Gurion: A Biography).
These words, along with what is happening in Gaza, have had more of an impact on Arabs, even those who are moderate and Westernized, than Obama can possibly imagine. My friend and colleague, Abdulsalam Haykal, publisher of Syria’s English monthly Forward Magazine, was sitting next to me while I was writing this article. I discussed Ben Gurion’s words with him, and he replied that Israel will not rest until it sees a Palestinian State without the Gaza Strip. He believes, as do several Arab intellectuals, that for a variety of reasons related to Israel’s security, Israel is bent on re-occupying the Gaza Strip and push every single Palestinian out–just like Weitz said 69 years ago–preferably into Egypt or perhaps, into the West Bank.
As an African-American who grew up inspired by the American Revolution against colonialism, and as someone who knows forwards and backwards the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, how can Obama admire a people uprooting, terrorizing and “smashing” another people? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the trinity that holds the U.S. together and defines its democracy, yet it has not been applied by the US when dealing with the Middle East. Obama, with his “yes we can” attitude, must show the world that things have changed and that this is a new United States.
Obama knows how much African-Americans suffered from persecution during the civil rights movement. To mainstream Arabs, the symbols of resistance are the Palestinian women kept waiting at checkpoints for hours, the stone-throwing children and the aging men being shoved around by young Israeli soldiers, and the young boys and girls torn to pieces by the missiles landing on Gaza. Arab intellectuals and activists have read the famed speech by Reverend King, and like him they have often spoken of their dream of emancipation, from Israeli occupation. The Arabs had a dream that their children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by their leaders as inferior to the powerful elite; “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Like King, they had a dream that “with this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, and to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day“.
It is all about land, freedom, and justice for the Palestinians.
He has also authored a biography of Syria’s former President Shukri al-Quwatli and currently serves as Associate Professor at the Faculty of International Relations at al-Kalamoun University in Syria.
In 2004, he created Syrianhistory.com, the first and online museum of Syrian history. He is also co-founder and editor-in-chief of FORWARD, the leading English monthly in Syria, and Vice-President of Haykal Media.
I don’t think Bush needs to strengthen his legacy. It has already been deeply engraved in the history of the Middle East. George W. Bush has in fact ruined the Middle East.
No words can describe my anger at what the United States has tolerated or promoted in the Middle East under the Bush White House. The list is long: the war on Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Falluja, Mosul, the war on Lebanon, Qana, and not to forget, the circus in Palestine, the killing in Jenin, and the siege in Gaza, topped with the elimination of Yasser Arafat, a democratically elected leader. These images have always reminded me of Sept. 11, 2001. The blood of these children–in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq–is no less valuable than that of Americans killed at the Twin Towers. Many Americans have been sending me “hate mail” recently, saying that the Bush Administration has been good to the Arabs and is trying to bring peace, security, and democracy to the Middle East. Sorry to tell them that this White House will be remembered for Abu Ghraib. It will be remembered for the atrocities in Gaza. It will be remembered for Qana.
Bush has perhaps single-handedly re-written the history of the Middle East–certainly against our will. This history has been very bloody and embarrassing for America, and it will affect America’s image for generations to come. Allow me to quote the former and legendary U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who spoke to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862 saying: “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trail through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”
In our part of the world, Bush has marched into history in great dishonor.
Each country singled out by the White House as a haven for democracy and progress has been ruined, beyond imagination, by his policies in the Arab World. America’s image has been perverted, distorted, and tarnished beyond repair in the minds of the millions of Arabs and non-Arabs who are disgusted by all the bloodshed we are seeing in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon.
Everybody in the Arab World holds Bush responsible for all of this madness, along with prime ministers Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert. I always wanted to write to the U.S. President and tell him: “Think for a minute, Mr. President, about how history will refer to you 100 years from now. Will you be ranked among great men like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, or Franklin Roosevelt? What have they done for America and what have you achieved? Washington achieved independence for America. Lincoln fought the Civil War. Wilson won World War I and Roosevelt defeated Hitler in World War II. You ruined the image of your forefathers–the great men who founded and created the modern United States.”
To a mother whose child was killed in Qana, Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Bush, will all be viewed as criminals. A grief-stricken person will not differentiate between good and evil, or right and wrong. He or she will hold America responsible for the death of their loved ones. I personally have high admiration for the American presidents mentioned above. They were strong leaders with talent, principle, and character. Bush is responsible for ruining their image in the Arab World.
To prove my point, I repeat a phrase that I have used over and over again since 2004, quoting Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts who said: “To many people in the Middle East, the symbol of America is not the Statue of Liberty but a prisoner standing on a box wearing a dark cape, a dark hood on his head, afraid he is going to be electrocuted.”
Many discussions were held by American policymakers and intellectuals in the United States, after September 11, on one question: “Why do they hate us?” The answer can be summarized with one simple phrase: “Favoritism towards Israel.” What happened over the last eight years–in Palestine and Lebanon–was an unforgivable crime committed by Israel, under the watchful eye of the United States, thanks to Bush.
I received a very large amount of “hate mail” from Americans and pro-Israeli readers over the last few years in response to the series of articles I have written against the Israeli War on Lebanon, which coincides with July 12, 2008.
These readers were enraged by my condemnation of the United States and Israel, claiming that the “war on terror” was correct and justified. One reader wrote: “You are an ungrateful man and I am done reading your site” because of what I had just written about Israel and the United States.
At the same time, I received many, many e-mails from Arab readers who supported my arguments, saying that Bush’s bias against the Arabs was “an unforgivable crime”–in every sense of the world.
I happen to personally know many of the Arab readers with whom I have communicated. They are not turbaned and bearded fanatics who roam the world with guns, wanting to destroy Israel and the United States. Rather they are fine, Westernized, American-educated and highly cultured Arab men and women (many are actually not even Muslims) who have never carried a gun in their life. One addressed the Bush administration and cursed its policy-makers saying that they have “abused the names of the great men of American history.”
The colossal difference in views, and the accumulating anger on both sides, makes dialogue and understanding extremely difficult–especially in times of war; especially under George W. Bush.
One reader commented on my work, saying that he was “disgusted” because I was “demonizing the U.S. for trying to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East.” He added, “If you are too ignorant and too stupid to see that, then maybe you aren’t worth U.S. blood and gold.” Another reader added, and I quote him at length: “Go buddy up with Syria, go buddy up with Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran, and go live in a piece of â?¦ world that glorifies suicide bombing by children, glorifies naked anti-Semitism and ignorance of the Holocaust, ‘honor kills their women and forces them to wear burkhas. Go ahead and chose to keep your part of the world uneducated, unemployed, and hopeless. Go ahead and chose to keep the Middle East the gutter of the world while America has the compassion to try and help you by removing the cancer affecting your region.”
In response, I write: What blood and what gold were spilled and paid by the Americans for the Arab World? I am astonished that an educated American would think in such a manner. America did not come to this part of the world to tutor or to educate. This is the biggest falsification brought to the world by President Bush.
Iraq was destroyed and looted under the Americans. There are over 10 people dying per day in America’s Iraq–so much for democracy and education. At one point it was more than 35 people dying per day in Iraq, meaning that more than one death occurs per hour in the “new and democratic Iraq.”
At one point more than 1,500 died per month in America’s Iraq. Mass graves–all created after Saddam Hussein, have been found in America’s Iraq, dug up by the Iraqis themselves under America’s watchful eye. Death squads are free to roam the streets, killing Iraqis by night.
Five years after the US invasion of Iraq, one cannot but wonder how the Americans missed a golden opportunity to create a secure democracy in the country to replace the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
Optimists in the Arab world, especially pro-Western and particularly pro-American Arabs, defended the United States until curtain fall, saying that it truly would root out terrorism from Iraq, and bring both stability and democracy to the Iraqi people.
Every one of those beliefs has been shattered – over and over again, since March 2003. As Iraq enters its sixth year since 2003, it is safe to ask: what has been achieved? What can I describe as American “compassion” towards the Arabs?
Apart from the downfall of Saddam, not a single achievement is noteworthy in Iraq. The country today is a “democracy” in civil war – a democracy where human life is being wasted, along with the dreams and security of the Iraqi people. Inasmuch as free elections are a great asset of which all oppressed people dream, they mean nothing if security is lacking.
History will not remember the free elections that took place in January and December 2005 as much as it will remember the notorious pictures of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison. The killings and the death squads that haunt the streets of Iraq will live much longer in the minds of Iraqi people than the image of Saddam’s statue falling in Baghdad.
American soldiers torturing (Lynching) Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison [Click on PICS to enlarge image]
Bush’s America did not come to democratize the Iraqis. It came to expand its sphere of influence, replace that of the former USSR, control the rise of political Islam, rebuild the Iraq it had destroyed, make use of Iraq’s oil wealth, and safeguard the security of Israel. Must I remind my American reader of the scandals of Abu Ghraib? Those pictures alone show how much compassion the Americans have for the Arabs. Must I remind him of the killing of 24 Iraqis in cold blood by U.S. marines at Haditha in November 2005 or of the killing of 11 Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops in the village of Ishaqi in March 2006?
The Arabs remember too clearly that it was the Americans who initially supported Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in 1979, simply because he challenged Iran. It was the Americans who orchestrated the first coup d’etat in Syria in 1949, toppling the democratically elected president Shukri al-Quwatli and replacing him with General Husni al-Za’im, a stooge of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), because the latter promised to respond to U.S. needs in the Middle East. These were mainly a crackdown on communism, a ceasefire with Israel, and privileges to Tapline, a U.S. oil company.
The fact that Quwatli had been democratically elected by his people meant nothing to the CIA, the White House or the Pentagon in 1949. The fact that Yasser Arafat, another democratically elected president, was besieged to his office in 2001-2004 also meant nothing to the Americans who said that he was “irrelevant” and completely ignored him–along with the will and choice of the Palestinian people, because he refused to become an American stooge in the Middle East.
The Americans must give to win the trust of the Arabs.
Arabs will only begin to have faith in the U.S. and the Bush White House when peace is brought to the Palestinians, security is maintained in Iraq, and American statesmen show more interest in real Arab domestic issues and democracy.
The Americans have also failed to portray themselves as honest brokers in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is the cornerstone of grievances to the Arab majority. The real problem that the Americans fail to understand is not Arafat, nor terrorism, nor Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but land and freedom for the Palestinians. Once that is secured, a majority of Arabs will start to trust America.
The road to peace in the Middle East runs through Jerusalem, not Baghdad. On the issue of Palestine, there is consensus among the 200 million Arabs. Since September 2000, more than 50,000 people have been left homeless in Gaza alone. The Occupied Territories currently suffer from 40 percent unemployment, and in Gaza alone it is over 50 percent. When the intifada broke out in 2000, the poverty rate was 21 percent, and by December 2002 it had increased to 60 percent. In Gaza, poverty today is estimated at over 80 percent.
Due to terrible conditions, food consumption in the Occupied Territories has dropped by 25 percent, and half of the population currently lives off United Nations aid. Malnutrition among infants is 22 percent, the highest in the region, matched only in the Sahara Desert.
The Israeli Defense Army has generated losses in Palestinian infrastructure estimated at U.S.$1.7 billion in 2002 alone. And that number is likely to increase, given the U.S. alliance with Israel and its generous donation of arms and money. When former secretary of state Collin Powell announced his plan for “democracy in the Middle East” in late 2003, he promised $29 million to promote a democratic culture to the Arabs. Whereas at the start of 2004, the White House gave Israel $300 million in donations to “help combat terrorism.”
In an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Aharanot, Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice once said, “I first visited Israel in 2000. I felt I was returning home, despite the fact that this was a place I have never visited. I have a deep affinity with Israel. I have always admired the history of the state of Israel and the hardness and determination of the people that founded it.” — Read: The tragic futility of Condoleezza Rice
No remark could have a worse effect on the inhabitants of the Middle East. Rice wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Cold War era and the USSR, and although she has a prestigious background in academia, she sadly has not read her Middle East history correctly. To the Arab street she is trying to appeal to today, the “founders” that she admires in Israel are nothing but invaders who realized early on that in order to survive they must uproot, kill and terrorize the Arabs and Palestinians.
Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s colonial department, said in 1940, “We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way [other] than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries – all of them! Not one village, not one tribe should be left.”
In 1948, there were 475 villages in Palestine, 385 of which were bulldozed to the ground by Israel.
In 1938, the “founder” Ben Gurion told the World Council of Poale Zion, “The boundaries of Zionist aspirations include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today’s trans-Jordan, all of the West Bank and Sinai.” Ten years later, as premier of Israel, he said, “Our aim is to smash Lebanon, trans-Jordan and Syria. We shall establish a Christian state [in Lebanon], and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate trans-Jordan, then Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.” (Taken from “Ben Gurion: A Biography,” written in 1986 by Michael Bar Zohar). These words have had more of an impact on Arabs, even those who are moderate and Westernized, than the democratic promises of Rice.
As an African-American who grew up inspired by the American Revolution against colonialism, and as someone who has read, if not memorized the Bill of Rights of the U.S. constitution, how can Rice admire a people uprooting, terrorizing and “smashing” another people? — Read: Lynchings in America — A History Not Known By Many — An hereditary trait that fully explains Abu Ghraib
1935 lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
1919 lynching William Brown in Douglas County, Nebraska
1936 lynching of Lint Shaw in Royston, Georgia
Notes:Some lynching victims were first raped or stripped of their ears and fingers. Others were lynched, pregnant or with their children, and some were burnt alive and then the lynchers had their charred bodies sold off, bone fragment by bone fragment, to gawkers.
This is a question asked all over the Middle East, shedding a lot of doubt on Rice’s credibility when talking about democratizing the Arab World, and the support she has from her President. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the trinity that holds the U.S. together and defines its democracy, yet it has not been applied by the U.S.–Bush’s America–when dealing with the Middle East.
To make things clear to readers: I am not opposed to peace with Israel nor am I anti-Semite. One of my closest friends during childhood and young adulthood had a Damascene Jewish mother. She was a remarkable lady. I am someone who sees no difference between Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and Baha’is. All of them have the right to live in peace and security. When Arafat signed Oslo in 1993, I was one of those who strongly supported him. I still think it was the bravest decision he ever took in his life. Oslo was ruined not because of Arafat but because of the outbreak of the intifada on Sept. 28, 2000. The outbreak of violence started after Ariel Sharon’s provocation in visiting the al-Aqsa Mosque. A circle of violence started after that, and all hell broke loose in the Middle East after Sept. 11, 2001. Give me a peace-wanting government in the United States and I will support Syrian-Israeli, or Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. One of my favorite quotes was made by Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, during the signing of Oslo. He said, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace.”
That was 15 years ago. These administrations, thanks to Bush, Olmert, and Rice, have spread nothing but destruction, setting Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine–and now possibly Iran–ablaze. That is their legacy. They have not surpassed “a time to hate, and a time for war.” They kept us at a “time to kill and a time to die” never bringing us a “time to heal, a time to laugh, a time to love, and a time for peace.”
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[Enlarge Picture] About The Author: Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst and historian based in Damascus, Syria. Moubayed is the author of “Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship (2000)” and “Steel & Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000 (2006).” He has also authored a biography of Syria’s former President Shukri al-Quwatli and currently serves as Associate Professor at the Faculty of International Relations at al-Kalamoun University in Syria. In 2004, he created Syrianhistory.com, the first and online museum of Syrian history. He is also co-founder and editor-in-chief of FORWARD, the leading English monthly in Syria, and Vice-President of Haykal Media.
Before 212 years, Turkey controlled an area of almost 8 million km2 in Africa; under its antecedent state form, e.g. the Ottoman Empire, vast African territories from the confines of Algeria to Somalia and the East African coast down to Tanzania were reporting to the Sultan at Istanbul, who was the Caliph of all Muslims worldwide. Ottoman-controlled territories and lands ruled by principalities that recognized the imperial authority of the Sultan totalled no less than one third of Africa. 
America has often fought the wrong war, at the wrong time, and against the wrong people. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan would seem to fall into such categories. Although, apart from the human tragedy, the enormous economic fallout of the Vietnam War might be imagined, the full outcome of the Iraq war must be awaited as it is not over yet. However, the debate on the launch of the Afghan war has only begun and it would take many more years to assess the damage, assuming the war is not going to end anytime soon. This war is also affecting neighboring Pakistan and creating a great controversy in terms of its economic cost and more importantly about whether it is winnable. Opinions vary, but those who doubt that the war could be won seem to be gaining ground.
About The Author: Professor Mahfuz R. Chowdhury teaches Economics at C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, New York, USA.
