Hussein’s husband had previously boasted to the media that the local police had fully supported him. And while Basra law enforcement officials have told the press that Leila Hussein’s defiance had nothing to do with her murder, that this was a routine spat of sectarian violence targeting the women activists, their own role in this story makes their statements suspect.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Leila Hussein was being made an example of. This wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last time, in today’s brutalized Iraq. The activists who were trying to help Hussein escape are receiving threats as well. Any woman who does not submit to her role as a passive piece of human garbage is a potential target in a patriarchal society scarred by years of violence.

Please note that the authors of Jezebel can help you donate money to the Basra activists, if you contact them. We hope to have more on this story. Until then, may God rest the souls of the innocent. There is nothing more that I can personally can say in the face of such tragedy.

Just today, we are getting news of a fourteen-year-old child losing her life after a typically heavy-handed Israeli raid erupted in violence. Israel is showing the Gazans who’s boss. Vote for Hamas? Pay the price.

And yet, who was it exactly that the Gazans were supposed to vote for? Previous attempts at establishing a measure of good government have failed spectacularly. If you feel that your very existence is under siege, who do you turn to? That’s right, the guys with the guns.

I have no love lost for Islamic hard-liners. However, when I look at Israel’s policies toward this region, it seems to me that at this point, it’s as if no one is even searching for an actual solution. Gaza is troublesome and unstable, and who wants to deal with that? Why not just bleed it dry? Demoralize it to the point of it fading away?

The horrors of European anti-Semitism have paved the way for a series of new horrors elsewhere.

For example, I don’t blame Jews for wanting to leave the beloved, albeit struggling, country of my birth, Ukraine. A Ukrainian gentile is privileged in a way that a Ukrainian Jew is simply not. Swastikas spray-painted on the walls of residential buildings say it all. This side of the issue must be considered if a solution to the conflict can one day be reached.

It’s easy to talk “peace” when you don’t have to worry about grenades flying through your window at any given moment, but I would like to try.

There have been atrocities on both sides of this ongoing debacle, and the ensuing bitterness has solidified into rock-hard contempt. Fundamentalist nihilism has blossomed alongside collective punishment and impotent diplomacy.

Things cannot go on like this indefinitely. A perpetually embattled Israel, surrounded by disgruntled neighbours, is not sustainable. Who wants to live like that? No one wants to live like that.

My question is, how many Muslim, Jewish, and Christian deaths will it take before there is a collective shift in thinking?

During the last three weeks before the onslaught, after an upsurge in rocket attacks coming from the Gaza Strip, Israel had imposed a tight blockade, refusing to allow anything but some humanitarian aid to trickle into the region, and not much of that. Two weeks later, the Israelis opened the doors to allow heating oil only. That same day, three more rockets were fired off at Israel from the Strip.

The Gaza Strip is roughly 25 miles long by 8 miles wide. Except for a seven mile southern border with Egypt, it is surrounded by Israel to the north and east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The area has been occupied almost continuously since the time of ancient Egyptians, with Philistines, Arabs, Christian Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British and the Israelis as overseers. It was even occupied by modern Egypt in the aftermath of the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Israel took control during the 1967 Six-Day War, along with the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, east Jerusalem and the Sinai Peninsula.

Israel withdrew its physical occupation from parts of the Strip in accordance with the 1979 Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords also affirmed the Palestinian right to self-government. The Palestinian National Authority and Israel then shared control in the Gaza Strip until 2005, when Ariel Sharon unilaterally ended Israeli’s military presence and withdrew all Israeli settlements, making the Strip the first territory to come completely under the PNA. The peace, however, did not to last.

Yasir Arafat’s PLO had become cynically corrupt, tired, and had generally lost its way. As we know, in 2007, Hamas, a militant group and determined foe of Israel, was voted in by the Palestinians to replace the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, causing a schism with the Fatah party, the PLO’s political wing, which dominates Palestinians in the West Bank.

Since the reluctant withdrawal of the Israeli settlements in 2005, Gaza is almost entirely Palestinian Arab. At least 99 percent of the population are Sunni Muslim with a scattered few Christians. The region saw a massive shift of population following the conflict of 1948, when Israel was created. By 1968, the region had grown in population six times. Right now 1.5 million people live in the Gaza Strip and it has, at 146 square miles, one of the highest population densities in the world. Eighty percent of Gazans live below the U.N.’s poverty level.

Israel and Egypt signed a treaty in 1979 that returned control of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Strip, to the Egyptians. As part of that treaty, a 100 meter wide band of land was designated as the Philadelphi corridor was set up as a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt. Israel subsequently built a corrugated sheet metal barrier there during the intifadas of the early 2000s. The barrier is topped by barbed wire.

Egypt and Israel then enacted a military accord in 2005 after the Israeli military pullout. This agreement was ostensibly built on the 1979 peace pact. This pact specified a deployment of 750 Egyptian border guards along the length of the border, which is, remember, seven miles long. These guards were to man the border helping Israel defend against terrorism, arms smuggling and other illegal behavior. That was the deal.

The Rafah Crossing, the only entry-exit point along those seven miles had been controlled by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. The E.U. was to monitor any Palestinian impulses to misbehave on their side of the wall. However, in July 2007, the E.U. pulled out after Hamas defeated Fatah in their elections for the right to speak for the Gazans. At the time of the pullout, Egypt and Israel agreed to shut down the Rafah Crossing, effectively sealing Gaza off from the rest of the world. The Israelis hoped that such a blockade would choke off Hamas-directed mortar and rocket attacks into southern Israel. It did not stop those attacks, but it did stop anything (i.e. heating oil, baby diapers, blankets, coffee and so on) from getting in. It was winter, and it was bitterly cold (Western observes, of course, regularly assume that the entirety of the Middle East is hot year-round).

Last week, Egyptian troops successfully managed to close the breaches, but not before thousands of Gazans broke out of the blockade to flood the nearby Egyptian towns for supplies. Before many of these people could return to their homes, the border slammed shut, trapping hundreds if not thousands of Gazans in Egypt. Israeli authorities pointed out that militants were among those locked outside. The militants, the Israelis claimed, were now free to cross the porous Israeli border elsewhere in order to cause more mayhem. Hamas has denied these allegations.

Those Gazans trapped inside the Gaza Strip are growing unhappy with Hamas’s continuing attacks on Israel from their staging points in Gaza. This, of course, is Israel’s strategy in the first place: squeeze Gaza and the Gazans themselves will stop Hamas’s rocket attacks. But the rockets have continued.

Israel has vowed to keep pounding suspected Hamas hide-outs with air strikes, even in the face of international criticism that Israel is using the rockets as a pretext for collective punishment in Gaza. Israel denies the charge.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he is helpless to stop the Hamas rockets since Hamas took control of Gaza last June. However, on February 4, rockets were fired into Israel from the West Bank, not Gaza, thus provoking Israel to demand that Abbas take stronger action against Hamas.

Enter the assassins.

On February 12th, Imad Mugniyah’s car was blown up with him in it in a tony neighborhood of Damascus. No one has claimed responsibility for killing Mugniyah, a famously elusive militant suspected of masterminding bombings that killed hundreds of American and French troops in Beirut during the 1980s. However, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, pointed the finger at Israel. So have many others, citing the sophistication of the bomb itself as evidence of the involvement of Israeli Intelligence, Mossad.

Israel again denied the charge, and was not the only one to point out that Syria’s intelligence service also had the wherewithal to come up with such a weapon. Syria has also denied the charge. Nasrallah then threatened to intensify his group’s conflict with Israel and to retaliate against Israeli targets anywhere in the world.

If Hezbollah were to strike at Israel outside the borders of Lebanon and Israel, it would be a complete turnaround from the group’s current policy. The last time it did so was in the 1990s, when Mr. Mugniyah, ironically, was accused of planning bombings of Israeli targets in Argentina. Hezbollah has denied any connection to the bombings in Buenos Aires.

Mr. Mugniyah’s murder was followed two days later by an Israeli air strike that killed a Hamas commander in Gaza as well as four other Hammas soldiers.

This is the stink of war. The acrid smell of cordite, blood, fear, fire and grief.

In the Gaza Strip, spring is on the way. Not peace, of course, just spring. Flower boxes are reappearing on window sills, clothes are hung out to dry in the sun. The old men have started playing checkers and backgammon in the coffeehouses.

Life, in some fashion, goes on.

And I should have known.

Her husband never struck her, and never smiled at her. She was grateful to him. He re-married quickly.

I should have known.

Her old classmate came to me years later, in a different city, where the air thankfully did not smell of her hair. Did I want to have a cup of coffee? Did I want to know the truth about my cousin? “My cousin had an accident.”

She had so many. Starting at age twelve.

I should have known.

My father does not speak to his younger brother. He will deny it. Or pretend not to hear you. Leave the room in search of his glasses and not come back for an hour. But he does not speak to his younger brother.

We should have known.

I look at my daughter’s toothless smile.

What do I know?

Amar is an Arab-American poet. For privacy reasons, she writes under a pen-name.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is tragic. There can be no doubt about that. But what shocks me today, as I am shocked on a daily basis with the stream of murders and suicides in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and so many other countries is this nagging question: Where on earth do they find them?? Where on earth do the plotters and schemers find so many willing men and women of young age to mould into their insane vision of the world? How did those who planned this latest act of violence stumble upon this latest specimen of misguided fervour and convince him (at least it seems to be a him at the time of writing) to go and end his life by assassinating a mother of three children. How did they get through to this guy? And more importantly, why is it so goddamn easy to find self-terminating assassins in our region?

(To read this article in full, please visit GlobalComment)

This brave young girl was allegedly killed at the hands of the man that should have been protecting her: her own father. Canadian media has reported that the 16 year old argued with her father about wearing the hijab, or traditional Islamic headscarf. Friends said she would leave the house in traditional dress and change into western-style clothing when she arrived at school.

Her father, Muhammad Parvez, called 911 to report that he had killed his daughter on Monday, December 11th. She died from her injuries only hours later. Her 26 year old brother has been charged with obstruction of justice for failing to cooperate with police. To me, Aqsa is a martyr for the freedom of individual choice.

I am especially distraught that this alleged murder happened in Canada, home of “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” a TV sitcom produced by a brilliant Canadian Muslim director, Zarqa Nawaz. In the episode, “The Barrier,” first aired earlier this year; the teenage girl, Layla and her very conservative father, Baber, disagreed about her attire. She was an active girl and didn’t want to be restricted by her garments. She hid the fact that she had had her period—a traditional moment when girls are encouraged to begin covering their hair–for fear that her father would want her to wear a headscarf. While the two fundamentally disagreed about the issue, as is the case in most civilized families (Muslim or not), violence was never an option.

To some zealots, there is no place in heaven for a Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair. For some, it is an ancient patriarchal tradition that should be abolished. But American Muslim teens themselves are embracing the autonomy that Islam and America afford individuals. In recently released The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook, Yasmine Hafiz, her brother, Imran Hafiz, and their mother, Dilara Hafiz, of Phoenix, Arizona, advise teens (and parents): “According to the Quran, as long as Muslims are dressed modestly and behave respectably, no specific dress code is required… modest behavior is also encouraged, therefore ogling the cute boy in Chemistry class or leering at the cheerleaders is definitely out! …Each person must read the Quran for herself and form her own opinion.”

Teens and others are turning to interpretations of Islam that assert that there isn’t one way to look if you’re a Muslim girl or woman. According to the distinguished Islamic scholar, Reza Aslan, “The veil was neither compulsory, nor for that matter, widely adopted until generations after Muhammad’s death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of the Prophet’s egalitarian reforms.”

Some so-called “traditional” Muslims argue that ‘Western’ women are oppressed because they must derive their self-worth from the gaze of men. However, it is also true that within some Islamic communities a woman who does not cover is not afforded the same respect as one who does. The expectations are different but the result is the same; a woman’s worth is still determined by others, including men.

While living in Yemen, my friend, Kelly Wentworth, who is also a convert to Islam, experienced pressure to cover herself that did not stem from a religious mandate but a cultural one. As the wife of a Yemeni man, if she chose not to cover, the society would consider it a dishonor to her husband’s family.

It is essential that men and women make their own choices about dress for internal reasons rather than succumbing to external pressures. This is only possible when individuals have the freedom to choose. Personally, by wearing hijab, I experience a sense of autonomy, confidence and femininity I did not before. Yet, for those who have been forced to wear it, I believe it is a very physical barrier to connection with the Divine. Perhaps it is because of her belief in this freedom of choice that Aqsa Parvez was so viciously murdered.

As a Muslim, a woman, a wife, a daughter and a citizen of the free world, I am outraged by the fact that Aqsa was taken from this earth. No human being has the right to destroy the life that God has made sacred. I am sickened that this man has shamed Islam through his very unislamic acts. There is no place in the world for this kind of intolerant, chauvinistic and bigoted thinking, no matter in what faith tradition it appears.

An important distinction difficult for fundamentalists of all faith traditions is that dress codes are a matter of choice, not religious mandate or obligation. Without choice, no act bears meaning. According to Islamic scripture, an act is judged by the intent with which it was performed. If a woman chooses to wear a scarf because she believes in its benefit to her, she has a pure motive. However, if she covers to please another person, whether that person is her husband, brother, father or mother, while not believing in its benefits, the motive is lost and the act of wearing it loses all meaning.

I believe Aqsa has found her place in Paradise. I pray that in her passing we will not miss this opportunity to take a lesson from the tragedy of her death, inspiring us to practice tolerance, love, kindness and understanding with all, however they are dressed.

Nick Broomfield’s “The Battle for Haditha” has not yet gotten enough press. In some ways, this is understandable. Despite the explosive subject matter, this is a low-key film. There are no big-name actors, no enormous budget, and, most importantly, the picture’s stylistic elements tend toward a stark, bare-boned simplicity. Nevertheless, this is a film to see.

Broomfield cast many amateurs for key roles, among them some ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, and this is both good and bad. There is a definite air of authenticity surrounding the film, yet the acting occasionally appears forced. Some of the dialogue struck me as contrived- although this may have something to do with the subtitles. I do not speak Arabic, but having been accompanied by an Arabic speaker at the screening, I discovered that the subtitles are not as good as they could have been.

This movie is earnest, but, in some scenes, it also comes across as didactic. Do we really need to see the chief insurgent character, a disgruntled former member of the Iraqi army, spelling out the message with lines such as: “The Americans created the insurgency by dis-banding the army”? Does the chief insurgent furthermore have to opine stiffly on the future of Iraq, noting (in a manner that suggests that he is channeling Fukuyama) the bleak possibility of the country inheriting a new leader, someone who will be a helluva lot worse than Saddam?

Yet in spite of a few missteps, this is a haunting picture. I can’t get it out of my head, and I probably won’t for a long time. Broomfield captures the comings and goings of the residents of Haditha, people whose lives are about to be shattered, with intimacy and grace. I was floored by the character of Rashied (Duraid A. Ghaieb), a young man besotted with his pregnant wife (Yasmine Hanani – who attended the screening alongside the director, and ex-Marine actors Elliot Ruiz and Eric Mehalacopoulos), keenly aware of the growing danger of staying with his family in Haditha, and yet unable to do much about it.

Alongside U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians, Broomfield dares to portray the members of the Iraqi insurgency as human beings. These people are not just fundamentalist foreigners, they are also ordinary locals who are infuriated with what has happened to their country. This simple truth is about as inconvenient as anything Al Gore can come up with, and is bound to make American audiences squirm in their seats.

At the Q & A afterwards, Broomfield pointed out that the massacre at Haditha has been extensively researched, and the script was an attempt to stick as faithfully as one could to real-life events. The movie was shot on location in Jordan, and grim anecdotes were related: apparently, one of the Iraqi families featured in the film wanted to pack up and leave in the middle of the shoot, highlighting the adversity of refugee life for the crew and the rest of the cast.

The audience, meanwhile, was happily irreverent. People expressed their anger with the U.S. occupation of Iraq with ease, blunt questions were asked, awkward pauses were observed, and the entire occasion had a fresh, unscripted feel one so rarely gets in similar settings in the States. Kudos to the festival organizers for this, honestly.

One woman asked if “The Battle for Haditha” would get past “censorship” in the States, a question which reminded me of misconceptions people hold about the U.S. film industry. In the U.S., the real censorship lies in trying to find a distributor for a potentially controversial film. The MPAA can cripple a movie’s chance at being distributed by issuing an NC-17 rating, but such ratings are usually tied to graphic representations of sex. “Battle for Haditha” has secured a U.S. distributor and will, hopefully, be seen by at least a fraction of the people who need to see it most: those among us who continue to defend the ongoing, blood-spattered mess that has been made of Iraq.

The best moments of the film have to do with the peculiar duality of wartime violence: how it is both personal and mediated, vicious and strangely, grotesquely casual. It is the antithesis to all life, and yet it can make its perpetrators feel alive. No amount of theorizing can ultimately reveal its true nature, and Broomfield understands this. Sometimes, all you need to do is watch.

Actually, come to think of it, just about everything. Where shall I begin? A wise choice would be with a friendly warning. Lawyers call it a ‘disclaimer notice’, or an ‘exclusion of liability’ clause. In my case, it is a necessary adjustment of readers’ expectations. It is a reminder that I neither claim to have the time or space to do justice to this subject, nor do I have a clue about what sober new-year resolutions could possibly salvage our doomed Titanic. So why did I choose such a big title? To grab your attention, I guess (you’re reading this far, aren’t you?). And to write something for this issue, of course, because you have grown accustomed to my monthly rants. However, please bear in mind that you are unlikely to find any earth-shattering analysis below.

A remarkable job has already been achieved by the more learned professionals who compiled the UNDP reports cataloguing the shortcomings of the Arabs. If this article will sound like a superficial exercise in self-flagellation, then probably this is exactly what it is. Therefore if you happened to be doing something more useful before landing on this page – such as plucking your eyebrows or picking your nose – I strongly urge you to please go ahead and continue whatever it is you were doing. I assure you that you are more likely to attain fulfillment there. Otherwise, you may humor me and read on. The choice is yours.

You’re still interested. Great. The first major objection you may have to my undertaking is the obvious question of why the hell I am assuming that we can treat the Arab world as one unit with common problems – while in fact it is a diverse group of separate countries, each with its own different resources, contrasting levels of development and peculiar political and social characteristics. Within the answer to this question lies one of the most astonishing ironies of the failure of the Pan-Arab ideology. After decades of persistent external and internal resistance against the dreamy notion that Arabs are a unique people with a common identity and history who can eventually be united under one federal Arab republic, something very strange took place. The same forces that drew up our political maps and succeeded in convincing us that our artificial straight line borders are an irreversible fact of history have recently had to undergo an unbelievable change of heart. The same colonial powers that finally succeeded in making us completely abandon the remote hope that we can be regarded as one people are today the very same parties who are reverting back to lumping us together as one. Believe it or not, the leaders who are now constantly referring to our fragmented nation-states using the singular expression ‘the Arab world’ are not Arab leaders but are the very Western leaders who have always resented this classification. I am not making this up. Listen to any recent speech or reference by these leaders to our region (even Ariel Sharon, for God’s sake, never bothers to make a distinction and always talks of us as one communal pain-in-the-ass he refers to as the “aravim”). It seems the West has finally succumbed to the undeniable fact that while the Arabs may bicker and be pathetic in their little tribal squabbles, when it comes to the crunch, we have to be looked at as one people. Now that’s an amazing feat of history. So if you hear me using the term ‘the Arab world’, trust me it is not because of any wishful thinking on my part. Apparently, we do constitute a unifiable nation which, oddly enough, is deemed to have a common destiny after all.

But I am not jubilating yet, for it is this destiny which scares me. In this small space, I will pick as our most destructive deficiency our stubborn refusal to acknowledge the true diagnosis of our illness as being an internal one, rather than a result of a conspiratorial assault on us by foreign powers. I’ve said this before, but it just keeps getting more relevant each time I think of it, so I must say it again and again.

It is time that we as Arabs finally underwent a serious phase of self-examination and asked ourselves why our foes have been so much better than us in advancing their causes and achieving their goals while we consistently managed to remain mired in confusion and appalling incompetence. We need to understand why we have so miserably lost and they have so triumphantly conquered. We need to honestly ask how and why we got ourselves into this bottomless pit in the first place. Indeed, one of the greatest impediments to the advancement of Arab societies has always been our collective inability to identify and separate the three distinct elements of our division and backwardness as a nation: the cause, the problem, and the solution. We have continuously confused the three. In other words, if the Arabs are today the sick man of the world, as the Ottoman Empire once had been to Europe, then we do not seem to be able to distinguish between the sources of the virus causing our ailment, the diagnosis of the disease itself and its symptoms, and the treatment and cure, if there is any. What we have been unbeatably excelling at, however, is in name-calling the disease with all sorts of eloquent insults and diatribe.

A prime example of our flawed perceptions of our predicament is the way in which we have failed to challenge the fundamental fallacy implanted in our collective consciousness that Israel is the source of all our troubles – ignoring the fact that Israel is only a symptom of our chronic impotence, a mere manifestation of our weakness. Indeed, it is our emotional and jingoistic acceptance of this enormous lie that has enabled military dictatorships to hijack entire countries, violate their people and plunder their resources for decades in the name of the higher external battle. We all duly discovered, to our inconsolable expense of course, that there had been no battle whatsoever, only an old-fashioned mafia style perpetuation of power and wealth, advanced on a platform of empty slogans. Yet we still find among us those who have not yet fathomed the equation that we are our own worst enemies; those who continue to look for the blame exclusively at the doorsteps of Israel and America – because they lack the courage to look straight in the mirror. These Arabs have not yet realized that there is not much point after more than 90 years to continue to nag and complain that foreign nations are giving us a hard time – if that is all we do. We need to snap out of it. Yes, Israel is a brutal occupying military bully and America is its faithful ally. Despicable situation, isn’t it? Granted, we have been regurgitating this fact for eternity.

But have we yet grasped what kind of hard laboring by Zionists in Israel and in the West was accomplished during a whole century to achieve this state of affairs? Have we asked ourselves what we have been contributing all along, apart from the speeches and rhetoric, to counter this imbalance? For example, the anti-American agitators amongst us never cease complaining about the undue influence of the Israeli lobby in the US, but they rarely ever pose to reflect on why the Arabs, with their mammoth wealth and resources, were unable and unwilling to play the same game of politics and develop a similar, if not necessarily comparable, political presence in the US. They still do not comprehend the harsh rules of the game at which they were severely beaten, so they continue to shout foul from the spectators’ seats. They will tell you that we must fight the West because it will never allow us to rise out of our defeat. But why should we expect any adversary nation to want us to do that? Since when do superpowers wish success for their subordinates anyway? Imagine what would have become of Germany or Japan if after the Second World War they adopted these Don Quixotian anti-American attitudes and kept crying over the humiliating conditions of their surrender – instead of silently working to rebuild their nations by decades of selfless sweat and sacrifice.
But our Arab agitators do not seem to appreciate what it takes for a nation to rise again, so they opt for the easy way out by continuously blaming the opponent for being just that: the enemy – without offering any realistic vision for resisting and overturning this inferiority. This has been our sorry state of affairs for too long; akin to a lazy mountaineer standing still and doing nothing, then blaming the snow for the avalanche. The snow is subversive, it is evil, he curses. Damn the snow, it never had our good interests at heart. Escapist and illusionist is the least description we deserve. We are just incapable of accepting that the gigantic industrial, technological and economic rift that separates us from the West – whom many of us seek to antagonize – cannot be bridged overnight and that the West will not be overcome any time soon. Yet all we have ever managed to reciprocate were recipes for military defeats and blunders in a continuous circus of comedies that only gets more acrobatically sophisticated through folly after folly of idiotic and ruthless behavior. The tragic reign of Saddam and his cohorts since invading Iran until ending up at the dock inside a pulverized Iraq two and a half decades later is but a resounding case in point. The equally desperate theatrics of a similar regime to remain in power these days in Syria are evidence that the nauseating show still goes on with no end in sight.
If you are still with me at this stage, you will most probably persevere to the finish line. Hang in there, we’re almost done. As I said, entire libraries cannot suffice to articulate a full list of our failings as a people, but it does not harm to name a few. Another disastrous ingredient in our psychological make up – which we all know, but I might as well throw it in – has been our mass willingness to passionately endorse the dictates of religious authority without employing our rational faculties to investigate their authenticity, examine their impact on our well being, or question the eligibility of their propagators. The catastrophic consequences of this tendency cannot be overstated, especially when ignorance assumes a life of its own as a mainstream school of thought pervading society, and when metaphysical absurdities mushroom to impede progress and nullify the noble raison d’être of religions.

This highly contagious disease is not exclusive to Muslims – as the current manifestations of Jewish and Christian fundamentalism confirm – but we just happen to be the nation that has suffered most from its insanities. I used to say that religions are like nuclear energy. If not handled within the strictest scientific scrutiny, we’ll either end up with an intentional Hiroshima or an accidental Chernobyl. In the Arab world, the deadly radiation has indeed blinded us beyond cure, and only drastic and invasive surgery can now intervene to extinguish the uncontrollable inferno.
You probably have a turned stomach by now. Well I don’t blame you, but you also can’t say I didn’t caution you. What is my proposed road to salvation, you’re dying to know after having dragged you down to this paragraph? I claim to have none, and I will be lying if I said otherwise. My only medication is to keep saying these things. This is how I selfishly keep my own sanity. The more people who may think alike, the better the chances that one day we can hope to swim against the sweeping tide.

Being Muslims, many of our brothers and sisters are not working for peace. They are misguided, mistaken and spreading the virus of hatred and revenge through telling deliberate lies, disinformation and false accusations, which is resulting in death and misery for number of innocent people living around the world at the hands of merciless

KILLER MUSLIMS and also bringing bad name to Mohammed (PBUH) who never killed anyone in his life time.
Instead of teaching about Good & Evil, certain Radical Muslim Clerics are only “Trading in Religion”. They teach us about accusing, abusing and killing the non-Muslims. They try to hypnotize us to Hate and Kill the non-Muslims and brethren of other sects or be killed and without using any common sense, we readily believe in whatever is being said

by these Hate Mongers. Actually, they are “Agents of Satan” who is paying them heavily and in return they are cutting at the very roots of the Ummah. Instead of “Mourning” most of the Muslims are rejoicing on the brutal killings of the non-combatant innocent civilians and “The Murderers” have always been “Our Great Heroes”.

Before it is too late and the Curse Of God falls upon us, we should use common sense, find out the TRUTH and must change ourselves to save Muslims from becoming the most “Hated, Isolated, Discredited and Suspicious” people in the world. We must start working for promoting “Sectarian Harmony and Religious Tolerance” in the society

and should prove to the WORLD through our deeds that Islam is not a religion of Zero Tolerance and Mohammed (PBUH) teaches “Love & Peace” and not Terrorism, Barbarism, Extremism, Sectarianism, Cruelty, Inhumanity and “Hatred & Killing” of the innocent civilians.

Islam is a religion of peace. Islam teaches respect and love for all even the animals. But many narrow-minded Muslims have so far failed to learn anything good from the teachings of Mohammed (PBUH) who preaches love for the peoples of all religions. We are far away from the basic principle of Islam i.e. “Enjoining the people to do Good and

forbidding them from Doing Evil” and thus, possess no quality of the civilized society. Unfortunately, many of us show Zero Tolerance towards others and have wrongly learnt few thing to be called as good Muslims and those are “hate” the non-Muslims and “Accusing, Abusing and Cursing” the non-Muslims. …act of madness?

The killing of others in the name of religion is a Sin. Can a FATHER ever teach his Children to be the permanent Enemies of each other? The time has come for us to stop readily believing in whatever is being said, read and written by the LIARS / Hate Mongers. Unfortunately, some misguided-Muslims believe that the Holy Koran and Holy Prophet

(PBUH) both have instructed Muslims that the opponents be KILLED and that they are simply following the orders. We should use our own common sense and only believe which is logical, convincing and in the best interest of the humanity.
Why do we hate others so much, may be they are better humans then what we are. My feeling is that the Muslims should unite to discredit and deactivate the fringe mullahs (Preachers of Hate) who promise a quick trip to paradise to people who have little and sacrifice themselves with bombs strapped to their bodies. If the mullahs (THE LIARS)

thought that it really was a way to paradise they would be strapping bombs to themselves! Their followers are kept too ignorant to see this for themselves and enlightened Muslims should educate them. We must promote understanding and peace. We are all watched by the same God and need to help one another, not Hate and Hurt.

Our contention is that the WORLD should resolve the conflicts facing the Muslim World to stop the terrorism. Unfortunately, all the disputes facing the Muslim World are our self created. The root causes of all the disputes are based on the Muslim Philosophy of Hate against the non-Muslims. The Muslim literature, teachings and preaching are

spreading and injecting this hatred in hearts and minds of the Muslims. Our intolerant behavior is further proved by the root causes of all the pending conflicts that we (Muslims) cannot live side by side in peace with the non-Muslims. All the disputes facing Muslim World can be resolved easily, only if we (the Muslims) are able to condemn the

“Philosophy of Hate” created in us by our past and present elders who have divided the peoples of the world in the name of “Religion, Cast and Creed”.
Fellow Muslims! If God is one and he loves mankind, we should value each others life and strive to protect each other than thinking that if we kill we shall have reward. God looks at human beings not as belonging to different religions; that is why the rain falls to all, the sun shines to all and we all breathe the air freely. We are all created or given life in the very same way- whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew etc. Let us learn to love each other sincerely. The change of heart and mind is possible to achieve if we keep up our

relentless efforts for a violence free and peaceful world. We need to preach love, kindness and humanity with extremist devotion and mission. The mullahs (THE LIARS) and the preachers of HATE must be excommunicated at every level and we should stop giving them donations as it is our money which is being used by them to spread HATRED for

killing of the innocents.
We must also stop dividing the World into Muslim and non-Muslim blocks. Our political leaders and religious teachers must offer positive ideas. Without the ability to imagine a better world, we cannot build anything together. Tolerance of the beliefs of other peoples in the world, warmth and friendship across racial cultures MUST be the objective of all peace loving people worldwide. What is being offered today through religion is “Death, Destruction and Suffering”.

MY PRAYER FOR PEACE:

Merciful God, please give to peoples of the world, the required wisdom and determination, to Forgive and Forget the bitterness of the past and learn to live in peace like brothers and sisters, by condemning the divisions and hatreds created in us by our past and present elders.

(Amen)