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 Let's look at this one a bit more closely. The Washington government are sitting on a pile of photos and videos that show Muslims being tortured, humliated and perhaps killed by American soldiers under a freedom and democracy mandate.
This at a time when Muslim paranoia of western intentions is at an all time high, when the Mohammed cartoons have shown the west's total disrespect for the religious traditions of a culture - who would never even make a statue of the Prophet, least of all depict him as a suicide bomber. And this while there are Danish forces and companies operating in the largely Muslim Iraq. The Abu Gharib torture photos are images that bring great shame to any of us who believed we were fighting on the 'good side' in this war.
Perhaps there is no good side, save for the side which says that war is not the answer, while those who disregard the suffering and death of innocents will all, only ever be, terrorists.
And it is always us peace abiding and loving folk who get it. Always. Tony drives a bomb proof limo and has a nice place to go if someone presses the N button. Boy it may even make things easier for some of these rich folk with their dwindling oil supplies if rising sea levels reduced land mass and global warming reduced crop productivity. Just take out a few major cities and there's probably enough to go round. Why else would anyone of sane origin decide that killing civilians would help limit the killing of civilians.
And at the same time you do wonder how so called Christians can sleep at night when there are people dying of aids but for the cost of a drug which they are too busy profiting from. And this is Jews as well - in the country that was made great and rich on the sweat of the slaves of those once majestic countries. Poverty breeds extremism, that is all. Egypt was once great. Saudi Arabia is too powerful. There is a great divide between classes in most of the non-western world, and this only breeds the sort of desperate violence from people who simply have no other way of being heard. they have no chance for poetry, or songs, or storytelling. and if they do, who hears their blue laments? who is heartbroken by their tale of suffering and grief and injustice. Who bears witness? Who cares?
And that is the only way this foolish war on terror can be won, surely. Make films, not bombs. Don't scream, sing. When angry people are heard, they will stop shouting so loudly,
Make films, not bombs. Don't scream, sing.
Anyway, it is a bit funny that the american news is noew saturated not with the release of terrifying footage from the abu gharib prison which shows abuse and piles of dead bodies - the sort of abuse the papers told us Saddam got up to in their most successful way perhpas of winning support for the war. While the few remaining doves blow steam, everyone else is kind of wowed by the fact that Cheney shot his best friend and is far too busy coming up with conspiracy theories to notice the rather horrible looking footage that is on second or third item on the news. If that. Let's face it Karl Rove is a fox and the top of his game in the world - if they're gonna smokescreen, it's gotta be so good that no-one thinks to say 'news burying'.
The other thing that needs to be remembered, especially this week when the courts agreed that I, well, I could face prison if someone thought I was gloryifying terrorist actions (sounds like a nice way to shut up dissent, to me). But is that to a Muslim, you are under deep oath - as deep an oath, perhaps, as the bond which unites brothers, sisters, parents and children, is that if you see a Muslim brother or sister being attacked, then you are obligated to go help save them. It is your religious and godly duty. It is like looking after a very large family. It is a special way of forming tight religious communities, and is not so far removed from the idea of the Mafia family - in a less criminal sense. So when Muslims see on TV these absues and see that not only do the perpertators of these actions not acknowledge the seriousness of their double-standards and gross milatary misconduct under Every Known Code of War, on display, to do nothing - and worse, to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, not only with dynamite in his hands, but in a turban, when that is from a different religion, how can we be suprised that there is such total anger and veminous ahtred, even for our own children, from a teacher who played with them. (although the London bombers did avoid the time of day when children would have been travelling to school).
Without a sensitivty to people's personal relationships with god it is impossible to see how deeply wounding this must feel to Muslim brothers and sisters. And us liberals lefties and loonies should have said so loudly. If people cannot criticise speeches, essays, books, films, cartoons and so on as being bang out of order for fear of betraying our well earned freedom of speech, then we are locked in totalitarian self-censorship. We failed to offer solidaratory for the ever decreasing number of Muslim moderates.
One of whom I met on Saturday night. And before I finish this spew I would like to thank him, for taking me to meet my brothers in bristol from the station. he was a brusque man at first and i must confess to having been a little impatient because he did not seem to know where the Cavalry pub was. In fact none of the taxi drivers knew and I began to get agitated with a city where even the elder taxi drivers didn't know the pub. But then I checked my phone and saw it was in fact the Cadbury pub, which has to be one of the best names I've heard for a Real Ale pub in a long time.
As we drove, tho, I softened, until eventually we were talking about addiction and the good man explained how canabis was just as bad as alohol, and that Muslims took neither.
"If you have a joint, a canabis joint. The next day, where are you? Do you have more friends? Are any of your problems solved? No, you have simply forgotten about your problems for a little while."
I tried to explain that there where times when it worked like an antidepressant, lifting me back up to street level, so-to-speak. And he did me the good favour of not labouring his point. We arrived near the cadbury and he stopped. He asked me:
"Do you feel tired, depressed, foggy?"
"Not depressed. Tired, foggy maybe."
He got out the car. I figured he was going to the boot to get out a free booklet to give me like Christians and Hare Krishnas do. But he crossed to my door and opened it. I wondered briefly if he was about to grab me and pull me out for being a heathen dope smoker, and then he began to write, with his finger, upon my forehead.
I don't know what it was he wrote, it felt more than one word or symbol. Then he muttered some words, I would guess Arabic, tho I have no idea, and held his hand hard against my head. I grew nervous, what was he doing - could he give me a curse or something mallicious. Am I being converted, am I undergoing some initiation to something I have no idea of? Then he removed his hand and blew on my forehead. A soft, white cloud of a breath and I opened my eyes.
He backed away and I waited for the sell. But it didn't come.
He explained that my head would feel clearer, free of fog. And when I awoke the next day, my head would feel clear then too.
And indeed it did. And when I awoke, tho I had slept for two hours on a bender with a prodigy revival taking place in the room below he was right, I did. I did not know what to say to him when I left, and I still don't know if it was the right thing: God bless you.
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