Opposite Goals
by Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/07/2


I read this article online and could not help posting it as it is just too perfect !!!!

I have always known that every goal our Umma (nation) aims at, is contrarily accomplished, to the extent where I started asking myself why don't we ask for poverty, slavery, and ignorance, in the hope that we might achieve wealth, freedom, and knowledge.

Perhaps things got mixed up in my head because of my many plane trips and lack of oxygen, but I am writing today from the ground, and I still believe that we are failing each time, to the extent that I started asking for failure in order to achieve success.

When I was a young boy, the topics in Arab politics were restricted to the liberation of Palestine, and the achievement of unity. Then came Jamal Abdel Nasser, and we had a leader whom we wished would liberate and unite us.

Unity between Egypt and Syria was established in 1958, was supposed to last forever, and to include the countries and the people of the Umma; but it collapsed in 1961, and made every unity seeker reevaluate his stance. The 1958 Iraqi revolution was a logical ally to the Egyptian revolution, and a future ally of the sought unity; but the revolution ate-up its people, and withdrew from the concept of unity.

When Moammar Gadhafi came to power, as a spitting image of Nasser, he revived the demands for unity in a way that convinced every Arab country of the virtues of separation.

This with regards to unity; as for Palestine, we all know what is going on, and we all refuse the division of 1947, because Palestine is entirely Arab. We have lost the 1948 war, and were left with 22% of the land of Palestine, when we could have kept more than its populated half.

The 1967 war lost the rest, and we now ask for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which were originally ours, but not ours.

In the meantime, most of us followed the illusion of communism; the concerned Arab governments acted here with rare intelligence; they realized that they will not allow the poor to reach the level of the rich, so they made the rich reach the level of the poor, with the exception of the ruling military elites and their entourages.

Does the reader remember the slogan unity, freedom, and communism? It is a nice slogan that was preached by the Arab Communist Baath Party, as it was the "trend" back then. But the party of unity itself was divided in two: a Syrian and an Iraqi; it was the biggest political enmity between the members of one party, and the result was that we did not achieve the unity that the party presented in its political rhetoric.

What did I cover so far? The liberation of Palestine that made us lose the rest, the unity that strengthened division, and communism that made everyone poorer on the basis of making everyone live the same misery in order to achieve equality.

I move now to the Gulf, as in the days of poverty, and before the high demand on oil and the increase in its price, nobody asked about the Gulf or its people. However, when these became rich, we heard about 'Arab oil,' not Saudi or Kuwaiti for example. But fortune did not corrupt all Gulf people, as Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan sponsored the establishment of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in a constant unity, which may be the only exception to the rule.

But the Gulf was the ground for achieving the total opposite of what was required, in a tragedy the consequences of which we still suffer.

I remember that there was an American base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which the Americans used to pay the price for, before the oil era; this money used to constitute an important portion of the Saudi budget back then. There was also a maritime American presence in Bahrain, and some British military ships, from Amman to Kuwait.

The American base in Dhahran was closed, and the others' presence in the Gulf remained unnoticeable. Then the Iranian Islamic Revolution took place, and demanded the expulsion of foreign forces from the Gulf. The region suddenly became a large port for the ships of major Western countries. Saddam Hussein refused to see the Iranian revolution making more mistakes than he was, so he attacked Iran, and the foreign ships doubled in the Gulf; then he invaded Kuwait, and the Gulf was filled with 800,000 soldiers, and a massive war machinery that no one ever imagined would be found in this region. Saddam Hussein, with his political and military genius, and what was known of his forecasting perceptions, found a way for the occupation forces to enter Iraq itself, after he gave up his head on a silver platter, to the enemies of the Umma.

All that I have mentioned so far does not come close to the terrorism that we are currently suffering from, and how the contrary, or the opposite, took place.

In the West, they call it Islamic terrorism, which leaves the impression that Muslims are terrorists.

The terrorists want to help Islam, and all they are achieving is harm to Muslims everywhere. They have launched a war in order to expel the infidels, which they are not, from the countries of Islam. Moreover, these foreigners, who manufactured the weapons that these terrorists use, made all that is in our countries, from the asphalt on the streets to the computers we use.

If the terrorists are the soldiers of Islam, then Islam does not need enemies. And if they succeed, they would take us back to caves and grottos; but they will not succeed, because they are the enemies of God and his people, the enemies of nature, the enemies of humanity. In their counter-defense of Islam, they achieved what Ariel Sharon and the enemies of Islam have failed to achieve, and the world currently talks about the beheading of an American or a Korean, and forgets the beheading of an entire population.

I think that if these terrorists fight Islam, then this latter would win, and the age of the first conquests will be revived.