“It is not the cloth that oppresses women, it is the illiterate mind” – Tariq Ramadan
Tag Archives: oppression
“Emancipate you…
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” –Bob Marley
I Am A Muslim Girl And This World Is Not For Me !
Dedicated to all Muslim Girls and women of the world…..
I am a Muslim Girl and this world is not for me
When I go out wander In places
I get annoyed of boys who chases
They follow me , touch poke and run
Leaving me behind, making my fun
They can’t feel my pain, treat us like toys
Because I am a girl and they are boys
And when I cover myself up with veils
These are the white people who make me fail
By striking against the covering of women
They cause me bane that can’t be undone
I am a Muslim girl and this world is not for me
I become a victim of bad comments, riot and rape
Because I don’t find any kind of escape
I am not allowed to follow my religion
To cover myself in this men-dominant region
I am a Muslim…
View original post 164 more words
I Know why the Terrorists Terrorize (Part 4/4)
1984
Orwell’s world is in a post WWIII dystopia. There are three world superpowers, and all 3 are totalitarian communist regimes that control about 90% of the Earth. The rest of the Earth is a bufferzone between the three superpowers that is fought for in an endless stalemate. The protagonist is someone who realizes that the world he lives in is god-forsaken, and there is literally nothing he could do about it. He goes about living, starts breaking some rules, gets caught, has problems, and the book ends with an equally dystopian world as in the beginning.
In other words, the novel was great. Sad, pitiful, and unbelievably pessimistic I found this book to be one of the best I’ve ever read. It deals with a number of philosophical elements – mainly dealing with the lack of freedom in society and the concept of “doublethink”. This is a word I’ve used a bit so far and will continue to use. Basically, the idea of “doublethink” is to believe in two contradictory statements simultaneously. I once read about a survey in which most Americans thought a nuclear war was inevitable, but that more nukes should be built anyways. That would be an example of doublethink, and every person of that world uses it in their everyday lives. ‘WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH,” a common motto of the people goes.
There is another theme that deals with the control of knowledge. The superpower the protagonist lives in, Oceania, controls all learning of history. In other words, they make history out to whatever they want to be and come a new generation, and no one knows what happened in the past at all. Soon, no one will even know that history was changed (not even the people at the very top of the government), because history was made to not say that. “He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past,” a government motto goes.
Probably the most major theme of the book has to do with the lack of freedom. The protagonist is watched from television monitors that are basically everywhere, even in his house. He cannot trust anyone, even his own wife (who the government chose for him). Later in the novel, we find out that technology has come to the point where even his mind can be read. The sanctity of our universal human rights (I’ll talk about this term one day and how most of us have no idea what it means and just spout the concept because we’ve been taught to spout it).The lack of freedom in this society makes life completely meaningless for the protagonist – who cannot pursue any sort of happiness or pleasure (be it physical, emotional, academic…). In other words, a lack of freedom is a lack of purpose in life.
The biggest theme for me, though, was something I don’t think most people catch on too. It was basically the fact that in this world, no one was happy. There was no sole dictator at the top of the bureaucratic chain, and even the people up there are not happy. No one liked the society how it was, as it ruined everything for absolutely everyone. And yet, nothing could be done about it. For one purpose to revolt the system means for others to have him done away with. The others that do away with him do it solely because if they don’t, they’ll be done away with. And so on, you have a society that continuously destroys itself because people will never completely join together – because of the invisible hand we will call “fear”. people realize it, too, but there is always the fear that your peers may not realize it, which is far too risky. The structure of the society is made so that it will literally last forever.The three superpowers are in an endless stalemate, and there is no chance of revolution inside each one. Likewise, there is a perfect balance between population and resources that will last forever in an eternal structure with no happiness or joy amongst anyone. Beautiful.
I Know why the Terrorists Terrorize (Part 3)
The social causes of terrorism are aggregated by the historical situations of the Middle East. The political destruction the Islamic World has faced are due to a wealth of reasons, and only some of which will be discussed. Much of what I say here is drawn from the book Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis. I have written a review on that book if you would like to check it out. The political chaos in the Middle East today is due to both interior and exterior reasons, and all too often the Middle East fails to recognize the problems it has created for itself while the outside world fails to recognize the problems it has created for the Middle East. Both of these forces have worked to destroy the political, social, economic, academic, and cultural fabric of a civilization equally rich in history and tradition as ours.
We can empathize with the problems the Middle East has unwittingly been forced into, but we must caution ourselves from forgetting the problems it has caused on its own. We must also caution ourselves from removing the blame of terrorism from the perpetrators to the victims, like America. Certainly, this country has seriously failed in Middle Eastern foreign affairs when it comes to the field of terrorism, but we cannot forget who did the bombing on whose soil.But that was before the real warring started. The real warring started with our 43rd President, and I’ll talk about him later.
The real warring started when Britian betrayed the Arab nations . The real warring started when France and Britain occupied the Arab states. The real warring started when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, or when the United States supported Saddam Hussein. The real warring started was when the United States supported a coup in Iran, or when Nasser came to power in Egypt. These things that happened in the Middle East, that traumatized the masses and angered the intellectuals, are what brought the violence and the despair in the region. The regimes that oppress the people of that world day by day are practically puppet regimes implemented by western powers.
And thus the terrorism took root. It took root in an anti-western ideology that stemmed from the oppression of regimes and colonial powers. The soviets invaded Afghanistan – and lost -, and collapsed soon after. This wasn’t all too correlated, but the masses of the middle east saw that as the hidden power of its people. These strong armed, violent revolts brought down a superpower, in their mind. USSR was a paper tiger, in their perceptions. The US has now inherited that role. As we have adopted a new idol of the “other”: Islam, to replace Communism, the Middle East has adopted us as the enemy likewise. We are wrapped in a chaotic, complicated world, in which we adopt a dualistic worldview just to satisfy our simple minds. The Axis of Evil that Bush so delightfully remarks about, is nothing but scared nations trying to survive in a chaotic world of dangerous bullies. Thus they bully their people, an d load themselves with weaponry and military strength in the hopes of survival. We as a nation eliminated Iraq, one of the three nations of the axis. It is not surprising North Korea and Iran are attempting nuclear weaponry: for fear of elimination too.
The warring continued when we bombed Iraq day after day, massacring hundreds of thousands of people just like us. We criticize the Boston Bomber’s face on the Rolling Stones Magazine, and yet we turn a blind eye when Bush shows up in our newspapers and our books. The warring continued when we bombed Afghanistan day after day, massacring just like we did before. The warring continued when we drone attack Yemen and Pakistan day after day, killing teenagers as “collateral damage” for their parents. The warring continues day after day. The terrorist ideology is like the Greek Hydra: every one of them we kill a number grow in his place. We must get to the root of the ideology, this anti-Western contempt, and fix that, for a long term solution. Else we are just beating around an ever growing burning bush.
How we deal with the people around us is how they deal with us. To treat Muslims as crazy and their regimes as hostile is for them to treat us likewise and for them to become hostile. To be hypocrites day after day by preaching democracy while funding dictatorships isn’t something no one realizes. The people of the Middle East remember the coup in Iran, or the support of Saudi Arabia, and the current lack of action in Syria. When we terrorize people, they terrorize back. Sometimes worse, with more violence, and more ruthlessness. In our own interests, we must stop. We cannot kill ideology with bombs – only with ideology. We terrorize them day after day, and they terrorize us likewise. That is why the terrorists terrorize.
Whispers of Satan 