America’s Moral Compass

vertex, #113

You cannot accuse Americans of being “ignorant.” That’s unfair and an easy way out. I don’t really know how many societies are enlightened, including Pakistan’s and Canada’s (or of Holland, for that matter.) My question was perhaps more rhetorical: sometimes we have to see ourselves from someone else’s eye to understand ourselves. That picture may not be as pretty as we make of it by looking at ourselves from our own perspective. And sometimes we need to place ourselves in others’ shoes to understand them.

Romair, #111

Your comment on “what if you were an American” is about half right, that your reaction would have been the same. But then you tangent off to “Because I would not have known any better” as if the Americans are the only ones who do not “know any better.” You think that general public in Spain, Britain, Germany, France, Holland (to name a few) knows any better about the Muslims? You think Pakistanis know any better when it comes to the Americans, the Qadianis and the Saudis?

I was against Bush invading Iraq. But if democracy takes hold in Iraq, then Bush is vindicated. He is a hero if there is a domino effect of democracy in the Middle East.

I wish you were more precise and concise in your argument and logic. If you could keep it short, focused and straightforward, it would help me respond better. Because of lack of time, I read your post very quickly and may have missed something.

Also, please see my response to vertex above.

Re: # 111

Romair: This is a nice one, and in fact quite comprehensive.

tahmed32: I was not claiming that Muslims are very powerful today, but actually they do have a lot of resources of this world and manpower. You can understand it as a huge reserve of potential energy. Hence knocking them off turn by turn and capturing their lands is necessary for a superpower to make sure that it never runs out of resources and its enemy can never be able to reach the same level. No values, no morality, no democracy, it`s just a means of prolonging its rule on the world.

arjun_m #112,
so true ......

To chowk staff, why was arjun`s post filtered? Is it incorrect to use the word - gay?

Godot,

“If you were a non-Muslim deeply-entrenched White American, how would you have reacted to 9/11? What would have been your view of the Muslims and Islam in the aftermath of 9/11?”

That`s a loaded question, as we`re not so ignorant as the deeply-entrenched white american who thinks Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and OBL, or that most of the fighting in Iraq is from foreign fighters, or that the Iraq war was not about Oil or WMDs but something greater and more noble.

The question isn`t how we would think if we were them, but rather why are they so ignorant, who is keeping them that way, for what reasons, and how can we change it?

Just as Muslims have to challenge what is being taught to Abdul`s and Zaid`s in the Madrassah`s, we need to tell the Americans to severely censure the likes of Franklin Graham and who-not who are fanning the flames of hate to the Abner`s and Zeeks within middle America.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Godot #97: “If you were a non-Muslim deeply-entrenched White American, how would you have reacted to 9/11? What would have been your view of the Muslims and Islam in the aftermath of 9/11?”

Good question.

If you mean, if I were actually an, “non-Muslim deeply-entrenched White American,” then I would have to say that my reaction would have been the same. Because I would not have known any better. I would have had the same issues and complexes as the average American. Most of all, I would have been completely ill-informed about what my country had done in other areas of the world, and would have never been able to figure out why others hated me so much. I would have been convinced that I was a moral force of goodness, and if anyone tried to harm me, I had cart-blanche to kill as many people as I wanted; including in countries that had nothing to do with 9-11.

I would think that nothing in the world was ever my fault.

However, if you mean what I personally would have done, the answer is different. I am partly ethnically Kashmiri. I don’t need to provide you the statistics of Kashmiris who have, and are, being killed in Kashmir. The numbers run ten to twenty times higher than WTC deaths. I support their freedom struggle, and strongly believe if given the opportunity, they would vote for freedom. Yet I don’t want Pakistan to bomb Bombay and kill an equal number of Indian civilians. Nor would I want the Kashmiris, themselves, to do so.

And I spend my whole day with Indians and Hindus, and have been doing so for ten years, or more. I don’t hate them and I don’t want to kill them.

This is not unique to me. I don’t think too many Bangladeshis would approve of killing 40,000 people in Lahore, regardless of the history of 71. In Pakistan, Shia leaders are killed regularly by terrorist Sunni factions. And, in a smaller number, vice-versa. Yet the Shia and Sunni communities in Pakistan aren’t out to kill each other. A lot of the funding for the IRA came from Boston. Yet the British did not bomb Boston (or Ireland). Was Idaho bombed, in the search of Timothy McVeigh?

In case of the USA, the situation is even more immoral for two reasons. First of all, it has gone a killed tens of thousands of people in a country, which according to US govt.`s own admission, had nothing to do with 9-11. It has destroyed whole cities. On top of that it has arrogantly declared that it has done it for the benefit of the citizens of that country, itself. This has to be beyond the height of arrogance. Imagine if the USA had bombed Lahore to smithereens, like it did in Fallujah, and killed thousands of Lahoris. And then you turned on CNN and saw Bush stating that he had done so for the benefit of Lahoris, themselves. And most Americans ended up agreeing with him. Would your blood boil? Or would you justify it through 9-11.

If we are going to apply the USA logic, then why do people complain about the Gujrat riots. There were a group of Hindus who got killed in a train. The Hindus were obviously angry. The govt. declared Muslims to be responsible, in its early investigations. So the more powerful Hindu community went and killed some of them. Same logic. Infact, based on the USA philosophy, Modi could have even declared that he was doing it for the benefit of the Muslims, themselves……………

One cannot play God and start deciding who will live and who will die, and then conveniently justify it by coming up with a string of reasons stating that it is for the benefit of the community being attacked (when all other reasons are proven false). That would mean anyone could attack anyone and kill them. The only time one has a right to use violence is if one is in self-defence (if one is attacked, one’s land is occupied, etc.)…………….

hamidm #109 as elvis presley would sing:

``Dont be cr-r-u-u-u-u-el``

ha! ha!

romair mian,

....... most of the world is envious of the us and that is why they ``hate`` bush ........ that is the bottom line ......... the europeans, now that they don`t need the us to protect them from the commies, are spouting off to cover up their own impotence and insecurity ......... but they are coming to their senses ..........

......... and canada does not even count - for all practical purposes it is totally dependent on the us ....... out of the 400B exports 350B or so go to the us with japan being a distant second at 8B ! ............ and don`t be too sure of how the rest of the canadians view the muslims - about 85% of them live within a hundred miles of the us border and if you guys are not careful they might just join the us and leave you, the eskimos and the polar bears to fend for themselves above the arctic circle ! ..........

............the reason canada is ``immigrant friendly`` is because almost 50% of the population is either foreign born or first generation - we all know that canada has been trying to increase its population and more than 50% of the growth in population over the last twenty years has come from immigration ......... anybody with 200K in the bank in pakistan has a canadian passport - even if they don`t live in canada! .......... also, as we know, half of the paf officers who graduated afrom risalpur between 1980 and 85 are in canada !.............. i am sure the canadians would have preferred to get regular white people but other than the romanian and russian strippers, they had to settle for chinese, indians and pakis ............ the chinamen and the horrible hindoos are adapting to their host environment, but it is another story with the musalmaans and like the citizens of bradford and manchester, the good people of toronto might one day regret letting them in ............so don`t get too comfortable

Romair... 54 was genuinely funny.

Thank you.

Re: # 106

I`m surprised you`re even trying to reason with Romair. Logic has never been his forte.

Romair,
Do you think had 9-11 kind of thing happened in Canada, Canadians would react any different from Americans? I would say the initial reaction is almost always of anger and need for revenge.

in my post #104 ``(albeit in need to not see the writing on the wall)`` should have been ``(albeit in need to see the writing on the wall).``

And also note that my reference in that post to Modi in the same sentence as the parents of the russian children who were killed in the school in Beslan by chechens does not in anyway mean that Modi and those parents are at the same moral level. Modi is a brutal murderer of innocent muslims, while those parents of the children murdered by chechen rebels were obviously vicitims. My point was simply that instead of ranting against the US (which in fact means the muslims no harm), we muslims need to start realistically seeing our own standing in the world today.

Charging #100 you write ``It is waging the most open type of war on two fronts which are pretty much correlated; ending the power of Muslims by striking them turn by turn and capturing as much as of the world resources as it can. ``

You seem to be a reasonable gentleman too, :-) , albeit (as you recomend for me) with a need to catch up on your newspaper reading.

That is: if you read ANY newspaper over the past 300 years, you will realize that ``muslim power`` ended around the start of the 18th century in case of the ottoman empire and around that time for the mughal empire as well. Throughout the 19th century, the ottoman empire was the ``sick man of europe``, routinely thrashed (in at least 3 major wars) by the Russian Czar and protected from being overrun only due to german or french or british intervention (including in the crimean war where the brits fought side by side with ``Johnny Turk`` as they called their ottoman chums).

I do read newspapers, my friend, and am well aware of the resentment for the US among many people in europe (which incidentally i have visited perhaps over 30 times in the past 20 years). You on the other hand need to realize that these resentments for the US pale in comparison to the hatreds for muslims around the world (if you have any doubts, contact the relatives of the spanish train that was bombed, or the russian school where schoolchildren were blown up by chechens, or have a chat with Mr. Modi in Gujerat). Islamic countries have nothing to offer to the world today in terms of leadership in in science and technology, in medicine, in ethics, in law and jurisprudence, in constitutional systems, in journalism. The US, by contrast, is the world leader in all these. If it is faulted, it is faulted for unilateralism. You called Iraq a ``heaven`` or something - most people consider it to be a hell. Even Khruschev (who, as head of the soviet union, told the US that he would ``bury`` it) lived to see his son leave the soviet union and become a US citizen!!

Wake up and smell the coffee, my friend, and then catch up on your newspaper reading, starting with the newspapers of the start of the 19th century to find out about ``muslim power``. Then read about Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who struggled to get muslims to smell the coffee and get what was then called western education (and is now simply called education).

My apologies for any harshness in this or earlier posts - no offense intended, since you seem to be a well-meaning gentleman (albeit in need to not see the writing on the wall). Start with reading Ralph #102 where he makes what I believe is an important point: ``The question is what kind of values the empire brings to a place.`` Compare the US values of democracy and education with the bankrupt values of the mullah fazloos and military dictators of the muslim world and you will understand what I think Ralph (who is an Indian poster, and therefore provides a perspective that you may not agree with but should not ignore) is talking about.

Re: # 84
I find it strange that you ask if Indians give directions like Americans do. Both in the US and in Australia, where I now live, I have found that people often don`t give you directions because they can`t-they just don`t know their way around their own cities. On the other hand, Indians always have an answer-be it right or wrong! Maybe Indians in your city don`t give directions, but trust me, most of them do. I know because I have no sense of direction and am perpetually lost!

Damn, Romair continues his old game.

What are Jews afraid of? Duh, of fanatical, jew-hating Muslims. Want proof? Read any Pakistani newsaper. Read any Pakistani `intellectual.` No. Just read Chowk. Or, just read Romair, and you will see hatred of all democratic things dripping from his every post, not even thinly disguised. America, Israel, India - any bets that Romair loses an ounce of blood everytime he hears of these cursed names?! :)

Muslims (Generalizations often serve a useful purpose. ``Not all Muslims are the same`` is a stupid Romairian ploy to sidestep issues) hate Jews with a passion. This is the only quom that even today openly accepts pro Hitler jokes.

Why do Mullahs love Canada? Because they have got their Shariat there. Unbelievable, but true. I bet Romair thinks that is right and proper.

Mullahs in Canada are just feeding off the natural resentment that smaller, less powerful neighbors have toward bigger, brasher friends.

A Christian Canadian has nothing in common with a Mullah, whether that Mullah wears a beard or remains in disguise.

Charging

Every military power builds an empire. Islamists did it (for which you are still paying in the form of spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy, military rule, chopped hands and heads, and shuttle-cock women), the British did it, and the Americans are doing it. The question is what kind of values the empire brings to a place. Since you cannot look beyond Arab colonization, America ofcourse is the great devil, out to get thuggish muslim countries by their beards.