By Shafiq Morton – Cape Town
Grand myth of the ' clash of civilisations ', clarion call neo-cons and fundamentalists everywhere, has fallen.
It fell into the Arab rebellion earlier this year when tyrants as Ben Ali and Mubarak were overthrown, and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi bloodthirsty rule overthrown.
Neo-con mantra, Arab strongmen was to remain in power, because the Arabs were not mature enough to think about things such as freedom of speech, civil freedom and democracy have been blown away.
The real reason for why strongmen was to keep their jobs – oil interests and Israel – women's organisations have been exposed as naked buttocks on a black tie function. The overthrow of despotic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya was clearly never in the Imperial script.
Even Isræls intelligence service MOSSAD, everyone go to the Agency in North Africa and the Middle East, could not predict that the Arab world would explode.
Bernard Lewis, octogenarian academic and author – that characterised the unfortunate cliché "The Clash of civilizations" in 1990 essay entitled "The roots of Muslim Rage" – must also scratching his head in amazement.
Lewis ' simplistic point of view, corrupted by academic suaveness was that each Arab State was a Lebanon waiting to happen. Samuel Huntington who plagiarized from Lewis three years later, wrote that if "central power" a weakening of the Arab States would collapse.
For too long, I think that Lewis ' deceptive genteel grammar have hidden his face of Orientalism. For example, am I the only one to extrapolate from his writings claim that "terrorism" is in our Muslim DNA because of the 13th century Hashi shin (or assassins)?
Lewis ' view — again, never directly stated in clear terms – is that Christianity and Islam is intended to be in a permanent wrestling match for the world's power, two opposite corners-East and West-stamping, clashing and flattening the grass like rival bull elephants.
But with Ibn Taimiyyah famous twelfth century Mardin Declaration (or fatwa) becomes re-interpreted by modern academics, it has become clear that Islam cannot be seen in two different existents: Dar ul Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar ul-Andrey (abode of war).
Neither Ibn Taimiyyah, voyages hole Salafi-Wahhabism and Islamic extremism separated the world into areas of faith and hostility. It was, in fact, Ibn Taimiyyah reign, Muslims could live peacefully as a minority during the time of the Mongol invasions.
This is a critical point – that often stand in the neck by Muslim extremist, fundamentalist Christian, revisionist Zionist or political neo-con – a person who prefers his world in reflected as black-and-white, rather than radical Technicolor.
It was actually Cairo's Tahrir Square, eloquent put lie to Lewis ' idea civilization dissonance, a space where I am sure that he would refuse to trøde the East meet West. It was because Al-Jazeera showed Coptic Christians to protect Muslims in their Friday prayer and on the following Sunday, Muslims do the same for rotary-wing aircraft.
With no central power — neo-con political conservatives produced bogey – it was clear to all that Egypt was to move to the centres, and not solution in sectarian chaos as in Lebanon in the 1980s.
I was told by Anas al-Tikriti Britain Cordoba Foundation (which visited Cairo in February), during the uprising of the churches had been guarded by Muslims and mosques of Christians. There was not an event, he said.
These simple gestures in places like Tahrir Square go far beyond their spontaneity or symbolism; they signify active tolerance and human togetherness. They give a live example, a common Abrahamic principle, precious public behaviour where East and West do not collide, but join hands – a crossroads, where Isaac embraces Ismæls.
Further evidence, if one is not yet convinced, can be found in the United States – ironically, the source of the theory of "collisions" – where Pastor Terry Jones, the famous Qur'anic pyromaniac finally succeeded in torching a Koran earlier this month.
Be-whiskered Jones stole international limelight last year when he threatened to have a mass bonfires of the Holy Book outside his Parish. While Muslim outrage boiled, were Christian community, openly denounced him, and strongly advised him to desist from its Southern-fried madness.
Jones, at the very least, fate worked in reverse order. Instead of people lighting bonfires around the country, several churches sponsored "read the Koran day" and interest in the Holy Book, the very explosive, translations in many selling off U.S. bookseller.
Cairo Palestine document, written by the Palestinian Christian communities at the end of 2009, is yet another example of the "clash" myth destroyed. The dynamics of the Palestinian struggle has with Hamas a central midfielder, is often pigeonholed as "Islamic terrorism". Lie the desire for world domination via the subjugation of Israel, has been an easy lie.
The Palestinian Cairo document, Christian "word of faith, hope and love", the Middle East conflict in the universal light where it rightfully belongs. Originally written in Arabic, the lingua franca in the East, is the currently imported into the Western church where the mother tongue is predominantly English.
Perhaps the problem is with Bernard Lewis and his ilk lured in a that while not intentionally ignoble, they have been trapping of subliminal prejudices within their own culturally determined and colonial reference frames.
Their single biggest deficiency has been their inability to understand that "isms" of any kind arising out of the historical and political circumstances in and outside their respective belief systems. I think the point is that good men of faith, East and West, have always seen "the other" unconditionally, and not through itself.
-Shafiq Morton is a presenter on voice of the Cape of the radio station. He was South African Vodacom community Journalist years in 2008 and was recently voted among the world's 500 most influential Muslims Jordanian Royal Islamic strategies Study Centre is headed by Prof. John Esposito of Georgetown University. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
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