Can a Value System Supposedly Primitive Pose a Threat to West?
By Reem Al-Faisal 

As the West enters the twilight hours of its civilization it demonstrates a
desperate desire to recapture the glories of a past when the world meant the
"West" and the only value system was that dictated by Western powers.
According to this way of thinking, modern history started at the Renaissance
and Western sciences were the sum of all knowledge.

America, of course, is the most glaring example of this Western malaise as
manifested by its refusal to abide by international pacts and agreements or
by its savage assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, let us not forget the
horror film the world has been forced to watch of torture and abuse of the
so-called terrorists in American gulags spread across the planet.

However, Europe also shows signs of stress given the hysteria with which it
views the Muslim world. Europe feels both fear and a sort of wounded
indignation toward the Muslims. On the one hand it is trying to force the
Muslims to abandon Islam as a universal value system claiming it is nothing
more than a primitive and archaic religion incapable of dealing with the
complex issues of the modern way of life; on the other it feels threatened
by this very same culture which it regards beneath its own. One sees and
hears an irrational logic in the West today where for some reason it thinks
that Islam will overwhelm it and wipe out its own civilization, yet
simultaneously it regards it as primitive. So, we get behavior like France
deciding that a few hundred Muslim girls wearing their veil to school are a
threat to the identity of secular France and might well destroy the French
way of life. Then we witness the caricatures in Denmark insulting the
Prophet (peace be upon him) and its reproduction in many European newspapers
and magazines. There are also books and articles and films and shows made by
Westerners depicting Islam as a savage and primitive religion that should be
fought and uprooted from this world. If Muslims want to live by their own
value system where is the threat in that to the West?

For too long the world has lived with one dominant culture imposing its view
on everyone else, where all human experience, be it negative or positive,
was seen through Western eyes only. However, recent developments show it is
no longer the case. In other parts of the world where people who until
recently could never control their own destiny or the fate of their nations
a new sense of independence and defiance is evident. Like in Palestine where
the people voted into power the Hamas party by an astounding majority. 

People might say Israel is not Western; however I say Israel has nothing
Jewish about it but its name. Zionism is nothing but an offspring of the
Western civilization and since its inception it has been nurtured and
protected by its parents, the West. In the days of the Cold War the Soviet
Union and America could always agree on one thing and that was the necessity
of the continued existence of the Israeli entity, and every other Western
power, be it near or far, helped and abetted the crimes of the Zionist
nation and still does it to this very day. Israelis themselves see their
country as an outpost of Western civilization amid a sea of savages who need
to be trained and broken in like wild animals. The tragedy of the Jews is
that to survive the European carnage they turned into a copy of what they
themselves suffered bitterly from - a racist, colonizer. Or that was the
only option given them by Western powers and those Jews who believed in the
superiority of their race over the Arabs. However the biggest losers in all
this will be the Jews who have always had a safe haven in the Muslim world
throughout their long persecution in Europe.

Look back on the short and bloody history of the Israeli nation and ask
yourselves who have been the greatest beneficiaries of its creation?

The answer is a few Jews who would never have been allowed to become leaders
in their community were it not for the existence of Israel and the great
markets of arms in the West. All the rest have lost bitterly. The
Palestinians their lands, the Arabs their youth and wealth spent on
never-ending wars for the past 50 years and the Jews in Israel who end up
living in nothing more than a heavily fortified ghetto. Meanwhile, the rest
of the Jews in the world are either held for ransom by Israel and forced to
support it blindly through money and effort or held accountable by others
for Israel's criminal behavior. So, in sum, the creation of Israel only
benefited those who trade in blood and carnage; they have surely made
handsome gains in the past 50 years.

Though we are witnessing the end of a world system which has dominated this
planet for over two centuries one should expect a bitter resistance from the
West to their slow but inevitable decline. As human beings most of us have
difficulty accepting our mortality and many of us never do even to the last
minute. The West can't for the moment come to grips with the fact that they
occupy this planet with other individuals who have a different set of values
which are as true as theirs. Muslims are not the only ones who feel the
intrusive and high-handed behavior of the West. We see examples of this kind
of attitude all around the world from Latin America to Africa and Asia.

However the West should be careful for they might be mighty but they are no
longer the only kid on the block. The block is getting mighty crowded and we
the rest of humanity no longer accept their dictates nor do we regard our
civilization as any less.

Reem Al-Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.


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