March 17, 2010

☫ The existential threat to Israel

Best allies of Israel: US and England?
Or our own weaknesses and laziness of spirit?


Are the US and England the best allies of the Tel-Aviv regime of occupation, or rather our own weaknesses undermining our cause? In Islam, the Greater Jihad is the Inner Jihad. Why do we then focus so much more on external campaigns that our lack of discipline boycotts?

When a senior strategist and director of the Tel-Aviv University Moshe Dayan Center like Asher Susser speaks frankly to an audience of supporters and says, «Secular Palestinian nationalism is on the way out -- That is the problem (for the occupation regime)» he gives away the only real fear threatening the tyranny he serves:

To no one's surprise, it is not about a boycott campaign. It is not about people strapping bombs around their bodies. It is about faithfulness in religion. The antithesis of secular nationalisms. Cheap chauvinisms which were easily defeated by Israel in the 1970s, and which current versions - labeled 'moderate Islam' - perform like a clockwork in the academicist and conceptual warfare of imperialists.

What is the problem when a Western clothing store sets to open several branches in the occupied territories? They will only bring more consumerism and degradation to Israel. Wouldn't we, due to that, protest or be sad if they opened in Iran?




Israel is not South Africa

Boycotting wont do the job. Israel is not the South Africa of the apartheid times, an analogy often drawn. Israel's racism is not the racism of the white man over the black man: It is even more inherently the racism of self-centeredness over God.

Israel's apartheid is not just against a group of people who are different, but against spirituality too. And that changes everything, starting from the nature of the combat. That brings the battlefield to the doorstep of our inner Jihads. 

Look and see what mere boycotts and secular campaigns have accomplished for the Palestinians: Even less territories and more humiliation. Do we see Israeli strategists today complicated in any way about this issue? How could they possibly be, when their entire regime is subsidized from abroad in the first place.




The conspiracy of us against ourselves

Yet if we turn to what a few well fought inner Jihads (as those of  Tabatabaei, Khomeini and Beheshti) brought for the oppressors, we stumble with a stunning view. We realize these have delivered the tyrants their most feared threat. An Islamic Revolution which resists desecration, and does so to the point that the challenges it has presented to the materialistic ideology in all levels and fields have been interpreted in the oppressors' minds as an existential threat.

It is an existential threat because the oppression lives well beyond Israel's imposed borders. Not only does it rest on staunch lobby groups deployed worldwide or in their allies' political systems but, far more importantly, it rests on each and every one of us. Our corruptions of behavior, our laziness to access to a better understanding of our world with the intellectual faculties that God deposited on us, are the first ones undermining our good intentions. Correcting our ways, moving towards wisdom and purity, and challenging the civilization of materialism are all in all that existential threat to the Tel-Aviv apartheid regime.

What is the point of declining eating a McDonalds burger only to then reaffirm lifestyles which promote the suffocation of spirituality? What consistency is there in declining taking certain biased media as source, to then borrow our understandings of reality from third people who - like Prophets - claim to be waking us up while not even belonging to the wise men?

Not in vain Tabatabaei advised us,

Before all else, members of a society should be able to gain a true vision of the world and of men based on the real nature of things. Only then could they know and perform their duties as human beings - in which lay their real welfare. شیعه در اسلام



Far more important than mocking the inconsequence of the men and women of these pictures, is to see ourselves reflected in them. This goes not just for us as Muslims, but to all human beings who hold beliefs of Justice in high regard.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

German, can you clarify?
If we boycott Western brand labels from marketing in the occupied territories, aren't we essentially boycotting the Westernization of those areas? This is exactly what is destroying the spiritualism you speak of.
I know it's not enough and I understand your assertion regarding inner jihad with which I agree fully. Just wanted to clarify. :)
Wonderfully-written, as usual!

Germán said...

You are absolutely right on that regard.

But as far as I understand, when pro-Palestine activists boycott Western brands, the main motivation is not due to Westernization, but the protest targets the fact that such brands are giving economic support and legitimization to the occupying regime. Or am I wrong?

Anonymous said...

Yes, that is the main concern and objection.
So not only do these retailers support the economy, but also destroy spiritualism. So boycotts are not effective in this regard?

Germán said...

I don't understand your approach :) I personally have never heard that people boycotting brands that support Israel do so in order to preserve spirituality in that land. Have you?

What I argue here is that much more important than a boycott which can do nothing to harm Israel, given the billions of dollars it receives from the United Statian and German tax payer, is to focus in what really harms the Israeli occupation, and which they themselves have admitted harms them the most: faithfulness in Islam. I have personally never witnessed Israelis expressing any concern about any boycott announced against them and their supporters, have you? But I have certainly heard them concerned over and over about those movements in the Islamic world who seek nearness to the Quranic principles.

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