Crime of Selective Memory

Category: Life & Society, Middle East Views: 4298
4298

To assume responsibility for one's failures as well as successes is the truest sign of maturity and wisdom; also it is the only way to evolve and grow.

This means a nation can never grow without learning from its past mistakes, as the philosopher George Santayana said, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". However as I look at the present day Arabs I see a nation which is engulfed by chaos and beset by misery without any hope of an exit from its current tragic state. They are a people consumed by hate, self-pity and desperate lethargy. This is a lethal combination that only results in utter blindness and ignorance of their history leading to false assumptions that leave them incapable of lifting themselves from the depths to which they have sunk.

We started by blaming our plight on the advent of colonialism that wasn't entirely true. If the Arab nation was invaded and raped by different foreign powers the reason was both foreign greed and an innate weakness in Arab society that allowed nations like the UK, Italy, France, and finally the US to exploit it. Colonialism was to the Arabs what a virus is to an enfeebled body. We had fossilized long before colonialism arrived on our shores. Our society had ceased to evolve or grow socially, culturally and economically but somehow we found someone else to blame for everything and that too the "Turks". We blamed the Ottoman Empire for every ill that afflicted us. This doesn't mean that none of the colonialists is to blame for our suffering. Only we should admit our own share in all this.

Then as though all that befell us in the past wasn't enough, Israel entered the scene stealing our lands, killing and expelling the people and when we failed to retrieve our lands or get even the minutest part of justice from the world we fell into despondency and lethargy blaming once again every ill in our society on a Zionist conspiracy - be it the impoverishment of our society, the mounting illiteracy, oppressive regimes, endemic corruption, the wasted natural resources, the oppression of women and the utter wasteland which we have created from the Atlantic to the Gulf. We claimed that had it not been for Israel we wouldn't be cursed by corrupt and oppressive regimes spreading ignorance and fear in every part of the Arab world. We claim that it is the Zionist who plots in the dark fooling us into fighting each other whether in ridiculous border wars or tragic civil wars. It is "they," the enemy who wasted our wealth and forced our best and brightest to immigrate to foreign lands in search of a decent life and better education. They are the ones who made us the tragicomedy that the Arab world has come to represent in the eyes of the world.

Finally, "they" are to blame for the latest folly, which is the war in Iraq. I don't deny that the Zionists are our enemies and that they have committed terrible crimes and still do against the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. However, we need to admit our own responsibility for the tragic situation in which we find ourselves today.

Amid the terrible noise and din we made by blaming our enemies for all the catastrophes, which befell our nation, we forgot the one most important component in our misery - "ourselves". We forgot what we did and didn't do. We forgot our faults and our mistakes, our betrayals and letdowns; we forgot our history and now that history has caught up with us. Those who invaded Iraq found a weak country and a weaker region that allowed them to do what they wanted with Iraq and the rest of the Arab nation.

Now, when all the past excuses are no longer valid or have proven to be a deception we search frantically for anyone to blame but ourselves for the chaos into which our region has been cast. And who might this terrible new enemy be? Who is to blame for Iraq and the savage sectarian war which rages there? Who is to blame for the war in Lebanon and the political impasse that it now languishes in? Who is to blame for the starvation and planned genocide of the Palestinians? Who possibly is to blame for the Arab misery?

The emphatic answer of course is not the Arabs; they are always the victims of others' machinations and today's villains are none other than a wicked minority guided by the more wicked "Iranians". I would laugh if it weren't so tragic.

We forgot what the Arab majority have done for centuries to the minority through oppression and persecution forcing them to live on the margins of society and that is why they are today one of the poorest segments of Arab society. Have we forgotten how we watched in silence as Saddam Hussein, the false hero of the Arabs, massacred the Iraqis in the south at the end of the first Gulf War?

Today we find ourselves engulfed in a sectarian war in Iraq, which threatens to spill over to the entire region. The monster that Iraq has become is our creation. Have we forgotten that Saddam was the favorite child of the Arab masses in the 1980s and how he committed genocide against the Kurds while nobody said anything? The Arabs didn't consider it of any consequence that an entire race of people was being exterminated in Arab lands at the hands of Arabs. We are reaping today in Iraq the fruit of our indifference. I could go on since the list of our past mistakes is long but I don't think I would have the space in this article. So, I come to the latest Arab folly of blaming Iran for all our ills of today.

If anyone should fear the aggression by another in this part of the world it should be the Iranians. It was Iraq that attacked Iran in the recent past and not vice-versa or have we forgotten that too?

Iran hasn't attacked anyone for the past century and it was Iraq that attacked it, aided by many of the Arabs, dragging us all to a long war that only resulted in killing and maiming millions on both sides.

Before we head into an all-out war against an imagined enemy again and before we destroy the future of another Arab generation, I beg you to sit down and take a deep breath; then open a book of our recent history and read it and learn from it please, learn where we committed mistakes and how to fix them. Then know who your real enemy is and begin to put down an effective plan for defeating that enemy.

The Kurds, the Shiites, Iranians, the Africans or the Berber were never the enemy and can never be since they are us and we are them.

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


  Category: Life & Society, Middle East
Views: 4298
 
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Older Comments:
P.F. CHANG FROM USA said:
An almost reasonable Islamic opinion, though the ONLY reason
that there is any workable civil society among the medieval
Semitic tribes from the wasteland of the Atlas to the Himalayas
is because of the westernizing influence of the colonial powers.
Unfortunately we left too early and you all fell back to your
backward ways. Had we stayed and rooted out your faux
religion there would be peace in the world now. Too bad this
author can bring herself to admit that the only modern, decent,
workable society in the whole Middle East is Israel. Heckfire, you
all could have bought each of the supposedly displaced
Palestineans a villa and 30 acres many times over since that
wonderous day in 1948 with all that oil money.

2007-02-23

YOOSEF FROM USA said:
mashallah...I don't know you or your true character, but you stated the truth. I wish all muslims could see the world events like this and state the facts, rather than their feelings, related to cultural ignorance.
2007-02-22

HAROON RASHEED FROM CANADA said:
SALAM... I AGREE WITH YOUR COMMENTS. THIS IS BASICALLY A PROBLEM NOT ONLY WITH THE ARABS. IN FACT THE MUSLIM WORLD AS A WHOLE IS SUFFERING FROM IT. I AM FROM A NON ARAB BACKGROUND. WE SHOULD REALIZE THAT ALL MUSLIMS ARE BROTHERS ONE TO ANOTHER. MAY ALLAH (S.W.T.) GUIDE US ALL (AMEEN).
2007-02-22

IRENA IDRIS FROM MALAYSIA said:
Reem, sorry but i really think you have no idea what Allah has warned us about in the Quran. Read the messages on the wall!
2007-02-21

DR EDRISS FROM US said:


this article is Tricky :).

I don't care that much about your belief sister but you are telling us that you are a so called shia thru dedicating most of this to defend Iran.

the problem in your article is what you claim doesn't go with your level of English. you seem very good english writer, but how come your intelligence in learning english, doesn't go with your ignorance in talking to the arabs like they are one!!?

everybody knows that there are 22 arab countries out there. which mean at least, 22 different opinions! but since you are not feeling yourself a true arab, you talk with a tune of non arab who sees the arabs like one.

I'm true Arab and I never ever considered myself more than a moslem. I know for sure from the 22 countries, 21 did never care to your saddam the way you present it here. matter fact, saddam become a hero lately because of the hate displayed by those you are defending here, in the way they managed to kill him in the moslem's holyday.

someone here, thought you are critisizing the arabs here. that's clear a propaganda in favore of Iran. if you live in saudia like you claim, don't condemn the arabs for whatever you saw in your neighborhood?? also don't tell us what others told you? because that's not how we learn the history. and I wish you are true woman, because you displayed smart hate toward the arabs, something that arab women just doesn't do.

before i end this, I would like share with you this website of the granson of khomainy. where you may learn for the first time, that saddam assisted khomainy for the whole 15 years he spent in Iraq. something that most of the so called shia ignore. which put alots off question marks on the war between Iran and Iraq: www.khomainy.com

I didn't answer you because I care about this article. I only got offended from the way you didn't care to demonize 500millions of the arabs to reach your politic target.
IT IS COMPLETLY EVIL.
2007-02-21

BABANDI A.GUMEL FROM U.K said:
Unfortunately We will continue to encounter problem so long we have decided to flout the laws of Allah.No body knows who is Allah except the Muslims.Therefore if they disobey the same Allah deliberately they will continue to have the same problem they are encountering today.It is the responsibility of each and every Muslim to make effort to obey Allah and invite the whole mankind to His obedience.Once we do the whole world will live in peace because we have left our responsibility this is why today we find people sank in ignorence worshipping different creations almost everything from human beings to Prophets,Jinns and Angels,Animals from monkeys to snakes,stones and rocks curbing different items and naming them as gods or deities not knowing "There is no God but God" the true God Allah not the false god including the recent one who came to our discussion forum in the guise of new god.So if there is no guidance people will start worshipping the creation making everything as God. May Allah save us and keep us and the whole Ummah on Siratil Mustaqeem.The responsibility for Hidayah is on our shoulders .We are the best Ummah provided we command people to do good and forbid them from evil.Allah has given us the True Deen unfortunately we are not true because we follow our Nafs like every body.This is why immorality is now a days so common.People now regard sins such as Zina drinking alcohol,usury and other heneous crimes such as unlawful killings are reagarded as if they are not in the category of sins. So then how can we progress.We must collectively repent for our sins and go back to the teachings of Rasulullah.
2007-02-21

ROMESH CHANDER FROM USA said:
Good attempt at self-criticism and self-analysis, and that too from a Saudi (does the author still live in Saudi Arabia?).

Jews may do terrible things in a little country called Palestine; but they cannot be responsible for muslim plight in Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, Somaili, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. Muslims need to take responsibility for their own plight. Colonialism was only partially responsible (it lasted 50-150 years, depending on the country and region); but the muslim decline had started long before that.

Will this kind of analysis spread in the muslim world? I must be deluding myself.

Jihad (as currently being waged) cannot be the solution; it destroys, but does not build anything. Muslims need to worry about This Life, before they worry about After Life. Muslims migrate to the west for a better This Life, not for better After Life.
2007-02-20

KHAN FROM USA said:
Could it be possibly more than just an "arab" struggle. I think its more of a global struggle and sufferings that MUSLIMS--not just arabs---are undergoing. Why is that? First, I think it's detrimental and unfitting to call this struggle an "ARAB" or "Palistinian" or "Iraqi" or whatever generic label you want to give it. Fact of the matter is that the world and especially the "Arab" world has neglected ISLAM and its tradition. I think its more relevant to look at Islamic History rather than the confined "Arab" history to seek the answer to the struggles in the Mid-east as well through out the world. The remedy is Islam and ONLY Islam. Islam is applicable to ALL circumstances, to all times and to all crisis and situations. So I think the author comes one step short of truely discerning what is really lacking in the Arab world or rather the MUSLIM world!

The answer is Islam and not Nationalistic ties which unfortunately the author makes continous reference to. And I believe it was/is this same fondness for nationalistic heritage that has led to the division, demise and distruction that we are witnessing among the MUSLIM-Arabs.


"Undoubtedly Allah has removed from you the pride of arrogance of the age of
Jahilliyah (ignorance) and the glorification of ancestors. Now people are of
two kinds. Either believers who are aware or transgressors who do wrong. You
are all the children of Adam and Adam was made of clay. People should give
up their pride in nations because that is a coal from the coals of
Hell-fire. If they do not give this up Allah (swt) will consider them lower
than the lowly worm which pushes itself through Khara (dung)." [Abu Dawud
and Tirmidhi]


Allah-u-Alam
2007-02-20

PROF.M.NYAMATHULLAH FROM INDIA said:
Too much of self crticism is also not a healthy sign.
The general Muslim public have been like sheep following the leaders only. Under able leaders, they could make history and under mediocres , they conveniently slumbered!
The detractors of Islam created divisions among muslims as "Arabs" and "Non-Arabs", " Shias" and "sunnis" and Durus".
The Turkish Sultan who was also the last Caliph,joined with Germany and Bulagaria during World War I (1914 - 1919), Turkey was made a Republic and hand picked Ata Turk was made the President.
The caliph is the representative of the last Prophet of Islam. It is upto the Muslims to decide whether he be allowed to continue or another pressed into service in his place.How comes the League of Nations has decided to abolish the caliphate rule? Could the same body
change th Pope or Grand Patriarch of the orthodox church?
Muslims have sinned ,no doubt, but in the light of Modern History, they are to be sympathized as "More sinned against than sinning"!
2007-02-20