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The Hypocrisy of the West

Highway 80, the Basra Road, also known as the Highway of Death.

 

There’s a great quote from Chomsky which everyone should learn by heart: “Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism,” he says. “Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.”

So one lone, mad Muslim convert decides to attack a bunch of pedestrians in London using a hire car, and everyone is going on about Islam being a malign force.

Have we forgotten already: those weapons of mass destruction; the more than a million dead; the utter devastation of an entire country; the depleted uranium munitions that will mean generations of mutations in Iraqi children; the millions made homeless; the vengeance on Fallujah; the turkey-shoot on the Basra Road; the deceit, the lies, the never-ending hypocrisy?

I won’t go into the ongoing violence in the region: the attacks on Libya and Syria, the Western-backed coup in Egypt. You must have heard it all, and then quietly decided it was irrelevant if you want to talk about the malignancy of Islam.

No one should be killed because of a political ideology, whether that ideology is fundamentalist Islam, or fundamentalist Capitalism, but if you look at the scale of the carnage, one side comes out clearly on top.

We’ve been interfering in the Middle East for more than a century now: ever since oil was discovered there.

We’ve overthrown democratic governments in Iran and Egypt. We’ve committed mass murder. We’ve supported corrupt, nepotistic regimes like Saudi Arabia. We’ve supported the vile Wahhabi philosophy which they have promoted around the world. We’ve turned a blind eye to their continuing support for terrorism.

You want to know who is behind ISIS?

We are.

You want to know who is behind the never ending cycle of violence in the region and throughout the World?

We are.

You want to know who targets women and children and civilians on the street?

We do.

There’s a famous New Testament text: Matthew 7, Verse 3 (King James version): “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

Or another, from the Old Testament: 2 Kings 20, Verse 1: “Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.”

In other words: before we start going on about the malignancy of Islam, we would do well to observe, and do something about, the malignancy in ourselves.

 

Christopher Stone


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2 Responses to The Hypocrisy of the West

    1. Wow – from Chomsky to the old testament – very expansive and in-between some bleeding obvious but rarely seen observations nicely written – I can’t believe I’m so excited by statements of the obvious
      It’s your writing and our stupidity

      Comment by Mark on 30 March, 2017 at 2:54 pm
    2. I agree- very well written!

      Comment by Ellie Thompson on 3 April, 2017 at 10:07 am

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