All support documents in Adobe PDF
Return of the Elders, Unleash your Wisdom
Session 04
3200 College Park Drive – Conroe, TX – 77384 – 936.273.7000
“The Cosmic War Revisited”
Curt Gibby
The world is rightly amazed at the recent events in North Africa and then Egypt where demonstrators apparently convinced the dictator (our ally) Hosni Mubarak to step down and turn the reins over to the army, with very little violence. Al Qaida has some its roots in Egypt. The event of the assassination of Anwar Sadat, which led to Mubarak taking power, is part of the road to al Qaida and the Cosmic War.
In this cosmic war, somehow, those we would call fundamentalists, extremists, jihadists, somehow reason that they can violate all the teachings of their faith, in order to protect their faith, including suicide and killing innocents.
The earliest martyr I can think of is Sampson, who prayed for strength to bring down the Canaanite temple on his tormentors and himself. But there has been no shortage of others down through history. Many, like Sally Zahran recently in Egypt, and a Buddhist Priest Thích Quảng Đức in Vietnam, and Norman Morrison outside the Pentagon, did this as a last desperate cry to the conscience of others. Al Qaeda fuels and exploits this anger and desperation of its members to become martyrs to strike out at those who oppress and humiliate them.
Well, it appears that this chain of events is rocking the North Africa and the Middle East. If this democracy thing can find a way to actually happen, this could make al Qaida irrelevant (redundant?), and confuse everybody else’s relationships. For instance, Israel’s. As the people in each country break loose of their despotic governments, perhaps, much in the same way as the signers of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution and Bill of Rights purposely leave behind the feudal baggage of the “Old Country”.
Who could know the part that digital technology and social networking could and did play in bringing things to a boil, even after the internet was shut down. It started a chain reaction, that seems to be growing, even though the technology was shut off.
I had no idea that Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Iran and Bahrain, etc. would be experiencing a democratic awakening when, months ago I felt it would be worthwhile to revisit “The Cosmic War” that we featured in May 2009 Session. There just seems to be no end to the war the Afghanistan. Is their anything we can do about it? Back in May 09 among other things we learned from Reza Aslan’s, How to Win a Cosmic War, that al Qaida and it’s franchisees have no plan to win, in the normal sense, other than to humiliate America, and cause us to weaken ourselves in endless warfare in return for the humiliation of having Crusader troops on Arab ground (initially to chase Iraq out of Kuwait).
Even though the potential continual spread of democracy and civil rights may make the whole world a nicer place, nothing at this point is certain. There is a lot to do. A lot of groups who claim to have similar interests will find they all have different opinions of how to achieve them. Will the need to negotiate compromise cool the flame of freedom? We all need to care, and, if it’s not al Qaida, there will be similar forces who will try disrupt the peace that needs to grow. (For instance arms merchants.)
Then I saw Lawrence Wright’s My Trip to al Qaida on HBO, It gave me much more context of what is going on and importantly through the eyes and experience of an American, that to me brings out many things that bridge the two worlds.
Wright also co-wrote the screenplay for the film The Siege (1998) with Edward Zwick and Menno Meyjes, which tells the story of a terrorist attack in New York City that leads to curtailed civil liberties and rounding up of Arab-Americans.[3] (Wikipedia)
“What the movie is most deeply about — it’s about our own latent possibilities of repression, stereotyping and prejudice,” says Zwick. “To see Americans rounded up in the streets, to see Americans put into stadiums, to see people held without habeas corpus — to have their rights violated in such a way is such a chilling and just terrifying thing to see — that is what one takes away, I believe, from this film.”[7](Wikipedia)
In 2006 Wright wrote The Looming Tower, al Qaida and the Road to 9-11. My trip to al Qaida relates the experiences that brought him to write the book.
I also picked up a copy of Karen Armstrong’s, Islam, A Short History, and learned that Muhammad’s message was simple and ethical. From Chapter 1, “Beginnings”:
He taught the Arabs no new doctrines about God: most of the Quraysh were already convinced that Allah had created the world and would judge humanity in the Last Days, as Jews and Christians believed. Muhammad did not think that he was founding a new religion, but that he was merely bringing the old faith in the One God to the Arabs, who had never had a prophet before. It was wrong, he insisted, to build a private fortune, but good to share wealth and create a society where the weak and vulnerable were treated with respect. If the Quraysh did not mend their ways, their society would collapse (as had other unjust societies in the past) because they were violating the fundamental laws of existence.
This was the core teaching of the new scripture, called the quran (recitation), because believers, most of whom, including Muhammad himself, were illiterate, imbibed its teachings by listening to public readings of its chapters (surahs). The Quran was revealed to Muhammad, verse by verse, surah by surah during the next twenty-one years, often in response to a crisis or a question that had arisen in the little community of the faithful.
…
Some were concerned about the fundamental injustice of their society. All pre-modern civilizations were based economically upon a surplus of agricultural produce; they therefore depended upon the labour of peasants who could not enjoy their high culture, which was only for an elite. To counter this, the new faiths stressed the importance of compassion. Arabia had remained outside the civilized world. Its intractable climate meant that the Arabs lived on the brink of starvation; there seemed no way that they could acquire an agrarian surplus that would put them on a footing with Sassanid Persia or Byzantium. But when the Quraysh began to develop a market economy their perspective began to change. Many were still happy with the old paganism, but there was a growing tendency to worship only one God; and there was, as we have seen, a creeping unease about the inequity of the new civilization that was developing in Mecca. The Arabs were now ready for an Axial Age faith of their own.
Our interest in Afghanistan is not a recent as many think, and it wasn’t just Charlie Wilson’s War either.
I also stumbled on this (in several places). Read On:
From the History Commons:
In an interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, admits that it was US policy to support radical Islamists to undermine Russia. He admits that US covert action drew Russia into starting the Afghan war in 1979. Asked if he has regrets about this, he responds, “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Then he is asked if he regrets “having given arms and advice to future terrorists,” and he responds, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” The interviewer then says, “Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.” But Brzezinski responds, “Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam….” [Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 1/15/1998]
What do you think of that! Jimmy Carter actually baited the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan which did, as Brzezinski predicted become it’s Vietnam. Even though Ronald Reagan got the credit for bringing down the wall with a little help from “Star Wars,” the anti missile defense system that never worked.
Now here’s a progress report on Tunisiathat appears to have started the whole thing.
Tunisia struggles to tame revolutionary spirit
By Christian Lowe2/15/11
TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisians found the experience of forcing out their president so exhilarating that they are finding it difficult to stop. A month after a tide of popular protests pushed authoritarian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from office, many people are taking the principle of people power and applying it to ever corner of their life.
Hotel workers have refused to clean guests’ rooms until they get more pay, telecoms workers threatened to strike over a plan to privatize their company, and disgruntled airport workers have halted international flights.
School pupils protested against their teachers, and then the teachers rallied outside the education ministry to complain that the pupils were being allowed to run wild.
“People seem to have misunderstood what liberty is really about,” said Nejmeddine, a businessman in the Tunisian capital.
“They just seem to want to do whatever they please and if you try to say anything to them they just say: ‘I’ll set myself on fire’,” he said, a reference to the self-immolation by jobless man Mohamed Bouazizi which started the revolution.
Some people in Tunisia say the discovery of personal freedom should be celebrated after two decades spent living in a repressive police state. But others worry about the impact on the spluttering economy.
It started a month ago:From last month’s notice for context
Tunisia’s Days-Old Government Shows Cracks
by NPR Staff and Wires,1/18/11
Tunisia’s newly formed unity government showed cracks Tuesday after a handful of ministers abruptly quit and an opposition party threatened to withdraw, moves that could further destabilize the North African nation days after fiery street protests toppled the country’s long-time leader.
…
The political pressure that brought down Ben Ali after 23 years in power continued Tuesday as hundreds of demonstrators massed in the capital, Tunis. Riot police in shielded helmets pummeled and kicked a protester and fired tear gas grenades into the crowd as protesters demanded that the Cabinet be purged of the old guard that served Ben Ali.
“I am afraid that our revolution will be stolen from me and my people. The people are asking for freedoms and this new government is not. They are the ones who oppressed the people for 22 years,” said Ines Mawdud, a 22-year-old student among protesters at the demonstration.
…
Tunisian officials said Monday that nearly 80 civilians have died since the unrest that began weeks ago and has spread to other parts of the region.
Apparently inspired by events in Tunisia, an Egyptian man set himself ablaze outside the prime minister’s office in central Cairo on Tuesday — the second such incident in the capital in as many days and a day after self-immolations in Mauritania and Algeria.
Initial reports said the man in Cairo, identified as lawyer Mohammed Farouq Mohammed el-Sayed, was protesting what he claimed to be the failure of police to find his long missing teenage daughter.
Matook Al-Faleh, a political science professor in Saudi Arabia, told NPR that Tunisia and other Arab nations share some of the same problems. “There is some kind of similarity, you know. For example, unemployment here [and] there is no participation here, no accountability for the government — all Arab countries,” he noted. Faleh said he has created a Facebook page where he has urged Tunisians to avoid violence and instead use the courts to hold their leaders to account.
But other experts believe it is incorrect to cast unrest in Tunisia as part of a wider movement in the Arab world.
“It’s important to avoid thinking that the circumstances of one country are automatically replicated in another, even neighboring, country,” British Foreign Minister William Hague told BBC Radio Tuesday during a visit to Australia.
A.L.L. on the web
Spring 2011 A.L.L. classes
Map of campus and parking lots
Third Saturday Seminars
To refer to an ancient Chinese saying, our world is in interesting times and individual citizens are assaulted with a blinding array of propaganda from every conceivable source. The Third Saturday Seminar is about demystification of what is going on around us.
Time will also be spent on current events. (Class will meet on 2/19, 3/26, 4/16, 5/21. Note that March date was adjusted for Spring Break). 5 Sessions. No fee.
Lone Star College -Montgome ry B102
16637 Sa 2/19 – 5/21 9:30 a.m. – Noon
Come, join the discussion! Let’s see if there is hope!
Public Service Announcement:
1. The old Coffee Pot is dead
And, we haven’t had anybody volunteer to become the next “Director of Coffee Services” so for this next meeting may we suggest that there are three excellent sources of very good coffee not far the college.
* Starbucks on the north side of Hwy 242 just east of Woodforest Bank.
* Caffe’ Diem and/or Brooklyn Cafe, both on the south side in the College Park Plaza shopping center.
* There is also a McDonald’s on the south side east of the shopping center and next to the Tradition Bank.
I will continue to bring donuts.
Curt Gibby
Director, Third Saturday Seminar
P. O Box 73207
Houston, Tx 77273