Recording a persecution of a people throughout the globe

In the introduction to his book “War on Terrorism-The Untold Truths”, Latheef Farook gives a partly possible reason for the currently prevailing Islamophobia in some parts of the world. “The current general hostile environment towards the Muslims,” he says, “could be attributed to some extent to the century-old and inherent suspicion and hostility of secular Europe towards Muslims.

“In the long years of bloody conflicts between the church and state in Europe the state was relegating religion to the whims of individuals. The 18th century French Revolution and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia once and for all sealed the fate of religion with the Pope and Euro-Christianity being completely excluded from any state activity.”

While this is true to a great extent the immediate problem that has been created, however, is due largely to the Islamic presence in the West. By this I mean the concentrations of Muslim emigrants in some Western capitals like Paris, New York and London so much so the visitor to these cities feel, it is said, they are moving around in either Cairo or Damascus or Tunis. In recent years migrations of Muslims to the West have been increasing. It is claimed that there is a five million population of Muslims now in America and with places of Muslim worship like mosques coming up there is now a change in the landscape too. The question that comes up before the natives of these countries is why the Muslims are not changing with the times. They are not changing for the simple reason that being Muslims they are not affected by the secularisation (mentioned above) that has gone on in the West to a point where there is virtually no religious life there today.

To the Muslims their religion is a way of life, something which affects their daily living. There is a time for fasting, a time for pilgrimage and many times for prayer every day. To ask them to stop observing these rites is asking them to cease being Muslims. Or to change the metaphor it is like the fox that came to lose its bushy tail advocating the virtues of being without one by modernising.

This snappy background may not help to understand the role being played by Bush and Blair in the Islamophobia going on now. Theirs is an entirely different game played by cashing in on the current Islamophobia, and this is what the War on Terror is all about. The interests of these imperial agents go back a little earlier to the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire spread over a vast area including many parts of Europe as well as the Arab lands, soon to be noted for their great resources of oil. This powerful empire, greatly respected and feared by Europe when under Suleyman whom Europe hailed as‘the Magnificent,’ had by the end of the 19th century earned the nickname of being the ‘Sick Man of Europe.’

Britain promised the Arabs to set up an independent Arab state if they helped to overthrow the remains of the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs kept to their word but not the British. In the meantime Britain made a secret pact with France to carve up the Arab land between them. Two new countries were created in that process Syria under France and Iraq under Britain.

Two adventurous Britons, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and Gertrude Bell (called ‘Daughter of the Desert’ by the Arabs) were made use of by British Intelligence because of their friendship with the Arabs, to win over them. The Americans who have been trying to get a foothold in the Middle East have now joined the fray by stepping into Iraq ostensibly to bring ‘democracy’ to a land ruled by a tyrant called Saddam Hussein. This tyrant was in reality a creature of US diplomacy that was armed and trained in gas warfare to achieve their ends.

Latheef Farook’s long stay in the Arab Gulf working as a journalist has helped him to keep a record of newspaper cuttings of how the world was treating the Muslims. He has converted his collection into a well-documented book of the persecution of the Muslims across the globe and extending even to China where the Uighurs, a Muslim people speaking a Turkic tongue are trying to survive. In War and Terrorism-The Untold Truths, Latheef has not failed to include the oil sheikhs in the Middle East who have played the role of collaborationists in the designs of the Western imperialists. “What these Arab dictators, suspicious of their own people and hand in glove with the west to prevent the rise of Islam” he writes, “failed to understand was that the Jews and their Christian allies waited for more than 14 centuries to enter Iraq as conquerors and they didn’t miss the opportunity with war monger George Bush in the White House, to do the job for them. While the Arab rulers remained silent, the only two leaders who spoke out openly against the invasion were former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed and South Africa’s inspirational living legend, Nelson Mandela.”

A week or so after Bush was elected a President a second time on November 2, 2004; this excitable man ordered an attack on the city of Fallujah to hunt down a handful of so-called terrorists. The citizens of Fallujah 300,000 of them were preparing to celebrate one of the holiest of Muslim festivals Id ul Fitr. Nobody knows how many of the 300,000 citizens died in the attack. According to the head of Turkey’s Parliamentary Human Rights Committee ‘this crime of immense proportion surpassed the genocides committed by Pharaoh, Hitler and Mussolini.’ Residents who escaped the massacre said that the Americans had used some weird weapons. A former US soldier named Rai who fought in Fallujah taking part in an Italian documentary and commenting on the Fallujah bombing said, “I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorous on Fallujah which burns bodies and melts the flesh all the way down to the bone...I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorous explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for.”

The Western media which did not openly flout Islamophobia, says Latheef, did not report that the American troops were dropping large quantities of internationally banned chemical weapons, white phosphorous and poisonous gas and killing harmless citizens indiscriminately. And the US government in turn officially dismissed any reference to the use of banned weapons as a ‘widespread myth,’ though it admitted using them a year later.

The cruelty and barbarity with which Bush and his British partner Blair are trying to bring ‘democracy’ to Iraq is causing some anxiety among thinking people. Latheef Farook should be commended for his brave effort to bring these disturbing events to the notice of a thinking public not too aware of these dastardly doings by a so-called civilised people cynical about the rights of human beings.