If You Want To Catch Fish, Don't Go To The Desert
Dean
Interesting editorial in the Saudi-run Arab News by Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed:
The summer of heat and bombs continues unabated. The condemnations of terrorism are deafening yet meaningless. Are we to get used to the sight of the wounded being carried away from beaches, hotels, and transport modes? As for the dead, the charred bodies leave nothing to contemplate.
The Brits have tempted fate with their “stiff upper lip” till their police lost their cool and killed an innocent man. Chalk up one more for the terrorists. The Egyptians on television keep telling the world that it was “imported” and could not have been an Egyptian that did the Sharm atrocities. Well, possible, but Ayman Zawaheri is an Egyptian and bosom buddy of Bin Laden.
Are we seeing and experiencing the dementia and frustration of the powerless? I think we are. The world seems impotent for the time being in the face of these atrocities. The world does not lack the means to combat this menace. The history of humanity is full of such struggles and invariably the majority wins and terror recedes. But today we lack the will to combat it. If you want to catch a fish, you do not go to the desert. And if you want to catch a terrorist you do not man tube stations. Once you are in the station trying to catch the perpetrator, you have already lost the game. The most effective way to combat vermin is to strike at their breeding grounds and not under your sink.
It took a heavy price for Tony Blair to recognize that he is fighting an “ideology.” Good for him. Now that this basic premise is clear, let us see what he is to do about it. Rushing off to war in Iraq did not bring terror to London. Those who are in their ivory towers pontificating about this matter are wrong — dead wrong! For once Blair is right and he should be supported unconditionally.
It is too late to ask for American and British withdrawal from Iraq. If that happens, Iraq will sink into a more gruesome, if at all imaginable, bloodbath and bring down the area with it. So let us stop discussing this matter for the time being and concentrate on the real and dangerous issue: Terror at home and abroad — home being where you actually live and abroad is just about fifty yards from where you are all the way to the South Pole.
The rest is here.
(Via Crossroads Arabia.)
Related Posts (on one page):
- There's Definitely Something In The Air
- Islamic Changes
- If You Want To Catch Fish, Don't Go To The Desert
- From the Mailbag: Free Muslims Meet With Angry Congressman
- Muslim March Toward Freedom
Are we seeing and experiencing the dementia and frustration of the powerless? I think we are. The world seems impotent for the time being in the face of these atrocities.
The "powerless" in this case are the British. This is an interesting change from the traditional portrayal of the Arab/Muslim world as powerless and humiliated.
The most effective way to combat vermin is to strike at their breeding grounds and not under your sink.
I agree, and it's interesting that this is published in a nation that U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey called "a significant source" of funds for Islamic terrorists around the world.
I've stopped reading Arab News, as I've found that Saudi actions speak much louder than their words. Saudi financial actions indicate that there is still very strong support for terrorism.
Still, it is an interesting article, and it's surprising to see it in Arab News.
When it comes to public relations, Saudis are light years ahead of us. They learn very fast. Here's a clip of one of their earlier efforts at spin in the UK.
The Minister denied accusations presented by a Sunday Times reporter, that Imam of the mosque in Makkah, Shaykh Abd Al-Rahman Al Sudayyis, on a visit to open the London Muslim Centre, had said in Makkah, that the Jews were the "scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs" and that he was refused visa to Canada because of these utterances. The Minister explained that the Imam was talking about the "injustices in Palestine and perpetrators of crimes in Palestine" and that he was not targeting the Jews in general. He also denied that extremists imams were being sent to the UK."
Uh huh. A little less convincing than the average issue of Pravda.
"Dr. Al-Shaykh denied suggestions that al Qaidah were influenced by the religious teachings in Saudi Arabian institutions. On the contrary, "such extremist ideas came from those trained by the extremists government of Taliban in Afghanistan."
See how he left himself open to criticism later on? Now that the Taliban are gone, who has been training the extremists?
Our efforts at instilling/installing democracy in the ME is akin to 'teaching a man to fish', but this is in the desert where no-one has a lake, much less an affinity for the taste of fish.
So we build a lake and stock it; our efforts at this point may have to be to get them - us too - to regard democratic fishing as a contest betwixt us and them: Who can catch bigger fish?
An appeal to arab exceptionalism, in other words.
Those bodies of water have been important for several thousand years in bringing the outside world to at least the littoral of Saudi Arabia. That's why both the Hijazis in the West and the Hasawis of the East are far more liberal and cosmopolitan than the Nejdis of the center. That may also explain why the citizens of the East and West played a more active role in the recent municipal elections, to the extent, even, that Shi'a majorities were elected in the East.