Resisting the Resistible
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
The lesson of history, it is said, is that its lessons are not learned. Foolishness, according to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again and yet expecting a different result. It applies to the last 20-plus years, ever since the United States has enhanced its military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
Despite the much-trumpeted drawdown of US forces, maimed soldiers maintain that the intensity of attacks against US troops in Afghanistan has not lessened.
The CBS-TV report of June 28 on the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, bears stark testimony to that fact. Here, wounded soldiers undergo treatment and rehabilitation for Afghanistan-related trauma, including amputation of limbs. According to this report, “Afghanistan has left an indelible mark on the young men … Afghanistan changed them more than they changed Afghanistan.”
Has the bellicose mindset behind the shedding of so much blood and treasure changed? The momentum has not abated of ratcheting up tensions with Iran and over-inflating Iran’s nuclear ambitions. On this, too many in power circles still speak with a single voice.
The world is still reeling from the consequences of the unwise choices undertaken by the 43 rd US President George Bush, which among other things, unleashed human rights abuses. As a result, according to former US President Jimmy Carter, the United States “can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.”
A New York Times article of June 26 depicts chilling details of atrocities in Held Kashmir, including massacres and disappearances inflicted by Indian occupation forces. In one instance, the news story cites the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission report of October 2011 “confirming the existence of 2,156 unmarked graves.” Similar accounts have emanated, according to this article, from the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons in Jammu and Kashmir, which has documented hundreds of disappearances. Those responsible have yet to be held accountable. And the international community remains conveniently quiet.
The US Muslim community may not have fully weighed that any attempt to whip up a fresh war hysteria to induce a new military action in the Middle East would have a pernicious fallout on them.
The Muslim-baiting hate and fear industry continues to flourish. It thrives because many Muslims remain defensive and disconnected from the larger society. The yoke of victimhood is unlikely to be broken without they being armed with the know-how and confidence to do so.
Data from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission amply documents that there has been a dramatic increase in employment discrimination complaints from Muslims. This has been reconfirmed in the US Department of Justice 22-page report released in April 2012, encaptioned “Confronting Discrimination in the Post-9/11 Era.”
On page 3, it noted: “Muslim Americans report that they continue to experience high levels of discrimination and that bigotry and intolerance by non-Muslims are among the biggest problems affecting their community.”
The US Muslim community has the means and motivation to resist the resistible. They can start by resolving to develop an intellectual and moral core within the community to counter it.
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