THIS article is in response to a piece by Gwynne Dyer which appeared in the Sunday Express issue of February 20, 2011.
The article depicts what one would have thought were extinct species of what they used to call Orientalists.
Apparently the genus is alive and kicking hard.
For quite sometime now the term Islamist has been applied to identify those Muslims who would like to explain the distinction between Europeanised Christianity and not only Islam but also with Christianity according Nabii (Prophet) Issa AS or Jesus as he has come to be known.
This would be perfectly acceptable if there were not any political overtones in the exercise.
However it has come to be understood that any thought that does not find favour with the West is viewed as distinctly anti-West and must be fought against with all the might of the lone Superpower that now straddles the world.
For a start, didn’t George Walker Bush vow to wage a “crusade” when he invaded Iraq as the first step?
He knew that there would be no Salah-ud-Din to rescue Muslims.
Now this would expressly exclude characters such as Osama Bin Laden from the epithet Islamist.
And really it should, to any one who is au fait with the current political scene around the world.
What urges on the likes of him are purely the geo-politics of the world and not any desire to Islamise every inhabitant of the planet.
An impossible task anyway!
What is at issue is the hegemony that is exercised by the West at the expense of Arab interests and not necessarily the plight of the “masses” as Dyer would want the world to believe.
There should be no gainsaying against the legitimate claim that the West, and the United States in particular, stand against the interest, indeed, the welfare of the Arabs vis-a-vis Israel who are the guardian of their interests in the Middle East.
A good example of this has just emerged in the threat to prosecute Muammar Gadaffi for what is happening in Libya today.
Surely Israel committed a lot more heinous massacres in the Gaza Strip and the whole world witnessed how babies were shot through the heart at point blank range.
Not a word from the West that any one in authority in Israel should be investigated with the intention to prosecute for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Some individual in the United Kingdom had wanted to bring to court the then Prime Minister of Israel Tzipi Livni on her visit to Britain.
But she cancelled her visit to that country.
Perhaps if she had decided to visit Wales only, Dyer would have gladly welcomed her home.
At any rate the British government at that time promised to amend the law under which Livni would have been arrested and prosecuted.
And, lest we forget, there were many killings and atrocities generally that were committed by both the American and British forces at Najjaf, Iraq and now in Pakistan.
Yet now Her Majesty’s government in the United Kingdom is in the forefront condemning Gadaffi to the hilt.
At no time have the likes of Bin Laden been heard campaigning against the blatant corruption that has proved endemic in the Arab world or indeed against poverty that pervades the poor lot in those countries most of whose leaders seek recognition from Western countries as “civilised” by really bankrolling the latter’s economies.
According to Michel Moore, Saudi Arabia controls one-sixth of the biggest economy in the world, the United States.
The Gulf States indulge in all manner of social activities that have nothing to do with the people of those countries but find favour with the Western jet-set.
It could be true that the likes of Bin Laden would have liked to see some kind of revolution engulf all the countries under the misrule of their nemesis perhaps because of deviating from the dictates of Islam on good governance.
But that may not have been their objective which must have been to see the West bleed to death.
In which case the much condemned 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings in London would explain that policy.
Of course 9/11 has a lot more other explanations that are perfunctorily dismissed as conspiracy theories, though it is known that the Israelis are out to do anything under the sun to advance their often nefarious course.
Even when Al Qaeda for example strikes within Arab countries often times it is Western interests that are the victims.
Therefore it would be correct to conclude that indeed theirs is the intention to fight the West rather than ferment revolutions in Arab countries.
Perhaps, at this juncture it may be important to emphasise that no one absolutely no one, in their right frame of mind could condone despotism.
Gadaffi has been a despot all along, but he has also been a thorn in the neck of the West.
At the same time the taking away of innocent life is despicable whether committed by Bin Laden or the Americans as at Najaf in Iraq or as it continues to be committed now in Afghanistan.
There is little doubt that Dyer’s epistle has done a lot of harm to Islam in a country such as Lesotho where Islam is virtually alien to the majority of the people.
Being a visitor to this beautiful country I would beseech readers to examine closely writings such as these from so-called Orientalists.
It is not unlike the days when people from Europe boasted of being experts on what the African wanted and was incapable of doing.
The African of course expunged the misrepresentations and fought to become masters of their own destiny.
Islam is not a blood-thirsty religion.
While there will always be the desire to unite the Muslim Umma that is not the same thing as having a “unified Caliphate”.
Anyone with the rudiments of history will have known that Caliphates disappeared in the ninth century and no one, certainly not those whom Dyer calls Islamists, have ever expressed the desire to resuscitate any type of Caliphate.
A near impossible task in this day and age anyway, not least after what the empire builders under the veritable Queen Victoria had accomplished.
Perhaps one should emphasise that there are law-abiding Muslims in the world who live and practise the teachings of their religion that are the unadulterated word of one and only Allah who had never been begotten nor beget any one.
Further according to those teachings the watch word is salaam (peace).
Finally, truly the young men and women who have taken to the streets in Arab countries deserve praise.
They have slapped in the face all those politicians who had been playing it safe in the face of tyranny.
The so-called Red Prince of Saudi Arabia, the former chief of security and Ambassador to the Court of St James, would approve of their actions.
? Khalid S Mtwangi is a Tanzanian national visiting Lesotho