Muslims throughout the world are without doubt distressed by the riots taking place in France. Anyone who remembers life in the US during the turbulent sixties can sympathize with both the French people, and also with the Muslim youth in France who are demonstrating their pains and frustrations in a way that is predictable, yet more harmful than helpful to their righteous cause. You can’t defeat racism with riots. It has taken more than 40 years for some riot stricken neighborhoods in the US to be restored after being destroyed by the self inflicted destruction that rioters brought to their own homes in US ghettos, and racism still exists, and there are still ghettos. Many believe that the delay in restoration was designed to send a message to young US blacks who, in their time, had also felt that by taking it to the streets, they would accomplish what voting and non-violent protests had failed to bring about. The message still rings clear, "you have the power to destroy, but you do not have the money to rebuild. If you think you have nothing now, just wait until after you destroy what you have. Then you will realize what nothing is, and you still wont be white." Punishment, not equality, or jobs, was the result of our young men’s public outcrying.
Like the north Africans rioting now in France, the generation of young blacks that took to US streets in the sixties were also the descendants of immigrants who had been rejected by their native lands and sold into slavery in a foreign land. We also looked different, ate strange foods, had accents, and our own form of religion that didn’t necessarily suit the religious taste of the all white church that kept its distance from the newly converted black heathens, and their rowdy children. The heathens who had only a century ago worshipped in mosques, or cooked roots and cast spells, or spun around in frenzy at the very thought of God, falling out in trembles at the altar, uttering angelic tongues, scared the hell out of them. American blacks had just enough religion for the master to consider us perhaps saved, but never enough to be considered civilized, or enough to be equal. Riots and violence didn’t change anything.
The Muslim world today must be similar to the Africa that had fallen so far from grace that one black tribe could sell its enemies from another black tribe to foreign slave traders for beads. That was hundreds of years ago, but it’s really no different than today. Muslims are being sold into slavery by Muslim leaders who live like Kings off the charity of the European nations, while their own people must escape into slavery in Europe in order to be "saved." Now we have another generation, hundreds of years later, young Africans in Europe burning cars in the street, crying out, cursing God and man because they are not Christian, they are dark, and hungry, and tired. They can see no way out of cycles of poverty that are perpetuated by racism and religious hatred that is so thoroughly entrenched in the heart of the European, that even today, the world still suffers from its resultant inequalities.
Still, there is no excuse for the violence; there is only pain. Unless you have felt this pain and humiliation, no one can explain it to you. It is like being spat upon, and cursed daily for being as God created you, and you cannot change what they hate about you, and you wouldn’t change it if you could. Rioting is like crying, and your crying will not touch hearts hardened by centuries of self-righteous religious crusading, racial supremacism and economic injustice. The only way to win is to refuse to cry. Refuse to destroy, or be destroyed. Refuse to be diminished by the evils of others, rather be empowered by the knowledge that God created you with rights that no man can take from you. Use your rights.
Whereas African American descendants of slaves and also freemen in the US had no native land to return to and claim rights, or to liberate, young Muslims in Europe do. There are 55 or more Muslim nation/states in this world. Why are there millions of Muslims living in poverty in Europe, and burning cars in the streets begging to be validated as fully entitled and equal human beings?
UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan and Ariel Sharon raised an issue that leaders of the Muslim world should seriously consider. Rather than waiting to be thrown out of the UN for demanding justice, it might be time for the 55 Muslim nation/states that are treated like second class world citizens and children by the UN, to leave. The UN has proven that it is incapable of dealing fairly with Muslims, or Muslim countries. When Muslims were being killed in Bosnia, they were embargoed by the UN and prevented from defending themselves. It took NATO to finally end the violence. The UN pulled out of Screbenica and left the Muslims there to be slaughtered, like it did the Muslims in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon. No one would believe how many Muslim refugees there are in the world. We only here about Darfur in Sudan, while there are others where Muslims are suffering as refugees in their own, and in neighboring Muslim countries.
It was the UN that imposed the most brutal sanctions regime upon Iraq for so many years, and then stole the money allocated for relief, and hid proof that Iraq had disassembled its WMD programs, information that could have staved off the 2003 invasion. We could go on and on about how unjustly Muslims and Muslim nations are treated by the UN, but that is not the point. The point is that there is no reason for Muslim nations to be part of an international body that rules by fear and intimidation. Why are Muslim nations subservient to an international body that is dominated by European nations whose primary agenda is to keep all non-Christian and non-White countries in poverty and servitude under threat of military attack, occupation, regime change and domination.
When South Africans called for an end to racist apartheid, the UN responded. When Iran called for an end to racist Zionism, a worse evil, Iran was threatened with expulsion? What does that tell us? It should tell us that as Muslims, we do not share the same ideas about law, liberty and justice as the UN. We have a law called Shariah law that teaches us that all people are equal, and that God’s words are fulfilled in truth and justice. Our Muslim nations, and peoples live under the constant fear of invasion, war, economic sanctions, humiliation and condemnation at the UN, for no reason except they are rich in coveted natural resources, and human labor. Where is their law, their justice? Why has Israel been allowed to kill and kill and kill and rob, and kill, while the UN sits on its hands and does nothing, yet Syria is treated with disdain, humiliated, and threatened with economic sanctions and invasion because someone killed Hariri? That’s BS (forgive me).
If the Muslim nations would separate from the UN and form a parallel international Islamic entity, with its own charter that is written in accordance with Islamic law, it would lead to independence, unity, and restoration of the Muslim world. It might create an opportunity for Muslim governments to reconcile with the 1.5 billion Muslim people of the world in the political and economic development of that region of the world, and an opportunity to bring our children home, and out of European ghettoes. It would create a way to give our young people purpose, pride and power, and most of all, to give them hope. Put their intellects, their energy and their imaginations to work in their own interests, in their own countries.
To be separate from the UN, and other Western dominated international entities like World Bank, IMF, WTO, etc., doesn’t have to mean being isolated from the rest of the world. In fact as independent Muslim nations united under the Shariah, an international Islamic entity could enter treaties, trade agreements, etc., with other nations so long as the terms meet the criteria of Shariah law. It would be free from the unfair politics of a European, and US dominated UN, and monetary and trade institutions who have one set of laws for Europe, the US and their allies, and no law when it comes to protecting Muslim nations and peoples, and our interests. Whereas an Islamic organization of nation/states would be independent, it could work cooperatively with the UN, and other international entities to the extent that projects are mutually beneficial and they want to work cooperatively.
If history is a teacher, it should have taught Muslims that there is no reason to expect that our people, or nations will ever be free, or prosperous so long as they remain under the authority, and threats of violence and economic terror regularly handed out to the Muslim world, and peoples through the UN. We will never be free to develop spiritually, economically, or in any other way, so long as we remain slaves to the institutions, created by the colonialists, that have impoverished Muslim nations in Africa, and exploited natural resources. We don’t have to wait for the UN, the United States or Europe to bring freedom and democracy to the Muslim world. The Muslim world can free itself, and stand on its own, and most importantly, bring its people and its children home to build their own societies where the are loved, and free to be who and what God created us to be…free, and Muslim.
I pray that the young Muslims of Europe will end their violent public crying and be Muslim men. Stand up, and tell them all to go to hell. Plan your hijrah. Go home. Change the Muslim world, and create a new destiny for Muslims and all others who desire to really be free. Islam has given us a roadmap to freedom, peace and prosperity, it’s called Qur’an. If we turn back to God, and give up hope in everything else, God has promised to guide us to peace, unity and prosperity in this life, and eternally in the next. We have tried everything else, could it be time to try Islam?
