ByZaman
Stanizai
World War
II ended the reign of fascism and racial supremacy and the victors of the war
took pride in their cultural diversity, ethnic pluralism, and universal
humanitarianism. They defined their modernity through the scope of civil rights
and liberties not just for their own ethnic minorities, but for deprived and
disenfranchised minorities globally. International organizations such as the
United Nations addressed the same concerns beyond cultural identity and
cultural relativism through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and other
such agencies. Nations adhered to, or at least respected, the principles of
democracy. Even authoritarian states pretended to be democratic, at least in
name: the Democratic Republic of Korea, the German Democratic Republic, the
people’s democratic republic of… Other nations proudly claimed to be ‘the
beacon of democracy,’ ‘the world’s largest democracy,’ or ‘the Middle East ’s only democracy.’ In the short interval
before the East-West military realignment, it seemed that humanity had reached
a critical turning point in its history and that any return to the tyrannies of
the past genocides, pogroms, massacres, and holocausts were just that—the past.
At the end
of the Cold War impasse, however, as the Berlin Wall came crumbling down, the
ideological divide of the East-West was replaced by the Middle East-West
racial, religious, and cultural divide that culminated in the election of
Donald Trump and the rise of neo-fascism parading as super-nationalism. With the
imposition of the Muslim Ban, Bush’s "you're either with us, or against
us" anti-terrorism campaign shifted into high gear and every effort of
Obama’s attempted outreach to the Muslim world was thrown out the window.
Religious
extremism was no longer lurking on the fringes of the society as a rebellious
opposition or a disenfranchised minority, rather it was firmly established in
the seat of power from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, and from India and Myanmar
to the Philippines , and
under the guise of ideology even in Russia
and China
The United
States dealt its neutrality as an impartial arbitrator in the Middle East
conflict fatal blows with concrete anti-Muslim positions such as recognizing
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, subsidizing unhindered settlements on
occupied lands, rescinding the designation ‘occupied’ from Palestinian
territories, and giving the green light to Israel
to drill in and practically annex the Golan Heights .
Even India ’s Hindu nationalist government joined what
appears to be an unholy alliance of sorts against Muslims by becoming the
largest customer in the world for Israeli weapons and by turning Kashmir to one of the most militarized places on earth
through a massive infusion of Indian forces. The Indian suppression of Muslims
in Kashmir now resembles the Israeli suppression
of the Palestinians. The Indian annexation of Kashmir mirrors Israel ’s annexation of the Golan Heights and the
rumored annexation of the West Bank . Both
countries wreaking havoc on victims of the 1947 and 1948 partitions of India and Palestine India India with the
partition of the soul of India
Not to be
left behind, China has sped
up the cultural colonization of the Muslims in Eastern
Turkistan (Xinjiang) where they have put some two million minority
Uyghur Muslims in ‘re-education’ camps. Hundreds of thousands of children of
millions of Uyghurs who are in concentration camps are taken to detention centers
for forced assimilation and ‘cultural cleansing.’ Thousands of Uyghur
intellectuals are imprisoned, some of whom have been investigated by Radio Free
Asia.
A BBC
report reveals widespread destruction of mosques and a Wall Street Journal
investigation reveals the extensive use of cutting-edge technology by the
Chinese government in the domestic surveillance of Muslims. CNN’s Matt Rivers
referred to China
If you
thought genocides like the Russian tyranny in Grozny Myanmar to the
Mindanao Muslims in the Philippines Saudi
Arabia in Yemen ,
Turkey in Kurdish lands, Syria
The sad
irony is that this globalized islamophobia is carried out not only by
authoritarian regimes that have no concern for the world opinion but by
political parties who themselves represent minority constituencies. The
Republican Party, the Grand Old Party in the U.S. India
The twists
of ironies are many and they originate in pretty much the same period of time:
the partition of Kashmir in 1947, the partition of Palestine
in 1948, and the annexation of Eastern Turkestan
in 1949. When foreign powers with their foreign solutions came to these
unfortunate neighborhoods, they drew lines of otherness between people making
them foreign to each other. A critical turning point in human history? Not so
fast.
Whether
there is light at the end of the tunnel depends on how long the tunnel is. It’s
a déjà vu all over again. The political suppression in Muslim majority states
in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the marginalization and radicalization of
political Islam that produced the likes of bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s. What
the outcome of the upbringing of the millions of Muslim youngsters in these
refugee camps and of this wave of vilification through Islamophobia will be in
a decade or two, only time will tell.
This
rampant militarism cloaked in vapid nationalist sloganeering may be serving the
excesses of unbridled corporate greed, but it definitely destroys a social
order whose unforeseeable consequences will be detrimental to civil order and
world peace. If names like Sanna Marin (Prime Minister of Finland), Katrín Jakobsdóttir
(Prime Minister of Iceland), Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (U.S. Congressperson),
and Greta Thunberg (Swedish activist) are the signs of the future, then it is
likely that the wounded soul of the world will be healed through a harmonic
convergence of the feminine energy, wisdom, and foresight.