By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
Editor’s Note
How many times in how many nations must the people fail to get leaders who can balance caring for the people with the realities of survival? It seems that time after time, even when there is a revolution to right the ship, within a short time from months to a couple of years, we are tight back where we started – or worse.
Perhaps the problem is not the leaders, but the expectation that A leader can solve the problems we face. The problems of a society are complex and generally deeply rooted. They arise out of the structure of a society and the values, beliefs, and the way we interact (aka “culture”) that hold it together. These two pieces, structure and culture are symbiotic; reinforcing and recreating each other. The social structure (various institutions from family to religion, economy to government, etc.) arises out of the culture and creates a society that reflects and reinforces the culture. The culture will also tend to recreate the social structure that reinforces it. While culture may change rapidly, social structure changes more slowly and tends to reinforce the older, deeper values most.
Perhaps, if we want substantive change we must look to the imperialist’s toolbox. The methods of the imperialists supplant both social structure and culture with their own and brutally suppress the society they are attempting to conquer.
And this my friend is where DIVERSITY becomes critically important. So much of what we think, and therefore what we perceive, is invisible to us. People from outside are critical to good problem-solving – especially on this level. Diversity in this case is not just from within a society, but across societies. Why? because they are operating from a different cultural base. Frankly, and I have no scientific proof for this, I think that we probably need to look to indigenous societies. These peoples are disappearing almost as quickly as the land they need to survive is being gobbled up by capitalism.
The remaining tribal peoples have largely not been overtaken by global capitalism that is rooted in Western culture – primarily the United States. And frankly, the dominant culture of the United States is the worst of the worst for addressing the collapse of the Earth’s ecology or embracing the diversity of race, culture or religion/philosophy. The why of this claim seems self-evident but goes beyond this introduction in any event. Cultural diversity, particularly that of tribal peoples, is important because they are outside the conceptual box of First and Second world cultures. They do not share our assumptions of reality, how things work, or our relationship to each other and the Earth. These cultures vary from each other, but because they are outside OUR boxes they ask different questions, see problems differently, and can offer different solutions.
To save our various societies and the planet we need a change of hear and mind, and we need to build new institutions. I strongly suspect that among the key things that will need to be embraced are:
- Small is beautiful
- Close to the Earth is close to ourselves.
- All life is valuable.
- There is an intelligence even in what we currently consider the lowest life.
- War wastes resources and critical energy.
- Technology has many forms but so-called “modern technology” needs to be thoroughly evaluated for impacts and risks before development.
- The resources of the Earth belong to us all (us being all living things)
We must build something different as nations and as a world, not just change the players on the field.
“Thinking outside the box” by wiing it
Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Albert Einstein
How to Mirror the Ongoing Injustice and Insanity Against A Besieged Mankind?
Global institutions of peace, security, and conflict resolution are managed by people who lack a basic understanding of mankind, its role and vitality in global affairs, protection of human rights, and aspirations for a sustainable future-making. When a formidable action is needed to prevent violation of human rights, security, and even essential needs of survival, they bent on issuing phony statements and referring to the international law of humanitarian rights (which does not exist or nobody cares about), and show faces of solidarity for leading humanity in painful crises. They are deceptive as they breathe incompetence, greed, egoistic name and fame, and betray humanity. There is much evil and less goodness in 21st-century global affairs – an amassed collection of unthinkable junk history. Flamboyant expressions of besieged mankind that defy ignorance and hallmarks of modern civilized people.
There are seeds of unimaginable and destructive Western cultural absolutism that could destroy the sense of time and rational consciousness of living history. The ongoing war in Ukraine, violations of human rights, prejudice against people of color and murders of indigenous people in North America, social and moral injustice, and continuous warfare – all echo the degradation of human values and soul, exhibit intellectual disregard, universal unhappiness, horrors, societal chaos and socio-economic miseries of innumerable multitudes.
The politically wise elected leaders failed to foresee the formidable challenges coming from the 99% oppressed mankind across global frontiers. Most political leaders would claim intellectual integrity but false proclamations that go unnoticed of human sufferings, pains, and socioeconomic devastation cannot be assumed to be strategies of kindness in the struggle for sustainable political change and systematic elimination of terror and injustice.
We witness that human tragedy between Russia-Ukraine, across Western Europe, the North American streets, the Middle East, and elsewhere while human conscience is still intact. Politicians tend to opt for convenient compromises that deform political truth as transient and pliable but the truth is always ONE, not many, and this is what most contemporary leaders fail to comprehend. We, the People of the globe must learn from living history and think of a navigational change, or else we will experience a self-generated dehumanization curve – evidence of a tragic human abnormality across all the functional domains, from thinking to actions. To safeguard our future, We, the People of global Conscience must evolve a compass of credibility to check those who are exercising political power and are entrusted with people’s confidence for peace, societal harmony, and workable conflict resolutions.
The UNO – in Search of Reinventing Another Universal Organization
The UNO was supposed to safeguard mankind from the “scourge of war”, but the UN Security Council- a progressive hope after WW2 is really a debating club for time-killing exercises and a manipulative global political powerhouse. The five self-appointed permanent members compete in fear of the others and sustainability propaganda to discuss the current issues. They are not interested in stopping the savagery of killings between Ukraine and Russia, going on for almost a year and a half, appalling human rights violations and dehumanization of the people of Palestine under Israeli occupation, freedom fighters in Kashmir against the Indian military control, millions of Rohingya people experience ethnic displacement from Myanmar, and destabilization of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and so on. There is nothing good coming out of the Security Council as a primary hub of global peace, security, and conflict management. The eloquent speakers tend to march on people’s passion for peace and harmony with artful sophistry and captivating eloquence of words without meaning and prompt action to protect the humanity.
The Western news media networks propel portraits of human degradation, historic injustice, and socio-economic vices as if political deception and prejudice were new things to political thinkers and rulers. How could we rethink to change the centuries-old dreadful human apparatus of brimstone, tormenting social inequalities, and torture inflicted by the contemporary so-called working democratic systems of political governance? The UNO and its inept leadership have no plan to safeguard mankind from the coming of a Third World War.
Extreme Ideologies Undermine Peace and Human Unity for A Sustainable Future
Those who grab political power through extreme ideologies and hateful manipulation are people of political intrigue assuming power through the exploitation of fellow human beings and imposing their absurdity on human consciousness striving for survival. Indian PM Narendra Modi recently visited the US to improve his dubious public image as a leader. He spoke of peace and terrorism while he is actively engaged in oppressing the minorities across India -Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian, violations of women’s rights and rape, and waging a prolonged war against the people of Kashmir. Truth is One and the same as it was many centuries earlier.
Contrary to the historic India under Mughal Empire where ethnic diversities lived in harmony, we are seeing contemporary India denying equal human rights and freedom – a framework of extreme Hinduism ideology. The masses of Kashmir seek their right to freedom, not forced captivity. How strange, for over seventy years corrupt Pakistani politicians never thought to hold an international conference on Kashmir. Pakistanis are averse to critical thinking and criticism for political change. One-track military minds dominate the Pakistani so-called political landscape and people are struggling to restore a sense of normalcy and lost credibility to the nation’s survival. Unless there is a navigational change away from the military dictatorship to restore democracy, Pakistanis could end up losing their national freedom.
Could Ukraine and Russia meet at a conference table for an immediate ceasefire and peacemaking? NATO and the EU are not working in a logical framework to have a dialogue with Russia or to stop the killings and displacement of civilians across Ukraine. Would America and Israel determine the future of the war-torn Middle East? Several oil-producing Arab leaders are complicit in the failure of finding a peaceful resolution of the repression of Palestine – be it East Jerusalem or the annexation of the West Bank. These puppets are mindless beings not living with the Arab people but in palaces under the CIA’s management. Israeli and Palestinian both live in mutual fear and moral and intellectual decadence. Had they believed in Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad and their teachings as Prophets of God- all trying to unite mankind before God, they should have reached a peace deal.
The PLO lacks intelligent and effective leadership to counteract Netanyahu whereas the Israeli’s problem rests with the right-wing extreme leadership devoid of peace, morality, and human equality. PM Netanyahu is glued to the extreme right-wing parties planning to annex the West Bank of Palestine into Israeli territory. The settlements go on and wicked leaders simply call it against international law. As if Palestinians were not human beings but just digits and numbers. One would have hoped that thinking Israeli politicians will safeguard their own freedom and security and workout a peaceful settlement between the two nations. None of them could live in peace and harmony unless human rights, freedom and justice are respected by all the parties.
Could the Global Leaders Learn to be People-Oriented, Effective, and Peacemakers?
Despite many political and strategic odds, one cannot blame the Western industrialized nations for ignorance, human prejudice, and sociol-economic disparities. Why has nobody else challenged racial inequality and moral injustice? What did the Arabs or Muslims contribute to the changing pattern of global political affairs? Global humanity is a mix of all cultures and civilizations. The Arab-Muslim world failed to produce any leader with vision and intellectual integrity for the changing and complex global affairs of the 21st century. When Arab leaders had proactive vision and intellect and human values, they articulated a unique civilization tolerant of diversity and varied cultural ethnicity in Andalucía (Spain) and built upon the unity of faith to nurture peaceful co-existence and human development. If you list the historic scientific, educational, and technological discoveries and contributions of Muslim scholars, they are countless.
Do you know any other scientists or scholars whose textbooks were used continuously for five centuries in European medical schools? Or their scientific work translated into Latin, French, Deutch, English, and other languages spoken across the world. Husain Abdullah Bu Ali Sina – Ibne–Sina (Avicenna – “Canon of Medicine” and “Book of Healing”), and Zakariya Al-Razi (Russ), are both 10th-century scientists and scholars. The Europeans changed their names to Avicenna and Russ so that nobody would recognize them as Muslim scholars. It is noted that Ibne Sina (Avicenna) alone discovered and authenticated 36 pharmaceutical formulas being used to this day. Marai Rosa Menocal (A Golden Reign of Tolerance: The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, 2003), explains: “The lessons of history, like the lessons of religion, sometimes neglect examples of tolerance. A thousand years ago on the Iberian Peninsula, an enlightened vision of Islam had created the most advanced culture in Europe….In Cordoba, the library housed some 400,000 volumes at a time when the largest library in Latin Christendom probably held no more than 400.”
Despite the sketchy illusions of freedom, democracy, human rights, liberty, and justice, we are encroached, stuffed, and at terrible risk of annihilation more by accident and error of judgment than a planned scheme of things by Man against Man. Often the extreme Western political propaganda inflames hatred against people of color and indigenous people, and Muslims are perceived as being “terrorists.” George Floyd’s voice continues to echo – “I cannot breathe…I cannot breathe” across the global human consciousness. Often false propaganda, deception, and prejudice are combined in a strategy to sell weapons and console the egoistic Arab leaders as allies of the Western military alliance. This political delusion is full of inherent inconsistencies. Gary Wills (What the Qur’an Meant and What It Matters. Viking, NY, 2017), a leading American scholar explains the reality in his new book:
Our enemy in this war is far less localizable than it was in the World War 2 or the Cold War. Terror is a tool, not a country. Declaring a war on it is less like normal warfare, country versus country, there is No VE Day or VJ Day in such wars… living with fear is corrosive…the less we know about the reality of Islam, the more we will fight shadows and false emanations from our apprehension. Ignorance is the natural ally of fear. It is time for us to learn about the real Islam beginning with its source book – The Qur’an.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and is the author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Germany, 12/2019.
Tags: ignorance, social change
All material is under a Creative Common share with attribution license unless otherwise noted.
Posted July 9, 2023 by Rowan Wolf in category “Activists“, “International Affairs“, “Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.“, “Militarism“, “Peace
 | ReplyReply allForward |
