TALIBAN, THE FRANKENSTEIN

TALIBAN, THE FRANKENSTEIN


1--THE PROVOCATION—

The provocation for writing this article was the following news, extracted from http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96QN30O0&show_article=1

“CAIRO (AP) - A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives, drawing new criticism for the kingdom's ultraconservative religious police and judiciary.
The woman's lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that he would appeal the verdict against Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi. The attorney, Abdel Rahman al-Lahem, said the verdict issued March 3 also demands that Sawadi be deported after serving her sentence.

The newspaper Al-Watan said the woman met with the two 24-year-old men last April after she asked them to bring her five loaves of bread at her home in al-Chamil, a city north of the capital, Riyadh.

Al-Watan identified one man as Fahd al-Anzi, the nephew of Sawadi's late husband, and the other as his friend and business partner Hadiyan bin Zein. It said they were arrested by the religious police after delivering the bread. The men also were convicted and sentenced to lashes and prison.

The court said it based its ruling on "citizen information" and testimony from al-Anzi's father, who accused Sawadi of corruption.

"Because she said she doesn't have a husband and because she is not a Saudi, conviction of the defendants of illegal mingling has been confirmed," the court verdict read.

Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam prohibits men and women who are not immediate relatives from mingling. It also bars women from driving, and the playing of music, dancing and many movies also are a concern for hard-liners who believe they violate religious and moral values.

Sawadi told the court she considered al-Anzi as her son, because she breast-fed him when he was a baby. But the court denied her claim, saying she didn't provide evidence. In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers.

Sawadi commonly asked her neighbors for help after her husband died, said journalist Bandar al-Ammar, who reported the story for Al-Watan. In a recent article, he wrote that he felt the need to report the case "so everybody knows to what degree we have reached."


2--WAHABI ISLAM

The Wahabi brand of rigid, fundamentalistic, communalistic Sunni Islam denies human rights to women and meets justice by barbarian law. There are several frightening examples of the operation of such law, based upon the Muslim Quranic law known as Sharia. A common form of punishment as per this law, practiced till today, is stoning to death.

Saudi Arabia is an independent sovereign country and the people and the government there are entitled to choose their own system of law and governance. I will not comment any further on it. What I will comment upon is the Taliban, a violent fundamentalist Islamic group that draws inspiration and funding and support from Saudi Arabia for spreading the Wahabi brand of Islam elsewhere. It is very much in news currently, in mid-March 2009, for being on the verge of gaining control of Pakistani capital, having already gained control of Swat valley and the important town of Peshawar. The USA is reportedly perturbed by this prospect. It is worth recalling that the Taliban had earlier ruled Afghanistan and were believed to be in some way involved in the 9/11 episode, which was engineered by Osama Bin Laden, the head of Al Qaida, who is supposed to be living in touch with and under protection of the Taliban.


3--THE TALIBAN

The word Taliban is the plural of Talib, pronounced taalib, which means a student. The group is so called because it draws its fighting force mainly from amongst those who are the products of madrassas. A madrassas is an Islamic school where children from the age of 5-6 years onwards are kept in seminaries and given free food and education, the latter consisting of mainly rote learning of Quran and a heavy dose of Islamic communalism that teaches abhorrence of all other faiths, especially the non-Book faiths like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism etc. It is to be remembered that it was the Taliban who destroyed, by several days long mortar fire, three 2500 years old giant Buddha statues, part of the world heritage recognized by the UNESCO in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, a few years ago when the country was under Taliban rule.


4--THE RISE OF TALIBAN FRANKENSTEIN—

The USA is currently fighting the so called “GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR”? [More about this “global war can be viewed at "GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR: essay, winner" .]. It is ironic that this war was initially directed against Taliban, which was the Frankenstein monster created by USA itself. (Frankenstein is the character in the novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”, generally known as "Frankenstein", written by Mary Shelley and published in England in1818 when she was 20 years old. The title of the novel refers to a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger than average and more powerful. However, over time, people have tended, incorrectly, to refer to this monster itself as "Frankenstein".)

Who has been responsible for the rise of this “vile and terroristic” Taliban which is reportedly (and, correctly), a threat to world peace? The simple and surprising answer is: The USA. Why do I say so? I can answer this no better than by giving below excerpts from an article by Joseph Clifford, which can be viewed at http://www.mediamonitors.net/josephclifford2.html


5—EXCERPTS FROM THE ARTICLE "IT IS THE OIL, STUPID!"
by Joseph Clifford

****
a--The Russians got into their Vietnam right after we got out of ours.

b--We supported Bin Laden and the Taliban for years, and viewed them as freedom fighters against the Russians.

c--As late as 1998 the US was paying the salary of every single Taliban official in Afghanistan.

d--There is more oil and gas in the Caspian Sea area than in Saudi Arabia. There is $6 Trillion dollars worth of oil in the Caspian Sea area. But you need a pipeline through Afghanistan to get the oil out.

e--UNOCAL, a giant American Oil conglomerate, wanted to build a 1000 mile long pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea.

f--UNOCAL spent $10,000,000,000 (ten billion) on geological surveys for pipeline construction, and very nicely courted the Taliban for their support in allowing the construction to begin.

g--All of the leading Taliban officials were in Texas negotiating with UNOCAL in 1998.

h—In 1998-1999 the Taliban changed its mind and threw UNOCAL out of the country and awarded the pipeline project to a company from Argentina.

i--John Maresca VP of UNOCAL testified before Congress and said no pipeline until the Taliban was gone and a more friendly government was established.

j—In 1999-2000 The Taliban became the most evil people in the world. Isn't that strange?

k--Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

l—And, then the Twin Towers happened on 11 September 2001. The rest is history


6. INDIAN FRANKENSTEINS—

Two examples from the Indian subcontinent bear a resemblance to the Taliban Frankenstein. In India, prime Minister Indira Gandhi maneuvered the rise of Bhindranwale group to control certain elements in Punjab, but this group ultimately was the cause of her assassination. Somewhat similar was, allegedly, the role of prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as regards LTTE, with similar fate. Both these leaders succumbed to the monsters they themselves created.



7. “PEARL OF WISDOM—

There is an interesting, but highly insightful footnote, titled as “Pearl of wisdom”, that occurs at the end of Clifford’s article. It is a quote from Samuel P. Huntington.

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." --- Samuel P. Huntington

I could not agree with this more.


M C Gupta
13 March 2009