By
Sattar Rind
We perhaps do not prefer to be simple by perceiving things which are around in our daily life. We like to make things more confused though for no reason.
As an example, for a long time an almost uncountable number of articles and books have been written on the issue of ISIS, almost everyone knows the actual facts and yet we still search for the causes of their existence, or at least pretend to. Despite this, we are planning to establish a research design to look into and discuss the same research again and again.
One could not however deny the significance of the research in order to understand the issues and be clear about any related to our society. Things though must definitely have been worse for the people of the areas where ISIS has control, beheading or burning people alive, raping women and selling them their daily activities.
In this case if anyone asked another to do research on such and such hypotheses, as to be able to know more about ISIS and the associated terrorism more deeply, one can rarely refuse to. Besides it would be a revelation that we the ordinary people are unable to save anyone’s life but thinking and finding the causes falls into a great deal more depth.
This is the vulnerability of an ordinary person. Therefore by covering this shocking weakness we also start an argument that what is happening is not a new thing in human history. This is just continuity. This will all also one day be history.
No doubt, it is an inescapable reality. Besides, what Bertrand Russell used to say is that if we ourselves are not victim of an incident then anything which has happened, is just news. Even feeling the level of pain could be measured through the severity of incident as well as distance. In other words, it could have happened in one’s own country or to the people of any other country of another continent.
Exactly the same thing has been elaborated another way by Leo Tolstoy in one of his novellas –‘The Death of Ivan IIyich’ as when he dies, the recipient of news of his death automatically realises they are not that person who has just died. Therefore in other words, another’s death is anything but news.
We are also very much inclined to forget the painful things that Graham Greene once wrote in his book ‘Ministry of Fear’. Very likely one of the painful facts about civilization was that it was nothing but a history of barbarism and every time we forget it. If we limit ourselves to the 19th century we would see the two World Wars in which the civilized people killed each other in the millions.
In World War II we also experienced barbarism of its own kind in that we used human fat of the human body to make soap to wash clothes or for any other purpose by the most civilized people – the Germans.
The country who has a number of world known philosophers to its credit, from Kant to Heidegger or from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche or from Marx to Hegel to Max Weber, who would dare compare their level of intellect to anyone? However the same nation had been trapped into the rhetoric of Hitler and his Nazi party and Gestapo secret agency killing the Jewish people in gas chambers in great numbers.
The British on the other hand have a different story of ‘divide and rule’, putting the world into chaos for an infinite period. They are the founders of Israel as well as the existing Saudi Arabia in shaping its existence.
The same and most proclaimed civilized people – the British, had left the people of Bengal in extreme famine on the verge of death. With the people of Bengal dying from a dearth of food, the British-Indian government sent a request to Winston Churchill that they could not send further grain to the soldiers of war, the Noble Prize Winner in literature replying very indifferently that Gandhi had not yet died of hunger.
We have also observed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Americans, a newly emerging world power had thrown nuclear bombs to kill the civilians of Japan.
Again we have observed those who faced Hitler’s brutality had repeated the same Hitlerism against the people of the original land owners of Palestine. How easily we have forgotten the Sabra and Shatila massacre in the post modern period of history by Israel. What is going on in Gaza should be equally condemnable.
Coming to the point of terrorism or especially that which is being spread by ISIS, a great fear has engrossed the world. Everyone is talking and writing about them and thinking of how to eliminate them.
However we have not forgotten that it was US/NATO and the UN who declared war against Iraq on the baseless allegation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, who all knew the facts and that this was not true.
Is anyone paying attention to the US Defense Intelligence Agency declassified reports that ISIS was created by the US to keep under pressure the Shiite expansion in Syria and Iraq, or that ISIS has been created from Al-Qaeda? In other words Al-Qaeda has been changed into ISIS and trained by Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries and Turkey. MI6 and the CIA had remained involved in suppling weapons and other required facilitation or information and goods to ISIS.
The most hurtful thing is that this support, with all the required necessities for extending terrorism, is still continuing by all of those powerful countries and individuals. However at the same time they are assuring the world and their own nation that they are fighting against ISIS.
Aleksandra Tomaszewska: "implementing the philosophy is madness"- i am just agree for nothing or let me to request that i am agree with your in the context of relatively...
Philosophy is always a theoretical construct meant to be discussed and thought not implemented into practice and lived. Philosophical discussions and analysis are harmless in themselves unless there is a madman trying to implement them in real life. We cannot blame Nietzsche or Hegel for Nazism or Marx for communism - the most felonious totalitarian systems in the history. We seem to be aware of that yet we tend to take totally opposite approach regarding relativism that is a new religion of modern West. Claiming there is no objective truth, good or beauty and cutting ourselves from roots of western civilization we open the door for ISIS madness. And we are bound to lose that war because we have no argument to fall back on. Relativism means that there is no difference between good and evil because there is no good and evil. Their beliefs are just as good as ours, their way is just as good as ours, their methods are just as good as ours. Scary? We need to think about it next time we praise relativism.
Poignantly stated Mr. Sattar. Unfortunately, history is ultimately a matter of interpretation with its own errors and biases.
Yes, we search for the causes... not the solutions. Very excellent writing. Karen Anne Kramer