By Lukman Harees –

Lukman Harees

“Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.” Joseph Paul Goebbels- Nazi Propaganda Minister

‘Paris suicide bombing’ was certainly a tragedy of equal proportions. People all over the world saw on TV and heard within minutes of this disaster, how some delusional lunatics perpetrated horrific acts of violence in the name of religion, on hundreds of innocents without an iota of love and mercy for their own kind-the humans. No-one in their right minds will condone this carnage. Thus, our thoughts irrespective of our colour, racial, religious and geographical differences are with the affected families and the French nation. This sad episode signifies that the world do not basically understand that human dignity refers to the value of human life and its inherent preciousness and that threat to Human Dignity emanates not from aliens or non-humans, but through the machinations of the hypocritical ,weird and the wicked human mind. The unashamed trampling of human dignity and violating the sanctity of human life has been becoming a norm, rather than an exception in the current human life narrative.

As the world comes to terms of what actually transpired and who were actually responsible, it is however an imperative need for us as ordinary people to see and look at things in the proper light without allowing the global Western media to lead all of us up the garden path through senseless, hate-laden, selective, reporting and ‘sensational’ headlines attempting to exploit our emotional feelings towards this human tragedy. For, it is no secret that we tend to form our world views blindly based more on what news they dish out to us giving more weightage to some, than others ,rather without verifying them ourselves, in this fast-paced world.

As for now, ISIS has presumably accepted responsibility for this Paris carnage ( their similar ‘feats’ in recent times, such as Beirut, Baghdad, has been overlooked and ignored by the Western Media). The Western media, as usual , has already led the way to drum up the Islamaphobia beat and the world once again will expect the entire global Muslim community to offer an unqualified apology while the Muslims in the West are dreading another round of hate attacks in retaliation. However, if we do not sift through the symptoms and attempt to identify the actual causes and the strategists behind these trends, then this ‘across- the- board’ criminalization of the Muslim community will continue and the world will only get worse by the day. Another victory for the Islamphobia industry! Who then are these ISIS folks? Are they acting on their own to achieve their goals or they just a cat’s paw on a greater design?

ISIS is neither a State nor Islamic and the mainstream Muslims have been attempting to stress time and again in many a ways that they have no truck with this rogue outfit. It is therefore not fair to hold all of them to account or make them carry the burden of ‘collective guilt’ for the action of this fringe bunch of lunatics, in the same way Christian community is not responsible for the atrocities Crusaders did or what Anders Behring Breivik did in 2011 in Norway . However, as a result of the well-organized Western media strategy to portray ISIS as an Islamic creation hell-bent on establishing an ‘Islamic Caliphate’ killing all those who are opposing same, it is unfortunate that the world fails to see ISIS in its’ true light – as a political creation for a designated purpose of the US in the Middle East.

We saw the first sudden, and quite dramatic, appearance of the fanatical Islamic group known as ISIS which was largely unheard of until a year ago, on the world’s stage ,which promptly replaced the worn out and tired al Qaeda as the world’s terrorist bogeyman. A declassified secret US government document obtained by the public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, (US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012) , shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad, in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The revelations contradict the official line of Western government on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the “Shia expansion.”. US Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, admitted last year that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Turkey had funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamist rebels in Syria that metamorphosed into ISIS. But he did not admit what this internal Pentagon document demonstrates?—that the entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.

The revelation from an internal US intelligence document, raises troubling questions about recent US government efforts to justify the expansion of state anti-terror powers. In the wake of the rise of ISIS, intrusive new measures to combat extremism including mass surveillance, the Orwellian ‘prevent duty’ and even plans to enable government censorship of broadcasters, are being pursued on both sides of the Atlantic, much of which disproportionately targets activists, journalists and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims. Yet the new Pentagon report reveals that, contrary to Western government claims, the primary cause of the threat comes from their own deeply misguided policies of secretly sponsoring ‘Islamist’ terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.

Further, do we realize that as the ISIS’s killings of Westerners and in Western lands gets prime attention, ISIS has killed far more Muslims? The 26-page UN report released in 2014 , described in vivid detail the gruesome circumstances in which ISIS has killed their fellow Muslims, which included beheadings, killing of women for objecting to ISIS’ policies, and executing Sunni Muslim clerics for refusing to swear allegiance to ISIS. The list goes on from ISIS slaughtering 1,500 Iraqi soldiers in June to blowing up numerous Sunni mosques because apparently the leaders of those mosques refused to swear loyalty to ISIS. The UN concluded that in the first eight months of 2014, at least 9,347 civilians had been killed and at least 17,386 wounded. While all these deaths are not attributable to ISIS alone, ISIS was identified as the primary actor.

Although ISIS offered ‘Islamic’ justifications for killing fellow Muslims, however when reading the details of the UN report, it is noted that the common thread in ISIS’ killings of Muslims has nothing to do with Islam. It has to do with absolute power. It doesn’t matter if the victim is a Sunni cleric or a Christian woman, the choice is to submit to ISIS or die.

Further, much has been written about the young men and women who join the Islamic State. But virtually nothing is known about those who quit: the “defectors” who didn’t like what they saw, abandoned their comrades and fled the Islamic State. Yet their stories could be key to stopping the flow of foreign fighters, countering the group’s propaganda and exposing its lies and hypocrisy. In a CNN survey, it was found that that there are sizeable defectors who left for various reasons: the leadership’s obsession with “spies” and “traitors.”, rather than Jihad for a caliphate’, sheer brutality, atrocities and the killing of innocent civilians, unfairness, inequality and racism and the group’s contradictions and hypocrisies. But their voices were strong and clear: “The Islamic State is not protecting Muslims. It is killing them.”

It will also be interesting to listen to the Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson- executive director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism – who has spent years researching and writing about FBI terrorism “stings” on mentally retarded and destitute Muslims orchestrated by informants convicted of rape and child molestation, who make some $100,000 per sting. Aaronson notes: ‘The FBI is responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than any other organization. More than al Qaeda, more than al Shabaab, more than the Islamic State,more than all of them combined’. Further, he refers to Clinton and Bush’s top counter-terrorism czar – Richard Clarke who said: ‘A lot of the cases after 9/11 were manufactured or enormously exaggerated and were announced with great trumpets by the attorney general and the FBI director so that we felt that they were doing something when, in fact, what they were doing was not helpful, not relevant, not needed’. Aaronson points out that the FBI hasn’t denied his reports. Isn’t’ there more to it than we read or watch on the Media!

Thus, true! as Lyal S. Sunga,Head of the Rule of Law Program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice says, “the world cannot afford to stand by while IS deliberately targets defenseless civilians for massacres, rape, torture and forcible expulsion, and that means that the U.N. Security Council has to take effective military action to prevent further violence and ensure that individual perpetrators are brought before the International Criminal Court. The world’s citizens deserve no less.” However should not UN also be more even handed, by also identifying the so-called Western culprits behind this rogue outfit and also applying these laws against Blair and Bush who basically started off this manic, without allowing them to go scot free- by tendering a mere apology?

Overall. it will be dangerous or suicidal for us as bystanders to jump to conclusions based on what we see and hear from the Media which is basically controlled by the Western Zionist Media tycoons. They manufacture the news for the world to believe and the mainstream Media sources in the Third World simply copy them and reproduce for our gullible consumption . The end result is a world whose thoughts are fashioned by those folks. Harold Wallace Rosenthal said “We [the Zionists] have it all under such control that no one – no one or no-body can [reach] people unless it is done through ‘our’ media control. We have it sewed up!!” ( from the Harold Wallace Rosenthal Interview 1976). Thus an all-out war against the ISIS should also encompass an all-out war against their Western backers as well; otherwise the backers will find another devious strategy to control the world and its’ resources. Palestine, invasion of Iraq have been ideal examples of West’s control of even the UN. Bystanders thus have a duty to push their governments towards making them accountable for their misdeeds.

Having said that, this should not be taken as an attempt of self-denial of an intrinsic problem which exists among Muslims where their religion which teaches them peaceful living and co-existence , is being hijacked by both internal and external destructive elements to tarnish the image of Islam and the Muslims. There are certainly extremist groups among them too, which seek to use cherry picked verses from the Quran to pursue their own ends. Certainly the Islamic scholars need to take the lead to deal with this mega-issue. Moreover, it behoves on the Muslim community as a whole, to engage in self retrospection to defeat this conspiracy.

References:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Islamophobia-Industry-Manufactures-Muslims/dp/0745332536
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/21/opinions/isis-defectors-neumann-amanpour/

“The FBI is Responsible for More Terrorism Plots in the U.S. More Than Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, the ‘Islamic State’, More Than All Of Them Combined”