September 21, 2003

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  A Note from the Garden Journal Volume 1.5

  
  

  a weekly weekend event of timely trifles

  
  

   

  
  

  I recently read an article which discussed the matter of the Israeli conflict in some detail. It was not an eloquent diatribe of political doublespeak or an attempt to win the Peabody award. It was simply something which listed the events of the past several years factually and in order, leaving the reader to determine for himself what it means. (It is recommended reading. You can find it here.) But scarcely would there be anybody who would, if they were honest, say that Arafat and his ilk, the Syrians, the Iranians and others (who also make up the bulk of resistance in Iraq) are in any way interested in Peace. Neither the PLO nor Hamas or Islamic Jihad wants peaceful co-existence. They want to annihilate Israel.

  
  

   

  
  

  But what of the Palestinians? Don’t they have a right to be there? They indeed do. So long as they abide by Israeli law, they are, it is a fact, allowed to live and thrive there. And indeed, thrive they do. Arab-Israelis hold seats in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), shop in stores lined with all of the plentiful groceries we take for granted in the U.S. or Europe and if an Arab-Israeli wishes to better himself in life, he can attend university or become an entrepreneur and make himself very successful indeed. In fact, Israel offers opportunities for Arabs no Arab nation on the face of the earth provides…for its non-royal members. Arab women too here, find equal opportunities for goal-realization as Israelis. But that is just the ethnic aspect.

  
  

   

  
  

  There is also the religious aspect. Lest you think the Wahabi sect and so forth control all of Islam, think again. There are many, many Muslims who find the radical militants of their faith to in fact be a seriously sick cult, which must be reigned in. Unfortunately for those living today, Islam is in a state of change, but at present painfully slow change. But this will be good for those living tomorrow. Presently a large section of the world’s mosques (which exist in the middle east) are controlled by extremists who have no interest in God, rather their interests lie in their own hold on power. But again, this is changing—even though large wheels turn more slowly, this one is turning. Many, despite fear of death, torture and imprisonment are publicly denouncing and rejecting these leaders as heretics, charlatans and cancerous, in an effort to return to the theology they feel is actually a consistent one with original Islamic principles. And this really is a human thing. So too, one might observe that the Christians faced just such a battle in the Middle Ages against those who controlled the Catholic Church. Certainly if church leaders could ignore, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” a Biblical teaching reiterated by Jesus Christ Himself, it stands to reason that the hardened heart and the evil soul know no vocational limitations. King David during the early days of Israel’s kingdom (some 3,000 years ago) also experienced that fact, as his predecessor, Saul pursued him with a vengeance. In the Middle Ages the pope had all but declared war on anyone who did not conform to his brand of faith, feeling his seat was threatened by competing lines of thought much more than by any sense of concern (which evokes compassion) for the souls of men. So with burnings at the stake, tortures and by use of so many other brutal methods, a war was carried out against the Jews, the Christians, the Moslems, even the Hedonists or anyone else (who did not play the political game). At the same time these powers-that-be, or that were, prevented the common man from gaining access to the sacred texts of the Bible and other knowledge, which would have put an end to the inquisitions, pogroms and crusades…and eventually in part did. While there are certainly many scars that remain from this period, the church arguably has done much in returning to its original first-century roots with regard to doctrine. There are still many wounds to heal both within and outside Christianity as a whole because a few were allowed by passive onlookers to turn it into a distant cult of its historical intent. So too it seems is it with anything man is involved in: “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing”…and no one group is immune.

  
  

   

  
  

  The benefit of history on where Islam is today, if history is to be predicted based on the past, is that over the next hundred or so years Islamic leadership should be broken into less centralized groups of control, whereby the necessary checks and balances for theological authenticity will be set forth on a large scale. Perhaps this will happen sooner than expected; after all, things often change very rapidly in wars, particularly once the head of the snake is cut off. And the head of the snake in my view isn’t even the Islamic extremists, but rather is what props them up. Some say the head is Iran, but I would disagree with that. But that is a topic for another time; however it does further prove that the radical clerics are nothing more than frauds, while at the same time being also nothing more than hit-men and pawns. As I have mentioned before (and it is being revealed more and more in recent headlines) that the true head of the snake sits comfortably in East Asia. About as far from true Muslim interests as possible. And equally as far from Christian and religious Jewish interests as well. Come to think of it, Buddhists in Tibet for awhile haven’t exactly been too happy with the events in their neighborhood either. Well, I suppose no one really is better off under Communism except of course for its fat, self-serving, lying, self-appointed rulers, who by these traits bear quite a bit in common with the unfaithful senior clerics of much of the middle east who claim allegiance to Allah, but inside cynically disregard the teachings of peace and kinship with fellow man counted by the devout of common men as most sacred.

  
  

   

  
  

  -Blogbat a.k.a. Martin

  
  

   

  
  

  A Note from the Garden Journal Volume 1.5

  
  

   

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