=By= Jimmie Moglia

“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy…”

The debate about the admissibility of burkinis on European beaches has mostly spared the American audience. But the issue is sufficiently grotesque to deserve a few related notes.

The idea that a state (France in the instance), can limit the freedom to wear clothing in the name of liberation is logically insane, historically ridiculous and politically idiotic. It is

“A fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!” (1)

Some have rated the measure a sign of repressed white supremacy, hidden behind political correctness. More likely, it is a sign of the helpless, and therefore feeble reaction to the seemingly unstoppable biblical transhumance of peoples – in the name of globalization, annihilation of cultures, languages, traditions and massively promoted miscegenation.

Readers will no doubt remember that “the apparel oft proclaims the man (or the woman)“ (2), but the ban on burkinis is (was) designed as an instrument to infuse the taste of liberty and the awareness of the pleasures of (European) culture into Islamic ladies, reluctant to expose (what they rate to be) their own nudity.

I said that the ban “was” … because the French Council of State, before I began writing this, has deliberated that such a ban “gravely violates, in a clearly illegal way, the fundamental freedom of coming and going, and the individual freedom of creed.”

Nevertheless, the still-debated ban on burkinis rests on the idea that by showing rather than hiding her flesh, a woman displays conclusive and irreversible evidence of female liberation and gender equality.

If so, the legislators of the measure showed poor historical awareness – though it is known that distance, either of time or place, is sufficient to reconcile imaginative minds to inexistent facts and questionable conclusions.

The correlation between modesty in dress and female subordination is a relic of the extreme English Reformers who turned into Puritans, of the Restoration (after the French Revolution) and of the Victorian era.

The two-piece female bathing attire was already used in the imperial baths and spas of Rome. In fact, given the lack of any political weight of women in Roman and Greek culture, the reduction in volume of worn cloth was proportional to the reduction of their social and economic standing. By and by, Roman women did not much care “… to o’erstep the modesty of nature.” (3).

In fact, the French revolution was preceded by a popular rediscovery and return to Roman customs, attires and fashion. Men (and women) styled their hair “a’ la Brutus.” Women wore dresses with no pockets and practically no underwear. To enable ladies to carry with them some basic items, the French invented the hand-bag, called “reticule”, a word deriving from the Latin “reticulum” meaning ‘net.’ In fact the French “reticule” was anything but practical, hence the terms ‘ridicule’ and ‘reticule’ were used interchangeably, to mock the handbag accompanying the skimpy dresses.

But even long before, starting at the end of the 1600 and throughout the whole of the 1700, women’s breasts were practically uncovered.

The unhurried tourist in Venice may venture to cross the “Ponte delle Tette” (Bridge of the Boobs), whose appellation and story are historically instructive.

The bridge is found in the sector of San Polo, which functioned, at the time of the story, as a red-light district. To lure customers, prostitutes used to lean topless, out of balconies or windows. Folkloric tradition attributes the habit to an ordnance issued by the Venetian Republic. The reasoning being that the sight of topless women would promote heterosexual excitement in male viewers, and thus help stem the increase in homosexuality affecting the city.

That sodomy was a problem is attested in the extended and massive Chronicles of Venice written in Latin by one of her citizens, Marin Sanudo, (1466-1536). In which we read,

“In order to eradicate the abominable vice of sodomy (abhominabile vitium sodomie), two noblemen per sector will be selected. And every Friday they will interview medical doctors and barbers (note that until historically recently, barbers were also surgeons and surgeons were barbers). If any doctor or barber, during the week, has been called to cure colo-rectal ailments in men (or women) deriving from sodomy, (in partem posteriorem confractam per sodomiam), they are obliged to denounce the fact to the authorities. Following the indictment, the sodomites will be hanged between two columns in a square (Piazzetta) and burned until they are reduced to ashes.”

One such punishment was inflicted on Bernardino Correr who, in 1482

“… attempted to carry out acts of sodomy on Mr. Hieronimo Urban, a most handsome young man, during one evening when Correr found Urban in the pathway leading from Ca’ Trevixan to S. Bartolomio. To this deplorable purpose Correr cut the suspenders of Urban’s stockings. But Urban did not want any of this and denounced Correr to the Council of Ten.”

Throughout the 1600 and 1700, low neck-lines approaching toplessness, were common, along with enormous shirts ending in wasp-like waits and breasts purposely augmented and raised via busts and corsets. We can detect in the vestment a different interpretation of the female body.

For men, in turn, it was the time of the Renaissance tights, remarkably similar to the now fashionable nylons, worn by ladies.

And long before, Dante Alighieri, the Shakespeare of Italy, (1260-1321), upbraids the women of Florence, for their most visible breasts, “…le sfacciate donne fiorentine l’andar mostrando con le poppe il petto” – the shameless Florentine women who go around showing their breast with their boobs.

But I digress. Actually, the quickened evolution of clothing styles is coeval with the birth of capitalism, in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. That’s when fashion, as we know it, was born. The word ‘fashion’ derives from the old French ‘façon’, meaning appearance, pattern, design, etc.

From the mid-1200 onward, fashion was linked to a rapid change in the shape and color of dresses. At first, fashion was the monopoly of the upper-classes, but gradually it Reaganesquely trickled down, at least, among the ancient equivalent of today’s urbanized middle classes.

Coeval with the explosion of fashion is the birth of sumptuary laws throughout Europe, aimed at forbidding the ostentation of luxury. In women primarily, but not only,

“… for it is not vain-glory for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber.” (4)

In fact, ample literature (and paintings), prove that fashion affected both men and women. For example, in evaluating the attire of an English suitor, a Venetian lady says,

“How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behavior everywhere” (5)

Case history, in the enforcement of dress codes and sumptuary laws, has a connection with the burkini issue, though from a different angle. In 1278, after Bologna became part of the Papal state, sumptuary laws forbade ribbons and long trains of dresses, and imposed the use of a veil on women when in church. This caused frequent brawls between the people and the papal controllers.

Throughout the Venetian Republic sumptuary laws prohibited women from “hiding themselves under expensive and luxurious dresses.” In the city of Verona, the thus-repressed ladies commissioned local graffiti-artists to write on the walls “F…k the cuckholds who don’t see what goes on at home.” (bechi fotui no vedè quelo che gavè in casa). The inference being that the concern about verecund modesty displayed in church clashed with the morally-lax general way of living, hence making the sumptuary laws silly and hypocritical.

However, a more practical objective, besides the enforcement of modesty, was to restrain and reduce the outward display of class differences. History printed in official school books teaches us that class struggle was a 19th century phenomenon and a Russian syndrome. In reality, throughout the history of capitalism rebellions were bloody, fierce and frequent. For, while a small privileged elite lived in luxury, the coffers of the majority would “sound with hollow poverty and emptiness” (6)

But there were also practical reasons for discouraging elaborate and long dresses with trails. St. Bernardine from Siena warned from the pulpit,

“O ladies, tell me: what happens to her trail when a woman walks along the street? It raises dust, and in the winter it is soiled with mud. He who follows her breathes the incense she produces, which is rightly called the incense of the devil.”

Nor an elaborate dress, jewelry and make-up necessarily enhanced the sex appeal of the wearer. Latin writers were explicit in their criticism of gaudy and ostentatious dresses and ornaments. Ovid warns,

“… but you (women) don’t load your ears with the precious stones that an Indian negro gathers in green waters; nor show yourselves laden with gold-embroidered gowns. For your luxury cancels the appeal with which you would conquer us.”

Lambasting both fancy dresses and applied cosmetics, St. Ambrose says that women,

“From the adultery of the face they proceed to meditate on the adultery of their chastity.” A point on which Ambrose and Mohammed would have agreed.

Given the actual history then, the act of not disrobing at the beach seems almost an indirect act of compensation against female submission. Or rather, there is a clear link between fashion, bikinis and capitalism. Capitalism rates traditional attire and costumes as obstacles to marketing, for tradition implies lack of change and durability, antithetic to fashion, which is but market-induced obsolescence, promoted as a spontaneous change in taste.

And market is such a powerful force that,

“New customs,
Though they be ever so ridiculous,
Nay, let them be unmanly, yet they are followed.” (7)

In the end, removing a veil from Islamic women and a cover from their legs, hardly suggests female emancipation. Rather, it implies a submission to the market, a word that, in turn, implies male domination. For the market, especially in Western neoliberal society, is the quintessential user and exploiter of the female body. And legislators ought to distinguish what is established because it is right, from that which is right because it is established.

Personally,

“Old fashions please me best: I am not so nice,
To change true rules for odd inventions.” (8)

but, after this curious and politically induced interest in attires, I am tempted to change my mind and examine more carefully my outward appearance. Maybe I’ll follow the example of Richard III,

“I’ll be at charges for a looking glass
And entertain a score or two of tailors
To study fashions to adorn my body.
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with a little cost.” (9)

** 1. Othello
** 2. 3. Hamlet
** 4. Cymbeline
** 5. Merchant of Venice
** 6. King Henry IV, p.2
** 7. King Henry VIII
** 8. Taming of the Shrew
** 9. King Richard III

In the play (opening quote). Polonius gives his son Laertes a set of precepts to follow while in Paris.

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

Dispatches from
G a i t h e r
Stewart
European Correspondent • Rome

“Нужно иметь сердце, чтобы понять!”
(One needs heart to understand)

A Christ-like persona by Antonio Cavallucci.

In his novel, The Idiot, Dostoevsky wrote that beauty can save the world, admitting however that “beauty is difficult to judge … and is a riddle.” I would humbly add that the writer’s world-saving beauty must be accompanied by a major measure of innocence, precisely the innocence of the novel’s hero, Prince Myshkin. The Prince’s physical flaw, his epilepsy which was also Dostoevsky’s affliction, can be overlooked; in the eyes of bourgeois society of then and now Myshkin’s deplorable flaw is his innocence. In his late twenties, the last four years of which he has spent in a Swiss sanatorium, Myshkin has preserved many of his childhood qualities: he is naïve, impractical, compassionate and kind, because of which most of the novel’s adult characters consider him an idiot. In reality, Dostoevsky did not have in mind the innocence synonymous with naiveté or inexperience, but instead the innocence of the clean hands of virtue and morality.

The innocence I am considering here is precisely Myshkin’s innocence, the anonym of a more significant ignorance, not the ignorance of uneducated, unschooled, unlettered common people. I have in mind instead the ignorance of the sophisticated and educated elite, the specialists, the ignorance of our political and economic leaders and masters who are morally ignorant, incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, who, for example, foolishly attempt to separate wealth and culture in the belief in a “creative aristocracy” born from wealth. In his Western Cannon of literature Harold Bloom recalls that “the power to originate is an individual gift.” Originality has nothing to do with social station.

As did Dostoevsky, I have linked beauty and innocence because the quality of innocence I have in mind is no less than the very essence of beauty. Therefore, by the same token, no redeeming beauty can be authentic and enduring without that measure of innocence which qualifies it. In short, genuine beauty cannot exist without innocence.

Innocence/beauty in turn is interrelated with truth. In the Russian master’s story, Prince Myshkin notes the child’s trusting nature and extraordinary truthfulness: “Do you know that a great deal can be forgiven you for that alone?” Children and simple unschooled persons resort to the little “white lie”, slyly, they believe in their naiveté, convinced they are fooling you.

But the educated ignorant, the uneducated educated, as exemplified by the Liberal elite, politicians and presidents and corporate executives, who, in order to gain office or position and enrich themselves, are not in the least troubled as to whether or not they are believed or if their lies are uncovered. The truth bothers the modern educated ignorant who prefer fakery and sham. Such is the impudence of their moral ignorance. In such “educated ignorance” there is no perception, no inkling whatsoever of the existence/imminence of a class struggle in the USA, a reality in fact little known in the world at large.

As T.S. Eliot wrote in The Information Age:

Where is the Life we have lost in living
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information

Innocence of the moral sort instead is part of and belongs to, I suspect, that “thing”, das Ding, which we search for all our lives, that indefinable and elusive thing that has no name, yet which is a remnant of something that remains in you the former child but which, as Dostoevsky notes, never emerges from your brain, although you perceive its presence and try and try to pinpoint it and, in the end, you may come to suspect it is perhaps the essence of yourself. In his manner Prince Myshkin says that “the feeling of intense beatitude makes the moment (of that feeling) worth a lifetime.” In order to express his feeling that there is something else, something haunting and mysterious in us, Dostoevsky’s protagonist in Notes From The Underground screams “No!” to “two and two make four”. But what is that thing? It is comforting to know that it is something more than the self-sufficing Reason of the Liberal bourgeoisie and their (false) morality. Dostoevsky believed that that something—that thing that concerns you alone—whatever it is, should suffice for salvation. In the meantime he proposes that it is the free will to choose or reject the logical as well as the illogical that makes mankind human.

In the same spirit, Kierkegaard finds that “we confound loss of naiveté (a developmental change) with loss of innocence (a spiritual failing). While each person is fated to lose naiveté, no person loses innocence by developmental necessity. Each person loses innocence by his or her own hand in freedom. For William Blake, as for Soren Kierkegaard, innocence is neither an original perfection that is swept away by experience, nor a half‐state waiting for its complement. Instead, anxious innocence is the “possibility of possibility,” the starting and end point of the individual’s journey of self‐discovery.

Inevitably, however, innocence is related to childhood, before it is marred by life experience where innocence encounters immorality and evil. The quality of experience in life as we grow older is then the problem, the hurdle to be overcome in order to maintain even a grain of innocence, the grain that contains the authentic world. The often negative moral quality of experience as inculcated by parents, relatives and friends, the degenerated morality of schools and religions, of lived life weighs heavy. How many times can the innocent child recite public prayers, pronounce the pledge of allegiance and sing the Star Spangled Banner and not lose bits of innocence and gradually, degree-by-degree, succumb to the lie that the USA is an exceptional land and is therefore permitted to commit crimes forbidden to others.

Arrived at this point, I can now look briefly at William Blake, the eighteenth century artist—poet, painter and musician—who created a world around the journey from innocence to experience. Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience of 1794 (a collection of poems composed and illustrated by Blake himself on a theme that must have occupied him for many years) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression. (Wikipedia). Childhood is a state of protected innocence gradually impinged on by a corrupt world and the oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes, i.e. by “experience”, the state in which childhood innocence diminishes, in most people a near total loss. The poet’s collection explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world: innocence or experience/ignorance. Many of his poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen through the lens of innocence first and then experience, both of which are seen by Blake as “definitions of consciousness”.

In particular, Blake’s innocence opposes despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual repression, and institutionalized religion; his innocents are forever on the side of the losers. His great insight, his “vision”, is into the way these separate modes of control work together to squelch what is most holy in human beings: the innate innocence before the Fall. Blake’s Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and trace their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. The poet draws attention to the positive aspects of natural human understanding prior to the corruption of experience. The Songs of Experience lament the ways in which the experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence. Experience thus adds a layer to innocence that darkens its original hopeful vision.

Dostoevsky’s Myshkin has retained much of his innocence and therefore, like real innocents in real life, is considered odd, naïve and ignorant by others who are already branded by “experience” and are just muddling through life in a world in which innocence dies away while the great majority of people, ignorant of their former childhood innocence, strives to toe the line and be like others.

Gaither Stewart

Our Senior Editor based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was recently published by Punto Press.

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BY KIM PETERSEN

Bill Blum

Respected writer William Blum understands US hegemony and imperialism on a global scale. In his important book Rogue State, he provided a comprehensive account of US imperialism around the world.

Recently, Blum wrote a trenchant article that compellingly ridiculed the nonsense that Donald Trump is a greater evil than Barack Obama. Blum tore the veneer off the Democratic Party and corporate media’s hypocritical demonization of Trump. As a clincher, Blum finishes his piece with sarcasm: “And if you like Barack Obama you’ll love Hillary Clinton.”

Trump, Obama, and Clinton are three evils. Of the three, Trump is the lesser evil. What is important is that come election time, the ballot is not confined to a lesser-evilist choice. The Green Party’s Jill Stein is not evil.

In the otherwise excellent piece by Blum appears a paragraph that I find superficial, void of historical validity, and above all, it seems to be repeating indoctrinating patterns typical of Islamophobia:

Obama’s declaration that ISIS “has nothing to do with Islam”. This is standard political correctness which ignores the indisputable role played by Islam in inspiring Orlando and Long Beach and Paris and Ankara and many other massacres; it is the religion that teaches the beauty and godliness of Jihad and the heavenly rewards of suicide bombings.

Does Islam play a role? Blinkered proponents of US and Israeli imperialism consistently blame Islam for the commission of terrorist acts. Blum is not such a proponent. However, framing Islam as “the religion that teaches the beauty and godliness of Jihad and the heavenly rewards of suicide bombings” decidedly opinionated and pre-restructured approach that deliberately ignores the Islamic teachings of peace.1 If Islam is the motivating source for terrorism, then how does Blum explain that there was not any act of so-called Jihadist terrorism in the period 1945-1967 (from the end of WWII until the Israeli war against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan)?

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ogically therefore, Arabs, be they mixed Christian and Muslim (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine once lead by the late Christian Orthodox George Habash; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by the Catholic-Marxist Nayef Hawatmeh) or predominately Muslim (such as Hamas and Hezbollah) have all used violence as counter measures to the US and Israeli violence. To call their violence “terrorism” while calling western and Israeli violence a “responsibility to protect or humanitarian intervention” [2] is an utmost act of malediction.

As for the word “Jihad” [used to express a struggle for anything (life, work, family) — including, of course, the early Islamic struggle to spread the word of Allah (God Almighty in Arabic)] — there is a story to tell. After the defeat of the crusaders in Syria in 1187, the word was used sporadically by the Ottoman Turks to recruit Muslims for the conquest of Europe. Politically that word generally disappeared from the popular usage (except from national movements seeking to use Islam as a rallying cry of battle as in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighting the occupiers of Palestine) until former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Wahhabi Saudi regime resurrected it to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Surprisingly, unmentioned in Blum’s piece is the “teachings” of violence by Blum’s people [3] in the Torah or the Bible’s teachings of violence. For example, do the teachings of Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim that it is okay to rape Gentile women represent an indisputable role of Judaism that teaches the beauty and godliness of raping non-Jews or does it represent individual extremism based on lopsided interpretation?

Representation of Saladin in a 14th century gravure. There are no reliable images of Saladin, but it is clear he was an extraordinary military and political leader, magnanimous in victory and noted for his generosity. The West has never produced a leader of such moral caliber.

I am very familiar with the greetings exchanged by Muslims: “As-Salaam-Alaikum” (“peace be upon you”) and “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam” (“and peace upon you”). I know peace to be emphasized by Islam. However, just like in the Bible where one finds invocations to peace, one also finds commands to commit violence. I asked if Blum had read the Qur’an, but he did not reply to this question. I asked if he had lived in a Muslim land? To this he did not reply either. I humbly submit that I have read the Bible, Qur’an, hadiths, and The Life of Mohammed among other texts. I have lived a number of years in Muslim countries. In Jordan and Egypt, Muslim people proudly recited stories to me of the prowess, tolerance, and virtue of the Muslim sultan and military leader Saladin who defeated the Crusaders, retook Al Quds (Jerusalem), and showed great mercy to his Christian and Jewish opponents. However, I am far from an expert on Islam.

I wrote to William Blum.

Kim Petersen: I just have to add since you took on Islam that your article would have read less tendentious if you had noted that the Bible’s God smites first born children, urges God-fearing people to commit genocide, condemns homosexuals, etc, etc — the point being that Christianity has nothing over Islam.

William Blum: But one is carrying out horrible terrorism today, even as we speak, threatening you and I. The other is ancient, ancient history. If in fact it ever happened.

KP: With all due respect, are the predominantly Christian nations not carrying out horrible terrorism today? And does not state terrorism dwarf retail terrorism?

And to be clear, it is not a religion carrying out acts; it is supposed adherents of the religion carrying out the acts in the name of their God/Allah/Yahweh. All are deplorable.

Blum responded in the email separately to each of my above preceding paragraphs.

WB: The Christian nations are horribly violent, but they do not purposely bomb crowded restaurants, or behead people, or purposely destroy ancient buildings, or ban education for women, sex and music.

It’s the teachings of Islam that inspire the Islamic terrorists to carry out Jihad and suicide bombings. Why else are they doing these things? If they hate US foreign policy why don’t they attack US military installations and American embassies, not people and targets with no connection whatsoever to any government. That’s terrorism by definition.

KP, additional comment: “If they hate US foreign policy why don’t they attack US military installations and American embassies”: They do, for example, the 1983 bombing of a US military installation in Lebanon demonstrates, but it does not matter what the target is: any act of resistance to the primordial acts of violence, even by a foreign interloper will be labeled terrorism. This is a label that is not applied by the same corporate media to the aggression of the US or its western acolytes.

Moreover, Blum seems in contradiction with himself. Earlier he blamed US violence rather than Islamic teachings for terrorism.

Why do terrorists hate America enough to give up their lives in order to deal the country such mortal blows? Of course it’s not America the terrorists hate; it’s American foreign policy. It’s what the United States has done to the world in the past half century — all the violence, the bombings, the depleted uranium, the cluster bombs, the assassinations, the promotion of torture, the overthrow of governments, and more. The terrorists — whatever else they might be — are also rational human beings; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States. [4]

It is assessment with which I agree.

Next, I respond sequentially to each of two preceding paragraphs where Blum writes 1) that Christians do not purposely commit horrible acts and 2) Islamic teachings serve as a fillip to terrorism.

KP: Christian nations do not drop nuclear weapons on civilian cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)? Do not firebomb civilian cities (Tokyo, Dresden)? Do not place a city under siege and bombard it (Fallujah)? Lynch and scalp non-White peoples? Purposely destroy hospitals (Afghanistan), the cultural heritage of a country (Iraq)?

Christianity and its teachings, as self-servingly interpreted by zealous western Christians, are deeply permissive and supportive of the West’s capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism that have caused far more destruction and death than a revanchist Islam that rose in resistance to western hegemony and terrorism. Based on available literature, it is known that Al Qaeda is a response to US military in Saudi Arabia and US support of Israel’s slow motion genocide (state terrorism) against Palestinians and their neighbors. Daesh was spawned by US militarism against Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

*****

I could have listed plenty more examples of murderous US imperialism, but I am talking to the expert on the topic. See Blum’s Master List.

Moreover, persuasive evidence suggests that Daesh is a US creation to further discredit Islam thus giving US imperialism more pretexts to attack Muslims.

I am in solidarity with the bulk of what Blum writes. He is exceptional when it comes to perfidious American policy and actions abroad. However, blaming Islam for the acts carried out by people is misdirection. Accounts vary somewhat, but in general, Muslims believe the Qur’an is Allah’s word relayed by the archangel Jibreel (Gabriel) who enabled the illiterate prophet Mohammed to read Allah’s message. Each person derives the meaning of the verses through his own interpretation or acceptance of another’s interpretation.

It is entirely possible that Islamic “teachings” can be bent to inspire/manipulate men into violent acts, but it is entirely possible that benevolent “teachings” of Islam can draw people toward peace. There are several ideologies that can be warped to untoward ends among susceptible people.

However, in the absence of imperialist evil wreaked against them, would these people professing to be Muslims have been inspired/manipulated into violent reprisals?

And why is religion or an ideology being used to spur people to violence? If the radicalized teachings are a reaction to injustices against a people, it seems unreasonable to focus blame on a religion rather than the injustices that brought about the radicalized teachings.

Nonetheless, whatever is cited as a motivating factor, the acts are solely the responsibility of the perpetrators of the acts.

People who claim to be Christians have launched crusades, set up Inquisitions to fight heresy, wrote Papal Bulls to allow dispossessing non-Christian Indigenous peoples of their territory, and started world wars, among other grave crimes. People professing to be Christians continue, to the present day, to wreak genocidal wars throughout the world.

I have no intention to indict any religion because the main issue is those who use religions as alibis for their actions and policy.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are beliefs. People choose to adhere to whichever one of these monotheisms (or other theisms) based on faith — or are more likely believe they were divinely led to the true belief. All three of these monotheistic religions contain “teachings” of violence and peace. Thus, to ascribe terrorism solely to the “teachings” of one religion is biased and wrong; and it leads to questions as to what is the interior motive driving such summary judgement without addressing the basic issues that generate terrorism.

To iterate, it is plain wrongheaded to criticize Islam – and Islam exclusively among religions – for spurring terrorism. To gain understanding, it is crucial to put terrorism and violence in proper context since terrorism against the West did not arise out of a vacuum. Neither does the Qur’an instruct Muslims to attack friendly nations. So-called Jihadist terrorism is in response to the far greater preceding terrorism and unremitting oppression from the Christian West and the Jewish Israel. By way of simple analogy, if someone punches you in the face without reason, and you punch that person back, yes, you used violence, but who deserves greater condemnation: the initiator of violence or you who responded to the violence with violence? Or should you and the initiator of violence be equally condemned? And if you had turned the other cheek to the person who first punched you, what lesson would that impart? Would the perpetrator be deterred from punching you again?

Finally, among religions, it is predominantly — and unquestionably — the nations and people that profess Christian beliefs that have wreaked and spawned the most horrific terrorism throughout history, including today. Nonetheless, I do not believe Christian “teachings” have much to do with US genocide against Arabs. US elitists are spurred by greed for control of resources, territory, information, and power. When elitists use religion, nationalism, and terrorism against other peoples to kill, rob, occupy, humiliate, and oppress them, why place the culpatory focus on the violence in resistance to the initial violence of forces manipulated by western elitists? The victims of violence, of course, must be accorded the right to resist violence. [5]

ENDNOTES

1. See Peter Standring, “Koran a Book of Peace, Not War, Scholars Say,” National Geographic Today 25 September 2001. Karen Armstrong, “The True, Peaceful Face Of Islam,” Time, 23 September 2001.
2. To be clear, Blum does not mislabel western interventionism.
3. In Blum’s recent article, he writes “… in the immortal words of my people — a schmuck!” Emphasis added.
4. William Blum, “Why Terrorists Hate America,” Third World Traveler. Daesh are terrorists, yes?
5. I explain here: “Progressivist Principles and Resistance,” Dissident Voice, 27 September 2010.