Monotheists and other head cases

American policy on British foundations with Israeli enforcement is the fuel for Islamic fundamentalism. So while Bin Laden isn't a nice guy, he was also not a nice guy when Washington decided to train and arm him against the soviets. Nor or any of the oil sheiks we do business with nice guys. And not all of them are jihadists.

Where was Islamic Jihad in 1948 when Israel was forced on the world? Who were the terrorists then? Where was Islamic Jihad in 1953 when the US and their partners in crime overthrew the democratic government in Iran for British Petroleum? Where was angry Islamic extremism when the British carved the middle east up into some of the stupidest borders one could ever imagine, stupid unless of course, one wanted to keep the Arab countries down and easy to pillage?

And why have westerners acted thus? Because they've been after oil, and other natural resources or strategic advantages, for a hundred years already, maybe longer. Just because the locus of power shifted from GB to the US doesn't mean anything, doesn't mean the fundamentally racist policy or the impact of it has changed. The same corporate interests operate in both places across decades, and in other colonizing European countries as well.

This is aggression. It is designed to have impact on entire societies. And it has.

We are the aggressor. We, the west with our "Christian" values. And we have had enormous impact with our actions on undeveloped nations and the people in them.

We've been invading these people for HUNDREDS of years. And we have come back in the 20th and 21st century with a vengeance and a thirst for oil and profit from hawking weapons that would have been impossible to imagine for the old Catholic crusaders, evil as they were.

Pieces of this ststem are visible in how economic pressures the American the ruling class apply to the American middle class pan out. We act against our own interests, some of us anyway, and that is what they want us to do. Then they don't have to shoot us. We can just be, in effect, slaves to their system.

Fundamentalism. Right wing politics. Extremism. Fox News. How easily manipulatable we are. Waste our energy on stopping the homosexual "menace". What a bunch of crap. How about the corporate menace that is destroying the country while the religious right supports it because it validates their homophobia?

We blame Muslims for our fear instead of our own government. We blame Muslims instead of our own policies.

This is the signature piece of your white man revolution. How our founders turned early Americans against the natives, against the slaves, who actually shared more of their class interests. Brilliant stuff, really. This is the same.
The Muslims aren't the problem.

The problem is, in part, conspicuous over consumption of everything, most of all oil, and what some governments are willing to do to keep it like that. The Problem is greed. Materialism.

We are in THEIR countries with our armies.
They are in our countries as refugees, just like all those Mexican people keep facing death in the desert because OUR TRADE POLICIES create the necessity for them to leave their homes and families.

Every time I criticize Bush or our policies or Israel some man jumps up and starts screaming how Muslims abuse women. I am astounded at the irony, hypocrisy, ignorance and narcissism of these men.

As a woman I would hate to live in Saudi Arabia or Vatican City or within any group of fundie male monotheists or plain old unadorned patriarchs of any gender, creed, race or location including orthodox jews and Zionist nut cases. Or Corporatist Fucks, the modern fascists. I would not last long among any of them.

Distinctions made between them do not resonate with me. They are all much more alike than different from each other, because they all value most their own power and own capacity to assert control over other people and say they're right and say they interpret god and the constitution correctly while everyone else is wrong.

They make religious faith look like narcissistic personality disorder.
They equate love with obedience and subservience. They pretend there is order where chaos reigns. They pretend there are answers to questions that are not answerable. They do not value all life equally at all. They have no concept of justice. They are willing to steal, murder, maim, lie.

Bashing Muslims is the sport of the day in the west now, and accusing Muslims of more misogyny or more violence than the other male monotheists people do is one of the main modes of the bashers.

I am well aware of how certain Muslims treat women. I am well aware of the clitorodectomy, the veiled face, the gang rapes, the general oppression and abuse. But that isn't Islam any more than snake dancing is Christianity. However, that is the image of Islam Bush promotes and it is the image of Islam the Pope promotes and it is the image of Islam the zionist trolls promote and the head case religious right promotes and it is the distinction promoted by the vast world wide "defense industry" and the greedy, world destroying oil industry who presently has their finger on the trigger of the American military..

The distinction I make is I completely and vehemently reject male monotheism and its values of hierarchy, colonization of others, control of others, pain over pleasure, lies, death, rigidity and delusional concepts of order, made up history, rejection of any kind of multi-polar world and its racism, classicism, misogyny, homophobia.

Muslim fundamentalist attitudes toward women make me sick. But then so do Christian fundamentalist attitudes. And corporate attitudes. And Orthodox attitudes. And Hindus who burn women alive when the women get in the way. And Chinese who commit infanticide against female babies.
I see little difference between people in these groups. They are all the same. Muslim extremists are no more extreme than any other extremists. They're just in the spot light.

The US is not just responsible for the destabilization of Iraq, but of the whole middle east. It has been destabilizing the region for at least 50 years, maybe more. And all those dead Arabs, be they in Iraq or Palestine or wherever else, are dead because of western gluttony and inattention to reality. I hate the murder of an old nun or a young one or anyone. I hate the murder of the Iraqis and the Palestinians and the Israeli children forced to "fight" for the Israeli Zionist cuckoos like Olmert, and Lebanese and other Arabs and Africans and poor in NOLA etc., day in and day out just as much.

Societies that have been occupied and colonized and abused from the outside for generations are bound to react to that stress. What's going on in the middle east is more than a reflection of Islam or the cultures of the Islamic countries. It also reflects what the west has been doing there. Those societies are under siege. They behave like they are under siege. They are increasingly fundamentalist and extreme. It's like post traumatic stress disorder for nation states.

Oppression incites religious extremism and fundamentalism. We've been abusing these people for a long time. It isn't that they are violent and they abuse women and we don't. Remember, we deployed an atomic bomb on civilian populations, Israel is the 4th biggest military on the planet, violence against women is epidemic here and when the west began the last round of crusades in the early 20th century American women were not able to vote.

Arabs are no more violent than anyone else. The present violence occurring in the middle east is bound to western - and Israel is western - colonization of the place, not anything inherent in Islam or their cultures. It reflects their lack of options. And even given that, most of them behave pretty damn well.

It is all of a piece. It is all the same values system be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Anglo Saxon, Persian. It teaches that some people are superior to other people. It is patriarchy. That's the problem.

We all know what Saudi Arabia is, but it isn't a creation of Islam. It is a creation of Britain. Exactly where did this country come from and when and why? And how did such rotten bastards as the Saud family get put in charge of all that oil?
Moderate Muslims have been fleeing Saudi Arabia for years to get away from it. Of course, not everyone has the option to flee.

I don't recognize the christian or jewish version of monotheism as superior to Islam.
They are all bad. The christian fundies who shriek loudest here don't have social and governmental control at this point. It's political and historical, maybe it's a political and historical accident, that they don't, but boy WHEN THEY DID look at how they governed. Crusades, Inquisitions, Genocides, Etc.

Christian government. How is it different from Islamic theocracy?
How much blood was spilled to Christianize Europe? How about to Christianize native Americans or Africans? How free were women? Would there be Islamic theocracy in Iran right now without western interference?

For at least a hundred years we've been sabotaging those countries. Influencing their development. What if we'd been invaded and colonized in 1907? What would Christianity be doing? How would women be treated? How are women treated now? There is epidemic violence against women here. This is the consequence for not being barefoot and pregnant and veiled and submissive to the control of some man.

Monotheism is nasty toward women. Monotheism is nasty toward human beings. It wants to relegate them to orders. It opposes equality and values death more than life. It is horrifying. The degree of control monotheism is able to assert varies from place to place and time to time, but it is still nasty toward women.