The West Just Don’t Understand
The Western world is a lot like the typical parent. You know how a lot of parents do drugs, are promiscuous, raise a lot of hell and have so much fun in their youth? And then, when they get older, they settle down, put on a suit and tie, get a job, join a church, and start believing in stuff like morality and traditional values? And tell their kids, “Son, drugs are bad. Save yourself before marriage. Be a good American.”
Well, the West is all grown up now and is all for “truth, justice, freedom, and peace”. That’s all well and good, but damnit, let the rest of the world have its share of fun too. Let us have our invasions, our killing off of indigenous peoples, our genocides, revolutions, and exploitations. Then when we’ve made it, and are in positions of power and authority, when we’re all grown up and done “developing”, we can be responsible parents too.
I can’t tell you how many pieces of white trash sit in their castles and bemoan how unjust and hostile the world is to them. And how the violence they perpetrate is only for the good of the world. At least tell the truth you liars - your jihad is for the Almighty Dollar. The Dollar is the Greatest! You arm dictators and then tell your people how they need to be taken out - you profit from the buildup as well as the destruction. And you don’t give a damn about freedom or independent thought - it’s a pat on the head to your sheepish, lazy, corrupt people so you can continue to rape them. And you have amnesia about the blood on your hands. Listen, Dad, if I’m gonna kill someone, I’d rather do it for God than gold. Hell I’d rather do it for art than gold.
I know some people will read this and take it as a hatred of all Western society, but that’s not the case. I am a child of the West too, and I know that my brothers and sisters are ordinary people, just as gullible as any Mozlems living in the East - they want to believe in something, something to fight for, something to die for as well. But see, what your parents didn’t tell you was that they’ve already done that for centuries. They just don’t want any blacks in their neighborhood now. Some of you are smart enough not to believe your parents, but you will be branded as a “traitor” to your family. Others of you are so childish you can’t think past the person who is feeding you, and are willing to die for their benefit.
If someone like Gandhi told the world to lay down their arms, I respect that. At least he was sincere about what he believed. If someone like Dubbya does it, hell no. Not until he does. Lol every parent thinks they can act retarded and demand perfection from their kids. Until these irresponsible and hypocritical parents can stop being so disgustingly adult, the teenage rebellion continues, and the parents can just eat it.
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June 1st, 2008 at 6:03 am
that was one sexy post!loved it haha!masalaama sis:)
June 1st, 2008 at 7:40 am
This post undermines the hell out of itself.
June 1st, 2008 at 8:28 am
huh?
if i get what you’re saying, it’s cool - i just write however the hell i feel like at any given time - sometimes it’s proper, sometimes its a rant - id rather do it that way than fake it
i was pissed off today :D
June 1st, 2008 at 9:36 am
“i was pissed off today :D”
You scare me- is that a psychotic smile? :) I hope it wasn’t anything serious insha Allah.
“…the West is all grown up now…”
“That’s all well and good, but damnit, let the rest of the world have its share of fun too.”
“when we’re all grown up and done “developing”, we can be responsible parents too.”
All these statements basically elaborate the premise of your argument, ‘the West is all grown up, a good parent’ etc. My point is that the premise of this argument is extremely problematic, not just historically, but religiously, morally, and so on, as well. It’s all about ‘teleology’. This assumption is the raison d’etre of so many evils things in the world, from ‘Modernism’ (the fiqhi kind) to Colonialism. If the ‘West’ is a benevolent father-figure, says the ‘mission civilatrice’, it is obliged to discipline, to punish and to reform the recalcitrant and stupid ‘children’ of ‘the East’.
Ibn Khaldun famously said, ‘ad-Da`ifu yashtabihu bi’l Qawiyy’ i.e. the weak imitate the strong. Once we internalise, as many muslims have done, the superiority of anything over and above Islam, whether we do it tacitly and implicitly (which is weakness and cowardice) or explicitly and unashamedly (which is kufr), we, as an ummah, are doomed. ‘The West’ is only more ‘developed’, more ‘civilised’ etc than the Muslim world in a material sense, nothing more. Many people mistakenly conflate material development with other kinds; thus we hear from some that parts of Islam are ‘backward’, ‘barbaric’ etc.
So you’re telling the ‘West’ to leave us alone is akin to the moody teen telling the parent to ’stay off his back’- in other words, the parent, ultimately, is right, his objections are valid ones, the ‘child’ is simply stupid and immature etc. That analogy is impossible to maintain, religiously speaking. It implies that somehow the Muslim world will ‘grow up’, becoming more like the Western world, that some if its ‘unpalatable’ views are outgrowths of childhood and nothing more. You have to realise that for the ‘West’, Islam in its pure form is the relic of a dead age, an anachronism. There are so many things from this religion that people aren’t able to accept without struggle, from the belief in jinn to the idea that a person can be stoned for adultery or crucified for hirabah. Those people, whether they confess it or not, at some (profound) level subscribe to this notion you have described- to this particular teleology of civilisation, according to which ‘Western’ man is the greatest, most developed etc and Islam is ‘backwards’ etc.
Augustine of Hippo wrote that everyone, even the most depraved and jingoistic, desires peace. The problem, however, is that each wants it on his own terms. The ‘West’ wants ‘peace’, but at this moment in time it seems like the peace of subjection- Pax Americana. As for those who defend their homes against the hegemony of foreigners- they desire peace on different terms, a peace which the ‘West’ hasn’t yet been able to accept.
None of this is an indictment of you, I’m not accusing you of anything but of remissness where your argument is concerned; there is a lot to be said for examining the presuppositions of an argument.
Must be all that Papa John’s ;)
June 1st, 2008 at 9:40 am
My guess is that you read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ at high school or something, and fell in love with it. Am I right?
You must have read it eighty-two times or something. That kills me.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:45 am
Whoa! that WAS a little harsh, but I guess the truth is bitter, afterall! Good one.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:54 am
“id rather do it that way than fake it”
So that makes me a phoney, does it? :D
Your obsession with ‘authenticity’ is puerile ;)
The difference between what I’m saying and what you are is a difference of degree, not one of kind. All art is artifice- any piece of writing is ‘unnatural’, ‘inauthentic’ etc in that it interposes something between thought/feeling/sensation and the description of it.
The idea that a piece of art is just ‘there’, exists without pretension or mediation is self-undermining, as I intend to show.
‘Modernism’ (the literary kind ;) ) as a whole purported to give us a more ‘authentic’ representation of ‘life’ than previous literary forms. To them, Dickens etc were full of pretense, they did not present ‘real life’, only a bowdlerized, heavily-mediated and ‘inauthentic’ kind.
In response you had everything from ‘Imagism’ to ‘Futurism’, all of which claimed to dissolve every boundary between ‘art’ and ‘life’. In the worst cases, this new aesthetic was disastrous- grammar, syntax and even punctuation were all deemed ‘artificial’ and discarded. Try and read ‘Tender Buttons’ and tell me what you think.
In discussions of the differences between ‘art’ and ‘life’ one is reminded of a memorable passage from Nordau’s ‘Degeneration’, which is hilarious, if nothing else. I can scan it in, if you wish.
Yours artificially,
WM
June 1st, 2008 at 9:59 am
See? Even your artistic sincerity is thoroughly inconsistent. Notice how the humble apostrophe is abandoned whereas the hyphen is left in.
;)
June 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am
Whoops, just realised your comment was addressed to the sister’s, not to mine!
Regardless, the point/s still stand/s.
June 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am
omg i hate the non-ability to edit comments! (i cant even edit my own comments)
no, no, my “huh” was towards you - that sis was easy to understand lol (i thought you were talking about the original post?)
your point about the analogy is good - i mean if someone took the analogy all the way, that america IS literally the parent or raised to a role of guardianship - let me clarify i didnt mean it obviously that america deserves to be the parent or that we subjugate ourselves to it - i just meant it is LIKE the parent who has time to “develop”, mature, etc. and settle while in its youth did “unsavory” things - and then tries to tell others not to do unsavory things; another analogy would be the drug dealer who does shady things to become rich and then tries to pretend he is so sophisticated and that he is now a “respectable” part of upper class society and condemns the small-time pusher in the streets
“My guess is that you read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ at high school or something, and fell in love with it. Am I right?”
what the hell! how did you know that? the teenage rebellion thing? the insistence on not being fake lol? but i read it as an adult - you dont understand i was seriously any day now gonna write a long blurb about it - i love that kid
“That kills me.” :)
June 1st, 2008 at 11:29 am
“how did you know that?”
Simple. You’re predictable :D
June 1st, 2008 at 11:40 am
Lets not bring Papa Johns into this.