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Wednesday, September 8, 2010

a comment on The Agenda's episode on terrorism

I love the Agenda on TVO, it always teaches me something new. On the blog Re: The Agenda's episode, "A path to homegrown terrorism", I posted this comment:

As a Lebanese, Arabic on days when Arabic regimes are respecting Lebanon, I'm trying to understand terrorism and noticed inaccuracies in western media in the process. Arabs include several religions, subcultures. Acknowledging only the majority culture, Muslims, is a sign of colonial thinking. Western colonizers used to think, a 100 years ago, that anyone form outside their world is second class citizen. They sought out uniformity in their culture and thought Christianity was exclusive to them, and to their converts in colonies. Even today, some westerners think we're pandering to the them when we tell them we're Arabic Christians!! Centuries ago a regime from the south of the Arabic peninsula had these same colonial beliefs: if you weren't one of them, it was a serious flaw. They too had technological superiority, but also a knack for assimilating surrounding peaceful cultures. Luckily that assimilation was incomplete, and that's why some diversity survived in the Arabic world. Colonizers from the east and west don't differ from each other, but together they differ from small peaceful cultures. My point is that it's not Islam or an Arabic identity that generates terrorism, but the residuals of having been a colonial power in the past. Maybe some individuals inherited an aggressive sense of entitlement from a past colonial power from the south of the Arabic peninsula. Picture a dangerous nostalgia in other nations, 3 centuries from now: a faction of American extremists would resent the world because the USA is no longer a superpower. Would Christianity have anything to do with it if these are Christians? Saudi Arabia is accused by some Lebanese even today, of reviving Saudi colonial times through their control of a Banana Republic in Lebanon, a corrupt and destructive banana republic also supported by the US. Colonial minds think alike? and is it colonial thinking, and not religion that breeds a violent sense of entitlement.

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