Letters to the Editor, November 28, 2003

Thank the Lord for your lives, for the peace and tranquility that you are living in and the feign democracy and liberty/freedoms that your forefathers wished for your nation.

I would like to THANK YOU all for your struggles, your fight and commitment to spread the Truth and see justice done, not only in your own Nation, but those further afield who are at present being brutalised. You have compassionately and unselfishly, taken it upon yourselves to take on with sympathy and understanding, their just fight. That is what I am very grateful for. That is what Thanksgiving should be about- to recognise the misfortunes of others, to do what you can to help them and to celebrate that acknowledgement and achievement and be thankful for small mercies.

If some backward, mediaevally-minded ruler or government wants to further insult the status of women and get away with it -- with at least passive support or an absence of active opposition -- in a country where the only common medium of discourse available happens to be the Qu'ran, what is that ruler or government going to do?

Is the ruler or government going to say: "Look: Kinder, Kuche und Kirche is my thing, the Third Reich is my model, that's the way it's gonna be, now blow it out your ear"? I think not. I rather think such a regime would invoke an endless stream of selectively quotable material from the one source that the entire society places beyond dispute. Think of it as the equivalent in a Muslim society of forcing one's opposition to "put a sock in it".

The problem really lies neither with Islamic belief, nor Islamic scripture (Qu'ran), nor yet even with the alleged complicity of Muslim men in keeping Muslim women subordinate. The problem begins rather with the reactionary intention of such rulers and governments. The impact of that intention is compounded many, many, many times over by manipulating the monopoly that the Qu'ran would enjoy by default in such countries and circumstances.

After my blood pressure returns to normal, the chauvinist assumption that Western societies are light-years ahead of Muslim ones in affording civil and political rights to women frankly breaks me up. I wonder how empowered those expectant mothers of the late 1950s and early 1960s were feeling in Germany, Britain, Canada, the U.S. and other advanced first-world countries after giving birth to severely-deformed children as a result of having accepted their doctor's advice without question and taken thalidomide for their nausea?

Fine: these women had the "freedom" not to take the drug --- but they were bombarded from all corners with "the best scientific advice available" telling them they would be crazy not to. Meanwhile, no one remembered to add to any of this advice that the active element in thalidomide had indeed been isolated by Nazi scientists a generation earlier, looking into developing sterilisation pills to administer to female political prisoners.

Medical advice presented in a manner precluding the possibility of informed consent is dictate disguised as "advice". When it operates effectively to annul any exercise of reproductive rights and responsibilities, such denial of the possibility of informed consent is simply criminal. Hundreds of millions in compensation claims by the hundreds of victims or their families were eventually settled around the globe. But there was never any prosecution of those who selected, or approved further up the line the selection of, the original fascist-era research sources for what became thalidomide's R&D profile.

"Modernisation of Islam", "more alternative media" etc. will not address let alone solve any of the issues being cited as "problems". Political action starting with the women themselves will, but launching let alone sustaining such acts of collective self-determination have to overcome a huge hurdle. This hurdle is created precisely by the so-called well-wishers seeking to foist bankrupt, irrelevant or largely negative schemes for "modernisation of Islam" and "more alternative media" as a substitute for the struggle for self-determination. What has made these nostrums especially poisonous in our day is the fact that CIA, MI5, Mossad etc. are not at all slow in exploiting these "modern"-sounding solutions as Trojan horses for an agenda of domination and plunder of others.

I would not argue that Islam is responsible for this unfairness towards women. I would instead be more likely to suggest that it is an older, less rational, way of life. Without claiming superiority, the western world has already evolved from the old-fashion views—which you justify. Choice is ultimate freedom. I respect the conditions and morals of the Koran deeply. And, you appear to agree with the text which states that "No where in the Koran are women supposed to be treated like second class citizens[...]"

So why not promote new this new thinking? Why not create a new standard or morals. Allow there to be middle-eastern role-models which represent this view. A daughter can have the unbiased exposure to either side to and at one point in her life make her own decision. From my sheltered, but well-read experience I feel as though there is not enough choice given to women in the Middle East. And contrary to many beliefs and clichés, the majority of us do not blame it on Islam, one just feels uncomfortable in our situation seeing our past—the same mistake being not something you are doing, but something you are not doing. And that is by promoting choice, to avoid any submission, naïve to other acceptable possibilities.

I do not side with George W Bush. I greatly sympathize and back with the Palestinian struggle. I also intend on spending much of my life devoted to the African Aids crisis. My hope with this letter is that I may in return be clarified on this issue, or understand it better.

Editor: There is nothing wrong with the discussion itself. The timing and the ones who are raising it must attract our attention. Are these just innocent calls from people who like Muslims and wish them good? Or the whole thing is that it is part of a media campaign to justify invasions and wars being launched on Muslim lands, like what Gary Zatsman has observed in the last sentence of his above comments?

To the people of Iraq, Gulf War II is like Pearl Harbor -- or like Wounded Knee.

Thanksgiving originated here approximately one thousand years ago. Out of charity, some Wampanoag Indians invited some Pilgrims to their traditional Thanksgiving feast. A short time later, colonists returned the Indians' hospitality by attacking a nearby village and massacring 600 people. Moral: Colonists make terrible house guests!

Did Chief Joseph have weapons of mass destruction? The US Army thought so. They killed 5,000 of his tribe's appaloosa horses. I guess the Army thought they were WMDs.

To the people of Iraq, The US invasion is like Pearl Harbor (except the Iraqis got more warning and 50,000 more people were killed.) To the Iraqis, Shock and Awe is like Wounded Knee. But for America, Iraq is like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- or like the quagmire of Vietnam. And which does Bush's bombing of Baghdad resemble more? 9-11 or Mai Lai?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Let's have every US soldier out of Iraq by Christmas! And let's get that lazy fat-cat Congress to do it. They work for us not for Bush. The energy bill? The let's-sell-out-MediCare bill? The $87 billion Halliburton fiasco? The disastrous environmental bills? Gutting education? The mother-endangerment bill? The no-overtime-from Scrooge bill? The tax-relief-for-plutocrats bill? The Shock-and-Awe bill so that we could have another Wounded Knee in Iraq? Money to brutally attack our right to free speech in Miami?

It's time to turn up the heat, start cooking up laws and leaders who will benefit us instead of them -- and to tell those turkeys in Washington to GET STUFFED.

Our government sounds increasingly more like Israel's by the day, with it punishing the innocent to greater degrees than each preceding week.

Lately, aside from Iraqi children being handcuffed in their homes, we've heard that the homes of "militants" (i.e., people who disagree with the occupation) are now bulldozed over. And what of the wives and children who lived there? Why are they punished?

Ariel Sharon would be proud. (In fact, I understand he is quite proud of his little brother "W," and plans to set up shop in Iraq soon.)

Meanwhile, our economy continues to falter, as W hopes to escalate things to get the economy sputtering (or at least get things so out of control in the Mideast that we don't recognize that we're in a full-scale depression).

Thank you so much for publishing A Palestinian Eid by Mike Odetalla in the Inquirer. It read very much like the reminiscences I have of my holidays as a Christian young person, and honors cultural, traditional and religious aspects of Islam as mine would of church, family traditions, dress-up, and feasts.

Seldom do we hear much about Palestinian sentimental sharing of traditions, fun, sorrows, and family life. This article tells us they are people with hopes, dreams, regrets, and fond remembrances of things past, and hope for the future. Gee, just like me! The memories of those good days in our youth are always warming, inspiring and informing; they should be preserved and shared.

My grandchildren and children love to hear how it was 'back then,' and only I can tell them how it was, to me. How it is today? Sadly, in every culture, religion, nation, it is different. We are human, in wishing things had stayed the same. Yesterday puts today in perspective. In the West, we bemoan the fast pace, the looser morality, the cost of living and in the Middle East, the sorrow of two peoples who have been unable to resolve their differences yet.

Thanks Mr. Odetalla. You made me think, today, made me remember yesterdays I had near forgotten. I hope you will continue providing different perspectives on 21st Century life.