Sunday, February 5, 2012

The good is interred with the bones but evil remains!

A whiff of revolution last year led to an unprecedented state crackdown on protestors in Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative countries in the region, where the focus was on women not being allowed to drive cars.

The house of Saudi’s ultra conservation has been their ace up their sleeve always, playing the religious card is a way of holding on to power. A country’s style of governance can effectively cause the same damage. A handful of daft adherents who interpret their religious scriptures in a distorted way can have dire consequences.

The siege of Mecca, storming of the great mosque in November 1979 by Saudi orthodox Wahhabi followers was quelled by the state with the help of French commandos. Speculation was rife that it was sponsored by Shiite Iran, but it left even Washington guessing.

The incident is a watershed in the history of modern Islam, as Trofimov states, that the siege was the genesis of al Qaeda – which later morphed into a full fledged Islamic terror outfit, enjoying constitutional protection in some Islamic states. The point that we have completely misunderstood the Islamic terrorist and bunch of lunatics is not the point. The moot point is more disturbing, that a bunch of fanatics who make a travesty of religious beliefs, can get the sanction of states even in progressive countries and function with its blessings is the real danger.

We may have eliminated Osama Bin Laden, but we ignored the ideology – and in doing so have let the cancer spread through the Middle East and other Islamic regions like the deadly Aids virus. If the spiritual leadership is founded by terrorists, who believe that killing has a higher purpose in itself, then the whole equation changes.

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