America: Do Not Commit Suicide in Iraq!

America: Do Not Commit Suicide in Iraq!

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

The draft text for the future ‘constitution’ of ‘Iraq’ bears witness to a complete American failure that risks taking the form of the most comprehensive defeat of the Modern West. If the Apprentice-Magicians of the State Department and the Pentagon do not wake up immediately, the disaster will be of unprecedented domino-like dimensions, and the land of Twin Rivers will become the domain of an apocalyptic terrorist dictator who, pretending to be the Islamic Messiah (al Mahdi), will have no constraint to causing a nuclear showdown.

Why did Americans invade ‘Iraq’?

At the moment many Americans believe that the UN Security Council Veto Right should be accorder to one country only, i.e. the USA, it would rather be honest and productive at the same time for the American administration to declare explicitly and solemnly the real reasons America invaded ‘Iraq’. Instead of being engulfed in long and derisory discussions about the possible nuclear, microbiological and chemical arsenal of the deposed tyrant, the American administration must point out new approaches to the International Law, Doing so, the American President still has the chance to force the rest of the world to accept these new approaches, heralding therefore the Era of the (long heralded but not yet initiated) Pax Americana. Being reticent and reluctant, having not the guts to stipulate principles that can rule World Politics at the times of an accelerated globalization is rather relevant of Quixotic behavior, and brings therefore disaster.

The real reason America invaded Iraq has to do with the American difficulty to accept rogue states with merciless dictators, who do not hesitate to exterminate in the most brutal way parts of their realm’s populations, to imprison hundreds of thousands of innocent dissidents and idealists, to exploit the national resources for the profit of their gang, to violate fundamental Human Rights, and to destabilize the regional peace and stability one way or another.

America, at the top of a great alliance, defied the UN Security Council, where the States would be met with an unethical – if not criminal – French Veto, and advanced without seeking UN approval.

For the sake of establishing Democracy and Human Rights the choice is cheerful.

For an ultimate contribution to the rise of an Islamic terrorist regime, after so many thousands of dead people, and after spending so many billions of US $ for the entire operation, the choice is inexcusable.

Establishing Democracy and Human Rights in ‘Iraq’ means ‘Imposing’ Enlightenment and Humanism.

The Americans should have known that the work after Saddam’s collapse would constitute the quasi-totality of their preoccupation. The country never had a democratic past, and in addition it faced all sorts of totalitarianism, colonialism, and cruelty that led to loss of identity, humanity, and life respectability. Life was of no value in ‘Iraq’ on the eve of the American attack.

Under such circumstances, you cannot suggest to two people – let alone two political parties – that they should sit together to discuss a difference of opinion. They will kill each other. If this is impossible for two political parties emanating out of an uncivilized and tyrannical environment, it is out of the question for two ethnic or religious groups.

In this case, one has to educate before introducing the Law of the Majority. And the Law of the Majority is not a parachute that fell on the earth! It is a higher layer in the Pyramid of Humanism, Enlightenment, Democracy and Human Rights.

A moment of reflection on European and American History is always necessary. Could one introduce the Law of Majority and other democratic procedures in the two Spanish kingdoms (Christian and Muslim) of the Middle / Islamic Ages? What makes the American administration think that an average ‘Iraqi’ in the year 2003 is more civilized than a Christian or Muslim Spaniard in the years 1303?

Nazi Germany is another good example, and quite well known to the Americans. What makes the American administration forget that in the period 1945 – 1960 Enlightenment and Humanism have been ‘imposed’ on Germany, and Democracy and Human Rights have been set on this re-education procedure that lasted many years? Who is oblivious of the fact that in 1950 Germany not only the Nazionaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands was prohibited, but also totalitarian ideas and concepts have been totally outlawed and their propagators proscribed?

If this happened to Germans, who deviated for just 12 years (1933 – 1945) but had had a half-millennium tradition of Humanism and Enlightenment encompassing Luther, Alexander von Humboldt, Goethe, Beethoven, Mozart, Kant, 18th – 19th century Prussian and Bavarian Enlightened Kings and Noblesse, Humanities and Academia, 19th century democrats and socialists, Berthold Brecht and Rosa Luxemburg, then how many centuries are needed for the educational process that the Americans should implement in Iraq, before thinking of introducing the Law of the Majority?

One could bring more historical examples from various continents, but the situation the Americans should expect to meet in Iraq is best described in an Ottoman Turkish proverb that reveals best the darkness that had long befallen on the Land of Twin Rivers:
- ‘We heard it happened in Baghdad’…..

Educating the oppressed ethnic groups of Mesopotamia is an international concern

While an international UN - UNESCO conference could specify the numerous programs that should be shaped and funded for the various ethnic groups of Mesopotamia, any draft text of ‘Iraqi’ ‘Constitution’ should stipulate separate territories for the country’s ethnic groups and make clear that the nature of the country is secular and con-federal. All ethnic, religious and linguistic groups must be stated clearly and comprehensively. And all the populations that fled or were expelled must be offered citizenship, full rights, and complete refunding / recompense.

Uninformed, the Americans are fooled by their ‘Iraqi’ interlocutors.

The worse that has happened so far is that the American administration has been fooled by the various ‘Iraqi’ interlocutors, who – undemocratic and totalitarian, uneducated and clannish – try to advance their agenda, thanks to American naivety and ignorance. This situation should stop as soon as possible, because it jeopardizes all the chances to impose Education, Enlightenment, Humanism and Democracy. The American answer should be as simple as that:
- You do not know what is permissible to you, your ethnic group, and country, because you have no humanist and democratic background. The way to emancipation and self-rule goes through education, and to the degree you advance and understand the progress made by the Mankind, you will be given full authority to administer the affairs of your federal circumference.

The recent intro-Shia fights and battles prove precisely that there are serious disagreements within several ethnic groups. Consequently, the Americans should understand that in today’s ‘Iraq’ Democracy and the Law of Majority are not and cannot be guaranteed even within each of the various ethnic groups. Instead of shyly announcing that they will stay there as military presence for another four years, they should solemnly state their purpose to create something new and great, first at the level of education and then at the level of politics.

An excellent example of how easily the Americans can be fooled by their disreputable ‘Iraqi’ interlocutors is an excerpt of the Draft text of Iraqi Constitution (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5230989,00.html). We publish it integrally, and we will comment subsequently.

Article (2):
1st - Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:
(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.
(b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy.
(c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.
2nd - This constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and the full religious rights for all individuals and the freedom of creed and religious practices.

Islam cannot be an official religion of any state today.

Americans ignore that Islam is not a phenomenon posterior to the French Revolution, and that Islam does not emanate from our modern world of democracy and majority governments. If Islam had been preached before one hundred years and had been accepted by the people of a country, it would have been normal for them to stipulate that Islam would be the official religion of their country. It would contradict the modern principle of Secular State, but this would not be the first or the last case; the UK is not a secular state, Spain is not a secular state, and Greece is not a secular state, but these three countries proved to function as respectful democratic entities.

If we insist that Islam cannot be a state religion today, it is because the conditions for this do not exist anymore. Islam was preached by Prophet Muhammad and then became the state religion of Arabia, ruled by the Prophet himself. Since the entire population of the small state of Arabia accepted Islam, this religion became the only religion of that state.

There is no proof of a community of people accepting Islam then, at the times of the Prophet, in a faraway country, and the Prophet authorizing them to impose Islam as the ‘official religion’ of their country.

Since we have no theoretical parallel, we should search for historical paradigms. In History, we find certainly various states where Islam was the official religion. But what were these states? We should focus on this subject for a while.

At the aftermath of the Prophet Muhammad’s death, Islam split into two parts, the party (Shia) of Ali, and the followers of Abu Bakr. Every group supported its leader for Caliph (representative of God on the Earth) and for various reasons. It was first the turn of Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman to rule (against the majority of the people), expressing what was then the spectrum of the Sunni ideas (and rejecting that the Caliph had to be obligatorily related, as Ali was, to the Prophet), and then the turn of Ali, who was however the undisputed first Imam. As one can imagine, furious disputes over the correct text of the Coranic verses (involving serious textual changes down to our times) and fierce fratricide fights were ordinary within the expanding Islamic country for 28 years after the Prophet’s death, and Muhammad’s son-in law, ruled as fourth Caliph for little time before being assassinated by an un-Islamic, abominable, murderous, and barbaric figure, Muawiyah, whose son, Yazid murdered Ali’s youngest son, Hussein, in Kerbala in an execrable an un-Islamic way. Muawiyah’s descendents (Umayyad Caliphate) ruled in Damascus for less than 100 years, before being dethroned by other pretenders, who transferred the capital to Mesopotamia, built Baghdad, and ruled for centuries (Abbasid Caliphate).

Islam can be the official religion of the Islamic Caliphate Only.

In all these cases, Islam was the official religion of a vast empire in which the majority was Christian, since the islamization was a relatively slow process, and at times it was not even favored by caliphs, who wished to extract higher taxation from their non-Muslim population. But Islam was the official religion as the religion of the ruling royal family that pretended for one reason or another to be linked to the original Leader, the Prophet.

Beyond those who were Caliphs, there were many other claimants, who ruled various states, because simply the Caliphs either were not strong enough to attack and eliminate them or for various reasons accommodated themselves with them.

With the centuries passing and with Islam expanding to Europe and faraway places in Eastern Asia and Western Africa, these marginal claimants have been a permanent phenomenon within the Political History of the Islamic Area, and Islam was always the official religion of their state or dominion, but the reason was always the same, namely pretension to any sort of linkage with the Prophet and the original community. It had nothing to do with majority or minority, and it was not accepted by the only, main, real Caliph, the Sultan at Istanbul.

The Islamic Caliphate implies material heritage of the times of the Prophet, insignia, and other paraphernalia of the Political Authority exercised in the Name of Islam. And the Islamic Caliphate is the only state where it is correct, proper and pertinent for Islam to be the official religion. Even Iran, a great Muslim country with magnificent Islamic civilization, was never accepted by the Caliphate as a pertinent political entity having Islam as official religion. For hundreds of years the Caliphs fought against the Shahs of Iran, rejecting the official religion of that country as ‘heretic’. And any state institutionalizing Islam as official religion would be heretic for the only historical Caliphate that existed until the early 1920s.

With the abolition of the Caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk, ceased existing the only state in the World History in which Islam could be the official religion.

Certainly Muslims can be the majority of the population in a country or an exclusively Muslim state may exist, but this does not signify an Islamic Right for proclaiming Islam as the Official Religion of the country in question.

By demanding in the name of Western principles and concepts, and thanks to Western confusion, ignorance or misconception, the proclamation of Islam as official religion, the swindling and treacherous, extremist and terrorist sheikhs advance their agenda and implement their conspiracy for an Ultimate Caliphate that would impose Islam allover the World at any cost. This is totally un-Islamic and there is not a single text to support and offer legitimacy to their abominable plans.

For all the Islamic Ages’ historians, philosophers, erudite academia, political and diplomatic magistrates, only the Islamic Caliphate was the state that had the Right to proclaim Islam as Official Religion, and none else.

This is also applicable in the case of the bogus-Islamic illiterate sheikhs of Iraq, S. Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, who have no background in the Islamic History and Civilization. Their demand for Islam as ‘the official religion of the state’ is totally baseless, un-Islamic and undemocratic.

If they are allowed to achieve this treachery, it will be easy for them to unveil their fabricated bogus-Mahdi (bogus-Messiah), and to impose him as a pacifying leader of all Muslims, supposedly ‘revivifying’ the Caliphate. Then there will be no one to oppose them and him in ‘Iraq’, and the West will be face-to-face with the most ulcerous expression of Hatred in the History of the Mankind. This apocalyptic figure will not have to generate it; he will find it already instilled in the ‘hearts’ of the ‘Muslims’ by the terrorist bogus-sheikhs who are able to cheat the State Department and the Foreign Office. These are the real dimensions of the American and the Western predicament in ‘Iraq’.