Repeatedly, I have made the claim on this web site that ISIS, Al Queda, and a large list of others have as their objective splitting the world into two camps Christian versus Muslim. This thinking is clearly a throwback to the old crusade era of 1,000 years ago. The other day I listened to a fellow on TV; apparently a Muslim American Cleric claiming to be among the untitled, but still the great majority of Muslims who wants peace. Judging by what he said, I believe him. After thinking about it for a couple of days, I realized that he changed my mind a bit in as much as he argued the modern version of the Islamic terrorist organizations are fighting to establish one or other of these organizations as the dominate one in the Islamic world. Of course, I gave weight; thus, concede to his view because it comes from the inside of that religion. He went on to discuss the percentage of the Muslim population who are Shiite or Sunni, etc, but the main thrust of his argument was that small groups are fighting to establish a peck order among the extremely diverse group of radical within the parent group of 1.7 billion people. Within the concept of the Arab Spring, his words create a multifaceted political complex in the world that caused me to change my mind.
To explain my change of view as an epiphany, or sudden leap of understanding, of sorts, I have to defined my impression that the Arab Spring. This is a movement from inside the Muslim world in which there is a desire to switch from clerics using religion, peoples believe in God or Allah, to rule over “all” people to using the power of the people to rule over “all” people, including those who do not believe in God or Allah. Thus, in a sense, the people in these Middle East Countries want to do what our founding fathers did, which is to use the power of the people to gain political domination.
Obviously, the error in my thinking had been to feel that people switch from believing in a divine being to believe in democracy. In Democracy, the people use their faith in themselves, irrespective of belief in divine being, to fight for dominance or fight the pecking order fight. The truth is that the same is true in the Muslim world. Although it was there for all to see, what was missing in my thinking about the Muslim world was lack of evidence of the innate human tendency to divide themselves into the political right and the political left irrespective of a belief in a divine being. The right versus the left, individualist versus the gregarious, the greedy versus the altruistic, and all those in between. Thus, I had created an artificial unrealistic society in my mind and tried to fit all Muslims into one mold—they all believed in Allah. I had not faced the challenge of dividing them into political parties. This cleric introduced, actually made me realize, the idea that Muslim are just as we are; they have hard right and hard left politicians who fight like hell to be the top chicken, but all fight within the context of their religion just as we do. This cleric did not assign a neat unifying classification in imitation of Democrat and Republican or a right and a left as we have, but chose to use the myriad name. Upon thinking about this fracturing of Muslim society, I realized such groups as ISIS, Al Queda, Muslim Brotherhood, etc collectively represents the extreme of one political philosophy, which appears to be the equivalent of our extreme right wing. Similarly, there is no organized and recognized extreme left wing; I cannot name one organization that represents a collection of left-wing followers—those Muslims who wants democracy—not one; they are all included in the nebulous group referred to in the press as the supporters of the Arab Spring. It is human nature that there is a right wing and a n left wing among those who support democracy, but where are they?
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