Western Misconceptions About The Muslim World
We hear a lot about Muslims and Islam in the Vancouver and Canadian news in general. In this article, I will try to clear up many of the misconceptions that are prevalent in what Mark Steyn of Maclean’s Magazine, the Canadian media and the western media call the “arab world” or the “muslim world” as if all Muslims were Arabs or all Muslims have the same views . Before jumping into the core of this topic, I will start with a historical analogy from an Algerian perspective.
When the French invaded what they named Algeria in 1830, they assumed the country’s people were all Arabs. But they were not! Algeria is mostly Berber. And the Berbers were, as they are today, divided into several ethnic groups, Kabyle in the mountainous north-central area, Chaoui in the eastern Atlas Mountains, Mozabites in the M’zab valley, and Tuareg in the far south.
Later, in the 1960s when Algeria was at war to recover its independence, some forces were working in the shadows of foreign lands, somewhere in the Middle East. That’s because some Algerian elitists had thought that if they aligned themselves with the so-called Arab world, they would get help. What a mistake!
Those elitists discovered a world that did not correspond to what they had imagined. The average person in North America or Europe is unaware that a “united Muslim world” or even an “Arab world” exists only in the mind of someone with a hidden agenda. The hidden agenda, mind you, has a vested interest in keeping that myth alive.
There is oil out there and a docile group of diverse peoples. If we consider the Muslim world, western countries refer to them as the Arab world! Egypt has long been one that trumpeted its ideology in the name of “Arabs”. Needless to say that it took them more than 20 years to slide into a forgotten state. Iraq? Syria? Where did the Assyrians, the Kurds, the Druses, the Armenians and all those ancient races disappear? Did they just fade away with the time and transform into Arabs? No, they are still there. They just acquired the Arab language and culture. Their ancestors were also coercefully islamised. But does that make them Arabs? In case you answered yes, then you should also consider all the descendants of slaves in the United States as being white. Since black people acquired the white ways, language and culture (ie: Bill Cosby). Then we have the whole of the so-called “Muslim world”. True, some regions have developed a new language from Berber and Arabic and yet the common westerner does not know that the Tunisian peasant can’t understand an Egyptian or a Jordanian nor does he practice the same Islam.
Where is the Muslim world?
The Muslim World and the Arab world are a western myth.
When CNN talks about Arab unity, the Arab league or the Muslim world, we all think they all mean one thing, but they don’t. How can so many diverse concepts in such a diverse Arab world all mean one thing? I suggest that vague notions have been created in the minds of western journalists and are now becoming accepted reality in everyone’s mind.
Islam is probably the only common link between these people and yet, for a person who has gone through these countries, the Islam one practices in one region is totally different from one practiced in another. It amuses me to hear about students, here in Canada, complaining against Maclean’s Magazine filing human rights complaints because its content is offensive to Islam. It would be more appropriate to say that it is offensive to THEIR way of practicing Islam. They take advantage of the fact that they are in Canada to entertain the illusion of some Muslim world unity. What a conceit to imply to be the representative of the entire Islamic vision. Just imagine that Christians across the globe are in tune with the Vatican, what a joke!
However, there is one thing that Muslims all over the world have in common is that they don’t have a conception of separation of church and state, this is why there is conflicts wherever they go (including Canada) this is explained in the Islam Review blog.
“This is a major reason why conflict accompanies the islamists wherever they go. Islamists and their defenders want to portray POLITICAL differences and disagreements as RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. Here are several references to illustrate this:
quran 9.29 - Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection. […]
Albania. Chechnya. Sarajevo. Grozny. Kashmir. Paris. London. Sydney. Dharfur. Madrid.
Kosovo. Just to name a few. 1400 years of this. Verse 9.29 abrogates 123 verses of ‘tolerance’, and they pick and choose among those 123 verses to sell you on islam being peaceful, knowing full well that your more than likely unaware of verse 9.29, which cancels them all out. And it goes hand in hand with: ” [Islam Review]
The World today, and mainly the Western World, must awake: ideas such as a united Muslim world or vision, a greater middle east, a united Arab world are fanciful ideas in a diverse world and must be dropped for the good of all concerned.
The mainstream of peoples are anything… but Arab… in the very countries western journalists so wrongly call “Arab countries” . Moreover, Muslims do not practice the same Islam all over the “Muslim world” any more than Baptists practice the same Christianity as Catholics do.
See also : The USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts of the University of Southern California
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