VOT 8 January 2007
Posted by MOZAFFAR in Misc.trackback
Voluntarily Occupied Territories
It used to be that Muslims let their minds get colonized by dreams of approval by the Red Coats. They wished that their skin was lily white. They regarded anything that resembled the Brits to be a sign of success, prosperity, even progress and approval. They loved their masters and wanted more than anything to be liked by them and to be like them.
That was then.
Many Muslim minds are still occupied today. There are plenty who migrate here and lose their minds. I’m not talking about those people, but I’ll tell you a bit about them anyways. They arrive here and see paradise on earth. Their outlook now pushes them to deplore everything that they find in today’s Muslim world and it pushes them to celebrate so many things that they find in today’s West. At the end of the day, though, all they have to offer is fierce criticism of Muslims, with little else. If they were to vanish from society, society wouldn’t even notice.
And, there are those who were raised here and buy into the hype. They believe that they live in paradise on earth, and the rest of the earth is the lot of savages.
But, I’m talking about a different group of occupied minds. I’m talking about those who know little about anything, and praise secularism as the best of all systems of life and government. I’m not talking about people who have honestly investigated the issue; I’m talking about those who see the lily white secularism of the US, France, and elsewhere, and regard it as paradise on earth, while seeing the backwardness of the, ahem, secular countries in Muslim-majoritied lands, multiplied by the intense backwardness of so many Muslim majoritied countries which claim to base their rule on Islam.
What’s the problem? Simple: the answer is not secularism. The answer is Checks and Balances. It is not religion that destroys government, for secularism has far more blood and exploitation on its hands than all other religions combined. People see what they want. America treats its middle-class somewhat well, and its wealthy really well. But, it’s done at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives outside of America.
What destroys governments is unchecked power, regardless of who possesses that power and regardless of what doctrine they follow. It could be someone in a turban, a yarmulke, a habit, a business suit, or someone in shorts.
So I fully support an “Islamic” government, so long as it has a full system of checks and balances. But if there are no checks and balances on the “Islamic” government, then it’s likely to be hell on earth, just like any other government, and may even be worse.
Free your mind.
And God knows best…
other|matters 
thank you for this message.
if one ever gets the rare opportunity to be the architect of a polity on the large scale, he or she will have many many failures to learn from and very few success stories to be inspired by.
though i agree with all you’ve said, i am confused by your example of america. there are ‘checks and balances’ apparently in the structure of the government (as does Iran and some other ‘backward’ states). so where and how has america failed? you mention, ‘it’s done at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives outside of America.’ is this resolved with ‘checks and balances’ as is commonly understood? or are you refering to some ‘meta’ form of checks and balances, a form we don’t learn about in our gov classes?