CULTURE LOCKING & CULTURE CARRYING: THE SECRETS REVEALED
By Peter W Ball
Inkwater Press
Pages: 264
Price: Price: $25.95
2007
ISBN: 978-159299-250-8
Reviewed by ABDUL BASEER
Reviewing a book which claims to be “a very detailed illustration of the operating problems dogging Muslim religion” is rather difficult for an objective reviewer. Though an objective reviewer might feel no objection in retaliation when given an extreme case, a fairly Muslim reviewer doesn’t usually find himself doing that either. This sympathy burden for the author reviewed is common with Muslim writers to the extent that it defines them. In this review, however, I find the author Peter Ball rightly deserving the same. Ball is not inspired by Islamhate but seriously injured by printed darkness and 24×7 Tele-gloom. I assume a mind severely hurt by continuous exposure to media punches for years is more painful than the whole body physically nailed. Let us give a chance to a victim of media abuse to survive, to revive and come back to senses then.
Mr. Ball too, it seems, is a victim of media propaganda because it would be erroneous to say he was born with Muslim contempt. And to say that he hated Islam while still being unaware of media’s diplomatic abuse of Islam would be racial hatred on our side. His ‘born Virgo’ character or Freudian instinct he uses so dashingly doesn’t actually seem to work behind his research-cum-Islamophobia.
It should then be clarified here that media’s diplomatic abuse of Islam makes the viewers and readers Islamophobes in a cyclic way; budding writers and reporters consume hate for years together and on taking jobs, eventually end up disseminating the same over the time, sometimes with additional creativity at the moment.
Mr. Ball himself is a retired engineer who lives quietly with his children in Canberra, Australia. Though he has got the understanding of Islam very off beam and calls it ‘dogged’ religion, we must sympathise with him until we are able to dust off his jahiliyyah and discard his acquired ignorance. Let our policy be clear: Defend in the best way possible. Do no harm and take no harm. And don’t hide your policy. We’ve seen our enemies turning into our best friends primarily because we don’t have any personal biases against anybody, only their assumptions. Converts like Ahmed Pundit, Yvonne Ridley have long recognised it; the latter actually converted to Islam for this very reason, finding a true adherence of the principle in Taliban.
When we hate the crime and not the criminal, and passionately believe that the victim of religious distaste against Islam has two undeniable rights in all circumstances; life and knowledge about religion, we stick to it. Let me make ‘Enabling, No harm’ policy clear further. Violent opposition of Islam by the Saffrons and Euro churches alike doesn’t affect Islam’s unstopped growth quite literally, for the same reason. And amazingly, large numbers of converts both in the west and east happen to be feminism’s empowered women.
Thankfully we don’t stop by that non-violence alone but further build peace through an active discarding of caste. While Gandhi stopped at abolition of untouchability, we in the very first, begin by an uncompromised Monotheism uniting humanity under Universal Brotherhood, initially bringing the broken caste system flat on earth. A fresh structure with sound pillars of equality and justice is then built gradually. So here we are, we love all, especially the peace lover even if he is Ambedkar, and hates none except the warmongers, even if he is a proud caste or WASP. Which side are you on then, military-supremacy nexus or the peace lovers?
It is known that a western eye investigating Islam does convey a propagandist view, as the opposite is hardly a case. While it is Washington-London expansion games that Muslims everywhere oppose and not the whole western world itself, a westerner or westernised mind in general argues exactly the opposite. Many, knowing full well, decidedly call the case a clash of civilization rather than struggle of victim nations against Imperial forces. The question again is to read the sources.
In a tone of aggressive atheism, Ball writes, “All the prayers recited by earnest believers of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religions have been totally wasted.” He is a staunch propagator of disbelief. What he surpasses is everything; to begin with, his own being and origin. I think it would be better here to have a look at what Godless part of the West has done in the Middle-East.
Washington-Downing Street rulers today are caught in a blood pool where they cannot prove they are peacemakers. CNN-BBC playing now the Pakistan card to bully India and ‘Nuclear Iran’ card to bully the rest have always swum those indiscriminate slayers through the blood pool. As a result the theft of Iraq’s oil has picked up speed. So far as the Arab world is concerned, I don’t think NATO alliance takes it as fool, but rather manageable. And if taken the example of Egypt crushing the Brotherhood by the right hand and starving Palestinian mothers, children and fathers by the other, then White House dwellers seem to have actually handed over the worries of managing the ‘worthless’ Arab world to secular militants within them.
Ball’s primary argument is that a built-in clash with science has driven the Moslem priests to blindly attack the west. And though he mentions Science under the Medieval Muslim rule, he doesn’t honestly give explanation where that clash was then, if it existed at all. Let’s only call his explanation escape a ‘memory lapse’ rather than deliberate for the book.
Then he goes to detail “how the Muslims produce the source of their power, their fanatical fundamentalists”, and with great difficulty to hide his own Islamophobia, explains “most (of them) are created by their Muslim Mothers while they are children.” Without blaming his mother here for this view, I suffice by saying that no mother would like her child be sacrificed in the battlefield except if they both hold onto a doubtlessly true meaning of life.
More importantly, the writer’s reasoning doesn’t fit into the present day money economy where life is materialised and money is oxygen. Terrorist attacks cannot be explained today by religious zeal but by material advantages. NATO led neo-imperial series invading oil-rich nations explains terror gamble. May be the writer should have said it is for money actually that terrorists are attacking, everywhere.
Mr. Ball has got himself tightly stuck in media machine, and only God Almighty can rescue him. It is no easy exit now, Ball!
Though he doesn’t directly refer to Clash of Civilisation thesis, which must be mentioned here as brouhaha over it has only united the people. Not completely so, yes; but doubtlessly again, it has brought them very closer to understand what the civilization actually means – practical harmony for human growth. So the propaganda of an imaginary ‘Clash’ can no more be used as an escape goat to blanket political behaviour. Neither can it divide and rule in the upcoming moments. The world today has understood the message to choose a side: the Believers camp, or the Disbelievers camp. And the third camp of agnostics or non-conformists which got plenty of time to decide its position, and the fate, is on fire from both sides.
Though the Muslims have never easily predicted the future of divide and rule played against them, they can do one thing more confidently this time – create it. Future is like that, always easier to invent than to predict. So, no other move can bring the Uncle Sam Camp to find its warfare tactics backfire – psychological turmoil it creates by the sectarian divide will be actually redirecting believers to scriptural prophesies, putting vicious imperial ambitions on the knees. For the readers, if they have more favourable steps, I am restless to know.
The most desired happy days seem closer, finally. And man’s oldest problem, the struggle going on between good and evil since ages cannot be denied a golden conclusion through military-media control by a unipolar gang. On the contrary the victory of the grand epitomic truth might very likely happen in front of millions of camera lenses, and if demanded, under the shadow of arms.