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Statement of Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese Intellectuals Against Religious
Tyranny
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3449
Tuesday 8 July 2014
Writers, journalists, academics, artists and intellectuals warn of the
depth of the gap which these religious and political movements drive our
societies and peoples to
The expansion of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria and
Iraq raises big questions about the future of the Levant, and risks
becoming a global exhibition for the failure of states and societies kin
the reigon.
The advancement of the forces, clans and tribes bearing the banner of
"Islamic State" backed by "travelling jihadists" came from all over the
world. It does not only threaten to dismantle national entities, which
were formed after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but undermines all
civilization, and faith itself, in our country.
Whatever has been said about the regional and international
beneficiaries of this movement in Iraq and Syria, and regardless of the
attempts to exploit this phenomenon to serve a strategy to build a new
West - Iranian consensus at the expense of the peoples of the region, we
see in the growing numbers of jihad supporters efforts to build an
authority based on religious legitimacy - under a very narrow vision of
religion itself - and a serious threat to the peoples of the Levant and
their right to freedom, justice and peace.
This religious provision is in essence a mill for humans; an enslavement
machine separated from the world of work and production. It establishes
an ultra-elitist racist rule, fascist in its treatment to the public,
that will soon accumulate power and wealth in the hands of a handful of
leaders protected by the sacred.
This entity is explicit in its initial hostility towards the freedom of
women, beauty, modern education, it is a parasite economically, and
aggressive at home and abroad. It is an establishment of a system of
enslavement that owns the population, the land and wealth. It will
impose by force an example foreign to the local population, and it will
kill them if they don’t support it.
The wide areas of Iraq and Syria wouldn’t have formed an area for the
spread of this slavery system if these two countries had not been
exposed to a long-term social and cultural leveling. Their Baathist
regimes have created a political and power vacuum that transformed them
in the worst way possible. They practiced extreme forms of
discrimination and aggression towards their citizens. Syria, in
particular, has an enslavement regime that owns the country and the
population, a regime that inherited power and then continued killing and
destroying the rebels for 40 months, before the eyes of the whole world.
In Iraq, the regime tries to follow the exclusive and possessive
instinct of the Syrian regime.
This is more than a major setback to civilization. What we are facing
today is a continuation of the aggression against populations in our
countries and a denial of their freedom and justice. Those who spread
their power now on the areas stretching from Anbar to Aleppo
countryside, through Mosul and Badiat ash-Sham, and threaten to invade
more areas to raise their black banner, are a renewal of the tyrannical
regimes, and they participate with these regimes in crushing all forces
of renaissance, renewal and freedom in our societies.
In addition to ISIS, the Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda and their sisters, come
the hordes of the League of the Righteous, the brigades of Abu al Fadl
al Abbas, the battalions of Hezbollah and others to participate in the
massacre and to give a historical and mythological depth to it, which
makes it our companion for generations to come. In this way, they
complete the scene of pouncing on the popular revolutions demanding
freedom, justice and equality, as well as on the smaller groups that
lack protection, on the principle of the state and the public interest,
in an endless and normless war of clans, sects and ethnicities.
ISIS, in this sense, is a shining victory for the so-called "Resistance
Countries", for their implied sense that these communities do not
deserve neither liberty, justice, equality nor even pity. Furthermore,
they provide excuses for the Iranian regime to expand in the region and
rivet its walls of protection beyond the borders of Iran, working to
launch a sectarian war that may destroy this region and kill all the
promises of the Arab revolutions.
They then provide an additional legitimacy to Israel (more than what the
Baathist enslavement regimes provided) and put the Palestinian struggle
in the most isolated locations and the lowest level of legitimacy.
This dangerous play with religion and employing it in a project to
establish an authority of enslavement that has no horizon but for
nothingness and darkness, where there is no economy nor education nor
culture nor art nor society nor happiness nor dignity of human being nor
respect among people, not to mention the lack of public and individual
freedom. This play is a serious threat to everything some enlightened
Arabs tried to build in the last century and a half, in their quest for
advancement in freedom and participation in the making of today’s world.
We, the writers, journalists, academics, artists and intellectuals, as
we hold all the human values approved by the modern human conscience,
we warn of the depth of the gap which these religious and political
movements drive our societies and peoples to. We first call on our
citizens, and the believers in human freedom and equality among people
everywhere, to join us to fight against the old and new killers, and to
work for freedom and justice in our countries, in our region, and in the
whole world.
July 3
Syrian Observer
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