Asking few questions makes a difference

Ali has a blog named "AFreeIraqi" and has posted what I think is an important message to all of us. Especially the doom and gloom folks on the left.
I'm posting the whole article as it is too good to break up. Ali will be notified I used his complete article. If there is a problem, I'll take it down.
Please visit Ali at AFreeIraqi and the other Iraqi bloggers in the blogrol on the left of this page for the news you won't hear from our Main Stream Media(MSM).
---Larry Everett

"Thursday, April 21, 2005
Asking few questions makes a difference.

There's a change of mentality that started to occur in Iraq even before the 9th of April, but toppling Saddam marked a surge in the change process that made it transfere into an active form and spread wider than before.

I think one of the main problems in Arab-Muslim communities is that the vast majority from the illiterate to even highly educated people do not ask enough questions. On the other hand, I've noticed (mainly through blogging ) that westerns in general and Americans in particular always have so many questions to ask and rarely settle with one point of view and accept it as the truth.

But an important question here is, why Arabs and Muslims do not care a lot about searching for answers?
In my mind there are two major reasons; one comes from Islam and one comes from Arab traditions. For Muslims, like most religious people anywhere there's a general belief that all questions have been answered already, and I think that the main difference here between west and east is just the fact that religious people form a higher percentage of the population in the Arab Muslim world than they do in the west.

In Islam the Sunnis have always had all the answers in the Koran and Hadeeth and all you have to do is dig them out, although "some will always remain unrevealed until judgment day". For the She'at, it's the Koran and the heritage of Mohammed and his dynasty down to the twelfth Imam, Al Mehdi.
Every time western scientists announce a scientific discovery, Muslim scholars kill themselves searching for a verse in the Koran that can be twisted to match it and then say, "Hey, we had it all the time and we didn't know!" and we have books and TV shows dedicated for showing how all these great inventions were mentioned in a way in the Koran, but we just didn't care to search harder!

'True Muslims' believe that Mohammed knew *everything*, and I've argued with many friends of mine many times about this point. I asked if they thought Mohammed knew how to manufacture a computer or to build space shuttle for example, and the answer was "absolutely". But he could not reveal all his knowledge to the people at that time because they wouldn't have understood it.

This makes one wonders why he was given such a useless knowledge in the first place! Most Muslims don't bother to answer this question and just think that Mohammed is perfect (which by the way is NOT mentioned anywhere in the Koran) and therefore he must know everything.

I asked if Mohammed knew the future and again I got the same answer. But what then makes God superior to Mohammed? The answer was a faked Hadeeth that does not address the question but it does state that Mohammed had this ability. And questioning that Hadeeth would be unacceptable for most Muslims because the Hadeeth is a basic corner of today's' belief for most Muslims and they simply can't imagine themselves abandoning it.

So all questions were answered already including the ones that have not been asked yet, so what's the point of seeking knowledge from another source! They don't know 1/million of what Mohammed and his descendants had and these not here to ask them. But they did left us what can give us some answers.

That's why those who study Islam are called scientists, and in some sects like Wahabism they're considered the only scientists. You hear the word scholars describing these people but the literal AND the actual translation (from Muslims point of view) would be "scientists".

This is why most Muslims' search in other fields of knowledge like medicine was always a 'blind' one in my mind. Because it did not improve or alter these researchers general understanding of life as a whole. I know many fellow Iraqi physicians, and very good ones in fact, who their knowledge did not make them any less superstitious or any more rational in their lives than illiterate people.

As for Arabs, they have too much pride in themselves and their traditions that makes it difficult for them to ask for others' help.

Anyhow, something happened in Iraq over the past years that I only noticed when I looked more into the Arab street and then I saw how much we have truly moved ahead of them.
Now the religious beliefs have not been shaken or dismissed but still what happened made their effect much less than it was before and I know that inside most Iraqis, those beliefs are not as holy and unquestionable as they were before. They may not admit it or even notice it but it shows in the way they have changed their atittude towards many issues.

In my trip to Jordan last September I had some casual conversations with people their and I tried to find out if what we see on Arab TVs is actually representative of how average Arabs think.
Well, they 'surprised' me with how much they know and how much they want to tell me about Iraq! They had everything figured out and had no place for any questions except for things like prices of goods, and even that they knew it was all "very expensive" and wouldn't believe anyone who tells them otherwise.

In Iraq these days such mentality can be found among Sadrists and Ba'athists while the majority of Iraqis have more questions than answers. On most of the times I was in a political discussion with friends or even strangers we seemed to race each other to say, "What do you think will happen? Will this thing or that work? Who do you think is behind this issue and why?" and such questions. We all seemed to search for a better understanding by scanning others' opinions than to just impose our facts.

I believe this change started before the war when Iraqis started to lose trust in their leadership, even the 'trust' of the helpless who is afraid to question or can't see a hope in doing that. I look at the invasion of Kuwait as the start point for such a change.

I see Iraq at that time, like most Arab/Muslim nations now, like a ship led by a blind deaf and brutal sailor that managed to keep the ship safe by the fact that all ships with real sailors managed to avoid hitting his ship while he was leading the ship without having any course or plan depending only on his intuition.

Unless a disaster happened, passengers would not even dare to complain. Most of them actually trusted the sailor out of fear, helplessness and because everyone said he was smart and they could not believe that such a strong calm elegantly dressed person had no clue what he was doing. He must have a plan, any plan as it simply can't be possible that someone reached the top without having some worthy qualifications.

But in Iraq the disaster happened and the passengers discovered that their sailor was actually a blind deaf and stupid piece of shit, and many of them revolted. And while he managed to crush the revolt he could not control their minds anymore. They saw his truth and this made them scared and worried about their future in this ship. Many decide to leave it before it finally sinks. Those who couldn't or didn't want to for one reason or another started to look for answers, and they looked outside their ship.

Before that time we used to get our news from the Iraqi media mainly. After that, the vast majority of Iraqis started to listen to Monte Carlo radio, BBC and VOA to try and find out what's going to happen to them. Even Ba'athists and Arab nationalists were doing that, as they realized that their fate was going to be decided outside Iraq by powers that have decided not to avoid a conflict with the mad leader anymore and were just waiting for the right moment to get rid of him once and for all.

After Saddam was toppled most Iraqis took a sigh of relief, "Now finally someone sane is going to run things here". They did think of America as a sane power totally replacing a mad one, at least for a while. I say they were relieved not just because they got rid of Saddam, as that meant incridible joy not relief. But It's been also a relief because it was scary to think that your fate is in the hands of an insane man while you can't do anything and you're not even used to such a huge responsibility.

But the Americans did not want to replace Saddam. They did not want to run things the way they wanted without sharing the responsibility with the people, even if they thought their management could fix things and even if this was for a transitional phase.
An iron evil fist was gone but it was not replaced by an "iron good fist" as many Iraqis wished, and things collapsed in a place that has been ruled with extreme force for decades when people were given freedom.

This is one of the main reasons why many Iraqis were and still are disappointed with America. No, these Iraqis do not hate America as most like to think, they're just disappointed with her for not fitting the image they had in their minds; the just tyrant that should've taken full responsibility for some time until they could find their own just tyrant who would make their life much better without forcing them to share a burden and a responsibility they never thought it was among their duties as citizens.

In the same sense, many Iraqis looked for the January elections to bring the long awaited Iraqi savior even if it meant many saviors not just one. They saw the advantage of multiple leaders/democacry and welcomed it but did not expect that these leaders would have so many differences and find a huge difficulty in agreeing on a common major goal.

Thus, Iraqis are brought back again to the same point where they have to ask questions and keep an eye on events. And with time and through these changes, it has become obvious to an increasing number of Iraqis that they can never go back to that idle state were they left everything to whoever in charge and instead they're gradually seeing how important their role in making their lives better, and I have no doubt that soon most Iraqis will find that not only they have a role they should play but that this role is in fact the main one."

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