View Point                                                                         Abid Ullah Jan

Musharraf, Dead or Alive, is Irrelevant

General Musharraf escaped a second assassination attempt in less than two weeks time. Asking if he would survive a third attempt is as unimportant as thinking how to breach his defenses for a third time. The reason is that his stay or departure is not the real problem.

Muslims are suffering from a two-fold problem. The fold that eats them from below is the never ending line of sycophants in the Muslim world who are willing to sacrifice anything for their personal benefit.

The fold that crushes them from the top is that of Washington-led Western allies who are not willing to say good-bye to their colonial escapades. Their two centuries old civilizing missions do not seem to come to an end in the foreseeable future.

Not everyone tries hard to understand the root causes of their problems. Some Muslims resort to killings and others to knee jerk reactions like the naïve Pakistanis who took to streets in protest to the comments of Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Robert F. Horan.
Mr. Horan was not wrong when he said: "Pakistani people would even sell their mothers for a few thousand dollars." He was kind enough, firstly, for not saying all Pakistanis and secondly, for mentioning just mothers. He did not know mothers matter little where faith is sacrificed. He just failed to include the long list of Arabs and other Muslims dying in service of their colonial masters.

The problem thus is not how to get rid of say Musharraf and Mubarak in the Muslim world and Bush and Sharon in the non-Muslim. The problem is the failure of Muslim intellectuals, most of whom have surrendered in their own peculiar way, and thus failed to convey the real feelings of Muslim masses to general public in Europe and America.
The solution is not in shooting one Muslim sell-out only to be replaced by another; or to vote out one tyrant in Washington or Tel Aviv only to vote another in his place at the same time.

The solution lies in throwing out the tiny minority - the tyrants of modern age - together with their tyrannical governing systems. This can be achieved with the help of the majority - the peace loving people in the East and West.

Apparently, Musharraf is attacked because of his support to the US invasions and occupations. Similarly, many of us believe that the US is in Afghanistan and Iraq to show its military strength, occupy natural resources, flush out terrorists and bring freedom and democracy.

These are not the real reasons for continued colonialism. These are just the out comes of the core American policy and governing system. What people in the East and West need to understand is that Musharraf, Karzai and even Bush and Blair are just pawns in the hands of their masters behind the scene.

Call them by any name or a combination of titles - such as neo-cons, Zionists, capitalists - their objective remains the same: maintaining the status quo and defeating any challenge to their existing power base.

The challenge they face is from Islam and their existing power is based only in lies and false impression as "liberators" and champions of democracy. This is the undeniable reality which is very hard for the media stricken people to understand.

One may ask, what has Islam to do with the power brokers behind the scene in the US? Of course, Islam cannot directly weed out elements of tyranny from the US system. However, it has the potential to lead us to a governing mechanism that will pale the United States' delivered blood-soaked freedom and democracy by demonstrating a true system of freedom, equality and fraternity to the world.

So, the ongoing invasions and occupation are partly for acquiring natural resources and extending hegemony as many would see. The main objective, however, remains to nip chances of Muslim's establishing an alternative governing model in the bud. The reason is simple: to sustain the power base of the most vicious tyrants of the human history.
Thousands of lives, including American, and billions of the taxpayer's money is wasted on intrigues, wars, puppets' support and media campaigns to keep masses in the dark about Islam.

Islam was the only motivating force behind the jihad against Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The same is now presented as an evil when it comes to the question of self rule according to the principles of Islam. Commentaries in the US media about the constitution-framing processes in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the curriculum changing process in Pakistan and Gulf States need not any further explanation to understand this reality.

To blunt the challenge of Islam, the venom-spitting propaganda, which started with promoting the concept of "Islamic fundamentalism," has finally narrowed down to fear-mongering through promoting the threat of "political Islam." Now political Islam is the curse and those who promote it are totalitarian militants.

That's how the fear is driven in the western mind-set, Musharrafs and Mubaraks are supported, invasions and occupations are justified and the status quo is maintained.
Getting lost in the rhetoric that "coward terrorists" attacked Musharraf, or their moves "endangered Islam," or Musharraf will continue his mission to fight "terrorism" will help us go no where.

It has become extremely important for the Western public to understand what the Muslim masses yearn for and how they are crushed between the extreme minority that has resorted to violence against the other minority that serves Washington under the banner of moderate Islam.

The Western public needs to understand that like others Muslims as well want to be free from foreign interventions to live according to the teachings of Islam. This is necessary because the ongoing war on part of the US and its allies to stop the emergence of an Islamic state as a model for the world is in-fact to deprive the humanity from peace and justice.

Understanding the concept of an Islamic State will help the Westerners find out if Muslim self-rule - based on the will of God that was preached by all the Prophets before and the last Prophet Muhammad to save the humanity from tyranny and injustice - without an American stooge on their top, will not hurt any one nor pose a threat to Western interests.

In the light of these realities, life and death of Musharraf or any of his buddies ruling anywhere in the Muslim world is irrelevant. If they go, they will be replaced by others, may be worse than them, as long as there is a will not to allow self rule to Muslim masses.