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perhaps not in the sense of the images encouraged by the western media, but a Crusade against Islam, most definitely.
What frightens the west about Islam has nothing to do with the rights of women, or human rights in general.
The "Islam" that is most demonized in the west is in fact the "Islam" that has been carefully cultivated and nurtured by the west, the totalitarian iron-fisted regimes of literal interpretation of scripture every bit as selective, as unstudied and as wacko as the American Christians who are so fond of "eye for an eye" when it suits their purposes but whom one seldom hears exhorting the part about an inch down in most Bibles, that lays out the conditions and rules regarding selling one's daughter into slavery.
While chopping hands and cloth on heads make good TV, and are very effective in persuading millions of otherwise reasonable people to cheerfully send their sons off to die in the name of stamping out this evil, and "liberating" these poor prisoners of the travesty their own politicians and generals and Armani-suited executive gunrunners have wrought and labelled "Islam," the fact is that women are treated just as poorly, human rights are shredded just as finely, in many places under completely non-Islamoid rubrics, and have been for thousands of years.
If western women, and western men, were and are so concerned about the plight of women in Pashtunistan, they have managed to suppress their distress quite impressively for more years than the US has been in business.
How many westerners know, for instance, that the Taliban were in fact wined and dined by bush regime henchmen, shortly after they came to the forefront, and were effectively made an offer they couldn't refuse, in the name of Holy Pipelinism, which they refused, and were selected as the next bombing victim?
And how many know that those colorful barbarities of the Taliban are in fact pre-Islamic tribal customs that not only have nothing to do with Islam but in many cases are in direct contradiction with the message of the Koran?
The half literate mullahs spouting rote suras in a language they cannot read while imposing the very kinds of draconian crap that Mohammed sought to END are the western imperialist oligarchy's best friend.
The western media loves to decry the lack of "democracy" in the Middle East, but prefers (and the regime also prefers) that no one peer too closely into just how much western blood and treasure has been spent in the cause of keeping it that way, back to the days of Lawrence and Gertrude.
The fact is, a democratic government chosen by an educated, well-fed and informed people with full franchisement would not be in the best interests of US business concerns, particularly the defense and energy industries.
A democratically elected, independent, accountable to his people leader could not be counted on to put US business interests before those of his own citizenry.
A dollaho, on the other hand, can and gladly will, if paid well and regularly, and throughout the region, they are.
Those interested might want to do some reading on the history of the House of Saud, for example, or enjoy typing "Mossadeq" into his google searchbox. For those with a taste for delving back farther in history, and a high tolerance for tragedy, the stomach-turning fall of the Hashemites from the honored position they once held to the contemptuous slimepit in which they now wallow, would not be the worst way you could spend an afternoon.
In short, the west could care less about people suffering from brutal regimes; on the contrary, they prefer it that way, because brutal regimes are more predictable and controllable. It is far easier to slip a few extra rolexes to a clumb of princes or sheikhs than it is to impose one's will on a noisy, fully franchised educated and opinionated electorate.
What the west fears about Islam itself has to do with the Islamic economy. They do not fear a huge Islamic bloc that enforces hijab in the streets with camel whips.
They fear a huge Islamic bloc that refuses to pay interest or accept Federal Reserve Notes, or the vaporcurrency of Greenspanfarts, in exchange for oil, and the other Islamic Monster, the spectre of peace.
Peace is the opposite of money. Few fine old families are said to have made their fortunes during this or that peace.
For those who are unaware, an Islamic economy is not socialism, nor is it the designer feudalism that westerners have been indoctrinated to worship as capitalism and a free market.
In an Islamic economy, entrepreneurship, prosperity, even wealth are encouraged, but exploitation and unbridled greed have no place.
Call back those hasty fingers, you who are about to say, why such a thing does not exist, cannot, human nature, all this balderdash about the utopia of the Caliphate - remember that we are talking now of the actual religion, not the various appeasing travesties of it that profit the sheikh and the CEO and starve the people, and also remember that the fact that Utopia is not possible is hardly an excuse for deliberately not feeding people when there is food to do so, and spending more than the cost of feeding them to slaughter them, which is the basis of US foreign policy for decades, and why it is possible to find not so many intelligent and well-read Iranians, Malaysians, Pakistanis and a host of other ians who will not mind telling you that they don't much care for Americans.
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