It is futile to argue considering how denial is a culture for these folks. On the other hand, the humour value provided by such denials and delusions is rather unique and great for a good laugh. Always fun to observe.
Pakistan and the Arab-Muslim Culture of Denial
Pakistan and the Arab-Muslim Culture of Denial
by Salim Mansur
Since 9/11, Islamist culture is seen to be synonymous with violence, misogyny and a pathological hatred for others; and, ironically, it has made Muslims themselves its most numerous victims. "Impure," or non-authentic Muslims, meant those whose Islam had been weakened by un-Islamic or non-Islamic values imported from the West, or contaminated by the Hindu culture of India.
Eventually political differences came to be viewed, by the measure of Islam, in terms of the "purity" and "impurity" of people. In the "Land of the Pure" [Urdu for Pakistan], those suspected of impurity must be cleansed, purged or driven out.
For Osama bin Laden there was a clear and unmistakable cultural divide separating the Arab-Muslim world from the West. The idea that there is a difference, perhaps even qualitative, in terms of culture between the West and the East is considered a scandal by those who are convinced that our highly interdependent world is headed in a direction where, at some point, cultures will converge, or their significance be so diminished that cultural differences will be merely a matter of curiosity.
In our contemporary world, however, Bin Laden was right, as was Samuel Huntington, warning almost a decade before 9/11 that cultural differences matter in world politics. When political leaders and intellectual pundits in the West minimize the role and influence of cultural differences in world politics, they seem to be insensible to historical record.
The cultural trait most significant in explaining the difference between the West and the East is to be found in how people assess their place and role in history. There are those who willingly discern and identify, in history, their own responsibility for what affects them and others; and then there are those who on the contrary view history, even of their own making, fatalistically to avoid taking any responsibility for its outcome. These two opposing characteristics in general might be defined respectively as the Culture of Responsibility distinguishing the West, and the Culture of Denial, which distinguishes the East, in particular the Arab-Muslim world.
The Culture of Responsibility is partly guilt-driven; guilt born out of anxiety, in both the individual and collective mind of people, that the choices they make can be wrong and, consequently, they cannot ethically shirk the role they have played in events in which they are actors. A sense of guilt is the spur that drives people individually and collectively to set right what is, or is seen to be, wrong; in an open, democratic society, this trait becomes an important self-corrective mechanism by which society reforms itself.
The Culture of Denial is one of shame, honor and face-saving against the forces of history that push for change. In such circumstances taking responsibility for one's role in events is an admission of supporting change, for better or worse – and change, in this culture, goes against collective interests as reflected in the consensus behind age-old customs and traditions. In refusing to take responsibility, or being accountable, people in shame cultures are adept in blaming others while viewing themselves as victims of history.
The contrast between these two cultures was evident in the manner in which the events of 9/11 were understood, explained, and interpreted by people in the West, in contrast to Muslims in the East. Once the shock and the grief lessened in time, analysts in the West sought explanations for 9/11 both in the thinking of those who carried out the terrorist attacks and also by looking inwardly toward what may have been the contributing factors, if any, of the West for provoking such attacks. Among Muslims, even those who denounced the perpetrators of 9/11, there was very little effort expended to understanding how their culture might have nurtured the thinking of Muslims that led to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. followed by similar attacks in Madrid, Spain, and London, England. Instead there was the reflexive response of blaming others, Jews or Israeli intelligence, and of brandishing the sociology of victimhood to exculpate the terrorists as victims long-suffering from the West's colonialist-imperialist policies and the alleged Israeli-Zionist occupation of Arab-Muslim lands in Palestine.
Despite 9/11, many in the West have gone the extra distance to placate Muslim opinion in respect to the situation in the Middle East. There seems to be the sense of guilt, nestled inside the culture of responsibility, about the colonial-imperial history of the West in the region after World War I; that guilt raises its head when contending with, for instance, the history and politics of Arab-Muslim denial of any right of Jews to a secure homeland in Palestine. This feeling of guilt among western intellectuals has been effectively exploited by Arab and Muslim intellectuals, religious leaders, and politicians to explain away the failings of Muslim culture as the effects of the humiliations inflicted by the West. This misguided view has, unfortunately, resulted in the wrong-headed effort on the part of the West, led by Europe, the U.K., and the U.S., to appease the culture of Muslims that languishes in shame and denial.
The world of Islam is much larger than the Middle East, and Muslim culture is not confined to the Arab world. The politics and history of Muslims from outside the Middle East, however, are less distorted by the lingering guilt of Western intellectuals, or by anti-Semites masking the oldest bigotry behind their excessive zeal in support for Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This dismissal of culpability means that the Muslim culture is rendered more transparent in revealing what Kanan Makiya described as the "cruelty and silence" which surrounded the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein over Iraq.
The history of Pakistan, and the genocide in Bangladesh, also provides a disclosure of the failings of Muslim culture – a history largely ignored or forgotten by the West. As a result, the embrace of Pakistan by America has contributed to strengthening those benefitting from this culture of shame and denial. There is lesson here in understanding the culture of the Muslim world without any blinkers.
The history of Pakistan, and the genocide in Bangladesh, also provides a disclosure of the failings of Muslim culture – a history largely ignored or forgotten by the West. As a result, the embrace of Pakistan by America has contributed to strengthening those benefitting from this culture of shame and denial. There is lesson here in understanding the culture of the Muslim world without any blinkers.
On 16 December 2013, Pakistan's National Assembly in Islamabad adopted a resolution by a majority vote condemning the execution of Abdul Quader Molla four days earlier in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The motion stated, "This House expresses deep concern on hanging of a veteran politician of Jamaat-i-Islami [JI] Bangladesh for supporting Pakistan in 1971." The motion was moved by a member of the Pakistani JI in the Assembly; and, speaking on a point of order, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the Interior Minister, stated that Molla's hanging was "a judicial murder for supporting a united Pakistan in 1971."
