The United States’s invasion of Afghanistan and the support it enjoys among the (ignorant) US public makes for a classroom example of thought control in democratic society.
Without threat of coercion, and at the risk of earning themselves the status of legitimate military targets, US networks (and Hollywood) have pledged their support for the US war effort. Rarely is one treated to such a spectacular exercise in thought control in a supposedly free society. Velaphi Msimang, Mowbray.
Salman Rushdie makes a good point when he says that the disclaimer, “This war is not about Islam”, and talk of the “hijacking of Islam” simply don’t have the ring of truth. But what alternative discourses are available?
Osama bin Laden and the Taliban did not invent the notion of the “wicked” Jew, “slaying of infidels” and the “inferior” female gender they are concepts explicit in the Qur’an.
For most people religious belief is not so much a choice as a predicament, especially when a fundamentalist government controls media and public opinion and when challenging religious orthodoxy is tantamount to suicide. Can one really hold individual believers accountable for beliefs that have clearly pre-existed them? A set of beliefs that may be anti-Semitic, misogynistic, intolerant and militant? No.
Paying lip-service to the notion that Islam is tolerant and peaceful (and that it has been hijacked by extremists) is necessary if the rights of innocent Muslims in the West are to be preserved. N Pietersma
Having read several articles in the M&G about recent events in Afghanistan and having watched many world leaders succumb to the US administration’s threat of “you’re with us or with the terrorists”, I’m surprised by the dearth of sane opinion about events in Afghanistan.
Why is hardly anybody expressing the view that what has been unleashed on the Afghan people is sickening and unacceptable? The US’s military track record in Third World countries is appalling and what we’re seeing now is yet another thread in a pattern of belligerence sewn by the US.
The US’s rhetoric around freedom and justice in an attempt to justify the attacks on the Taliban would be amusing if it wasn’t so arrogant and if innocent people weren’t being killed. Any sympathy I had for the US after the September 11 attacks has been overshadowed by disgust at its response. Matthew van der Want, by e-mail.