Witnessing the events of the past few days following the charge, imprisonment and subsequent full pardon of a British teacher, Gillian Gibbons, for insulting Islam one can easily be forgiven for thinking that the British Empire never ended and still rules the darkest parts of Africa.
The swift delegation of British peers sent to extract a resolution demonstrated to all that the ‘natives’ had clearly stepped out of line and once they had been received by President Hassan al-Bashir it was inevitable a capitulation would occur and the verdict would be overturned. The undercurrents of a colonial legacy whereby the ‘savages’ had to be tamed and were unable to govern themselves was very apparent. The actions of the UK foreign office are consistent with its own history of colonialism, occupation and wars in Sudan in the 19th and early 20th century. The venerated warmonger, Winston Churchill, writing about his country’s colonial exploits in Sudan said in his book, ‘The River War: An account of the reconquest of Sudan’ in 1899:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! [followers]. Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live”.
The incident of the UK teacher follows that of other similar events in recent years which highlight western interference into other nation’s domestic policies. Where western life is always considered more valuable than others and non-western judicial systems are always deemed inferior. The jailing and release of two British nurses, for murdering their colleague, in Saudi Arabia in the late 1990’s and the Afghanistan regime’s overturning of the court’s apostasy conviction last year for a man who had converted to Christianity are but just two examples. In all cases western government pressure for clemency upon the tyrant rulers they imposed upon the Muslim world prevails.
As for the accusation of over reaction to the naming of a simple teddy bear, the Muslim world should absolutely accept no lectures from the West as to what it considers honourable and deserving of respect. How can anyone take western criticism seriously, when their own societies have become so plagued with ridicule and triviality such that religion, God, Christianity and the Prophet Isa (as) are so routinely abused, satirised and made a laughing stock.
One also wonders how the British government would have reacted had its own recent spate of anti-terror legislation that has seen Muslims in the UK detained without charge, shot at in dawn raids, stopped and searched in their hundreds and convicted for writing poems been scrutinised with calls for a pardon or early release.
It is precisely this form of duplicity and arrogance that bodes ill will in all parts of the world towards western neo-colonial powers. Western governments must realise, now more than ever with the rise of political Islam and the reestablishment of the Khilafah, that the history of the West is not the history of the world; western civilisation is not universal waiting to be adopted by all; western modes of ruling and government are precisely that; specific only to those European nations that experienced a particular shared history and that other cultures, value systems and civilisations did and do exist. Samuel Huntingdon’s oft quoted remark remains as valid now as when it was first written:
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."