A R C H I V E S
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| The Theater of War |
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| Halima |
| 04/09/03 at 01:58:33 |
| Assalam O ALaikum "Take your seats ladies and gentlemen at the theatre of war. Show now running, not just every night but every hour brought to you directly in your living room. Live from the center of conflict - action as it happens. Commentary and dissection of the day’s events from the very best experts. All live action, ladies and gentlemen. This year’s war. The conflict in Iraq." Imagine the scene in the living room. Well, you don’t have to imagine because here it is in your own house. Do you have your dinner on trays on your knees or are you all seated around the tables necks craned? Do you look up now and then from your paper as the images are paraded before you or do you sit controls in hand as you receive the daily briefing from the Pentagon? Are the kids in there with you or do you tell them to go and play in another room to spare them the gory details? In our house we are usually playing ping pong with the remote control between Aljazeera and BBC World to check the extent of the propaganda of the western media. There comes a point when input is too much and we have to go and do something. It suddenly felt wrong to be eating whilst people were dying on the television in front of us. So now we have quiet at mealtimes. For the first time we are using the TV for its correct purpose, to get information and news. Any more frivolous thing we may have watched before looks wrong in comparison. Our radio entertainment has also been banished. We can’t follow up news of our brothers’ and sisters’ deaths with comedy shows. In the ringside seats of the theater of war are the journalists. They sit cross-legged daily, pens poised at the appointed time to be told what’s happening. They are thrown morsels for their pages like the daily feeding of the sea lions at the zoo. There’s no more going out after your story. You might wind up dead. Even so, for the journalist who does manage to dig up his own story there’s always a counter explanation from the Pentagon. "You see those kids at the morgue they were showing on Aljazeera. Some story about US strikes on civilians. Well that was old footage that the Iraqi regime just brought out to make us look bad. You prove it was our bomb that killed them." You see, for the US media, the crime isn’t murdering children, it’s showing the dead children on TV. What audacity! Arab viewers have got used to seeing their blood soaked brothers on TV but Americans like their wars sanitary. "Surgical strikes." Weapons with pin-point precision. Weapons that can tell an arms installation from a market, a friendly plane from a foe. "Whoops. I think that was one of ours. What will we tell the Brigadier?" And what are the spectators at the theater of war doing when they’re not getting briefings? Probably relaxing at the hotel with a drink. Maybe even sunning themselves. When you’ve E’d your copy back home what else is there to do? US troops have a whole mini city of shops and eateries laid on in Kuwait. In their Gulf bolt holes the journalists don’t feel the impact of the war they call for and sustain with the fuel of public and official opinion. Nor has the war come home over here in Britain, who is apparently at war with Iraq. Not with the Iraqi people of course, says Tony Blair. Just with their government. "OK, will all those who support this regime please raise your hands." We are told we are at war and some of us have been trying to bring home the reality to the public with demonstrations and protest actions. The slogan at the latest march was: "Bombs are dropping and you’re out shopping!" Yes, the tills are still ringing all across the UK and probably in the US too. There was a major rugby match this weekend in our town. War never gets in the way of sport. Nor does it interfere with entertainment. Cinemas and nightclubs are doing a roaring trade as usual. Neither do people demur from dining out out of respect for the dead. The people in these countries don’t behave as if they are at war. Life goes on as normal. Somewhere someone is having their lives turned into hell on their behalf but they don’t see the connection between their comfortable, secure way of life and the deprivations and injustices perpetrated by our armies on people elsewhere. This is because the average TV diet has made people lose touch with reality. They are used to watching drama where the actors play dead and then get up all better again. The language western journalists use about war makes it seem like a theater, a spectator’s event that you watch with fascination and then go off and enjoy yourself. The consequences of their government’s actions have not yet reached them. The media uses inappropriate language to talk about government policies which are always seen in the context of political careers and the possibility for spin. They ask Blair’s advisors how something will "play" with an audience. Even when they are talking about waging war. Yet when Ministers are losing their jobs it is referred to as a "bloodbath" in the press. No wonder they have lost touch with all sense of morality. The journalists influence the politicians who make the decisions for the troops to be mobilized to do their wicked deed but they are very, very far distant from the impact of their actions, the devastation they have wreaked on someone else’s life. The people on the receiving end are screaming "why are they doing this to us?" If they could get hold of the enemy they would like to set upon him. They don’t know about chain of command. The soldier himself doesn’t know why he kills either. "Just following orders Ma’am." Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) described this state of affairs; when the one killed will not know for what he was killed, nor will the killer know why he has killed. Muslims have to make a connection between the news that is filtering in and how they personally respond to it and act on it. It is not enough to swear at the TV. The devil behind the screen can’t hear you even if you kick his pixelated face in a rage. If a person can’t react effectively to news it is better that they switch it off. For those who dare to watch, there are a few useful tips: Limit exposure to news to once or twice a day. Try to have something active to do while watching TV. Have a pen and paper and note down points you want to take from the bulletins to follow up. Use it to pass on to friends, write letters to newspapers or in your protest activities. Write down and investigate the points you want to challenge from hostile media. Watching this kind of thing is a job and not a pastime. While we are not the victims we can at least try to help the actual victims. They may be in a position to help us one day. What the Anglo-American forces are doing in Iraq is not a war. You could call it an illegal invasion and an unprovoked attack on civilians and a disarmed army. That’s not the war. The war has to start in our living rooms. A war on apathy. A war on inaction and a war on powerlessness. =====================================================Sarah Louise Baker is a Muslim British novelist who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. |
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