Gentle waves: Hegemony: the masks slipped and the truth revealed

Dr. Yasir Mahgoub Elhussein

When real intentions are evil, they are usually covered up with masks to hide the evil and market in vain for good that does not exist. But as soon as the masks fall apart, the truth is revealed, and the masked people learn the lessons. In a popular Lebanese play “Hala and the King” (1967), and during the celebration of the feast of “The Second Face”, “Hala” refuses the “king’s” invitation to marry her and stays in his palace, preferring a life of poverty and simplicity. However, the king disguises himself as a beggar, and meets “Hala” to find out the reason for her refusal. She does not know that he is the king, and she tells him about the poverty in the city, and about the corruption of the king’s court. Then she discovers that she is conversing with the king himself, but she goes on advising him with some good-natured irony, not to judge or imprison all the deceivers who surround him, because then there would be no one left to rule. The play ends with Hala departing the city as she entered it: unmarried, poor, and honorable.

In today’s absurd world, the Western system represents a huge empire and a member king that rules the world or tries to rule it, especially what this system calls the Middle East region, the cradle of civilizations, the repository of wealth and the place  of the descent of religions, through various means starting with the use of smokescreens, globalization and “religion industry”. It ends with putting the masks aside and examining a missile, tank and suicide drone. Globalization or the Western bourgeoisie is nothing but Western culture, or so it is intended to be a culture that generalizes, and one taste is imposed on all human beings, according to which cultural differences and distinctions are abolished. There is specific data produced by globalization, notably globalization has its source and center in the West. And that they are not modern technical tools and means or new modes of production, but rather valuable and cultural contents. Therefore, fear and reservation in dealing with it is justified. Accordingly, we must look carefully at the hidden aspects of the luster of globalization. It is no secret that whoever uses the expression “civilization” often means Western civilization.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Westernization became more dangerous, not only for cultural security, but for the entire Arab and Islamic national security. The fierce competition between the Catholic and Evangelical missionaries led to the establishment of two global cultural systems, the Francophone and the Anglo-Saxon. Many projects have been presented to the region recently, since the Madrid Peace Conference in the Middle East at the beginning of the 1990s, and they do not end with the “Middle East” that former Israeli President Shimon Peres proposed in the past after the Oslo Accords, and then the “Middle East market.” The globalization thesis is mirrored in most or some of the proposals by institutions of Western origin, sponsorship and control, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, where developing countries are called for structural adjustment, removal of restrictions in front of foreign goods, and stimulation of consumption impulses, which is an undoubtedly found approach to entrench dependency that crosses on Western thought.

While the essence of the idea of ​​containment and control remained unchanged, the means and methods of achieving it have been and still subject to modification and change according to the development and circumstances of renewed circumstances. Behind a new mask, another project has emerged aimed at the return of semi-direct colonial control, and with it the privileged relations that ruled the region’s wealth for nearly half a century before the nationalization campaign in the sixties and seventies of the last century. In the midst of economic deterioration, political decline, and social abuse, the “king” comes today wearing another mask in which religion is employed politically, a “new religion” made in the factories of Western domination. The “Abrahamic Religion” is a new Western product that has been marketed for years, a religion that has no foundations, followers, or book. Rather, it is a project whose godfathers say that its basis is the common denominator among the three religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, as they are Abrahamic religions, in reference to the Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him. Allegedly “focusing on what is common between religions and ignoring what could cause conflicts and fighting between peoples.” And with a well-crafted mask titled “Establishing peace between peoples and states regardless of differences,” he creates a deliberate confusion between the virtue of accepting the other and the concept of coexistence between these religions, and between their mixing and dissolving the differences and divisions specific to each of them. Even this deliberate confusion led to a targeted and desired result, which was represented in whether the cooperation of the followers of the three religions is required for their commonalities and noble human values, or is it intended to make a new religion for a bastard who has lost the support of the parents. Perhaps many of the deceived believe that this call seemed to them, in its conviction, a call for human unity and the elimination of the causes of disputes and conflicts, but in reality it is a call for the confiscation of freedom of belief and freedom of faith and choice. The objection to the “Abrahamic religion” was not only on the part of the Islamic clergy, as others opposed it.

In short, the Abrahamic religion project is a purely political project whose aim is to support and expand the circle of normalization of relations with Israel in the Arab region in particular. The recent wave of normalization with the Israeli occupier was based on an agreement called the “Abrahamic Accord.” The text of the declaration of the agreement, published on the page of the US State Department, states the following: “We encourage efforts to support dialogue between cultures and religions to advance a culture of peace between the three Abrahamic religions and all of humanity.” It was natural for the connection between the Abrahamic religion project and normalization with Israel to lead to a great popular rejection of normalization and the new mask.