Column

Especially in the Middle East, the US will implement this domination through Israel—the dominant power in the Middle East. Bush and his advisors calculate that the short term losses will be outwighed by the long-term benefits.

Democracy which is praised and adored as the best governmental system, when it is unified by Bush with the war machine, turns into a frightening spectre for other nations. If people were frightened before of chauvinism, that fear is only increased by a chauvinistic democracy: the authorization and occupation of other countries behind the veil of democracy. The result is a special kind of democracy: an American enforced democracy.

The prime theological challenge in the recent religious life is: How does someone religious define himself surrounded by another religions. Or in its contemporary theological terms: How to theologize in the religious context.

The attack upon Iraq indeed could be used as an excuse to improve the larger military budget. But it will be expensive for the fragile American economy. The military industry’s will increase the state’s budget deficit. Within a year of his supremacy, Bush has turned the budget surplus of US$405 billion into a budget deficit of US$157 billion. Moreover, according to Stiglitz, the last gulf war resulted in the American recession in 1991, which caused the senior Bush to lose his re-election bid.

The United States government has requested its citizens to abandon Iraq as soon as possible. In the past, foreigners might have been kidnapped by Iraq and used as human shields to protect a range of strategic places. If the military invasion of Iraq is executed, the US government does not want any of the bombs falling on Iraq to hurt its own people.

The veil has also become a symbol of liberation and resistance. As a symbol of resistance, it extends far beyond Middle Eastern society and can be found in modern Muslim societies all over the world. Resistance is a strategy to fortify either individual or communal existence. Cudjoe and Harlow define resistance as an activity planned to liberate society from oppression, and involving all aspects of experience including aesthetics as discussed below (Cudjoe dan Harlow 2000).

When politics get co-opted by religion, or when religion gets used as a political tool a a highly repressive hegemonic condition results. In circumstances in which religious beliefs are comprehended as the absolute, universal and final frame of truth, politics and power are considered as one.

Which is more important in the Islamic point of view: liberty or justice? This question is significant in terms of the current dilemma Muslims are in. Liberty and justice appear to clash with each other. In fact, the Muslim countries are unable to balance liberty and justice, if the haven’t indeed already lost both.

First, an interpretation of Islam that is not literalistic, that is substantial, that is contextual and that is in step with the ever-changing civilization of humanity.

In a somewhat different language and terminology, Mohammad Abed Al-Jabiri emphasizes that criticism of the religious text, re-reading and re-interpretation, should be done with a structuralist methodology; also using historical analysis and ideological criticism. In structuralism the text is read in a literal fashion in order to localize the tentative truth.