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US support in Libya fueling war crimes

Guest Columnist

Published: Sunday, March 25, 2012

Updated: Sunday, March 25, 2012 20:03

kaley

The inception of 2012 has ushered in a new wave of scrutiny regarding the mounting list of potential war crimes in Libya that have been unfolding in recent months.

Reports published by the Arab Organization for Human Rights detailing questionable actions by Libyan rebels with regards to civilians and migrant workers have been labeled “inconclusive,” providing a scapegoat for crimes against humanity that are currently occurring in Libya.

Any support from the United States that Libya is still receiving must be ceased immediately, including resources, otherwise our nation is also held responsible for allowing the detainment and torture of migrant African workers by the Libyan opposition.

The commission by the Arab Organization for Human Rights notes that it “was unable to draw conclusions in such instances on the basis of the information provided by NATO and recommends further investigations.” The delay in action by the United Nations and human rights organizations is another prime example of the perpetuation of the cycle of violence that plagues the Arab nations presently.

A recent Internet video depicts black African migrants being detained by Libyan rebels in a cage with their hands bound, forced to eat parts of the old Libyan flag. Libyan resistance supporters can be heard yelling, calling the detainees dogs. Amnesty International stated that these African migrants and refugees “became targets of stigma, discrimination and violence.”

Continued U.S. support for Libya will only fuel these racially driven war crimes and instances of horrible violence. There is no justification whatsoever for the detainment of the more than 5,000 African migrants, and there has been no demand or negotiation for the release of said detainees. The U.S. needs to urge organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for the immediate release of these victims.

Libya stands alone amid the chaotic events that unfolded within the Arab Spring uprising. With more than 30 years of oppressive rule by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime influencing current resistance efforts, Libya stands at risk. The violence that is surfacing by the resistance, which is aligned with interim authorities, is likely to cause the rise of a new dictatorship.

Other examples such as Syria exhibit this volatile component. In a report by Reuters, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch said, “It is imperative for armed elements of the Syrian opposition to protect human rights. They need to make it clear that they envision a Syria that turns the page on Assad-era violations and welcomes all – regardless of their religious group or background – without discrimination.”

In this regard, Libyan rebels are no different from any other unorganized resistance that has risen up in the Arab Spring with attention to their lack of cohesion and direction. Continued U.S. support will only propagate this cycle.

Upcoming scheduled elections in Libya represent a pivotal opportunity for the country to distance itself from Gaddafi’s reign and the violations against humanity that were endured during this period. However, without guidance, Libya will remain in darkness.

Newly elected officials must deal with the resistance accordingly and must use swift action to relieve the wrongfully detained workers. This includes the implementation of serious measures such as the control of military weaponry and accountability for those members of the resistance responsible for detaining and torturing innocent migrant workers. The U.N. needs to recognize Libya as a sovereign member of its union and treat the civilians and African migrants accordingly.

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17 comments

Anonymous
Fri Mar 30 2012 08:35
Trollwatch,

FYI I don't HAVE to do anything. You don't make the rules. This is not your site.

Second, since when are citations a pre-requisite for commenting? Most comments do not have source material and most comments do not have substance either. So don't hold me up to some standard nobody else comes close to following.

Third, the point I was trying to make was to refute the comment dated 3/27 @ 10:53 (a comment that, by the way, did not cite any source material) in which the commentator attempted to whitewash Islam.

Fourth, I hope you enjoy watching trolls as much as I enjoy trolling.

"Allahu Akbar" he shouted out in honor of his God as he shot the seven year old girl in the head.

TrollWatch
Thu Mar 29 2012 11:44
First of all,

If you're going to sit here and copy and paste quotes, you need to show where you got them from so that people don't think you're pulling them out of your ass. Not just the person, but what book, speech, etc. it came from. You'll notice that the writer specifically attributed information to sources and even provided hyperlinks to the information.

Also, you need to establish a point you're trying to make. Just copying and pasting quotes isn't going to make a lick of difference to anybody unless you use them to articulate a point. Do us all a favor and go away. You're making this paper's readership look atrocious.

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:45
Sam Harris on Islam

"Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death."

"As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-Muslims have been politically and economically subdued, converted, or put to sword."

"The penalty for apostasy is death. We would do well to linger over this fact for a moment, because it is the black pearl of intolerance that no liberal exegesis will ever fully digest."

"There are other ideologies with which to expunge the last vapors of reasonableness from a society's discourse, but Islam is undoubtedly one of the best we've got."

"The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence."

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:45
Jacques Ellul on Islam

"...But care is taken not to say how Islam expanded, how countries 'passed into [Muslim] hands.'...Regarding this expansion, little is said about jihad. And yet it all happened through war!...the jihad is an institution...that is to say it is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world...The conquered populations change status (tney become dhimmis), and the shari'a tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change 'owners.'"

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:44
Richard Dawkins on Islam

"Islam deserves criticism on account of the logical consequences of its dogma, namely, that the murder of fellow human beings is to be rewarded with sensual pleasure in a hedonistic 'Paradise'- a concept born in the fantasies of an Arab rebel some fourteen centuries ago. The religion of Mohammed is a dangerous system when the teachings and example of the 'prophet' are believed and followed."

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:43
Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam

"I studied the Koran a great deal...I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world, and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself."

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:42
Andre Servier on Islam

"Islam was not a torch, as has been claimed, but an extinguisher. Conceived in a barbarous brain for the use of a barbarous people, it was - and it remains - incapable of adapting itself to civilization. Wherever it has dominated, it has broken the impulse towards progress and checked the evolution of society."

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:41
Vernon Richards on Islam

"The true Islamic concept of peace goes something like this:'Peace comes through submission to Muhammad and his concept of Allah'(i.e. Islam). As such the Islamic concept of peace, meaning making the whole world Muslim, is actually a mandate for war. It was inevitable and unavoidable that the conflict would eventually reach our borders, and so it has."

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:40
According to historian Richard Fletcher, "Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch." On December 30, 1066, about four thousand Jews in Granada were murdered by rioting Muslim mobs--more than would be killed in the Crusaders' infamous Rhineland pogroms of the mid-twelfth century. What enraged the Granadan Muslims was the political power of the Jewish vizier Samuel ibn Naghrila and his son Joseph: the mob resented the fact that these men had authority over Muslims, which they saw as a "breach of sharia." The mob was incited to kill the Jews by a poem composed by Muslim jurist Abu Ishaq: "I myself arrived in Granada and saw that these Jews were meddling in its affairs. ... So hasten to slaughter them as a good work whereby you will earn God's favor, and offer them up in sacrifice, a well-fattened ram."
The mob heeded his call. A Muslim chronicler (and later sultan of Granada), 'Abd Allah, said that "both the common people and the nobles were disgusted by the cunning of the Jews, the notorious changes they had brought in the order of things, and the positions they occupied in violation of their pact [of second-class status]." He recounted that the mob "put every Jew in the city to the sword and took vast quantities of their property."
"Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews..." -- Qur'an 5:82.
Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:39
Yet the philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarked, "You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us....No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have....We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear."
Notably, Maimonides directed that Jews could teach rabbinic law to Christians, but not to Muslims. For Muslims, he said, will interpret what they are taught "according to their erroneous principles and they will oppress us. [F]or this reason ... they hate all [non-Muslims] who live among them." But the Christians, he said, "admit that the text of the Torah, such as we have it, is intact"--as opposed to the Islamic view that the Jews and Christians have corrupted their scriptures. Christians, continued Maimonides, "do not find in their religious law any contradiction with ours."
Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:39
Gregory Palamus of Thessalonica on Islam

"For these impious people, hated by God and infamous, boast of having got the better of the Romans by their love of God...they live by the bow, the sword and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devoting themselves to murder, pillage, spoil and not only do they commit these crimes, but even - what an aberration - they believe that God approves of them. This is what I think of them, now that I know precisely about their way of life."

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:38
Patriarch Cyrus of Alexandria on Islam

"I am afraid that God has sent these men to lay waste the world".

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:37
John Wesley on Islam

"Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it...have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind."

Anonymous
Wed Mar 28 2012 08:37
hn Quincy Adams on Islam

"The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force."

Anonymous
Tue Mar 27 2012 10:53
To the previous two commenters, the facts speak for themselves.

Indonesia is the country that has the largest number of Muslims in the world, and the majority of people in Malaysia are Muslims. But, no Muslim army ever went to Indonesia or Malaysia. It is an established historical fact that Indonesia entered Islam not due to war, but because of its moral message. Despite the disappearance of Islamic government from many regions once ruled by it, their original inhabitants have remained Muslims. Moreover, they carried the message of truth, inviting others to it as well, and in so doing endured harm, affliction and oppression. The same can be said for those in the regions of Syria and Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, North Africa, Asia, the Balkans and in Spain. This shows that the effect of Islam on the population was one of moral conviction, in contrast to occupation by western colonialists, finally compelled to leave lands whose peoples held only memories of affliction, sorrow, subjugation and oppression.

Muslims ruled Spain (Andalusia) for about 800 years. During this period the Christians and Jews enjoyed freedom to practice their respective religions, and this is a documented historical fact.

Christian and Jewish minorities have survived in the Muslim lands of the Middle East for centuries. Countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan all have significant Christian and Jewish populations.

Muslims ruled India for about a thousand years, and therefore had the power to force each and every non-Muslim of India to convert to Islam, but they did not, and thus more than 80% of the Indian population remains non-Muslim.

Similarly, Islam spread rapidly on the East Coast of Africa. And likewise no Muslim army was ever dispatched to the East Coast of Africa.

An article in Reader's Digest 'Almanac', yearbook 1986, gives the statistics of the increase of the percentage of the major religions of the world in half a century from 1934 to 1984. This article also appeared in The Plain Truth magazine. At the top was Islam, which increased by 235%, while Christianity had increased by 47%. During this fifty-year period, there was no "Islamic conquest" yet Islam spread at an extraordinary rate.

Today the fastest growing religion in America and Europe is Islam. The Muslims in these lands are a minority. The only sword they have in their possession is the sword of truth. It is this sword that is converting thousands to Islam.

Islamic law protects the privileged status of minorities, and that is why non-Muslim places of worship have flourished all over the Islamic world. Islamic law also allows non-Muslim minorities to set up their own courts, which implement family laws drawn up by the minorities themselves. The life and property of all citizens in an Islamic state are considered sacred whether they are Muslims or not.

Anonymous
Mon Mar 26 2012 16:02
Within three hundred years of Mohammed's birth Muslims had violently conquered all of the Middle East, all of North Africa, huge sections of central and southern Asia and parts of southern Europe. It was only after Muslims had conquered Spain and Sicily and were marching towards Rome when the church declared the First Crusade.

But let's remember: Islam is a religion of peace. LOL

Anonymous
Mon Mar 26 2012 15:59
Kaley,

If there is one thing we should have finally learned about the Islamic culture is that there is nothing non-Muslims can do to help them. Anything we infidels do will be held in contempt by them.

The other thing we should have learned by now is that there is nothing we can do to prevent them from following the violent path.

Studying Islam teaches us that from its very beginning it was/is a repressive and violent religion for Mohammed was a repressive and violent man. He is considered as close to a perfect man as is possible in Islam.

So you, and others, can ignore reality and point fingers here and there for all the problems that go with Islam but it will solve nothing for the problem IS Islam despite what your PC, liberal professors might tell you otherwise.





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