Tuesday 20 January 2009

Somalia And The Scourge Of Godless Relativism


There can be nothing more repugnant than the kind of Godless relativism that permits men to perform the most heinous of acts, in the service of narrow political interests. Few people, if any, seem to pay sufficient attention to the fundamental flaws inherent in any theory which claims that the distinction between right and wrong can be blurred. There can be no variation—as all individuals with firm beliefs shall realise—in either environment or personal perspective that can alter the distinction between that which is right and that which is wrong. It seems to me that the distinction between honour and dishonour can never be blurred, and any individual that can believe otherwise is clearly deluded.

Recently, we have witnessed devastation on a great scale in the lands of the Levant. The most dreadful form of organised barbarism had been unleashed upon a long-abused and captive populace. The justification for this particularly outrageous, and gruesome, form of military aggression had been the relative security rights of one group of people as compared to the rights of another group of people. This kind of relative comparison, I believe, is the root cause of much of the suffering in this world. It seems to me that we are all encouraged to believe in the erroneous idea that any society that can boast a relatively superior form of military power may, if it so deems fit, seek to obliterate another society in the interests of relative security.

In Somalia, during the past two years, we have witnessed levels of violence, and internal civilian displacement never before witnessed in this corner of the world. The Ethiopian military invasion, of the Somali national territory in late 2006, has directly resulted in the deaths of no less than 16000 Somali people. This particularly ghastly military occupation of the Somali national territory had been launched in order to satisfy the spurious interests of non-Somali political leaders. This specific military intervention was designed to satisfy the relatively obscure political interests of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, of Ethiopia, with respect to the Somali people. That is to say that the so-called international community had agreed—on this particular occasion—that the relative merits of Ethiopian state interests were far more important than the legitimate interests of the Somali nation.

It is important to recall that the Somali city of Mogadishu, which for so long had been a lawless and anarchic place, had been rehabilitated by the ICU and had become a city of law and order well before the Ethiopian military invasion of December 2006. Instead of encouraging the good work the ICU—and supporting the full restoration of law and order throughout the entire Somali national territory—the powers of the West deemed the rise of the ICU as something that was relatively bad for the people of Somalia and, by extension, the rest of the world. The Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia was accordingly sanctioned and supported in the West. The fact that the ICU was relatively popular inside Somalia, at the time of the Ethiopian military invasion, apparently did not interests the powers in the West.

Upon reflecting upon these matters, one is forced to come to the conclusion that the relative merits of popular Somali national aspirations are almost certainly viewed with suspicion—if not contempt—in the important centres of power in the West. It seems to me that the relatively more Western orientated political interests of the Ethiopian state are more appealing to the self-appointed Western arbiters, of African political disputes, than the essentially Islamic political interests of the Somali nation. In the Islamic tradition, there can be no blurring of the distinction between right and wrong; no blurring of the distinction between service and dis-service; and no blurring of the distinction between military occupation and national liberation. Today, the city of Mogadishu is in a worse state than on the occasion of the initial arrival of the Ethiopian army. Godless relativism had inspired the folly that has become the Ethiopian military occupation of the Somali national territory, and, it shall be Godless relativism that precipitates the demise of many currently moribund political entities in this world.

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