Lordo wrote:who said the problem is religion. the problem is parasitic ameriga and her ardent supporters. when ameriga leaves the middle east we will be on the road to recovery. we may even have begun and just dont know it yet. after all stone age did not come to an end for lack of stones.
Please do not overlook the way that the USA has used religion as a tool to maintain its imperialist hegemony over the region.
U.S. imperialism and political Islam
During the era of the Cold War, the United States viewed radical nationalism and communism as dire threats to its influence. After an initial period when Washington tried to win Nasser, and the Iranian secular nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh, to its side and failed, it developed an “Islam strategy” whereby Islamist groups, helped by Saudi Arabia, would be cultivated as bulwarks against radical nationalism and communism. During the 1950s, the United States would use the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt against Nasser, and a group of clergy in Iran against Mossadegh.
If Mossadegh represented the potential for what secular nationalists in power might do to Western oil interests (he nationalized the oil industry), Nasser represented Washington’s nightmare scenario in the region. While Egypt does not possess oil, Nasserism, with its emphasis on pan-Arab unity, sought to unite the technologically advanced urban countries and their large, well-trained working classes with the vast wealth of the oil producing countries. The combination of Cairo plus Riyadh would have severely hampered Western domination over the oil resources of the region. Thus, in addition to hatching coup plots against Nasser and carrying out various assassination attempts on him, such as poisoning his chocolates etc., the United States began to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and to increasingly rely on Saudi Arabia to act as a counterbalance. In the case of Iran, the CIA succeeded in its coup, and installed the pro-U.S. Shah.
If the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was first established with a grant from the British Suez Canal Company, it was thanks to U.S. support and Saudi funding that it was able to grow and proliferate. Saudi Arabia used it against the secular regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, and helped to build its bases in Sudan. It also encouraged it in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Muslim Brotherhood allied with Mawdudi’s Jamaat i-Islami. As one senior CIA official put it, the
“optic was the Cold War. The Cold War was the defining clarity of the time. We saw Nasser as socialist, anti-Western, anti-Baghdad pact, and we were looking for some sort of counterfoil. Saudi efforts to Islamicize the region were seen as powerful and effective and likely to be successful. We loved that. We had an ally against communism.”
This ally, which we will discuss shortly, laid the basis for precisely such an Islamization, and would seize the initiative from secular nationalism once the latter began a process of decline in the late 1960s.
http://isreview.org/issue/76/political- ... t-analysis
