The unfolding events in Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon have struck me and moved me as I’m sure they have you. As I wait with tears in my eyes and with held breath watching the remarkable events happening I was reminded of what Alaa, The Mesopotamian, my favorite Iraqi blogger, wrote shortly after he began blogging in November of 2003:
Years ago, in my earlier youth, had I heard somebody talking like this, my hair would have stood on end, I would have been thrown into a fit of rage enough to give me heart attack. But years of suffering, years ground to dust and wasted living under a system which had hardly anything right in it, atavism which took us back to a moral state comparable to that that existed even before the reforms of Islam fifteen centuries ago, have finally brought me to this forlorn conclusion: that perhaps it is better this way – perhaps that really, salvation lies herein.
Caution to the wind. Consider this: if the U.S. tommorrow announces that anybody willing to come to its land would be given the “Green Card” immediately with no further question, how many people do you think would stand in line? Answer this question if you dare ? Why if Western values are so bad and so terrible would you find Muslim, Hindu, Buddist, and every colour and every breed standing in that hypothetical line, in their billions ?
But America cannot take in the entire humanity, so america decides to go to them instead.
Fool, romantic, freak, say what you may. Romantics have always shaped history.
We can only hope that it will be so.
