> Very true and in my line of thinking. Same for corruption, accountability, >responsibility, responsiveness, transparency and all that. These cannot be >reformed by changing the imaginary system with more l
*** And why wouldn't it be true when the MOST imprtant part of the equation is very conveniently left out of the picture? Any old fool would or should know that rules, regulations and laws, either NOT enforced, or could not be enforced, or no amount of police, either unequipped ort untraqined or undisciplined, would make any difference. That is where the difference lies? Is it a big mystery? Would be only to those who are unable to look at the WHOLE truth, and thus are driven to dwell on half truths, assuming that everyone else is either too stupid or toofoolish to see thru the ruses. > From: "Rajen Barua" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 2005/05/18 Wed AM 10:28:19 EDT > To: "Dilip/Dil Deka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > "ASSAMNETCOLORADO" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Assam] It takes a village? > > Very true and in my line of thinking. Same for corruption, accountability, responsibility, responsiveness, transparency and all that. These cannot be reformed by changing the imaginary system with more laws and rules on paper. We will have to change or reform the culture. People's attitude will have to be changed. There is no short cut for that. For corruption to be reduced in Assam, Assamese society will have to stop condoning corruption in society. As long as they will accept people like Prafulla Mahanta, Hiteswar Saikia and others who built palaces in Mumbai and Delhi out of public money, and re-elect them again and again, Assamese cannot reduce corruption. The open acceptactance of corruption by Assamese society will have to stop. The attitude, "Everybody is corrupt, that is why I am corrupt. India is bad, that is why Assam is bad" attitude will have to go. In Assam also It Takes a Village to turn things around. > > Rajen Barua > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Dilip/Dil Deka > To: ASSAMNETCOLORADO > Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 8:42 AM > Subject: [Assam] It takes a village? > > > From the article below, I quote, "In identifying the problem, though, Mr. Na'mat also identifies the solution. If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority. It is what the community, what the village, deems shameful. That is what restrains people. So how do we get the Sunni Arab village to delegitimize suicide bombers?" > > Laws and police, or shame on the perpetrators by means of culture? Which one do you think works better? Does religion (as Friedman says) have any role in bringing about restraint? > Dilip > Outrage and Silence > By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN > Published: May 18, 2005 > It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guant�namo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way. > > That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police. > Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia. > > The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward. > > The challenge we face in Iraq is so steep precisely because the power shift the U.S. and its allies are trying to engineer there is so profound - in both religious and political terms. > > Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are indifferent to their brutalization. > > At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually sanitized as "resistance" to occupation. > > Salama Na'mat, the Washington bureau chief for the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat, wrote the other day: "What is the responsibility of the [Arab] regimes and the official and semiofficial media in the countries bordering Iraq in legitimizing the operations that murder Iraqis? ... Isn't their goal to thwart [the emergence of] the newborn democracy in Iraq so that it won't spread in the region?" (Translation by Memri.) > > In identifying the problem, though, Mr. Na'mat also identifies the > solution. If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority. It is what the community, what the village, deems shameful. That is what restrains people. So how do we get the Sunni Arab village to delegitimize suicide bombers? > > Inside Iraq, obviously, credible Sunnis have to be brought into the > political process and constitution-drafting, as long as they do not have blood on their hands from Saddam's days. And outside Iraq, the Bush team needs to be forcefully demanding that Saudi Arabia and other key Arab allies use their media, government and religious systems to denounce and delegitimize the despicable murder of Muslims by Muslims in Iraq. > > If the Arab world, its media and its spiritual leaders, came out and forcefully and repeatedly condemned those who mount these suicide attacks, and if credible Sunnis were given their fair share in the Iraqi government, I am certain a lot of this suicide bombing would stop, as happened with the Palestinians. Iraqi Sunnis would pass on the intelligence needed to prevent these attacks, and they would deny the suicide bombers the safe houses they need to succeed. > > That is the only way it stops, because we don't know who is who. It takes the village - and right now the Sunni Arab village needs to be pressured and induced to restrain those among them who are engaging in these suicidal murders of innocents. > > The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and compassion that it propagates. > > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- > > > _______________________________________________ > Assam mailing list > [email protected] > http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam > > Mailing list FAQ: > http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html > To unsubscribe or change options: > http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam > >
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