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Below is
a guest contribution by James Gibb Stuart for issue 22 (Autumn 1997) of Common
Sense on the topic of Confronting a Common Enemy.
Confronting a
Common Enemy
In the Coronation Oath of
our British sovereigns there is a Latin phrase, Fidei Defensor,
which has customarily been rendered in English as Defender of the
Faith. But our Crown Prince, Prince Charles, has shown that the
Latin is ambiguous when he chooses to translate it as Defender of
Faith.That subtle shift in interpretation should be seen as highly
significant by the millions of Muslims who have chosen to remain as
loyal citizens of the great Commonwealth within which they and their
forbears were born. It is faith that has been enshrined, not just
the Christian faith of Britain's Anglo-Saxon heritage, but in a
wider sense, the devotions, moral standards and disciplined
lifestyles of those other millions who look upwards and outwards to
a Supreme Being.
In an increasingly
secular world, dominated by malign forces that defer much less to
God than to Mammon, believers of whatever creed or denomination
should feel impelled, as never before, to stretch out the hand of
friendship and fellowship across the oceans and the continents
towards peoples of diverse races and cultures with whom the only
common bond may indeed be faith itself. Muslims have every right to
be actively involved in this metamorphosis, for despite centuries of
suspicion, strife, antagonisms and bloodshed instigated by errant
followers of both great religions, the Muslim and the Christian
faiths have in their more tolerant doctrines all the elements of a
benign co-existence. A Scottish Presbyterian, I have not been
privileged to study the Holy Quran in its original Arabic, gaining
my impressions only from French and English translations, but in my
readings I have seen nothing which offends my Christian conscience.
The Prophet Muhammad never failed to accord respect to Jesus Christ,
His predecessor on Earth, and if, as noted, followers of both
spiritual beliefs have at times become embroiled in bloody conflict,
it has not been at the behest of the Masters Themselves.
Nowadays there is a new
urgency for relationships to be based upon mutual appreciation and
understanding, for the whole of modern society is threatened by a
greedy and hedonistic philosophy which occasionally exerts its power
through international capital markets, and bids to destroy
governments and peoples who try to stand in its way. Recently
Mahatir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, spoke out indignantly
against the international speculators who had been attacking his
country's currency, threatening inflation and a collapse of living
standards. For his courage and frankness he was promptly assailed by
George Soros, an Eastern European whose chief claim to celebrity
status was when he mounted a multi-million dollar speculation
against the British pound. Soros had the arrogance to call Mohamad
“a menace to Malaysia”, and with his statement achieving worldwide
publicity, the inference was clear - that governments and prime
ministers are no longer in charge of their national affairs where
such issues clash with the speculative aims and objectives of the
international money mafia.
There is an answer to all
this - and the Muslim World should not endure its hurt and
humiliation in resentful silence, for within the Christian West
there is growing opposition to the vicious and wickedly
irresponsible power-play that was turned against Malaysia, and with
it comes a perception that people of faith should stand together.
How often has a Muslim thinker told me, with a sad inclination of
the head, that his co-religionists are pathetically divided? How
often, because of such divisions, have Western multinational
companies and financiers profited from their outrageous schemes to
control and manipulate Muslim resources? To what extent can it be
said that the critical factor which is currently holding the
usury-driven finance system in place is the compliance - either
through fear or ignorance - of Arab and other Muslim-orientated
governments? For sure, a military threat exists. The terrible
preponderance of sophisticated firepower brought to bear against
Iraq during the Gulf War showed that what has come to be known as
the military-industrial power complex will not readily be countered
by military means alone. Those who express their natural resentment
by guerrilla tactics of urban terror, by attacks upon Western
installations and even upon civilian populations, are pursuing
courses which must in the end prove counter-productive, making it
easy for the propaganda machines to create fear and animosity
between nations and cultures, thus laying the necessary groundwork,
should the global interests which are fast taking over the planet,
decide the time is ripe for another war. In Hidden Menace to World
Peace, my latest analysis of the subject, I felt it advisable to
warn that after the rapprochement of the main European powers within
the proposed continental union, followed by the collapse and
subsequent dismemberment of the Soviet Empire, the warmongers who
profit from international conflict may just be running short of
traditional adversaries. An armed and largely disaffected Islam,
smarting from its rebuffs and humiliations at the hands of a
technologically superior West, might just be persuaded to create a
situation in which it could be portrayed by skilful and inflammatory
propaganda as the last enemy of civilisation. Predictably there
would be pre-emptive strikes to secure vital resources and supply
lines, national pride would be offended, and outraged fanaticism
would do the rest. If that sombre hypothesis is even a remote
possibility, then Muslims must talk to Christians with mutual
respect and frankness, so that there can never be that 21st century
re-run of the mediaeval crusades. And the ground upon which they can
unite their faiths and their principles is an enlightened
understanding of the finance-driven global power structure which
threatens to impose economic enslavement on Christian and Muslim
alike. Its most potent weapon is debt, the creation of an
international climate in which it was once seen to be modern and
progressive for the technically backward nations to borrow heavily
from Western bankers, allegedly to provide finance for their
infrastructures, develop their resources and improve the living
standards of their peoples. Generally the results have been the
opposite of what was intended. They have left many of those
developing economies crippled with the payment of interest.
Governments have lost their freedom of action and sense of
independence. They have adjusted their policies so as to make the
bankers' dues a first charge upon their national revenues, and their
peoples have suffered in consequence. Even as good Muslims, they
have become the servants and dependants of their lenders. The Holy
Quran tells them it is wrong, yet for years they have done it, and
gone on doing it, because they felt there was no alternative if they
wanted to share the benefits of Western technology.
Now they should know
better. Western technology is real. It has been acquired and
consolidated by two centuries of industrial and scientific
development. But is has been welded into an instrument of
seigniorage and coercion by the very financial strategem that both
Christ and Muhammad condemned, yet which so many of their errant
followers have accepted as the Holy Writ.
Usury! the illegitimate
creation of almost all our new money as an interest-bearing debt by
the Western banking industry! The virtual enslavement of entire
populations by the enactment of massive dollar loans! The misery,
poverty and degradation that has ensured! These are matters of
common concern to peoples of all cultures. So let Christian and
Muslim speak of them together. For there truly is an answer - one of
which both the Holy Prophets would mightily approve.
Author: James
Gibb Stuart |
Date Published:
Autumn
1997 |
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