Tens of thousands of our men and women, including children, are arrested, kidnapped, caged, raped, and tortured. Our lands are occupied and our people oppressed and driven from their homes. Our people are starved and deprived of medicines through sanctions. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been murdered, made refugees, and orphaned. Our Prophet (PBUH) is mocked and or religion maligned.
And what do Muslims do? Yes, a few here and there resist. Yet, the majority of Muslims call for peace and even join the calls for their fellow Muslims to abandon armed resistance.
Sabra and Shatila. Jenin. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib. Haditha. Kunar. Gaza. The list goes on and on. The Israelis hold over 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, including children, and most without charge. Our brothers are kidnapped and torn from their families. Children are raised without fathers and women struggle without their husbands; mothers grieve over the loss of their sons. And these are the fortunate ones. Others regularly bury their young after they are slaughtered by occupation forces.
Here's an account that details the fate of a Muslim prisoner at the hands of US guards at a detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan:
Dilawar, who died on December 10, 2002, was a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver and farmer who weighed 122 pounds and was described by his interpreters as neither violent nor aggressive.
When beaten, he repeatedly cried "Allah!" The outcry appears to have amused U.S. military personnel, as the act of striking him in order to provoke a scream of "Allah!" eventually "became a kind of running joke," according to one of the MPs. "People kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,'" he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."
The Times reported that:
On the day of his death, Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
"A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen.
It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time. (Source: wikipedia.org)
Not to mention the harrowing ordeal of Dr. Aaafia Siddiqui, thought to be the same prisoner 650 who was repeatedly raped and tortured by US prison guards over a period of years at the same Bagram facility. The journalist Yvonne Ridley reported on the accounts of former prisoners who are still haunted by the woman's screams.
Conclusion: Our restraint borders on insanity.
0 comments:
Post a Comment