(Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire have
turned Justice Mute)

by Ibrahim Alloush
Translated from Arabic by Muhammad Abu Nasr

Let's suppose that an Arab John Doe decides that it would be a good idea for him to establish normal relations with Zionism, or to accept foreign funds, or to adopt opportunist or unprincipled positions in the patriotic arena. What would be the best situation in which he could embark on such a course, while facing a minimum of condemnation within the political community or the society that is directly harmed by his behavior?

Let's suppose that another Arab John Doe finds that his personal situation would greatly improve if he made some concessions of principle, compromising his ideas and practice. But at the same time he doesn't want to be seen as an enemy of his nation. He wants, in fact, to be counted as part of the home team. What is the best system of values and concepts that will enable him to adopt positions of both sides simultaneously?

If we look at the first Arab John Doe, the second Arab John Doe, or others like them -- and they are all representative of a gelatinous middle stratum that doesn't find itself and its interests entirely here or entirely there -- we will find them defending their opportunism and abandonment of principles on various pretexts, all of which in the final analysis come under the heading of "moral relativism".

Moral relativism is a concept that has become widespread in the context of post-modernism, taking liberalism to its extreme by asserting the absolute equivalence of all cultures, beliefs, practices, values, concepts, and ethics. It is a concept that equates, for example, drug addiction or prostitution with their absence. In our Arab and Islamic countries it equates normalization with the Zionist entity, on the one hand, with the refusal to accept its colonial presence, on the other. It equates working as a Zionist agent with being a patriot. Promoters of moral relativism regard all these as "relative concepts" that nobody can presume to judge.

Today the post-modernist school and its offshoot, the concept of moral relativism, constitute one of the most important cultural weapons being used by the globalist offensive that needs a basic idea to rationalize its political, economic, and military onslaught. The thinker Ziauddin Sardar, for example, therefore believes that post-modernism is precisely the attack on the Third World as manifest in the cultural sphere, this time wrapped in the banner of "defense of multiculturalism".

Concepts like moral relativism and multiculturalism have today become the intellectual basis for the programs of transnational corporations that constantly strive to bring the entire inhabited world under their sway. Extreme liberalism has become their program in international gatherings and in the Third World -- whether in economics (the free market, i.e., absolute freedom for transnational corporations), or politics (the one-sided individualist conception of human rights and the fragmentation of the nation-state), or in culture (the sanctification of pluralism and minorities), or in ethics (absolute individual freedom and moral relativism, i.e., the break-up of the society).

Therefore we find that elites in the Third World adopt and attempt to impose by force their extreme liberal programs in various fields, but so far without political liberalism since the latter might let things get "out of control" before these elites can accomplish the minimum program of overturning and remolding the society on new bases. Of course, after the economy and culture have been overturned, there will no longer be any danger in the electoral game or "freedom of the press" and the like -- just as is the case in America. It is in this way, and only in this way, that the Americans are speaking the truth when they say that they want to spread "democracy" in the Arab Homeland -- but not before making the extreme liberal line predominant in people's thinking.

In our Arab and Islamic countries, opportunists might not go so far as to adopt the concept of moral relativism openly. They might even oppose the extreme liberal program to this or that extent. But, in their need for a justification of their conciliatory and unprincipled behavior in general, they will be inevitably compelled to borrow at least a part of the extreme liberal discourse from the forces that are spreading globalism. In both cases the result will wind up the same -- undermining revolutionary and patriotic principles and criteria. Undermining principled criteria, raising the maximum possible dust cloud about a "democracy" that is surrounded by ethical chaos is what they need to cover up their opportunism.

The martyr Kamal Nasir said, "a day will come when treason is just another point of view"!

Treason, and even things less extreme, are not, according to any people on earth, a legitimate point of view, even if some should try to dress it up with "pluralism" and "relativism".

Yes, we must fiercely defend freedom of opinion and expression. We must demand that principled people accept legitimate difference of opinion. People will know, in any case, how to distinguish between those who are really defending freedom of expression and opinion from those who are using them to cover up their sedition.

Established positions of principle will remain the dividing line between those who are serious and those who pretend. On one side of that line is the freedom of opinion; and on the other side . . . the masks fall off.