Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Try contesting PAS on ideas, not co-opting them in govt By Terence Netto
Thursday, June 01, 2023
Malaysiakini : The previous year, Ghannouchi had returned to Tunisia from over two
decades in exile to lead what was called the Jasmine Revolution, whose
most visible feature was the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidin Ben
Ali, who had ruled for nearly 25 years.
Following his triumphant
return, Ghannouchi, then the leading intellectual in the Muslim world
began steering his party Ennhalda to the leadership of what came to be
known as the Arab Spring, the period of ferment in the Islamic crescent
that saw Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi,
ejected from office.
Farther afield, the buffeting of another autocrat, Bashar Al Assad of Syria, also occurred.
Although
the entire tableau of strife and unrest in the region did not eventuate
in what its initial, freedom-questing stirrings heralded, it was a
hopeful sign: that brutal dictatorships were going to be the order of
the day in the Arab world.
Freedom and faith
So, what was to be the replacement?
As
envisaged by Public Liberties in the Islamic State, a book Ghannouchi
wrote in 1993, he argued that God granted Muslims and non-Muslims alike a
range of liberties, including freedom of religion, the press, and
property ownership.
Was he espousing Western liberalism?
Here is the surprise: Ghannouchi’s reasoning was based on faith (aqidah).
Rachid Ghannouchi
He wrote that according to Islam, no government or political party is authorised to decide things arbitrarily for its subjects.
He
argued the right to interpret the scriptures is everybody’s right, and
he rejected the dogma of Western-style secularism which enforces the
division between politics and religion.
He argued that the French ideal of laicite - the public square being stripped of all expressions of religion - was not the pre-condition of democracy.
Instead, he argued that it is the enemy of genuine democratic self-government.
When
he returned in triumph from exile in 2001, Ghannouchi declared to a
mammoth crowd at Carthage airport that he was not interested in becoming
another Ayatollah Khomeini.
He said: “We respect democracy
without any restrictions. We honour the decision of the people whether
they are for or against us.”
He said he aimed to live in a society where each and every woman enjoyed the God-given right whether or not to wear the hijab.
In the 2019 election, Ghannouchi led Ennhalda to victory in the Tunisian election and he became speaker of the assembly.
‘State security’
Sadly, Ghannouchi is now in jail in Tunisia for a year on a charge of calling another Muslim an apostate.
More ominously, more charges await him for being a threat to “state security”.
The
right-wing government of President Kais Saied is moving to dismantle
the foundations of Tunisia’s hard-won gains over the last decade in
building a civil society.
For that, it has to put in jail its principal opponent, Ghannouchi, who is 81 and in frail health.
But where has prison been a lasting hindrance to reform and the building of a civil society?
The
Islamic philosophy of Ghannouchi can be the lodestar of the government
of Anwar, who incidentally is a good friend of Ghannouchi.
