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DOA UNTUK AYAH

IMAGINE -JOHN LENNON

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Sosialisme dan Islam: Kesatuan menentang kezaliman Kapitalisme


Golongan kapitalis tidak kenal anda 'siapa', tetapi kenal anda 'apa'.


Karl Marx, pernah berkata:

"Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes"

"Religion is the opium of the people"

"Agama merupakan candu buat masyarakat"

Tetapi jikalau beliau masih hidup pada tahun 1979 dan menyaksikan salah satu sejarah dunia Islam yang agung iaitu Revolusi Iran, tentu beliau akan menarik balik kata-kata diatas. Bangsa yang ditindas oleh Shah Iran itu akhirnya bangkit dari akar umbi menumpaskan patung Amerika tersebut dengan kekuatan revolusi kelas tertindas dan Islam.

Alangkah indahnya perjuangan menegakkan keadilan ini dimiliki semua golongan yang tertindas. Alangkah indahnya gerakan jikalau gerakan Islam dapat ‘berdakwah’ kepada jutaan golongan Marxist dan Sosialis bahawasanya Islam berkongsi roh perjuangan yang sama dengan mereka. Alangkah lebih indah apabila perkahwinan antara ‘dakwah dan perjuangan menegakkan keadilan’ ini berakhir dengan perakuan bahawa Islam itu Ad-deen oleh jutaan golongan Marxis dan Sosialis ini…

Tetapi mengapa tidak begitu? Mengapa gerakan Islam tidak cuba membuka mata dengan melihat musuh yang lebih fana sifatnya, yang sudah meratah hidup-hidup jutaan manusia dari zaman Qabil dan Habil hinggalah di era globalisasi yang sememangnya gerakan Islam ditipu mentah-mentah?

Itulah kekurangan yang ada, dimana kekurangan ini jikalau diketemukan titik perjuangan yang sama bakal mengubah dunia ini daripada dinodai golongan kapitalis yang ditunjangi agenda Zionisme Internasional.

Gerakan Islam di dunia, terutamanya di Malaysia ini masih ingin bersikap “eksklusif” dalam menilai masalah umat manusia. Seolah-olah erti ke’Khalifahan’ itu hanya untuk orang Islam semata-mata.

Berapa ramai daripada golongan pejuang Islam ini yang mengenali dan mengiktiraf perjuangan Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Baghat Singh, Frantz Fanon, dan revolusinier yang seangkatan dengan mereka?

Walhal, golongan kapitalis begitu rakus menindas tidak kira siapa dan apa yang mampu mencabar kekuasaan mereka semenjak 200 tahun dahulu lagi.

Disinilah saya berpendapat bahawa perana pejuang Islam dan pejuang keadialan yang pelbagai terutamanya pejuang-pejuang sosialis harus berpadu tenaga untuk membela golongan yang tertindas tidak kira siapa pun asalkan namanya manusia, maka tanggungjawab itu terletak di pundak kita bersama.

Sama-sama kita mendekati saudara seperjuangan yang terdekat dengan kita pada mutakhir ini: Sosialisme.

Artikel dibawah dipetik dari laman http://www.pk-sejahtera.us/kastra/?page_id=7 dengan olahan semula dalam Bahasa Melayu Malaysia untuk para pembaca budiman sekalian.


MENGENAL LEBIH DEKAT SOSIALISME


“Maka apakah mereka mencari agama yang lain dari agama Allah, padahal kepada-Nya-lah berserah diri segala apa yang di langit dan di bumi, baik dengan suka maupun terpaksa dan hanya kepada Allah lah mereka dikembalikan” (QS Ali Imran 83)


“Barang siapa mencari agama selain agama Islam, maka sekali-kali tidaklah akan diterima (agama itu) daripadanya, dan dia di akhirat termasuk orang-orang yang rugi” (QS Ali Imran 85)


I. Pengertian Sosialisme

Menurut Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, sosialisme mempunyai erti-erti sebagai berikut:

1. semua teori-teori ekonomi dan politik yang membela kepemilikan (ownership) kolektif atau kepemilikan pemerintah, dan pengaturan dari alat-alat produksi dan pengagihan barang.

2. a. sebuah sistem masyarakat atau kehidupan berkelompok yang di dalamnya tidak ada kepemilikan (property) peribadi.

b. sebuah sistem atau keadaan masyarakat yang di dalamnya alat-alat produksi dikuasai dan dikawal oleh negara.


3. sebuah fasa masyarakat yang di dalam teori transisi Marxist berada di antara kapitalisme dan komunisme, dan yang dicirikan oleh distribusi barang yang tidak merata dan pengupahan berdasarkan jumlah kerja yang dilakukan.


Sedangkan Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia menyebutkan bahwa sosialisme adalah sebuah istilah umum untuk teori politik dan ekonomi yang membela sebuah sistem kepemilikan bersama atau pemerintah, dan pengurusan alat-alat produksi dan pengagihan barang.

Karena sifat kolektif ini, sosialisme biasanya dipertentangkan dengan doktrin kesucian (sanctity) kepemilikan peribadi yang merupakan ciri utama dari kapitalisme. Kalau kapitalisme sangat menekankan persaingan dan keuntungan, maka sosialisme menganjurkan kerja sama dan pelayanan sosial.


Dalam pengertian yang lebih luas, sosialisme sering digunakan untuk menggambarkan secara lepas teori-teori ekonomi dari mulai teori yang mengatakan bahwa hanya hal-hal yang bersangkut kepentingan umum dan sumber daya alam yang harus dikuasai negara, sampai dengan teori yang menyebutkan bahwa negara harus bertanggungjawab kepada semua permasalahan ekonomi.


Gustav LeBon dalam bukunya The Psychology of Socialism (1899) menyebutkan bahawa sebuah evolusi (perubahan) yang terjadi dalam suatu masyarakat haruslah ditinjau dari 3 sisi:

faktor politik, faktor ekonomi dan faktor psikologi.

Karena itu, dalam melihat sosialisme, LeBon berpendapat bahwa kita harus melihatnya sebagai konsep politik, konsep ekonomi, konsep falsafah dan sebagai sebuah kepercayaan/keyakinan (belief).

Bahkan dalam bagian ke-2 dari bukunya ini, LeBon menulis tentang sosialisme sebagai sebuah kepercayaan yang salah satu babnya berjudul Evolusi Sosialisme Menuju Sebuah Bentuk Keagamaan (religious form).


Jelaslah bagi kita bahwa sosialisme bukanlah semata hanya sebuah teori ekonomi semata. Ia adalah sebuah jalan hidup yang meliputi berbagai aspek, dengan aspek politik dan ekonomi sebagai ujung tombaknya. Ia adalah sesuatu yang diyakini penganutnya sebagai sesuatu yang harus diperjuangkan, bahkan dengan revolusi (marxisme), untuk membawa suatu perubahan dalam masyarakat. Tidaklah berlebihan kalau kita mengkategorikannya sebagai sebuah –dalam istilah Islam-dien.

II. Sejarah awal Sosialisme

Sosialisme muncul di akhir abad ke-18 dan awal abad ke-19 sebagai reaksi dari perubahan ekonomi dan sosial yang diakibatkan oleh revolusi industri. Revolusi industri ini memang memberikan kelebihan buat para pemilik fabrik pada saat itu, tetapi dilain pihak para pekerja justeru malah semakin miskin. Semakin menyebar idea sistem industri kapitalis ini, maka reaksi dalam bentuk pemikiran-pemikiran sosialis pun semakin meningkat.


Meskipun banyak pemikir sebelumnya yang juga menyampaikan idea-idea yang serupa dengan sosialisme, pemikir pertama yang mungkin dapat dijuluki sosialis adalah François Noël Babeuf yang pemikiran-pemikirannya muncul selama revolusi Prancis. Dia sangat memperjuangkan doktrin pertarungan kelas antara kaum modal dan buruh yang di kemudian hari diperjuangkan dengan lebih keras oleh Karl Marx.


Para pemikir sosialis setelah Babeuf ini kemudian ternyata lebih moderat dan mereka biasanya dijuluki kaum “utopian socialists”, seperti de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, dan Robert Owen. Mereka lebih moderat dalam erti tidak terlalu mengentengahkan pertentangan kelas dan perjuangan kekerasan tetapi mengetengahkan kerjasama daripada persaingan. Saint-Simon berpendapat bahawa negara yang harus mengatur produksi dan pengagihan, sedangkan Fourier dan Owen lebih mempercayai bahwa yang harus berperanan besar adalah komuniti kolektif kecil. Karena itu kemudian muncul perkampungan komuniti (communistic settlements) yang didirikan berdasarkan konsep yang terakhir ini di beberapa tempat di Eropah dan Amerika Syarikat, seperti New Harmony (Indiana) dan Brook Farm (Massachussets)[1].


Setelah kaum utopian ini, kemudian muncul para pemikir yang idea-ideanya lebih ke arah politik, misalnya Louis Blanc. Blanc sendiri kemudian menjadi anggota pemerintahan provisional Prancis di tahun 1848. Sebaliknya juga muncul para anarkis seperti Pierre Joseph Proudhon dan radikalis (insurrectionist) Auhuste Blanqui yang juga sangat berpengaruh di antara kaum sosialis di awal dan pertengahan abad ke-19.


Pada tahun 1840-an, istilah komunisme mulai muncul untuk menyebut sayap kiri yang militan dari faham sosialisme. Istilah ini biasanya dirujukkan kepada tulisan Etiene Cabet dengan teori-teorinya tentang kepemilikan umum. Istilah ini kemudian digunakan oleh Karl Marx dan Friedrich Engels untuk menggambarkan pergerakan yang membela perjuangan kelas dan mengaruskan revolusi untuk menciptakan sebuah masyarakat kerjasama (society of cooperation).


Karl Marx (dalam bahasa Inggeris, Karl ialah Charlie) adalah anak dari pasangan Hirschel and Henrietta Marx. Ia lahir di Trier, Germany, tahun 1818. Hirschel Marx adalah seorang pengacara dan kerana gerakan anti-Semitik kemudian meninggalkan agama Yahudinya ketika Karl masih kecil. Meskipun majoriti penduduk Trier adalah katolik, Marx memutuskan untuk menjadi seorang protestan dan mengganti namanya dari Hirschel menjadi Heinrich

III. Jenis-jenis Sosialisme: Revolusionis dan Evolusionis (Gradualis)


Secara umum, sosialisme terbagi 2:

Di satu sisi adalah mereka yang berpendapat tentang pentingnya perjuangan kelas dan keharusan melakukan revolusi (revolusionis), dan di sisi lain adalah mereka yang berfaham bahwa cita-cita sosialisme ini hendaklah diwujudkan melalui cara-cara yang lebih berperingkat dan tanpa kekerasan.


Revolusionis diwakili oleh Marxism. Di dalam karya-karyanya, Marx menyerang kaum sosialis sebagai para pemimpi utopia teoritis yang mengabaikan pentingnya perjuangan revolusi untuk mendirikan doktrin-doktrinnya. Pada tahun 1848, Marx dan Engels menulis Communist Manifesto yang di dalamnya mereka menuliskan prinsip-prinsip yang disebut Marx sebagai scientific socialism. Di sini Marx mengajukan kemestian adanya konflik revolusioner antara modal dan buruh.


Sejalan dengan Marxisme, beberapa jenis sosialisme lainnya yang lebih memili jalan perjuangan berperingkat juga muncul, misalnya sosialisme kristian dengan tokohnya Frederick Denison Maurice dan Carles Kingsley.

Juga muncul sosialisme yang perjuangannya diwadahi dalam bentuk parti. Di tahun 1870-an sudah bermunculan parti-parti sosialis di banyak negara Eropah.


Di akhir abad 19, kaum revolusionis berada di atas angin kerana keadaan buruh semakin baik dan tidak terlihatnya tanda-tanda bahawa kapitalisme akan mati. Puncaknya mungkin adalah di Rusia ketika Parti Sosial Demokratis Buruh Rusia berpecah dalam Bolshevisme (revolusionis) dan Menshevisme (gradualis/peningkatan). Para pendukung bolshevisme inilah yang kemudian mengambil alih kekuasaan melalui Revolusi Rusia di tahun1917 dan mereka kemudian membentuk Partai Komunis Uni Soviet.

IV. Sosialisme dan Islam


Islam sejalan dengan komunisme?


Salah satu isu yang dilontarkan kaum sosialis di negara-negara majoriti muslim adalah bahawa Islam sejalan dengan sosialisme/komunisme. Hasan Raid misalnya dalam tulisannya yang disampaikan pada pertemuan yang diselenggarakan Forum Mahasiswa Ciputat tanggal 13 Juli 2000 di Jakarta, menyebutkan bahwa Islam dan komunisme/sosialisme itu harus bergandengan tangan.

Paling tidak ada 3 alasan yang dikemukakannya:


a. Islam memerangi kapitalisme

Pernyataan mereka adalah bahawa Islam cukup jelas menentang adanya manusia mengeksploitasi manusia lain sebagaimana tercermin dari surah Al An’am:145 atau QS Al Baqarah:188, atau yang lebih tegas lagi adalah ayat 1-4 surat Al Humazah (yang jelas-jelas mengutuk orang-orang yang menumpuk-numpuk harta).

Dan orang-orang yang menumpuk harta tersebut ialah kaum kapitalis. Mengenai Islam menentang kapitalisme ini telah dikemukakan dengan jelas oleh HOS Tjokroaminoto, melalalui bukunya yang berjudul “Islam dan Sosialisme”.

Bukunya itu ditulis pada tahun 1924 di Mataram. Ini diantaranya yang dikatakan HOS Tjokroaminoto:

“Menghisap keringatnya orang-orang yang bekerja, memakan hasil pekerjaan orang lain, tidak memberikan keuntungan yang semestinya (dengan seharusnya) menjadi bahagian lain orang yang turut bekerja mengeluarkan keuntungan itu,–semua perbuatan yang serupa ini (oleh Karl Marx disebut memakan keuntungan ‘meerwaarde’ (nilai lebih) adalah dilarang sekeras-kerasnya oleh agama Islam, karena itulah perbuatan memakan ‘riba’ belaka. Dengan begitu maka nyatalah, agama Islam memerangi kapitalisme sampai pada ‘akarnya’, membunuh kapitalisme mulai darui ‘benihnya’, oleh karena pertama-tama sekali yang menjadi dasarnya kapitalisme, iaitu memakan keuntungan ‘meerwaarde’ sepanjang fahamnya Karl Marx, dan ‘memakan riba’ sepanjang fahamnya Islam” (Penerbit Bulan Bintang, Jkt, 1954, hal: 17).


b. Menegakkan Sosialisme

Ini kerana Islam hendak menegakkan keadilan sosial misalnya dalam
surat Al Qashash ayat 5-6. Di sana dengan gamblang dikemukakan janji Tuhan yang akan menjadikan kaum tertindas dan miskin (mustadafhin atau dhuafa) sebagai pemimpin di bumi dan mewarisi bumi sehingga tidak ada tempat lagi bagi kaum mustakbirin (para diktator, angkuh dan kaya) untuk melakukan penindasan dan penghisapan terhadap kaum mustadafhin.

Keadilan sosial tegak. Tentang Islam akan menegakkan sosialisme, juga telah dikemukakan H. Agus Salim dalam Kongres Nasional VI SI, bulan Oktober 1921 di Surabaia. H. Agus Salim antara lain mengatakan:

“Nabi Muhammad Saw sudah mengajarkan sosialisme, sejak 1200 tahun sebelum Karl Marx” (Sekneg: G 30-S Pemberontakan PKI”, 1994, hal: 11).


Kemudian menurut tulisan Hasan Raid ini, masyarakat yang berkeadilan sosial atau masyarakat sosialis adalah masyarakat transisi menuju masyarakat Tauhidik, “umat yang satu” seperti yang dikemukakan surat Al Mukminun ayat 52.

Mengenai masyarakat Tauhidik ini, Asghar Ali Engineer melalui bukunya “Islam dan Pembebasan” mengemukakan bahawa Tauhid tidak hanya menyatakan keesaan Allah, tetapi juga kesatuan manusia dalam semua hal. Suatu masyarakat jami’-i tawhid yang Islamik, tidak akan membenarkan diskriminasi dalam bentuk apapun, tidak kira itu didasarkan pada ras(keturunan), agama, kasta maupun kelas.

Masyarakat tauhidik yang sejati menjamin kesatuan sempurna diantara manusia dan untuk mencapai ini, perlu untuk membentuk masyarakat tanpa kelas.

Keesaan Allah mengharuskan kesatuan masyarakat dengan sempurna dan masyarakat demikian tidak menerima perbezaan dalam bentuk apapun, bahkan perbezaan kelas sekalipun. Tidak akan terjadi solidariti iman sejati, kecuali segala bentuk perbezaan ras(keturunan), bangsa, kasta, dan kelas dihilangkan. Pembahagian kelas menegaskan secara tidak langsung dominasi yang kuat atas yang lemah dan dominasi ini merupakan pengingkaran terhadap pembentukan masyarakat yang adil (hal: 94).


c. Pertentangan Kelas dan Perjuangan Kelas

Al Qur’an menyebutkan tentang pertentangan dan perjuangan kelas, misalnya surah Al Mukminun (53), Al Qashash (5-6) dan Ar Ra’du (11). Ketiga surah-surah di atas mengandungi petunjuk bahwa masyarakat manusia tidak satu lagi, tetapi telah terpecah-pecah dalam yang menindas dan yang tertindas.

Tuhan dalam hal ini terang-terangan memihak kepada kaum yang tertindas.

Itu tercermin dari janji Tuhan dalam Al Qashash (5-6). Melalui surat Ar Ra’du 11 cukup jelas dikemukakan, bahawa keadaan mereka yang tertindas dan miskin tetap akan tertindas dan miskin, bila mereka sendiri tidak bangkit melemparkan belenggu yang dililitkan kaum penindas atas leher mereka.

Usaha kaum atau perjuangan kelas dari kaum tertindas sendirilah yang menentukan terjadinya perubahan. Imbauan berperang untuk membebaskan orang-orang yang teraniaya dari surat Annisa 75 dan Al Hajj 39. Hadith Nabi Muhammad s.a.w juga mengatakan:

“Bila engkau melihat kemungkaran ubahlah dengan tangan (kekuatan, kekerasan), dan bila tidak mampu, ubahlah dengan lidah (kritik, nasehat) dan bila tidak mampu juga, ubahlah dalam hati dan itulah selemah-lemahnya iman. Bagi yang imannya kuat, kemungkaran harus diubah dengan tangan. “

Dengan mengemukakan ayat-ayat yang terdapat dalam Al Quran di atas, mereka kemudian mendakwa bahawa Islam dengan jelas memerangi kapitalisme, Islam hendak menegakkan sosialisme, dan Islam bertujuan untuk mewujudkan masyarakat tanpa kelas.

Dan untuk memenangkan perjuangan mengalahkan kapitalisme, memenangkan sosialisme dan kemudian terwujudnya masyarakat tanpa kelas, Islam memberikan petunjuk harus dengan melalui perjuangan kelas. Semuanya itu menunjukkan terdapatnya titik persamaan antara Islam dan komunisme. Memang istilahnya tentu tidak sama.

Misalnya komunisme menyebut yang diperanginya “kapitalisme”, Islam memakai istilah ‘mengutuk orang-orang yang menumpuk harta”; komunisme memakai istilah “sosialisme” yang hendak ditegakkan, Islam mengatakan ‘menjadikan kaum tertindas menjadi pemimpin di bumi dan mewarisi bumi”.

Komunisme menyatakan tujuan tujuannya yang terakhir terbentuknya “masyarakat komunis”, “masyarakat tanpa kelas”, Islam memakai “masyarakat Tauhidik”.

Komunisme memakai istilah “perjuangan kelas”, Islam memakai istilah “usaha kaum”.

“Usaha” itu adalah “perjuangan”, “kaum”, itu adalah “golongan” atau “kelas”.
Dikatakan mereka bahwa tentang terdapatnya perbezaan antara Islam dan Komunisme tentu tak akan ada yang menyangkal. Islam mempermasalahkan kehidupan di dunia dan akhirat, sedang Komunisme hanya mempermasalahkan masalah kehidupan manusia di dunia, bagaimana supaya tegak keadilan. Masalah akhirat, tidak dipermasalahkan komunisme. Masalah akhirat, adalah masalah peribadi, masalah hubungannya dengan yang menciptakannya.

Islam Agama yang Fitrah


Mengenai sosialisme ini, Yusuf Qorodhowi dalam bukunya Sistem Masyarakat Islam dalam Al Qur’an dan Sunnah (Malaamihu Al Mujtama’ Al Muslim Alladzi Nasyuduh) menyebutkan 3 hal sebagai berikut.


1. Sistem ekonomi Sosialis menghilangkan pemilikan individu dan kebebasannya dan menganggap semua kekayaan itu sebagai perisai pemerintahan.

Prinsip ini sangat diagung-agungkan oleh masyarakat sebagai perwakilan dari negara. Individu dalam sistem ini tidak berhak memiliki tanah, fabrik pekarangan atau yang lainnya dari sarana produksi, tetapi ia wajib bekerja sebagai karyawan pemerintah sebagai pemilik segala sumber produksi dan yang berhak mengoperasikannya.

Pemerintah juga melarang seseorang untuk memiliki modal harta meskipun melalui prosedur yang halal. Adapun dalam Islam kita mengetahui bahwa dia menghargai hak milik pribadi, karena itu termasuk konsekuensi fitrah dan termasuk bahagian dari kebebasan (kemerdekaan).

Bahkan termasuk sifat dasar kemanusiaan, karena hak milik peribadi itu merupakan motivasi yang paling kuat untuk merangsang produktivitas dan meningkatkannya. Islam tidak membedakan antara sarana produksi dan yang lainnya, tidak pula membezakan antara pemilikan besar atau kecil, selama ia memperolehnya dengan cara yang sah menurut syari’at.


2. Faham sosialisme-Marxisme tegak di atas perang antar golongan (perjuangan kelas) dengan mempergunakan sarana kekerasan yang penuh pertumpahan darah.

Sehingga pada akhirya seluruh golongan itu hancur, kecuali satu golongan yaitu kaum “Proletariat” termasuk di dalamnya kaum buruh rakyat kecil.

Padahal yang sebenarnya menang bukanlah dari kalangan buruh, tetapi sekelompok manusia yang bekerja di parti dan tentera yang berkuasa atas nama golongan buruh di segala bidang dan melarang sebagian besar penduduk dari segala sesuatu. Oleh karena itu akhir penjelasan dari Karl Marx adalah:

“Wahai kaum buruh sedunia bersatulah!”

Adapun Islam, aturan dan falsafahnya tegak di atas persaudaraan antara manusia dan menganggap mereka semuanya satu keluarga dan memperbaiki hubungan di antara mereka apabila terjadi ketidakberesan. Islam menganggap hal itu lebih mulia daripada shalat atau puasa sunnah. Maka jelaslah perbezaan antara orang yang mengajak para buruh untuk bersatu melawan yang lainnya dengan orang yang mengajak manusia seluruhnya untuk bersaudara dan menjalin cinta kasih sesama mereka.

Nabi SAW bersabda:

“Jadilah kalian hamba-hamba Allah yang bersaudara.” (HR. Ahmad dan Muslim)


3. Faham Sosialis Marxis selalu diliputi oleh tekanan politik, dan ketakutan pemikiran serta berbagai pelarangan terhadap kebebasan.

Mereka menyembunyikan aspirasi kelompok-kelompok yang menentang sistem dan menuduh setiap kelompok pembangkan sebagai sikap primitif, kontra revolusi, pengkhianat atau dengan tuduhan yang lainnya. Sama saja sejak masa “Lenin” sampai hari ini. Dan Lenin pernah menulis kepada salah seorang sahabatnya, ia mengatakan:

“Sesungguhnya tidak mengapa membunuh tiga perempat penduduk dunia agar sisanya seperempat menjadi Sosialis.”

Adapun Islam itu tegak di atas dasar musyawarah, dan menjadikan nasihat pemerintah itu termasuk inti ajarannya, dan mendidik masyarakat untuk menyelamatkan orang yang berbuat kejahatan dengan lembut dan beramar ma’ruf nahi munkar serta memperingatkan ummat apabila melihat orang yang zhalim, kemudian bila mereka tidak memegang kedua tangannya (mencegahnya) maka Allah akan menyegerakan siksa untuk mereka dari sisi-Nya.


Muhammad Qutb ketika menjawab pertanyaan mengapa dunia memerlukan Islam sekarang ini, menuliskan sebagai-berikut:


Pertama bahawa Islam bukanlah semata-mata ideologi teori, tetapi ia merupakan sebuah sistem praktis yang mengapresiasi kebutuhan asasi manusia dan berusaha merealisasikannya.

Kemudian, di dalam upayanya memenuhi kebutuhan manusia ini, Islam berusaha mencapai keseimbangan dalam berbagai aspek aktiviti kehidupan. Ini dimulai dari keseimbangan individu antara jasad dan jiwanya. Juga keseimbangan antara kebutuhan individu dengan kebutuhan komuniti. Islam tidak membolehkan kedzholiman individu terhadap individu lainnya atau terhadap komunitas. Begitu juga Islam tidak membolehkan komuniti untuk mendzholimi individu.

Juga harus diingat bahawa keberadaan Islam adalah terpisah dari ideologi-ideologi lain baik sebagai falsafah sosial mahupun sebuah sistem ekonomi.

Beberapa tampilan Islam mungkin memang serupa dengan kapitalisme atau sosialisme, tetapi sebenarnya sangat berbeda dari keduanya. Islam dapat dikatakan mempertahankan hal-hal yang baik dari sistem-sistem ini, tetapi terbebas dari berbagai kelemahan yang dimilikinya. Islam menjamin kebebasan personal dan menyediakan kesempatan untuk berkembangnya enterprise individu, tanpa mengorbankan masyarakat atau keadilan sosial.


Selanjutnya beliau menyebutkan bahwa Islam berada di antara (keseimbangan) dua ekstrim: kapitalisme dan sosialisme.

Islam sangat menghargai baik peranan individu mahupun peranan negara dan mengharmonikan keduanya sedemikian sehingga seorang individu mempunyai kebebasan yang sangat diperlukannya untuk mengembangkan potensinya, tetapi juga memberikan kekuasaan kepada masyarakat dan negara untuk mengatur dan mengkontrol hubungan sosio-ekonomi untuk menjaga dan memelihara keharmonisan kehidupan manusia.


Juga Muhammad Qutb menegaskan bahwa sistem Islam yang unik ini tidak lahir sebagai reaksi terhadap sebuah tekanan ekonomi, juga bukan merupakan hasil kompromi berbagai kepentingan yang berbeda.

V. PENUTUP

Tulisan ini ditutup dengan suatu ucapan yang sering disampaikan orang dalam mengamati gejala sosialisme ini. Ucapan ini memang bukan ucapan ilmiah karena tidak jelas siapa yang pertama kali mengatakannya, tetapi patut untuk kita renungkan:


“Apabila seorang anak muda tidak tertarik dengan sosialisme, maka berarti ia kurang pergaulan dan kurang wawasan. Tetapi apabila ketika menjadi tua, ia masih saja mengagumi sosialisme, maka berarti pemikirannya tidak berkembang.”


Wallahu a’lam bis shawab

Selain referensi yang disebutkan di dalam tulisan di atas, Bahan-bahan bacaan lebib LENGKAP dapat ditemukan di:
· http://www24.brinkster.com/indomarxist/ (situs sosialisme/komunisme Indonesia)
· http://www.ceo.parra.catholic.edu.au/lib_links/social.html (berisi berbagai link ke berbagai situs sosialisme dunia)
· Abul a’laa Maududi, Capitalism, Socialism and Islam.
· Said Qutb, Keadilan Sosial dalam Islam
· M. Syamsi Ali, Ajaran Rasulullah SAW bukan faham melainkan dien (http://media.isnet.org/isnet/Syamsi/sosialisme.html) tanggapan terhadap tulisan Muhammad mengajarkan sosialisme jauh sebelum Karl Marx oleh Alam Tulus (http://media.isnet.org/islam/Etc/sosialisme.html)

[1] Mungkin fenomena ini mirip apa yang dilakukan oleh gerakan Darul Arqam di Malaysia. Mereka membangun sebuah perkampungan sendiri dan berusaha menerapkan sistim (ekonomi) yang mereka yakini kebenarannya dalam perkampungan itu, seolah terlepas dari dunia luar.

Posted by Rausyanfikir at 1:06 PM
Labels: industri, kapitalis, Penjajahan Minda, sosialisme

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tulisan saudara sy puji...Sy yakin saudara tidak berfahaman sosialisme atau komunisme..cuma sy pinta,saudara perjelaskan bahwa Islam lg BAGUS dari sosialisme..Sy jgk tertarik dgn kata2 diakhir tulisan saudara (“Apabila seorang anak muda tidak tertarik dengan sosialisme, maka berarti ia kurang pergaulan dan kurang wawasan. Tetapi apabila ketika menjadi tua, ia masih saja mengagumi sosialisme, maka berarti pemikirannya tidak berkembang.”)..Cuma yg sy nak gtau,maut xtggu masa tua

January 21, 2008 5:17 PM
nami o fish said...

terima kasih banyak-banyak pasal tulis artikel ini.

selaku pendukung sosialis,saya selalu diserang kerana dikatakan bercanggah dengan islam.

ini tohmahan yang tak boleh saya terima.

diharapkan kita dapat bekerjasama dalam segala macam hal.

sila lawat page saya http://tehtarikgelasbesar.blogspot.com ok?

kita bincang-bincang.

Workers of the world unite!

October 23, 2008 7:28 PM
s said...

"cuma sy pinta,saudara perjelaskan bahwa Islam lg BAGUS dari sosialisme"
ya. saya juga inginkan penekanan yg lebih yg menyatakan sistem ekonomi Islam adalah lebih baik dari sis sosialis.. minta pndangan...

November 10, 2008 3:45 PM
Rausyanfikir said...

Itu sudah pasti. Saya meletakkan sosialisme kepada pengkritik hebat kapitalisme. Sebagai solusi yg mutlak tidak mungkin sama sekali.Xpa, baca dulu semua posting saya dan anda akan faham dimana kedudukan saya.

November 10, 2008 3:48 PM
jiwamelayu said...

sistem sosialis sebagai alat bukannya matlamat: matlamat kita adalah Yang Satu!

heh, falsafah tahaluf siyasi?

August 26, 2009 11:07 AM
Rausyanfikir said...

Yup. Tak ke mana sangat pun sosialisme tapi berjaya juga sebagai alternatif kepada hegemoni kapitalis di sesetengah tempat.

August 26, 2009 11:10 AM

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my 1st

selamat berbahagia SADY

US vs IRAQ

*T**he US War against Iraq*

*The Destruction of a Civilization*

*By James Petras*

*August 21, 2009 "**Information Clearing House*
*" -- The* US seven-year war
and occupation of Iraq is driven by several major political forces and
informed by a variety of imperial interests. However these interests do
not in themselves explain the depth and scope of the sustained, massive
and continuing destruction of an entire society and its reduction to a
permanent state of war. The range of political forces contributing to
the making of the war and the subsequent US occupation include the
following (in order of importance):

The most important political force was also the least openly discussed.
The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC), which includes the prominent role
of long-time, hard-line unconditional Jewish supporters of the State of
Israel appointed to top positions in the Bush Pentagon (Douglas Feith
and Paul Wolfowitz ), key operative in the Office of the Vice President
(Irving (Scooter) Libby), the Treasury Department (Stuart Levey), the
National Security Council (Elliot Abrams) and a phalanx of consultants,
Presidential speechwriters (David Frum), secondary officials and policy
advisers to the State Department. These committed Zionists ?insiders?
were buttressed by thousands of full-time /Israel-First/ functionaries
in the 51 major American Jewish organizations, which form the President
of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO). They openly stated
that their top priority was to advance Israel?s agenda, which, in this
case, was a US war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, occupy the
country, physically divide Iraq, destroy its military and industrial
capability and impose a pro-Israel/pro-US puppet regime. If Iraq were
ethnically cleansed and divided, as advocated by the ultra-right,
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the ?Liberal? President
Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and militarist-Zionist,
Leslie Gelb, there would be more than several ?client regimes?.

Top Zionist policymakers who promoted the war did not initially
_directly_ pursue the policy of systematically destroying what, in
effect, was the entire Iraqi civilization. But their support and design
of an occupation policy included the total dismemberment of the Iraqi
state apparatus and recruitment of Israeli advisers to provide their
?expertise? in interrogation techniques, repression of civilian
resistance and counter-insurgency. Israeli expertise certainly played a
role in fomenting the intra-Iraqi religious and ethnic strife, which
Israel had mastered in Palestine. The Israeli ?model? of colonial war
and occupation ? the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 ? and the practice of
?total destruction? using sectarian, ethno-religious division was
evident in the notorious massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps in Beirut, which took place under Israeli military supervision.

The second powerful political force behind the Iraq War were civilian
militarists (like Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney) who sought
to extend US imperial reach in the Persian Gulf and strengthen its
geo-political position by eliminating a strong, secular, nationalist
backer of Arab anti-imperialist insurgency in the Middle East. The
civilian militarists sought to extend the American military base
encirclement of Russia and secure control over Iraqi oil reserves as a
pressure point against China. The civilian militarists were less moved
by Vice President Cheney?s past ties with the oil industry and more
interested in his role as CEO of Halliburton?s giant military base
contractor subsidiary Kellogg-Brown and Root, which was consolidating
the US Empire through worldwide military base expansion. Major US oil
companies, who feared losing out to European and Asian competitors, were
already eager to deal with Saddam Hussein, and some of the Bush?s
supporters in the oil industry had already engaged in illegal trading
with the embargoed Iraqi regime. The oil industry was not inclined to
promote regional instability with a war.

The militarist strategy of conquest and occupation was designed to
establish a long-term colonial military presence in the form of
strategic military bases with a significant and sustained contingent of
colonial military advisors and combat units. The brutal colonial
occupation of an independent secular state with a strong nationalist
history and an advanced infrastructure with a sophisticated military and
police apparatus, extensive public services and wide-spread literacy
naturally led to the growth of a wide array of militant and armed
anti-occupation movements. In response, US colonial officials, the CIA
and the Defense Intelligence Agencies devised a ?divide and rule?
strategy (the so-called ?El Salvador solution? associated with the
former ?hot-spot? Ambassador and US Director of National Intelligence,
John Negroponte) fomenting armed sectarian-based conflicts and promoting
inter-religious assassinations to debilitate any effort at a united
nationalist anti-imperialist movement. The dismantling of the secular
civilian bureaucracy and military was designed by the Zionists in the
Bush Administration to enhance Israel?s power in the region and to
encourage the rise of militant Islamic groups, which had been repressed
by the deposed Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. Israel had mastered
this strategy earlier: It originally sponsored and financed sectarian
Islamic militant groups, like Hamas, as an alternative to the secular
Palestine Liberation Organization and set the stage for sectarian
fighting among the Palestinians.

The result of US colonial policies were to fund and multiply a wide
range of internal conflicts as mullahs, tribal leaders, political
gangsters, warlords, expatriates and death squads proliferated. The ?war
of all against all? served the interests of the US occupation forces.
Iraq became a pool of armed, unemployed young men, from which to recruit
a new mercenary army. The ?civil war? and ?ethnic conflict? provided a
pretext for the US and its Iraqi puppets to discharge hundreds of
thousands of soldiers, police and functionaries from the previous regime
(especially if they were from Sunni, mixed or secular families) and to
undermine the basis for civilian employment. Under the cover of
generalized ?war against terror?, US Special Forces and CIA-directed
death squads spread terror within Iraqi civil society, targeting anyone
suspected of criticizing the puppet government ? especially among the
educated and professional classes, precisely the Iraqis most capable of
re-constructing an independent secular republic.

The Iraq war was driven by an influential group of neo-conservative and
neo-liberal ideologues with strong ties to Israel. They viewed the
success of the Iraq war (by success they meant the total dismemberment
of the country) as the first ?domino? in a series of war to
?re-colonize? the Middle East (in their words: ?to re-draw the map?).
They disguised their imperial ideology with a thin veneer of rhetoric
about ?promoting democracies? in the Middle East (excluding, of course,
the un-democratic policies of their ?homeland? Israel over its
subjugated Palestinians). Conflating Israeli regional hegemonic
ambitions with the US imperial interests, the neo-conservatives and
their neo-liberal fellow travelers in the Democratic Party first backed
President Bush and later President Obama in their escalation of the wars
against Afghanistan and Pakistan. They unanimously supported Israel?s
savage bombing campaign against Lebanon, the land and air assault and
massacre of thousands of civilians trapped in Gaza, the bombing of
Syrian facilities and the big push (from Israel) for a pre-emptive,
full-scale military attack against Iran.

The US advocates of sequential and multiple simultaneous wars in the
Middle East and South Asia believed that they could only unleash the
full strength of their mass destructive power after they had secured
total control of their first victim, Iraq. They were confident that
Iraqi resistance would collapse rapidly after 13 years of brutal
starvation sanctions imposed on the republic by the US and United
Nations. In order to consolidate imperial control, American
policy-makers decided to permanently silence all independent Iraqi
civilian dissidents. They turned to the financing of Shia clerics and
Sunni tribal assassins, and contracting scores of thousands of private
mercenaries among the Kurdish Peshmerga warlords to carry out selective
assassinations of leaders of civil society movements.

The US created and trained a 200,000 member Iraqi colonial puppet army
composed almost entirely of Shia gunmen, and excluded experienced Iraqi
military men from secular, Sunni or Christian backgrounds. A little
known result of this build up of American trained and financed death
squads and its puppet ?Iraqi? army, was the virtual destruction of the
ancient Iraqi Christian population, which was displaced, its churches
bombed and its leaders, bishops and intellectuals, academics and
scientists assassinated or driven into exile. The US and its Israeli
advisers were well aware that Iraqi Christians had played a key role the
historic development of the secular, nationalist,
anti-British/anti-monarchist movements and their elimination as an
influential force during the first years of US occupation was no
accident. The result of the US policies were to eliminate most secular
democratic anti-imperialist leaders and movements and to present their
murderous net-work of ?ethno-religious? collaborators as their
uncontested ?partners? in sustaining the long-term US colonial presence
in Iraq. With their puppets in power, Iraq would serve as a launching
platform for its strategic pursuit of the other ?dominoes? (Syria, Iran,
Central Asian Republics?).

The sustained bloody purge of Iraq under US occupation resulted in the
killing 1.3 million Iraqi civilians during the first 7 years after Bush
invaded in March 2003. Up to mid-2009, the invasion and occupation of
Iraq has _officially cost_ the American treasury over $666 billion. This
enormous expenditure attests to its centrality in the larger US imperial
strategy for the entire Middle East/South and Central Asia region.
Washington?s policy of politicizing and militarizing ethno-religious
differences, arming and encouraging rival tribal, religious and ethnic
leaders to engage in mutual bloodletting served to destroy national
unity and resistance. The ?divide and rule? tactics and reliance on
retrograde social and religious organizations is the commonest and
best-known practice in pursuing the conquest and subjugation of a
unified, advanced nationalist state. Breaking up the national state,
destroying nationalist consciousness and encouraging primitive
ethno-religious, feudal and regional loyalties required the systematic
destruction of the principal purveyors of nationalist consciousness,
historical memory and secular, scientific thought. Provoking
ethno-religious hatreds destroyed intermarriages, mixed communities and
institutions with their long-standing personal friendships and
professional ties among diverse backgrounds. The physical elimination of
academics, writers, teachers, intellectuals, scientists and
professionals, especially physicians, engineers, lawyers, jurists and
journalists was decisive in imposing ethno-religious rule under a
colonial occupation. To establish long-term dominance and sustain
ethno-religious client rulers, the entire pre-existing cultural edifice,
which had sustained an independent secular nationalist state, was
physically destroyed by the US and its Iraqi puppets. This included
destroying the libraries, census bureaus, and repositories of all
property and court records, health departments, laboratories, schools,
cultural centers, medical facilities and above all the entire
scientific-literary-humanistic social scientific class of professionals.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi professionals and family members were
driven by terror into internal and external exile. All funding for
national, secular, scientific and educational institutions were cut off.
Death squads engaged in the systematic murder of thousands of academics
and professionals suspected of the least dissent, the least nationalist
sentiment; anyone with the least capacity to re-construct the republic
was marked.

_The Destruction of a Modern Arab Civilization_

Independent, secular Iraq had the most advanced scientific-cultural
order in the Arab world, despite the repressive nature of Saddam
Hussein?s police state. There was a system of national health care,
universal public education and generous welfare services, combined with
unprecedented levels of gender equality. This marked the advanced nature
of Iraqi civilization in the late 20^th century. Separation of church
and state and strict protection of religious minorities (Christians,
Assyrians and others) contrasts sharply with what has resulted from the
US occupation and its destruction of the Iraqi civil and governmental
structures. The harsh dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein thus presided
over a highly developed modern civilization in which advanced scientific
work went hand in hand with a strong nationalist and anti-imperialist
identity. This resulted especially in the Iraqi people and regime?s
expressions of solidarity for the plight of the Palestinian people under
Israeli rule and occupation.

A mere ?regime change? could not extirpate this deeply embedded and
advanced secular republican culture in Iraq. The US war planners and
their Israeli advisers were well aware that colonial occupation would
increase Iraqi nationalist consciousness unless the secular nation was
destroyed and hence, the imperial imperative to uproot and destroy the
carriers of nationalist consciousness by physically eliminating the
educated, the talented, the scientific, indeed the most secular elements
of Iraqi society. Retrogression became the principal instrument for the
US to impose its colonial puppets, with their primitive, ?pre-national?
loyalties, in power in a culturally purged Baghdad stripped of its most
sophisticated and nationalistic social strata.

According to the Al-Ahram Studies Center in Cairo, more that 310 Iraqi
scientists were eliminated during the first 18 months of the US
occupation ? a figure that the Iraqi education ministry did not dispute.

Another report listed the killings of more than 340 intellectuals and
scientists between 2005 and 2007. Bombings of institutes of higher
education had pushed enrollment down to 30% of the pre-invasion figures.
In one bombing in January 2007, at Baghdad?s Mustansiriya University 70
students were killed with hundreds wounded. These figures compelled the
UNESCO to warn that Iraq?s university system was on the brink of
collapse. The numbers of prominent Iraqi scientists and professionals
who have fled the country have approached 20,000. Of the 6,700 Iraqi
university professors who fled since 2003, the Los Angeles Times
reported than only 150 had returned by October 2008. Despite the US
claims of improved security, the situation in 2008 saw numerous
assassinations, including the only practicing neurosurgeon in Iraq?s
second largest city of Basra, whose body was dumped on the city streets.

The raw data on the Iraqi academics, scientists and professionals
assassinated by the US and allied occupation forces and the militias and
shadowy forces they control is drawn from a list published by the
_Pakistan Daily News _(_www.daily.pk _) on
November 26, 2008. This list makes for very uncomfortable reading into
the reality of systematic elimination of intellectuals in Iraq under the
meat-grinder of US occupation.

_Assassinations_

The physical elimination of an individual by assassination is an extreme
form of terrorism, which has far-reaching effects rippling throughout
the community from which the individual comes ? in this case the world
of Iraqi intellectuals, academics, professionals and creative leaders in
the arts and sciences. For each Iraqi intellectual murdered, thousands
of educated Iraqis fled the country or abandoned their work for safer,
less vulnerable activity.

Baghdad was considered the ?Paris? of the Arab world, in terms of
culture and art, science and education. In the 1970?s and 80?s, its
universities were the envy of the Arab world. The US ?shock and awe?
campaign that rained down on Baghdad evoked emotions akin to an aerial
bombardment of the Louvre, the Sorbonne and the greatest libraries of
Europe. Baghdad University was one of the most prestigious and
productive universities in the Arab world. Many of its academics
possessed doctoral degrees and engaged in post-doctoral studies abroad
at prestigious institutions. It taught and graduated many of the top
professionals and scientists in the Middle East. Even under the deadly
grip of the US/UN-imposed economic sanctions that starved Iraq during
the 13 years before the March 2003 invasion, thousands of graduate
students and young professionals came to Iraq for post-graduate
training. Young physicians from throughout the Arab world received
advanced medical training in its institutions. Many of its academics
presented scientific papers at major international conferences and
published in prestigious journals. Most important, Baghdad University
trained and maintained a highly respected scientific secular culture
free of sectarian discrimination ? with academics from all ethnic and
religious backgrounds.

This world has been forever shattered: Under US occupation, up to
November 2008, eighty-three academics and researchers teaching at
Baghdad University had been murdered and several thousand of their
colleagues, students and family members were forced to flee.

_The Selection of Assassinated Academics by Discipline_

The November 2008 article published by the _Pakistan Daily News_ lists
the names of a total of 154 top Baghdad-based academics, renowned in
their fields, who were murdered. Altogether, a total of 281 well-known
intellectuals teaching at the top universities in Iraq fell victim to
the ?death squads? under US occupation.

Prior to the US occupation, Baghdad University possessed the premier
research and teaching medical faculty in the entire Middle East
attracting hundreds of young doctors for advanced training. That program
has been devastated during the rise of the US-death squad regime, with
few prospects of recovery. Of those murdered, 25% (21) were the most
senior professors and lecturers in the medical faculty of Baghdad
University, the highest percentage of any faculty. The second highest
percentage of butchered faculty were the professors and researchers from
Baghdad University?s renowned engineering faculty (12), followed by the
top academics in the humanities (10), physical and social sciences (8
senior academics each), education (5). The remaining top academics
murdered at Baghdad University spread out among the agronomy, business,
physical education, communications and religious studies faculties.

At three other Baghdad universities, 53 senior academics were
slaughtered, including 10 in the social sciences, 7 in the faculty of
law, 6 each in medicine and the humanities, 9 in the physical sciences
and 5 in engineering. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld?s August 20, 2002
pre-invasion joke, /??one has to assume they/ (scientists)/ have not
been playing ?*tiddlywinks?*(a child?s game)?(/ justifying the bloody
purge of Iraq?s scientists in physics and chemistry. An ominous signal
of the academic bloodletting that followed the invasion.

Similar bloody purges of academics occurred in all the provincial
universities: 127 senior academics and scientists were assassinated at
the various well-regarded universities in Mosul, Kirkuk, Basra and
elsewhere. The provincial universities with the highest number of
murdered senior faculty members were in cities where the US and British
military and their Kurdish mercenary allies were most active: Basra
(35), Mosul (35), Diyala (15) and Al-Anbar (11).

The Iraqi military and allied death squads carried out most of the
killing of academics in the cities under US or ?allied? control. The
systematic murder of academics was a _nation-wide_, _cross-disciplinary
drive_ to destroy the cultural and educational foundations of a modern
Arab civilization. The death squads carrying out most of these
assassinations were primitive, pre-modern, ethno-religious groups ?set
loose? or /instrumentalized/ by US military strategists to wipe out any
politically conscious intellectuals and nationalist scientists who might
pursue an agenda for re-building a modern, secular society and
independent, unified republic.

In its panic to prevent the US invasion, the Iraqi National Monitoring
Directorate provided a list, which identified over 500 key Iraqi
scientists to the UN on December 7, 2002. There is little doubt that
this list became a core element in the US military?s /hit list/ for
eliminating Iraq?s scientific elite. In his notorious pre-invasion
speech to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited a
list of over 3,500 Iraqi scientists and technicians who would have to be
?contained? to prevent their expertise from being used by other
countries. The US had even created a ?budget? of hundreds of millions of
dollars, drawn from the Iraqi ?Oil for Food? money held by the United
Nations to set up ?civilian re-education? programs to re-train Iraqi
scientists and engineers. These highly touted programs were never
seriously implemented. Cheaper ways of containing what one American
policy expert termed Iraq?s /?/excess scientists, engineers and
technicians? in a Carnegie Endowment Paper (RANSAC Policy Update April
2004) became clear. The US had decided to adopt and expand the Israeli
Mossad?s covert operation of assassinating selected key Iraqi scientists
on an industrial scale.

_The US ?Surge? and ?Peak Assassination? Campaigns: 2006-2007_

The high tide of terror against academics coincides with the renewal of
the US military offensive in Baghdad and in the provinces. Of the total
number of assassinations of Baghdad-based academics for which a date is
recorded (110 known intellectuals slaughtered), almost 80% (87) occurred
in 2006 and 2007. A similar pattern is found in the provinces with 77%
of a total of 84 scholars murdered outside of capital during the same
period. The pattern is clear: the murder rate of academics grows as the
occupying US forces organize a mercenary Iraqi military and police force
and provide money for the training and recruitment of rival Shia and
Sunni tribesmen and militia as a means of decreasing American casualties
and of purging potential dissident critics of the occupation.

The terror campaign against academics intensified in mid-2005 and
reached its peak in 2006-2007, leading to the mass flight of tens of
thousands of Iraqi scholars, scientists, professionals and their
families overseas. Entire university medical school faculties have
become refugees in Syria and elsewhere. Those who could not afford to
abandon elderly parents or relatives and remained in Iraq have taken
extraordinary measures to hide their identities. Some have chosen to
collaborate with the US occupation forces or the puppet regime in the
hope of being protected or allowed to immigrate with their families to
the US or Europe, although the Europeans, especially the British are
disinclined to accept Iraqi scholars. After 2008, there has been a sharp
decline in the murder of academics ? with only 4 assassinated that year.
This reflects the massive flight of Iraqi intellectuals living abroad or
in hiding rather than any change of policy on the part of the US and its
mercenary puppets. As a result, Iraq?s research facilities have been
decimated. The lives of those remaining support staff, including
technicians, librarians and students have been devastated with few
prospects for future employment.

The US war and occupation of Iraq, as Presidents Bush and Obama have
declared, is a ?success? ? an independent nation of 23 million citizens
has been occupied by force, a puppet regime is ensconced, colonial
mercenary troops obey American officers and the oil fields have been put
up for sale. All of Iraq?s nationalist laws protecting its patrimony,
its cultural treasures and national resources, have been annulled. The
occupiers have imposed a ?constitution? favoring the US Empire. Israel
and its Zionist flunkies in the Administrations of both Bush and Obama
celebrate the demise of a modern adversary?and the conversion of Iraq
into a cultural-political desert. In line with an alleged agreement made
by the US State Department and Pentagon officials to influential
collectors from the American Council for Cultural Policy in January
2003, the looted treasures of ancient Mesopotamia have ?found? their way
into the collections of the elite in London, New York and elsewhere. The
collectors can now anticipate the pillage of Iran.


Warning to Iran

The US invasion, occupation and destruction of a modern,
scientific-cultural civilization, such as existed in Iraq, _is a prelude
of what the people of Iran can expect_ if and when a US-Israeli military
attack occurs. The imperial threat to the cultural-scientific
foundations of the Iranian nation has been totally absent from the
narrative among the affluent Iranian student protesters and their
US-funded NGO?s during their post-election /?Lipstick Revolution?/
protests. They should bear in mind that in 2004 educated, sophisticated
Iraqis in Baghdad consoled themselves with a fatally misplaced optimism
that ?at least we are not like Afghanistan?. The same elite are now in
squalid refugee camps in Syria and Jordan and their country more closely
resembles Afghanistan than anywhere else in the Middle East. The
chilling promise of President Bush in April 2003 to transform Iraq in
the image of ?our newly liberated Afghanistan? has been fulfilled. And
reports that the US Administration advisers had reviewed the Israeli
Mossad policy of selective assassination of Iranian scientists should
cause the pro-Western liberal intellectuals of Teheran to seriously
ponder the lesson of the murderous campaign that has virtually
eliminated Iraqi scientists and academics during 2006-2007.

_Conclusion_

What does the United States (and Britain and Israel) gain from
establishing a retrograde client regime, based on medieval
ethno-clerical socio-political structures in Iraq? First and foremost,
Iraq has become an outpost for empire. Secondly, it is a weak and
backward regime incapable of challenging Israeli economic and military
dominance in the region and unwilling to question the ongoing ethnic
cleansing of the native Palestinian Arabs from Jerusalem, the West Bank
and Gaza. Thirdly, the destruction of the scientific, academic, cultural
and legal foundations of an independent state means increasing reliance
on the Western (and Chinese) multinational corporations and their
technical infrastructure ? facilitating imperial economic penetration
and exploitation.

In the mid 19^th Century, after the revolutions of 1848, the
conservative French sociologist Emil Durkheim recognized that the
European bourgeoisie was confronted with rising class conflict and an
increasing anti-capitalist working class. Durkheim noted that, whatever
its philosophical misgivings about religion and clericalism, the
bourgeoisie would have to _use_ the myths of traditional religion to
?create? social cohesion and undercut class polarization. He called on
the educated and sophisticated Parisian capitalist class to forego its
rejection of obscurantist religious dogma in favor of
_instrumentalizing_ religion as a tool to maintain its political
dominance. In the same way, US strategists, including the
Pentagon-Zionists, have _instrumentalized_ the tribal-mullah,
ethno-religious forces to destroy the secular national political
leadership and advanced culture of Iraq in order to consolidate imperial
rule ? even if this strategy called for the killing off of the
scientific and professional classes. Contemporary US imperial rule is
based on supporting the socially and politically _most backward sectors_
of society _and_ applying the _most advanced technology_ of warfare.

Israeli advisers have played a major role in instructing US occupation
forces in Iraq on the practices of urban counter-insurgency and
repression of civilians, drawing on their 60 years of experience. The
infamous massacre of hundreds of Palestinian families at Deir Yasin in
1948 was emblematic of Zionist elimination of hundreds of productive
farming villages, which had been settled for centuries by a native
people with their endogenous civilization and cultural ties to the soil,
in order to impose a new colonial order. The _policy of the total
deracination_ of the Palestinians is central to Israel?s advise to the
US policymakers in Iraq. Their message has been carried out by their
Zionist acolytes in the Bush and Obama Administrations, ordering the
dismemberment of the entire modern Iraqi civil and state bureaucracy and
using pre-modern tribal death squads made up of Kurds and Shia
extremists to purge the modern universities and research institutions of
that shattered nation.

The US imperial conquest of Iraq is built on the destruction of a modern
secular republic. The cultural desert that remains (a Biblical ?howling
wilderness? soaked in the blood of Iraq?s precious scholars) is
controlled by mega-swindlers, mercenary thugs posing as ?Iraqi
officers?, tribal and ethnic cultural illiterates and medieval religious
figures. They operate under the guidance and direction of West Point
graduates holding ?blue-prints for empire?, formulated by graduates of
Princeton, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale and Chicago, eager to serve the
interests of American and European multi-national corporations.

This is called ?combined and uneven development?: The marriage of
fundamentalist mullahs with Ivy League Zionists at the service of the US.

WORKERS' DAY ?

*
Celebrating the Worker Day

Celebrating the American Worker
The Sad Story Behind Labor Day
by Claudine Zap


For most of us, Labor Day means backyard barbecues, weekend sales, and a last carefree day before school starts. But the laid-back holiday has some seriously sad history, including chaos, riots, and even death. Let us explain.

A tragic tale

Back in the days of the Industrial Revolution, workers were expected to put in 12-hour days, seven days a week (yes, including kids). Already sounds awful, right? It gets worse. In Pullman, Illinois, a company town that employed and housed workers to build posh railway cars, times had gotten tough. In response, George Pullman cut jobs and wages. It was 1893. Thousands of workers walked off their jobs in protest, demanding higher salaries and lower rents. Other unions joined, refusing to work the Pullman cars, turning the small-town fracas into a national fury.

With mail cars backing up, and riots worrying train execs, President Grover Cleveland stepped in. He declared the strike illegal and sent 12,000 troops to break the strike. Cue brutal protests and bloodshed. The strike was broken, but so was the spirit of the workers. To reach out to the labor movement, Congress rushed the national holiday into law. The bad will resulted in Cleveland losing re-election. But the day off for hot dogs endures.

When is it?

Labor Day falls on the first Monday of September. This year, that would be Monday, September 7. According to the Department of Labor, Congress passed an act in 1894 making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

So, working stiffs everywhere, say it now, with feeling: Happy Labor Day.



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PURNAMA MERINDU SITI

HITLER & WAR

Opinion

Pat Buchanan

Did Hitler Want War?

About The Author:

Pat Buchanan has been a senior adviser to three presidents, twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

Pat Buchanan Pat Buchanan – Tue Sep 1, 3:00 am ET

Creators Syndicate – On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.

Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished. Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers.

By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin. A hundred million Christians were under the heel of the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin.

What cause could justify such sacrifices?

The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.

Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland's rescue.

But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe?

Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn't want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.

Comes the response: The war guarantee was not about Danzig, or even about Poland. It was about the moral and strategic imperative "to stop Hitler" after he showed, by tearing up the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia with it, that he was out to conquer the world. And this Nazi beast could not be allowed to do that.

If true, a fair point. Americans, after all, were prepared to use atom bombs to keep the Red Army from the Channel. But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet's, or Fidel Castro's, was out to conquer the world?

After Munich in 1938, Czechoslovakia did indeed crumble and come apart. Yet consider what became of its parts.

The Sudeten Germans were returned to German rule, as they wished. Poland had annexed the tiny disputed region of Teschen, where thousands of Poles lived. Hungary's ancestral lands in the south of Slovakia had been returned to her. The Slovaks had their full independence guaranteed by Germany. As for the Czechs, they came to Berlin for the same deal as the Slovaks, but Hitler insisted they accept a protectorate.

Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?

Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland's turn, then Russia's, then France's, then Britain's, then the United States.

We would all be speaking German now.

But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can't get out of the Baltic Sea?

If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?

Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?

Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?

Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser's fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?

Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.

Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Miklos Horthy's Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso's Slovakia.

Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.

As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?

Winston Churchill was right when he called it "The Unnecessary War" — the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.

Pat Buchanan's book on the causes of World War II, "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War,'" can be purchased through amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/nnyexu. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

CIA INTERROGATIONS

What is the CIA Still Hiding about Interrogations?

By Nat Hentoff:

September 04, 2009 "Billings Gazette" -- A fierce debate will long continue to swirl around former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's long-delayed 2004 report (sprung by an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit) about at least some of the "enhanced" CIA interrogations. He now says some were apparently designed "solely because they were degrading" (his statement printed in the Aug. 24 Washington Post).

The Helgerson report was released despite strenuous objections by CIA Director Leon Panetta.

We now know (The New York Times, August 26) that the CIA's "secret interrogation program operated under strict rules ... managers, doctors and lawyers not only set the program's parameters but dictated every facet of a detainee's daily routine, monitoring interrogations on an hour-by-hour basis."

Bush-Cheney torture policy

If we are to believe this proud declaration by the CIA, it reveals how fastidiously the Bush-Cheney administration executed its policy of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" forbidden by the international Convention Against Torture, the Geneva Conventions (both of which we signed), our own torture laws and the Supreme Court's 2006 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision.

Should you doubt our torture policy existed, see actual official government documents (including autopsy reports of suspects killed during interrogation) in "Administration of Torture": A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond" (Columbia University Press, 2007) by the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh.

What is the CIA hiding? Keep in mind that of the 109 pages on the widely discussed CIA inspector general report, 36 pages were completely blacked out, and 30 more were largely blacked out (ABC News, Aug. 25). Moreover, ABC's Brian Ross and Matthew Cole alarmingly disclose:

"The CIA and the Obama Administration continue to keep secret some of the most shocking allegations involving the spy agency's interrogation program: three deaths and several other detainees whose whereabouts could not be determined, according to a former senior intelligence official who has read the full, unredacted version."

Beyond the inflammatory Helgerson report, there will be much more to come if we ever get a full-scale, bipartisan criminal investigation with subpoena powers, not only of "the black sites" but all the way up the chain of command to the highest-level officials and their lawyers, who have yet to be held at all accountable for the war crimes - and that's what they are in U.S. and international law - committed in our name.

Continuing secrecy

As for the continuing secrecy of the far from self-declared "transparent" Obama administration, little attention has been paid to the former CIA inspector general's recent statement in the Aug. 24 Washington Post in which he said:

"I am disappointed that the Government did not release even a redacted version of the Recommendations (I made), which described a number of corrective actions that needed to be taken."

Why do Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama hide these recommendations by the former inspector general? Because they don't want to act on them?

At the smoldering core of what will inevitably, blazingly erupt is the statement by a then much-respected national veteran of public service in the January/February/March 2008 Washington Monthly:

"We have made clear that there are certain lines Americans will not cross because we respect the dignity of every human being ... We are sworn to govern by the rule of law, not by brute force ... We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security.

"Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground."

Startlingly, the definer of these battered American values was Leon Panetta, President Barack Obama's choice to be present director of the CIA!

But Panetta now intensely opposes even Holder's very narrow preliminary investigation of the CIA's "enhanced interrogations." Like the president, Panetta prefers to look forward, as the nonpareil baseball legend Satchel Paige advised: "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you."

It's too late, Mr. President and Mr. CIA Director.

NAT HENTOFF for Newspaper Enterprise Association



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