Culture Awareness

China only has 7% of the world's arable land and fresh water, 3% of its forests and only 2% of its oil. And although China's land mass is roughly the same size as the United States, it has 4.5 times the population. In addition, China's enormous population is unevenly distributed, with 94% living in the south eastern part of the country. In the United States, this distribution would translate to nearly one billion people living east of the Mississippi River. MORE>>

United States President George W Bush has built his new policy of world democratic revolution on the assumption that democracy in foreign lands would automatically welcome US imperialism in the name of capitalistic free trade. In the Middle East, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, the native land of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001, or even Egypt, democracy, if allowed to be practiced as a free political process that reflects popular opinion and historical conditions, will likely be problematic to US regional and global interests, which includes its and its allies' dependence on low-cost imported oil. The US has repeatedly tried to topple democratically elected governments, the latest example being the Bush White House's efforts to engineer a coup in Venezuela. MORE>>

To a Westerner, it is hard to fathom why events that happened half a century or even 1,000 years ago still hold such significance that they dominate Arab perceptions of Europeans and the American adventures in the Middle East. There were crusades in medieval times lasting over 200 years, all aimed at "liberating" Christianity's holiest sites from Muslim control. There is the 20th century history of Christian Europe's conquests of Arab land, in the dying days of the Muslim Ottoman empire's presence in the Arab world. Though each was unique in its own way, they all had one thing in common: in one way or the other, they turned out to be failures. MORE>>

“A profound concern with Muslim identity and unity has been further stimulated by decolonization, demographic growth, industrialization, urbanization, and a changing international order associated with among other things, the oil wealth beneath Muslim lands. Modern communications have strengthened and elaborated the ties among Muslin peoples. There has been a growth in the numbers who make the pilgrimage to Mecca, creating a more intense sense of common identity among Muslims from as far afield as China and Senegal, Yemen and Bangladesh. Growing numbers of students in the Middle East universities, spreading ideas and personal contacts across borders. There are regular and increasing frequent conferences and consultations among Muslim intellectuals and ulama (religious scholars) held in centers such as Teheran, Mecca, and Kuala Lumper.

The sense of Islamic Unity has also been reflected in and encouraged by the actions of states and international organizations. In 1969 the leaders of Saudi Arabia, working with those of Pakistan, Morocco, Iran, Tunisia and Turkey organized the first Islamic Summit at Rabat. Out of this emerged the Organization of Islamic Conferences, which was formerly established with headquarters in Jeddah in 1972. Virtually all the states with substantial Muslim populations now belong to the conference which is the only international organization of its kind. Christian, Orthodox, Buddhist, Hindu governments do not have interstate organizations with members based on religion. Muslim governments do.”

Samuel P. Huntington

There are three results of this ascension to greater power and influence that I feel you can be certain of:

• The Gold Dinar as a settlement system first agreed to by 28 Islamic states will encompass all of Islam.
• The growing resentment for the USA's publicly stated objective of bringing democracy to all Islamic nations including China will serve to transform this organization into a transnational government of sorts. It will become a United Nations of Islam without the divergent opinions that make the New York based UN virtually ineffectual. 
• The US dollar - which is already in the crosshairs of radical Islam - will become a target for all of Islam in its defense against the forces of democracy. Islamic states are ungovernable by our standards and we should learn to accept that fact. Already in the march towards a new form of government in Iraq, the US is applying traditional methods of governing that have existed in Iraq for centuries.