Historicity of Jesus - 2

[acharya]

Can you delve on this

Western hurbris and its domination for centuries have created unique traits



The West's Victim Complex



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunil-shar...10762.html

Westerners have developed an acute consciousness of their own pain but their senses have become dulled to the suffering of those they take on. Centuries of world domination have inculcated in them a feeling of solipsism, that my hurt matters while yours does not. The ideal of freedom, its protection at home as well as its evangelization overseas, is repeatedly invoked to justify military interventionism, almost as if without a world vigilante constantly fanning the flames of liberty, asphyxiation would strangulate the planet's supposedly oppressed. But consider the poignant remark of a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq: "We were sent to liberate Iraq. Instead we sure have liberated the hell out of the Iraqis."

Occidentals also frequently portray the ongoing clash as one between the West and Islam, almost never as between Christianity and Islam. An air of moral superciliousness is affected, as if one religion is above violence while the other is synonymous with it. Religious passages are cherry-picked, often by those with little understanding of the whole scripture, to lend weight to this argument, while remaining oblivious of similar language outlined in one's own holy texts.



The Bible counsels turning the other cheek but Western leaders who profess to follow it have little compunction in striking if they believe their interests to be at risk. And, just before launching "just wars," some seek divine blessing. They never tire of reiterating that the West is not at war with Islam, and never will be, for which they are acclaimed as peacemakers even as they keep escalating the conflict.



An invasion such as that of Iraq, of which the publicly-declared rationale has been proven to be flawed, and the outcome of which has gone awry, is brushed off with a casual shrug of the shoulders, or at most with, "Ooops, sorry, we made a mistake in the cause of liberty." Imagine if another country had behaved likewise. The U.S. would have been the first one hollering to bring its leadership to justice.



But protagonists of the Iraq war and the long but fruitless hunt for a relatively small number of jihadis in Afghanistan are frequently hailed as defenders of freedom. They are happily engaged in writing tomes on their exploits and earning millions of dollars on the lecture circuit. Although Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general at the time of the Iraqi invasion termed it as illegal because it contravened the U.N.'s charter, no international institution has had the guts to even broach investigating the actions of its perpetrators. In the twenty first century, might is still right.