The Missionary Government

No, not that kind of "missionary"! Get your minds out of the gutter! ;-P

You can always count on Abdul-Latif Al-Duaij to call things as they are and not mince words. In his column today, he recalls reading in the papers about an "anonymous source" who blames the current increase in wayward teens being brainwashed and recruited into Islamist terrorist squads solely on these kids' parents. "How can a child disappear for a whole week without his parents knowing anything?" this source snorted derisively. Al-Duaij counters with his own sarcasm: "How can extremists control the country's mosques and pulpits, not for a week or a month or even a year, but for decades without the government 'knowing anything'?"

Of course parents are ultimately responsible for how their children turn out, but they also look up to a government that has forged an unholy alliance with the Islamist forces of darkness since 1976 - the year parliament was suspended, incidentally. The past 30 years have given us a missionary government hell-bent on spreading the word of Islam across Kuwait, as if we were a nation of heathens, in collaboration with Islamists who have infiltrated every aspect of public life from schools to mosques to security forces. Instead of learning things that kids could put to practical use in their adult lives, they are taught fear and loathing and eternal damnation in hell. It's reached a point where supposedly normal, God-fearing, law-abiding Kuwaitis continuously feel they're not "religious enough" and end up deferring to religious authorities for guidance in every aspect of their lives.

In another column by Ahmad Al-Sarraf, also in today's Al-Qabas, he asks why it is that after over 14 centuries of Islam, 10 centuries since the founding of Al-Azhar, 100 years of religious education in Kuwait, and 75 years of public education.. there's still an increasing number of ignorant people who feel the need to ask so-called "religious figures" if running a red traffic light is a sin!

Is it any wonder today's kids are so screwed up? Thank God I'm old enough to have escaped that tide of ignorance and repression, and that I had the benefit of educated parents who brought us up well.