[ New World Order ]    [Western Hagemony]   [No Quick Fix ]     NEW WORLD ORDER The dramatic collapse of communism had triggered a chain of events the meaning of which becomes more comprehensible and the consequences of which become clearer as these events continue to unfold. The West had already equated the fall of communism with its own triumph, and has accordingly gone ahead to celebrate. Full of itself, and intoxicated by its perceived victory, the United States, has gone ahead, unilaterally and unashamedly, to take over the reins of global authority, spurring Boris Yeltsin against his own people and the very tenets of democracy, dictating human rights standards for China, directing North Korea to shut its nuclear plants, pre-empting the United Nation in Somalia and cornering the PLO to submission. This is what the New World Order is all about, or so the United States deems: a world under the unchallengeable leadership of the United States in which it can do as it pleases. The dangers here become immediately clear. First, for the entire world community, a world under American leadership is too perilous to contemplate. For a start, to paraphrase an American social psychologist, America is the only nation that has gone straight from barbarism to decadence with out going through civilization. The barbaric manner in which the Americans Indians were hunted and exterminated and the brutal manner in which Africans were transported to and treated in the so called "free land" amply testify to this barbarism. The abomination at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the savagery in Vietnam and callous execution of the recent Gulf war have shown that barbarism is a permanent feature of American leadership. The memories of the savage American Cowboy and the oppression of the white slave master are already hunting the world as the powers of the United Nations become increasingly usurped in the Gulf War, in Somalia, in Haiti, etc. Calls for the Democratization of the UN Security Council have been blatantly ignored. It is the poor Haitians who need democracy and America's love for the latter (or is it the former?) has made them deploy naval vessels. The era of the New World Order is the era of 'might is right'. Second, for the Muslims, with communism out of the way, Islam remains the only force that can contend and contest the Western leadership. The latter can now give its undivided attention to the perceived threat of Islam, a perception which dates back to the days of the Crusades. The dispatch with which the allied forces executed the Gulf War, the lack of remorse with which the West abandoned the Muslims in Bosnia to their fate, and the dubious way in which the PLO was intimidated into submission, should be instructive enough. The events in Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia speak volumes of what the West, particularly American leadership, has in store for Muslims in general and Islamic movements in particular. Today the search light has been focused more than ever before on the Islamic movements and their activities are monitored by the hour. It is on this hazardous terrain and under this daunting circumstances that the Islamic movements are having to operate.