By Ghada Ramahi

But now that the Y2K hoax has passed, a more pathetic picture emerges. For such a scenario to have taken place, masses of people must have been brainless. While communal celebrations are part of human nature, one wonders about the significance of celebrating a New Year. What kind of gain would one get? Why would people gather as clowns in a circus anxiously counting away moments of their life, waiting for the arrival of an arbitrary point in time?

The global significance of celebrating the Gregorian Year 2000 is not simply about a pretty number, for many existing calendars have theirs. Nor is it about venerating the past 2000 years since the birth of Prophet 'Isa (aka, Jesus Christ), upon whom be peace. Rather, it is about celebrating the present and, most importantly, the future.

In celebrating the dawn of the third Gregorian Millennium, the Eurocentric West rejoices itself. It celebrates the culmination of its triumph over the world. In a sense, it is a celebration of subjugation of the Globe to the Political West. The celebrations have nothing to do with Christianity, otherwise the Eastern Christian and non-Eurocentric Christian sects would not have been marginalized in the official media, including those of the Arab regimes. Rather, millennium celebrations are about paying homage to the Eurocentric World Order, and about identifying who acquiesces to it, the very order that is supposedly calling for freedom, independence, and democracy. Those who do not conform are considered as a threat to the world 'peace' and labeled as terrorists.

The concept of the Millennium is a fundamental component of Eurocentric Christianity, and subsequently Western modernity. Millenarianism is the belief in some future `thousand-year' period of blessedness. The advocates of the doctrine are divided into a pre- and post-millenarianists. The first maintains that the period will follow the Second Coming of Christ, while the other believes that the period precedes the Advent and prepares for it by the spread of righteousness over the earth; it signals the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Throughout the second Gregorian millennium, many false predictions were made as to when will this millennial prophecy actually take place, as it was not dependent upon round numbers. But this begs the question of the identity of this Messiah for which the Eurocentric West waits. Is it the same one that the self-same civilization supposedly crucified, and which subsequently worked so hard on distorting his message?

While the media moderated Y2K crisis fizzles out and becomes history, like many crises before it (the AIDS crisis, for instance), a new crisis will soon arrive. In the Eurocentric mentality, a perpetual state of crisis is fundamentally necessary, a threatening situation is required for which the established authority will intervene on behalf of the laity. This necessity of a crisis de jour stems from the essentiality of the mediated authority of the Church between the Divine and the laity. Although it might appear that the Church is no longer the supreme authority, its doctrines became institutionalized in the Eurocentric Order that has emerged with Western modernity.

The influence the media has in first instigating and then perpetuating the millennial hype is another concern. Corporate media are an enterprise that the Eurocentric West established for its own benefit and to serve as an essential pillar in advancing its own agenda and gains. It is a tool that mobilizes masses and subliminally instructs them as to how to think and act. Corporate media first propagate among the masses that there is a computer imperfection (itself a corporate product) which might bring about the destruction of the world. Then, the same corporate media instruct the masses that new products are needed which might prevent or cure this computer failure.

Here, a message is sent to those consumers of the Eurocentric technology, who are still convinced that one day they will actually be able to produce such technology of their own. The Eurocentric masters reinstate the essential dictum of modernity, that they alone have the final say over creation and destruction of this technology.

Simultaneous to the media preparing the masses for destruction, including a spate of Hollywood Armageddon movies, it was conditioning them for a bright and wonderful future, hence the establishment's ability to bring about both the end of the world as well as guarding its safety. And it seems that certain people of the world deserve destruction while others deserve the heavenly future.

This charade is augmented by the lack of agreement on the precise arrival of The Millennium, whether it is 2000 or 2001, as if the arrival of the new number corresponds to a particular magic point in time where the world would shed its old ugly skin and acquire a new beautiful one, where people should give up their beliefs and identities to join with and fervently celebrate the Eurocentric New Order.

The considerations for Muslims are many. To begin with, many Muslims are duped into thinking that the celebrations are about commemorating the birthday of their Prophet 'Isa, hence by joining in the celebrations they claim their share of him. But the contemporary version of Christianity has nothing to do with what was revealed to Prophet 'Isa, upon whom be peace. It is nothing but a combination of Graeco-Roman polytheism, the whims of the European monarchs and lords, and the agendas of the Popes, a fabrication in the name of which the Eurocentric West plundered the world.

While many of the Muslim and Arab regimes were in the forefront paying their homage to the new millennium, the Muslim masses looked very cheerful in their celebrations with colorful fireworks lighting up the skies, forgetting that there are other Muslims around the world whose skies are lit up with real fireworks and deadly live ammunitions.

Muslims seem oblivious in their busy talking about preparing themselves for 'the new century' and about how to enter the new Millennium, not realizing that they are intentionally excluded from any limited benefits it might hold. The stipulation to allow them into the party is to give up Islam. For the past thousand years, the Eurocentric West has considered Islam to be its only real challenge and major threat. That the Eurocentric media warn about Muslim plans to thwart millennial celebrations should come as no surprise, since Islam is a thousand-year enemy of the West and not a new replacement for Communism.

It is a morbid fact indeed that after more than fourteen centuries since the Message of Prophet Muhammad, Allah's blessings upon him, the world order runs in accordance to a distorted form of Christianity enshrined as Western modernity. In a sense, this is an attempt to negate the will of Allah Most High, who sent his Final Prophet as Khatim al-Anbiya with His Final Eternal Message as the one to prevail and annul what proceeded it, and by which the world should be run. Instead, Islam is blamed as a source of terror and its followers denigrated as enemies of a supposedly and otherwise peaceful future. But while the Eurocentric West might have its way for now, the reality of a million Muslims gathering around the Ka'abah al-Musharrafah in complete submission to Allah (swt) for thirty nights of Ramadan testifies otherwise. For, as the Almighty tells us in the Noble and Protected Qur'an: “Their intention is to extinguish Allah's Light with their mouths; but Allah will complete His Light, even though the unbelievers may detest it. It is He who has sent His Messenger with Guidance and the religion of Truth, that He may proclaim it over all religion, even though the polytheist may detest it” (Surah al-Saff, verses 8-9).