Peace, Empathy and Other Delusional Pasttimes
Muslims decry the lack of knowledge among Westerners of Islam and the writings of the Koran. To know us, they would have us believe, is to love us. In fact, in the wake of all that has been written about Islam, Sharia law, the writings and interpretations of the Koran and the life and times of Muhammad, in the last year or so it would seem to this particular reader that the less we knew of all of the above the more able we were, if not exactly to "love", then to respect and tolerateIslam.We tended to believe, indeed we wanted to believe, that Muslims were no different than we Westerners, and in a purely animal sense they are not. Animal in the sense that all humans have basic instinctual, emotional and bodily requirements, mostly linked to self preservation, and no humans are exempt from these. On the other hand, apart from our primal, instinctual needs there are those needs on a higher scale of human evolution, and we like to think that all current humans upon this earth share those as well. As indeed they must, since it is what makes us human. Apart from deviations all over the place when we are faced with the brutally mentally disturbed, the seriously dangerous psychopaths of which any society has more than they can cope with.
But cultural association is another really big hurdle to get over, try as we may. My personal experience, arriving from a city and a life-time in Canada to a very different historical, cultural, religious background in Tokyo where a year of my life was spent in total wonderment, appreciation and admiration informed me that the divide is not all that great at all, and when meeting another culture so different than one's own the chasm between people is narrow indeed; the meeting- and agreement-points more salubrious and celebratory than problematical.
I may have fooled myself into accepting a veneer of acceptance that was less than total, but certainly not on the human scale of one-on-one that I was working with. There were no personal restrictions placed upon my freedom of thought, association and practise. I felt completely at home, relaxed and comfortable. It was a personal best-of-all-possible-worlds situation. I felt happy, curious, privileged and was able to indulge my curiosity to its fullest.
A belief in the equality of all humankind accorded with my upbringing, my personal beliefs. Even as a child I didn't have to be particularly precocious to realize that genetic endowment left some individuals short of beauty, brains or social inheritance. But truly, isn't it comforting to hold dear the belief that as one holds compassion for others, so will others view oneself compassionately, with interest and humanity?
Long-held beliefs can be shattered in an instant, in a life-time, or throughout the course of a particular turn in human history, brief, or long-term. In this particular instance, it hasn't taken a life-time, and it didn't come easily, dating in all likelihood from a set of breathtakingly dreadful and momentous incidents which occurred in the United States in a particular September. Viewing those events I knew with a certain dread that the world would never be the same again. And indeed, it hasn't been. And it is becoming increasingly "different" as time goes on.
Canada, along with Britain, the United States and other concerned countries is in Afghanistan for the purpose of assisting that country in its recovery from the Taliban's heartless rule. These downtrodden people need all the help they can get, and they're not the only country, but for now one of the more visible ones we're dedicating time, effort, money and that most precious commodity of all, lives to. And these people who so need our help see nothing amiss in wishing to murder one of their own whom they view as an apostate. This leaves us with a big why? Why do they so little value human life? Why do they hate? Why are we there?
We're told repeatedly by aggrieved Muslims that Islam is a peaceful, compassionate religion. Not, however, toward infidels, toward Jews, nor toward Muslims who do not sufficiently capably practise their religion. They, we have been informed, deserve no compassion, and it is no great loss to the world, certainly not to Islam, were they to be put to death. We give compassion and gain derision for our humanitarian attempts. Afghanistan, though, is a backward country in many ways, a tribal country of old animosities and war lords, each invoking from the Koran and Islam what most suits their personal agendas.
Is it then different in other Islamic countries? If so, how is it that none of them protested when Abdul Rahman was facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity? If Islam is such a peaceful religion why do Muslims of various sects, primarily the Sunnis and the Shia detest one another unto death, and indeed appear to do their utmost to visit the Grim Reaper upon one another? That is, when they're not focusing on their mutual enemies which appear to be all societies not practising Islam.
Here's an example that Matthew Fisher in Jerusalem, reporting in the National Post writes of:
There was an interpreter in Baghdad who seemed like a totally Westernized guy. A genial wizard with cellphones and computers, he mixed freely with the foreign press corps, talking at length and in nearly perfect English about hos much he enjoyed his graduate studies in Britain, fondly recalling his old girlfriends in Manchester and the bars and nightclubs that were their favourite haunts. So it came as a shock when he told a group of reporters that if he ever saw his mother or sister speaking with a man whom he didn't know, he would kill them in a second. When his audience objected, he laughed dismissively.
And here's another:
A young man from Afghanistan - studying to be a doctor in Pakistan and who hopes to emigrate to the West, where several siblings were already practising medicine - had been repeatedly forced by the Taliban to go to a football stadium in Kabul to witness the execution of people conviced or crimes such as rape and adultery, and the severing of limbs and whippings of petty thieves and those caught drinking alcohol or not praying five times a day. As this fellow was known to be a fierce opponent of the Taliban, it might have been expected that he would condemn such extreme practises. But no. Such punishments were among the very few good things the Taliban had done.
Ready for another?
A man in the West Bank sporting the full beard of a pious Muslim suggested to a visitor recently that he should embrace Islam because it was the most peace-loving and fair religion. When this assertion was challenged with eyewitness accounts of suicide bombings against Jews, Christians and Muslims and of mullahs advocating such attacks at Friday prayers, the man said there was no contradiction. Such attacks were justified whenever Islam was threatened by those who did not practise it or did not practise it in the right way.This is a cultural/religious/historical divide which appears no attempts on the part of the West, its political masters, its institutions, its military, its well-meaning citizenry, will ever breach. So what on earth will the outcome finally be? Will it be as George Jonas has written, that faced with an implacable entity that styles itself as a enemy unto death (your/our death) one must smite, sunder, completely inundate, bring to their knees, this Islamist foe before the aggregate, the average, the fair-minded among Muslims can be brought into the fold of agreeable, well-meaning, co-operatively accepting humanity?
posted by Pieface @ Monday, April 03, 2006
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