The mask of radical Islam has been so over-represented in the media, it's confused as the real face of Islam. The responses to last night's bombing emerged mostly in the form of solidarity and humanity but inadvertently turned into a de-facto "Progressive West" discussion of how "Islam needs to change" if radicalisation is to be tackled.
To these people, I ask this question: Is the purdah and the jihad all that people see? You think those are the only boundaries Islam operates in? You condemn religion because of the actions of a few evil/power-hungry men?
A number of people find it easy to say, "It's not the people, but it is the diktat of the religion that they follow that I have a problem with". The most common argument against religion is the opinion that it has done nothing better than divide the world. Religious people are considered the opposite of progressive and the fanatics are played up for effect because they reinforce all of these assumptions.
The real question here is; why do we need to challenge the beliefs of another to legitimise our own? Why are the progressive intellectuals so threatened by the faith collective?
As a writer, there can be nothing more absurd than the idea that religious structures resist change. In fact, our ability to form and mold abstract ideas came with the beginning of religion. Logic was born as an antithesis to it when we went too deep at one end.
Without religion, there would be no philosophy. There would be literature. There wouldn't be the wisdom to guide us through our tribulations and joys in life. Death would become just another business and the lessons of life would have never come into their true meaning. Without mysticism (an otherwise acceptable off-shoot to religion), we would never mourn our dead or celebrate the phenomena of life. Without our awareness of our mortality, we would have never evolved in the kind of thought that transcends it. Religions were threads that tied communities together.
How did we stop being thankful for these little mercies?
I'll return to what I began discussing. While the world leaders were understandably restrained as the tragedy was occuring; everyone knew why they were not saying what they were saying. The victims were many, and the world watched in horror. The villian screamed "Allah-uh-Akbar" as they gunned down the innocents.
Suddenly, the world threw a collective, questioning look at Islam and every Muslim in the world was forced to prove that they did not rub their hands in glee as these attacks were carried forth.
The others who opined, said, "Well, we know you guys are cool, but you religion mandates beheadings and cows so maybe you guys should come back after you've updated your beliefs?"
To me, this is the equivalent of screaming at the copy of Quran (and by parallel, a Bible) for being such a pro-violence text book. One might have heard this argument before, but when has the KKK is a representative of all white people? What about the Neo-Nazis who have taken Hitler's hatred for Jews a notch higher to hate on the other races? Do I just waltz up to them and be like "Yo guys! You wanna try'na tone it down and be a little less aggressively white??"
ISIS is group of nihilists who are not fighting to live to see a better day; rather, they are the harbingers of end. They don't recognise Islam as a collection of belief systems, rather, stick to a While they're driven by ideology, it is confined only to the lessons that help them further their agenda. They are dangerous because their fanaticism only allows them to turn a blind eye to the appeals of humanity. To them, it is all of them against all of us. It is a sect of Islam which is waging a war against humanity. It is the belief of that one secluded group collecting in the god-forsaken, war-torn Syria. It is not even all of the Sunnis.
Islam is one of the oldest and largest religions in the world. As with all major religions, it boasts of many off-shoots that resulted from it. Would you be able to imagine Sufi without its messages of peace? Can we deny being touched the depth of feeling we feel when read the compositions of Rumi? I'm not going into claim that Islam began to teach people about the lessons of love and understanding. To be honest, it was more a manual of survival in a thankless world when it was written. It still advocates mercy to it's enemies, but it also tells them to leave no stone unturned if they didn't convert. Though are we really going to find a problem with it given that this was happening before and during the Crusades? When Christian faith was burning people on stakes and killed others in the various conquests disguised as evangelicism?
Hindu extremists their actions by echoing the fundamentalist view that "you only deserve to live if you do it our way". The killings over suspected cow-nappings. How is this ANY different from what happened in Paris the other night? What of Lebanon, what of Beirut?
In all of the cases above, when one group disrupts the peace of the collective (not the Ayn Rand interpretaion of the word); it is because the agenda is not about co-existing peacefully. There is no room for diversity in their communities.
Should we really be choosing sides, especially using ideology as context? Does it serve any purpose at all?
Extremists find religion the easiest thing to politicise because their followers are already invested in the ideology. The conversion to fanaticism is catalysed by the misunderstanding and hateful reactions subjected to them by the rest of the world. Generalizations cement beliefs in popular consciousness. Ideas like migrants/refugees are stealing the local economy, for example, have made a bad situation even worse because people stop sympathising with those who are on the run from harrowing situations that have chased them out of their homes. Do we really want to push them back to where they came from, and prove the people back home were right? Do we really want to reinforce the belief that the only other person who will look out for you in the world will only be someone from your particular community?
To put this into perspective, let me quote Ser Jorah Mormont (yes, from GoT) when Danaerys tells him she must fight because people are praying for her: "The common people pray for rain, health, and a summer that never ends. They don't care what games the high lords play."
Ordinary people need enough to eat, a happy life and a home to call their own. Our individual ambitions are about seeking better days and living a peaceful life that sometimes mattered in the bigger picture.
The Middle East crisis has cascaded into a threat of an impending world war. The complexity of this situation was explained best by the actor John Cusack in a recent conversation with Arundhati Roy: "In Syria, you’re on the side of those who want to depose Assad, right? And then suddenly, you’re with Assad, wanting to fight ISIS. It’s like some crazed, bewildered, rich giant bumbling around in a poor area with his pockets stuffed with money, and lots of weapons—just throwing stuff around."
Should we really be blaming a religion for the consequences of bad political decisions, displaced people and an oppressive regime? Should we really give these battered people more reason to hate the world?
OPEN your eyes to the suffering such seemingly innocuous endorsements of stereotypes. If you want to offer solutions to a problem, don't settle for the vague generalizations. Don't blame the refugees - political or otherwise. Don't blame the system.
The thing we should be up against is ignorance and intolerance - religious or otherwise.
Hatred has many excuses, we don't need to throw the "progressive-liberal" terrorists thrown in the mix. We should mind humanity first; and saving nit-picking the failings of religion to the fanatics.
We keep asking for change. We should all begin by becoming decent, thoughtful human beings first.
___________________________________________________
NOTE: These are not pro-religious statements. People who know me, know that i'm ANYTHING but religious. I don't pray to a divine being as part of my daily routine. I don't do it because coming from a household of mixed faith, I have come to see the truth in the adage: "Where there are a thousand faiths, we are apt to become skeptical of them all."
To these people, I ask this question: Is the purdah and the jihad all that people see? You think those are the only boundaries Islam operates in? You condemn religion because of the actions of a few evil/power-hungry men?
A number of people find it easy to say, "It's not the people, but it is the diktat of the religion that they follow that I have a problem with". The most common argument against religion is the opinion that it has done nothing better than divide the world. Religious people are considered the opposite of progressive and the fanatics are played up for effect because they reinforce all of these assumptions.
The real question here is; why do we need to challenge the beliefs of another to legitimise our own? Why are the progressive intellectuals so threatened by the faith collective?
As a writer, there can be nothing more absurd than the idea that religious structures resist change. In fact, our ability to form and mold abstract ideas came with the beginning of religion. Logic was born as an antithesis to it when we went too deep at one end.
Without religion, there would be no philosophy. There would be literature. There wouldn't be the wisdom to guide us through our tribulations and joys in life. Death would become just another business and the lessons of life would have never come into their true meaning. Without mysticism (an otherwise acceptable off-shoot to religion), we would never mourn our dead or celebrate the phenomena of life. Without our awareness of our mortality, we would have never evolved in the kind of thought that transcends it. Religions were threads that tied communities together.
How did we stop being thankful for these little mercies?
I'll return to what I began discussing. While the world leaders were understandably restrained as the tragedy was occuring; everyone knew why they were not saying what they were saying. The victims were many, and the world watched in horror. The villian screamed "Allah-uh-Akbar" as they gunned down the innocents.
Suddenly, the world threw a collective, questioning look at Islam and every Muslim in the world was forced to prove that they did not rub their hands in glee as these attacks were carried forth.
The others who opined, said, "Well, we know you guys are cool, but you religion mandates beheadings and cows so maybe you guys should come back after you've updated your beliefs?"
To me, this is the equivalent of screaming at the copy of Quran (and by parallel, a Bible) for being such a pro-violence text book. One might have heard this argument before, but when has the KKK is a representative of all white people? What about the Neo-Nazis who have taken Hitler's hatred for Jews a notch higher to hate on the other races? Do I just waltz up to them and be like "Yo guys! You wanna try'na tone it down and be a little less aggressively white??"
ISIS is group of nihilists who are not fighting to live to see a better day; rather, they are the harbingers of end. They don't recognise Islam as a collection of belief systems, rather, stick to a While they're driven by ideology, it is confined only to the lessons that help them further their agenda. They are dangerous because their fanaticism only allows them to turn a blind eye to the appeals of humanity. To them, it is all of them against all of us. It is a sect of Islam which is waging a war against humanity. It is the belief of that one secluded group collecting in the god-forsaken, war-torn Syria. It is not even all of the Sunnis.
Islam is one of the oldest and largest religions in the world. As with all major religions, it boasts of many off-shoots that resulted from it. Would you be able to imagine Sufi without its messages of peace? Can we deny being touched the depth of feeling we feel when read the compositions of Rumi? I'm not going into claim that Islam began to teach people about the lessons of love and understanding. To be honest, it was more a manual of survival in a thankless world when it was written. It still advocates mercy to it's enemies, but it also tells them to leave no stone unturned if they didn't convert. Though are we really going to find a problem with it given that this was happening before and during the Crusades? When Christian faith was burning people on stakes and killed others in the various conquests disguised as evangelicism?
Hindu extremists their actions by echoing the fundamentalist view that "you only deserve to live if you do it our way". The killings over suspected cow-nappings. How is this ANY different from what happened in Paris the other night? What of Lebanon, what of Beirut?
In all of the cases above, when one group disrupts the peace of the collective (not the Ayn Rand interpretaion of the word); it is because the agenda is not about co-existing peacefully. There is no room for diversity in their communities.
Should we really be choosing sides, especially using ideology as context? Does it serve any purpose at all?
Extremists find religion the easiest thing to politicise because their followers are already invested in the ideology. The conversion to fanaticism is catalysed by the misunderstanding and hateful reactions subjected to them by the rest of the world. Generalizations cement beliefs in popular consciousness. Ideas like migrants/refugees are stealing the local economy, for example, have made a bad situation even worse because people stop sympathising with those who are on the run from harrowing situations that have chased them out of their homes. Do we really want to push them back to where they came from, and prove the people back home were right? Do we really want to reinforce the belief that the only other person who will look out for you in the world will only be someone from your particular community?
To put this into perspective, let me quote Ser Jorah Mormont (yes, from GoT) when Danaerys tells him she must fight because people are praying for her: "The common people pray for rain, health, and a summer that never ends. They don't care what games the high lords play."
Ordinary people need enough to eat, a happy life and a home to call their own. Our individual ambitions are about seeking better days and living a peaceful life that sometimes mattered in the bigger picture.
The Middle East crisis has cascaded into a threat of an impending world war. The complexity of this situation was explained best by the actor John Cusack in a recent conversation with Arundhati Roy: "In Syria, you’re on the side of those who want to depose Assad, right? And then suddenly, you’re with Assad, wanting to fight ISIS. It’s like some crazed, bewildered, rich giant bumbling around in a poor area with his pockets stuffed with money, and lots of weapons—just throwing stuff around."
Should we really be blaming a religion for the consequences of bad political decisions, displaced people and an oppressive regime? Should we really give these battered people more reason to hate the world?
OPEN your eyes to the suffering such seemingly innocuous endorsements of stereotypes. If you want to offer solutions to a problem, don't settle for the vague generalizations. Don't blame the refugees - political or otherwise. Don't blame the system.
The thing we should be up against is ignorance and intolerance - religious or otherwise.
Hatred has many excuses, we don't need to throw the "progressive-liberal" terrorists thrown in the mix. We should mind humanity first; and saving nit-picking the failings of religion to the fanatics.
We keep asking for change. We should all begin by becoming decent, thoughtful human beings first.
___________________________________________________
NOTE: These are not pro-religious statements. People who know me, know that i'm ANYTHING but religious. I don't pray to a divine being as part of my daily routine. I don't do it because coming from a household of mixed faith, I have come to see the truth in the adage: "Where there are a thousand faiths, we are apt to become skeptical of them all."
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