By Irfan HusainWednesday, 13 Jan, 2010 | 12:22 PM PST |
News from Cairo and Kuala Lumpur over the last week is a clear sign of the intolerant times we live in. In Egypt, drive-by killers have murdered several Coptic Christians as they were leaving church, sparking riots that left more people dead. And in Malaysia, half a dozen churches have been torched or attacked.
Not on the same savage scale, but nevertheless an indicator of the rising resentment of the ‘Other’ was the Swiss referendum that banned the building of minarets. Around the world, friction between faiths is increasing, and is being fuelled by fanatics and the reactionary media that has become a global phenomenon.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Age of Reason that illuminated the human mind in the late 18th century held out the promise of putting logic and rationality at centre stage. But conflicting ideologies overwhelmed this appeal to reason: the 20th century was marked by bloody slaughter as Communism, National Socialism and Capitalism fought to establish their dominance.
If these manmade ideologies can excite such a killing frenzy, how much more potent is religious faith? As previous centuries have shown, no major religion is exempt from the perceived need to foist it over non-believers. This is truer of the monotheistic belief systems than of others. Christianity produced the Crusades and the Hundred Year War. Its missionaries travelled to the far corners of the globe in the wake of colonial armies to convert the ‘heathen’.
In the 8th century, the armies of Islam swept across much of the known world in a bid to spread the faith. The Muslim Ottomans of Turkey continued this westward push, and for centuries, Christian Europe was locked in battle with the Turks. The tide turned outside the gates of Vienna in the 17th century, and ever since, Muslims have seen themselves at the receiving end of Christian domination and oppression.
This titanic, existential struggle continues to sear the worldview of millions of Muslims around the world. Their perception of the Christian West as an arrogant, rapacious power was reinforced by the colonial experience. Now, they see themselves as victims of a rampaging American war machine that is pursuing a millennium-old anti-Muslim agenda.
Against this backdrop of ancient enmity and unceasing rancour, millions of Muslims view any attack against the hated West as something to cheer. Even if these terrorist atrocities are mere pinpricks, they draw applause from many Muslims blinded by hate. United in their anti-West sentiments and by the concept of the ummah, millions of Muslims overlook their national self-interest as they applaud and support the nihilistic forces unleashed in the name of jihad. They also forget that far more Muslims have died at the hands of their fellow Muslims than have fallen in battle against Western powers.
Returning to the current manifestation of this conflict, Christians living in many Muslim countries are often viewed as Western agents, even though they are ethnically of the same stock as the majority population. For instance, the Coptic presence in Egypt predates the Muslims by over six hundred years.
In Pakistan, this anti-Christian sentiment has been growing ever since Zia’s self-serving policies that gave rise to the extremism that is devouring Pakistan today. Churches and poor Christian communities have been repeatedly attacked. Together with Hindus, most Pakistani Christians remain amongst the lowest of the low.
In Malaysia, the trigger for this recent bout of anti-Christian frenzy was a High Court decision that allowed non-Muslims to use ‘Allah’ to denote their deity. It struck me as odd that this matter was the subject of judicial review at all. After all, every religion claims that its god is the creator of the whole world. Islam is no exception. That being so, why should anybody object if their term for the Maker is used by others?
More and more, people are becoming exclusivist in their approach to religion. A Muslim website advises believers not to socialise with non-Muslims unless it’s strictly necessary. Rehman Malik, our Interior Minister, said in the wake of the deadly Ashura bombing in Karachi that the perpetrators were ‘worse than the non-believers’. The obvious implication here is that non-Muslims are terrible people, but those responsible for the recent atrocity are even worse. Actually, all the indices and surveys show that non-Muslim societies are generally freer of corruption and crime than Muslim countries.
Ever since 9/11, the ongoing conflict is being defined on both sides as a war between Christianity and Islam. Opinion polls across much of the Muslim world indicate that the United States is viewed as the villain. Even when it has rallied to a Muslim cause, as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo, its motives are suspect in the eyes of many Muslims.
Much of this irrational attitude is due to impotent rage; but it has been fuelled by American policies as well. Chief among these is the blank cheque handed over to Israel. In a sense, the plight of the Palestinians has come to symbolise the weakness of the Muslim world. On the other side of the coin, Israel is viewed as Washington’s agent in humiliating both the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours. In this black-and-white take on the conflict, the Jewish narrative of persecution and genocide is forgotten, as is the criminal Arab culpability in losing war after war to the tiny Zionist state.
Mankind’s slow rise has been marked by suspicion and warfare between tribes and nations. After the great bloodletting of the first and second World Wars, there was some hope that humanity would learn some lessons and avoid warfare as a means of settling our differences. The League of Nations and the United Nations were the concrete expressions of these idealistic aspirations.
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, there was renewed hope that the end of the Cold War would finally usher in the dawn of a peaceful era. Alas, the last two decades have been bloodier than the previous twenty years.
As the United States emerged as the only superpower after the end of the Soviet Union, extremists saw suicide attacks as their only means of resisting American firepower. And although terrorism is a weapon of the weak, it remains a deadly one.
Today, instead of building bridges, we are all busy erecting barriers. Unless we can tear them down, the world will become an even messier place.
(Dawn)
News from Cairo and Kuala Lumpur over the last week is a clear sign of the intolerant times we live in. In Egypt, drive-by killers have murdered several Coptic Christians as they were leaving church, sparking riots that left more people dead. And in Malaysia, half a dozen churches have been torched or attacked.
Not on the same savage scale, but nevertheless an indicator of the rising resentment of the ‘Other’ was the Swiss referendum that banned the building of minarets. Around the world, friction between faiths is increasing, and is being fuelled by fanatics and the reactionary media that has become a global phenomenon.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Age of Reason that illuminated the human mind in the late 18th century held out the promise of putting logic and rationality at centre stage. But conflicting ideologies overwhelmed this appeal to reason: the 20th century was marked by bloody slaughter as Communism, National Socialism and Capitalism fought to establish their dominance.
If these manmade ideologies can excite such a killing frenzy, how much more potent is religious faith? As previous centuries have shown, no major religion is exempt from the perceived need to foist it over non-believers. This is truer of the monotheistic belief systems than of others. Christianity produced the Crusades and the Hundred Year War. Its missionaries travelled to the far corners of the globe in the wake of colonial armies to convert the ‘heathen’.
In the 8th century, the armies of Islam swept across much of the known world in a bid to spread the faith. The Muslim Ottomans of Turkey continued this westward push, and for centuries, Christian Europe was locked in battle with the Turks. The tide turned outside the gates of Vienna in the 17th century, and ever since, Muslims have seen themselves at the receiving end of Christian domination and oppression.
This titanic, existential struggle continues to sear the worldview of millions of Muslims around the world. Their perception of the Christian West as an arrogant, rapacious power was reinforced by the colonial experience. Now, they see themselves as victims of a rampaging American war machine that is pursuing a millennium-old anti-Muslim agenda.
Against this backdrop of ancient enmity and unceasing rancour, millions of Muslims view any attack against the hated West as something to cheer. Even if these terrorist atrocities are mere pinpricks, they draw applause from many Muslims blinded by hate. United in their anti-West sentiments and by the concept of the ummah, millions of Muslims overlook their national self-interest as they applaud and support the nihilistic forces unleashed in the name of jihad. They also forget that far more Muslims have died at the hands of their fellow Muslims than have fallen in battle against Western powers.
Returning to the current manifestation of this conflict, Christians living in many Muslim countries are often viewed as Western agents, even though they are ethnically of the same stock as the majority population. For instance, the Coptic presence in Egypt predates the Muslims by over six hundred years.
In Pakistan, this anti-Christian sentiment has been growing ever since Zia’s self-serving policies that gave rise to the extremism that is devouring Pakistan today. Churches and poor Christian communities have been repeatedly attacked. Together with Hindus, most Pakistani Christians remain amongst the lowest of the low.
In Malaysia, the trigger for this recent bout of anti-Christian frenzy was a High Court decision that allowed non-Muslims to use ‘Allah’ to denote their deity. It struck me as odd that this matter was the subject of judicial review at all. After all, every religion claims that its god is the creator of the whole world. Islam is no exception. That being so, why should anybody object if their term for the Maker is used by others?
More and more, people are becoming exclusivist in their approach to religion. A Muslim website advises believers not to socialise with non-Muslims unless it’s strictly necessary. Rehman Malik, our Interior Minister, said in the wake of the deadly Ashura bombing in Karachi that the perpetrators were ‘worse than the non-believers’. The obvious implication here is that non-Muslims are terrible people, but those responsible for the recent atrocity are even worse. Actually, all the indices and surveys show that non-Muslim societies are generally freer of corruption and crime than Muslim countries.
Ever since 9/11, the ongoing conflict is being defined on both sides as a war between Christianity and Islam. Opinion polls across much of the Muslim world indicate that the United States is viewed as the villain. Even when it has rallied to a Muslim cause, as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo, its motives are suspect in the eyes of many Muslims.
Much of this irrational attitude is due to impotent rage; but it has been fuelled by American policies as well. Chief among these is the blank cheque handed over to Israel. In a sense, the plight of the Palestinians has come to symbolise the weakness of the Muslim world. On the other side of the coin, Israel is viewed as Washington’s agent in humiliating both the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours. In this black-and-white take on the conflict, the Jewish narrative of persecution and genocide is forgotten, as is the criminal Arab culpability in losing war after war to the tiny Zionist state.
Mankind’s slow rise has been marked by suspicion and warfare between tribes and nations. After the great bloodletting of the first and second World Wars, there was some hope that humanity would learn some lessons and avoid warfare as a means of settling our differences. The League of Nations and the United Nations were the concrete expressions of these idealistic aspirations.
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, there was renewed hope that the end of the Cold War would finally usher in the dawn of a peaceful era. Alas, the last two decades have been bloodier than the previous twenty years.
As the United States emerged as the only superpower after the end of the Soviet Union, extremists saw suicide attacks as their only means of resisting American firepower. And although terrorism is a weapon of the weak, it remains a deadly one.
Today, instead of building bridges, we are all busy erecting barriers. Unless we can tear them down, the world will become an even messier place.
(Dawn)
