Who pays the price for all the madness and hatred that a few create ? Why should I be held responsible for the acts of some crazed lunatic who goes around hurting others simply because i belong to the same community ?
Incidentally i got a "hate call" from India ( Bangalore), the city which faced a few bombings recently. This person, called me up - abused me for a few minutes and practically stopped short of blaming me ( and other fellow muslims) for the violence - since inherently "Muslims are violent people". This, coming from an educated person, who is well travelled shocked me to say the least. I believe this is not an isolated incident; but many people out there feel similar things, though many would not be as honest as my "friend" was.
The whole issue of culture talk, of the use of "Islamic fundamentalism" or "Islamism" or "Muslim fundamentalism" is warped. prefixing a religion to any sort of madness does not take the blame away from the individuals. It simply tranfers it to the community they represent and that is pretty damaging. Damaging to normal, regular people who have normal, regular ambitions.
Get an education, find a job, find the love of your life, get married, have kids, watch a movie, complain about the traffic, worry about the family. These are issues which concern any average Muslim in any part of the world. I am sure this does not vary much if you were to ask the same question about "What are the most important issues which concern you" to a Muslim in Indonesia, or USA, or even in the Middle East. I am pretty sure at least 80% of the issues i have listed would figure in his/her list ; unless the person is a die-hard peace activist and names " World peace" as the chief personal goal that person would work for.
The whole culture talk about "Good muslim, bad muslim" de-humanises people. It not only paints them as evil, but distorts the image of an entire community of over 1 billion people ( yes, there are over 1 billion muslims the world over). And i can assure you, we are all pretty "normal" people - except for may be 0.0001 % of them who are crazed nut cases. They are giving us all a bad name, making our lives difficult, causing embarrasment and sullying our reputation.
We have our issues. Yes, of course. Our societies are as diverse as the world is. Islam is a global religion as much as Christianity is. This means the ways the religion is interpreted and practiced is also very different. But this does NOT mean that we are a bunch of crazy people who mean harm to others.
Incidentally, the level of debate has come down to such a level that one starts by first defending oneself. It is as if you are guilty unless proved innocent. I was reading this interesting survey conducted by Pew international in 2004 showed the following attitudes towards muslims in USA and Europe :
Country favourable attitude unfavourable
USA 35 32
Germany 36 46
France 48 29
The rest of the percentage is for "somewhat favourable" . These figures say something about the attitude of people towards Muslims. It is about time the community itself took stock of these negative attitudes that others have of them and did something about it. Instead of blaming others for our ills, blaming the governments, the zionists, the media and everyone but ourselves, the community is doing itself no good.
The first step, i think may be to face up to the problem that we have a problem. We seem to be in a slumber throughout the world. A slumber so deep that we dont care or arent even bothered to worry about what our reputation is. We are not incharge of it. May be we are too self-absorbed in our past successes as a "great civilisation" which invented Algebra and laid the foundation for the European renaissance that we forget that it all happened a long time ago...and in the last 6-7 centuries, our report card doesnt show much progress. We need to smarten up, wake up to the new world around us and do something about our reputation. And this starts by taking a close look at who the bad apples are. And controlling them or ejecting them out of the community if need be. This way, the 99.9999% of those who are innocent dont get the blame for the 0.0001% who are responsible for acts of madness.
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3 comments:
Awesome S:) Wish I had written this post:)
I couldn't have written any better, well done. Am so proud to have you as a friend:) and happy to know we go beyond muslim hindu christian - maybe we now need to push this envelop some_ how do we get other fellow countrymen to think and feel this way?
Hi Mee
I wish there was a simple answer. But how about this : make it compulsory for every person to let his child spend at least 20% of his/her time with his friends from other religion ( esp.in a country such as India)..at their home, in their kitchen, in the living room...and make strong friendships in early childhood which shapes one's thinking in many ways.
I think the focus should not be on "secularising" the country by getting rid of the religion, but by learning to tolerate and assimilate the best from each faith in our lives. Parents have a big responsibility here. Glad i had folks who taught me that one can love and respect others without agreeing with them all the time.
I think thats neat, schools and colleges must initiate this too. And yep you are right, religion takes on a mask which at times is sinister and all in the name of religion people revel in politics of the worst kind!
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