For those whove confessed to being moderate in both adherence to religion and political ideology, commenting on a clash of two extremes is a huge dilemma. A friend asked for my view on Charlie Hebdo attack, and I felt its ill-timed to begin speaking grammar while the world mourns the dead. I just sent him a piece I wrote some two or so years ago in response to an anti-Islam film that punned the Prophet of Islam by an American filmmaker. Even though I dont approve of Charlie Hebdos style of journalism, which has never pretended to be politically correct, the world must ally in condemning the killing of its staff by a dangerous band of lowlifes. ***************************** The Hypocrisy of American Humanism - By Gimba “Everybody is talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism/ This-ism, that-ism, is-ism, ism, ism… /All we are saying is give peace a chance…” Give Peace a Chance, John Lennon. I love the West, I love America, I love freedom. But, I hate hypocrisy. I hate civil savageries (pardon this oxymoron) I see in the analyses of some insensible Op-ed writers who pronounce as improper the protests against demonisation of one’s worldviews, civilisations, histories, faith—one’s very existence. Yet, I hate violence. This could be an unmanageable position; one in which one’s personal philosophy suffers to the point of pushing one to lean on a side. And, as a Muslim, you must’ve suspected my likely decision. But, know that logic is woven away from sentiments. I believe that everyone deserves a quantum of respect. I have been called names for announcing my disapproval of gay rights in Nigeria. The Blacks in Americas, South Africa, Zimbabwe… went violent on being considered inferiors, segregated, demonised. And, yes, the civil rights movement happened with very many casualties. But, history calls them heroes, shaming the stereotype artists who had believed that Blacks were born for the plantations, ghettos, villages, anywhere away from the “immaculate” Whites. But racism doesn’t make every white person racist, just as violent response to provocations doesn’t make every Muslim a terrorist. Many just do not have anger management coaches. It’s a tough world, where the media decides the image of everything, from the brands in the stocks market to the very sugar ants in one’s kitchen. The media decides who you are; they push you to the wall until you find their method unbearable. But, that is what they want. They experiment. And, from the results of those experiments, they define you. In the book of stereotyping, Muslims are “Arabs and their copycats who believe in a certain God named Allah, for whom they kill either for pleasure or as a result of inherited savagery just for a promised 72 virgins in paradise.” First, there is no mention of a reward of 72-virgins for martyrdom in the Qur’an, except a 21st century stenographer of the Prophet has just done so, and perhaps this must have been from a literal understanding of the Qur’an. The only available reference to “72 wives” was in a Hadith—records of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds—in the collection Sunan Al-Tirmidhi, which is considered “Gharib”, weak and, like many other such unreliable hadiths, must never be applied in legal judgments. These is one of such complexities that our stereotype artists, dressed in a gaudy robe of ignorance, were too lazy, or just deliberately refused, to investigate, to study, to know. I followed the arguments that trailed Salman Rudhdie’s infamous novel, Satanic Verses, and had even listened to his own version of the defence, even whence he tried to proclaim his adherence to Islam, but what he didn’t get was there are thin lines between facts and fiction, entertainment and provocation, research and propaganda. What makes the Muslim angry? The same mentality that made the Zulus and Xhosas mad at the Afrikaans. You may get this! I do not believe in extreme humanism, I believe in effectual humanism. Effectual because freedom is a two-sided respite that comforts the oppressed and controls the oppressor; but when freedom sets a regiment of the oppressed against a fleet of the oppressed, another form of oppression sets in. Welcome to modernity. And, in this ongoing tumult over the anti-Islam film, the clause ought to be Welcome to American’s (not America, please). Even in this modernity, what happens when Time or The Economist calls President Barack Obama “Monkey”? Yes, what happens to the freedom of expression here? Respect! This flurry of anti-Islam portrayals must be a lesson for the entirety of Muslims adept at giving to Allah and His Prophet, what is not Islam; especially the bloodthirsty proponents of wicked “isms” involved in the racially defined clash of Western and Arab civilizations in which the political is taken for the religious; the same clash in which hatred towards gays is tabooed in a society that permits demonisation of Muslims without an apology, with a consideration that the Alqaedas and the Boko Harams of the terror world are also foes of the larger Islam. And the more I ponder the “isms” of our religious and secular worlds, the more I’m tempted to join Lennon in shouting: “Give peace a chance!” By Gimba Kakanda
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 18:00:12 +0000
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