On Charlie Hebdo I appreciate what has said about provocation and also that more often than not it is the less powerful that are consistently the target, therefore having to resort to unconventional means to seek redress. Nevertheless, the root of the the issues involved here, where men kill for the honor of their God and prophets, is similar to that of the death penalty debate. Is human life sacred or alternatively should people kill people for sins committed and what level of sin should be considered worthy of death? In the world today Islamic fundamentalists are leading the pack in denigrating the sanctity of human life by shedding the blood of war in times of peace - meaning killing unarmed people far away from the physical theatre of war. You know, I dont really care much about religion either way; I believe the 2 leading holy books were started as types of constitutions and historical records used by the founders of the religions to regulate their emergent societies and record their historical developments. These books and the statutes they provide, being situated in specific bygone periods have become anachronistic in many respects, yet it is calcified by faith in their perceived divinity and hence, lack of changeability. Islam unlike Christianity has not done a new testament which is more philosophical in that it was written by those who did not possess nor could effectively seek political power. Even then, when their religious descendants gained political ascendancy, it was a very violently ugly period in the history of mankind. However, those in control of those climes, i.e. the developed Western world, shifted from the esoteric holy book to constitutions, which though underlined by much of what Moses and others taught, fully discounted the faith hype and the fatal consequences of unbelief. In fact, what was taken represented those then unassailable thoughts of the authors who were obviously very learned and intelligent people and many of which thoughts remain so to date. This constitutionalism effectively separated political power from religion. We need such extraction of superior thoughts from Islam, to contribute to constitutionalism, where it is not already captured or there exist alternatives, if any. The reason for expounding the preceding perspective is to establish the fact that it was the Christians that overcame the limitations and negatives of their religion in every instance and it happened because they gave their religion a hard look and decided to go the other way rather than sentimentally or blindly support the evil deeds done by their religious counterparts whether tacitly in their silence or indirectly by minimizing the evilness of their actions through such excuses as provocation. This was the same reaction when BH started. Muslims and Northerners generally kept quiet, claimed provocation (poverty a la el-Rufai) or shouted war crimes to what was seen as a heavy handed reaction by Government. Even some misguided Yoruba Muslims were recorded to have virtually celebrated the death of the female Christian Corp members in the ensuing melee. I put it to anyone interested, without fear or favour, that racism is worse than blasphemy in that the debasement suffered by the victim of racism is more personal and has very real deprivations, including psychosomatic health disorders and physical death. Would that justify black people, the most racially oppressed of all peoples in recent times, throwing bombs, missiles or bullets at every Caucasian in sight? If they do, other blacks who feel their pain, must understand that racism has to do more with the backwardness and easy conquest of a people and try to see how to organize themselves to catch up, overtake or create new (laudable) directions of their leadership. We, the black people, must not encourage or fail to roundly condemn and contribute in any way we can to getting punishment for, those who would take up arms and snuff out the life of white people randomly. We should not leave any window of sympathy by excusing them on grounds of provocation, poverty, trauma, etc. That is what Muslims must do in this case of blasphemy, that is of obviously of no direct personal physical import. The idea of holy anger and honour killing has no place in this century. As someone as Islamic as Al-Sisi recently said, Muslims must revolutionize that religion. facebook/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FDEhNarfrlec&h=BAQG4RgqZ
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:04:35 +0000
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