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Written by Mohamed Elmasry
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Thursday, 22 September 2005 |
It is a Racist, Religionist world
Self
- hating religionists and racists are the worst of a bad lot, as
they usually spearhead negative campaigns against their own
communities. Humans are created equal and must be treated equally. This
is a basic
and familiar teaching of moralists, ethicists and world's religions.
Above all, it is a prerequisite concept for sentient and spiritual creatures like ourselves, in order to enjoy personal peace of mind and to uphold peace with justice at the national and global levels.
To discriminate among ourselves on the basis of race or religion is an ugly human behaviour which should be instinctively exposed and rejected. Through education and political activism - especially the latter - there is still hope in our time to reduce the enormous human suffering caused by both racism and religionism.
Thus, it is not enough for Muslims to continually insist that Islam is a religion of peace. It is not enough to deny religionist accusations that Islam was spread by the sword, or that Muslims are not terrorists, extremists, radicals, or militants, etc.
Instead, through concentrated political activism, and working with fair - minded people of all backgrounds, there is hope that racism and militant religionism can be exposed for what they are and eradicated from our midst.
Consider the following list:
- Why did Jewish settlers, recently evicted from their illegally occupied land in Gaza, receive far more media coverage, political attention and public sympathy than neighbouring Palestinians who have suffered under Israeli restrictions and harassment for close to 40 years? Those Jewish settlers were not pioneers roughing it in a barren land - they lived at European middle-class standards in beautiful spacious seafront homes, with playgrounds and a sophisticated infrastructure, all the while protected by a modern well-equipped occupation army. Why was so little of the impoverished Palestinians' suffering brought to TV viewers around the World over the past four decades? This is about as ugly and insidious as racism and religionism get.
- What do you say to Iraqis who maintain now that "I was not worse off under Saddam Hussain." Conversely, what do you say to the many more Iraqis who've lost all forms of personal security and do not even know if they will get home dead or alive today? Such questions were clearly absent from the agenda of George W. Bush when he invaded Iraq. Why is it so easy to believe from news reports and White House policies that the lives of Americans (even those sent to be cannon-fodder in a misguided war) are somehow more valuable than those of Iraqis?
- Why have most Western nations thrown away the fruit of their long struggle toward human rights by recently enacting draconian anti-terrorist laws, instead of on relying on existing criminal codes? Why could the British government fight Irish terrorism using its time-honoured criminal code, but suddenly introduce sweeping new anti-terrorist laws following the July 2005 bombings?
- Why is Britain, the world's oldest continuous democracy, now outlawing ?radical? Muslim organizations and deporting ?extremist? clerics, after having allowed the free expression of politically dissident voices even during the First and Second World Wars?
- Why is Canada adopting - without judicial approval - the discriminatory practice of using a no-fly list to target certain Canadians? And why in this instance, as in so many others, are Canadian Muslims not protected by this country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
- Why are historical wrongs against people of different races or religions not addressed, admitted and corrected? In the 1800s in Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Belgium, people of all classes were united in welcoming colonial / imperial expansion in Africa and Asia for economic reasons, which included imposing on others the "superiority" of their European race and religion. During the same time period the United States was looking across the Pacific as well as southward to the Caribbean. And in Palestine, Zionists and their supporters were preparing to give a land "without people" (indigenous people didn't count!) to a people who claimed to be without land. Only a few "radical" critics questioned the justice of any of these racist religionist policies.
Hobbes' Third Law of politics states that there is a direct correspondence between the ruler and the ruled. This means that where a ruler leads, the ruled will fall in step along the same path. But Hobbes' Law also works inversely; whoever is to rule a certain people must rule them as s/he wishes to be ruled. Both parts of this law can be practiced consciously or unconsciously.
Hobbes maintained that the inverse of his law would most likely happen when the "unpolitical stupidity of the ruled" fails to impose limits on how their rulers can influence them. That is why the response to the vast scourge of human suffering that results directly from racism and religionism must be through political activism first, and education a close second.
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