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September 28, 2006
Even the Pope!
The Pope’s pronouncements on the place of violence in Islam, for which he has apologised, has served to unite a fractured and fragmented Muslim Ummah that has spoken forcefully with one voice in the defense of its ideal. Muslims all over the world were taken aback when Pope Benedict the 16th made what was tantamount to a frontal assault on the sensibilities of the followers of Islam.
The indignation turned to outrage, resulting in attacks on churches in the Middle East, a regrettable and condemnable act in itself. The phenomenal power of instant communication in the modern age was fully on display, and the Pope’s remarks took the Muslim Ummah off its back foot, where it has been proffering at best a weak and dithering response to the multitude of challenges facing the faithful. With one utterance the Pope brought them aggressively onto the front foot, dealing the Vatican bouncer the treatment it deserved.
Not withstanding the universal display of rage, history will record this occurrence as an outcome that roused the silent majority within Islam to take a stand, and loudly proclaim the infallible truth, that Islam is a religion of peaceful coexistence with dignity and honour. Violence is inherent in injustice, and the fight against it. What Islam does not advocate is the turning of the other cheek, for that has historically galvanised tyrants onto greater tyranny. Instead, Islam advocates a vigorous defense of one’s life and property, and it is unfortunate that some aggressors have to be met with physical force, and not the power of reason. Reason forms the very foundation of Islam in its celebration of unity within diversity.
Jihad is mandatory within Islam, but before a Muslim can pick up a sword, or gun for that matter, he or she must first engage in the struggle for the self, the struggle for moderation and tolerance in life, known as the Jihad-i-Akbar, or the greater holy war. Clearly the West has failed in this given the levels of opulence and conspicuous consumption within its societies that has left great swathes of humanity impoverished and starving. There is no concept anymore of love thy neighbour, it appears. If it still exists then it is a strange kind of love that we see on display.
Bill Gates is a rare exception for having bequeathed his vast fortune to the under-privileged of the world. The vast majority who swear by capitalism, however, continues to display a singular lack of empathy for global suffering, fully consumed by the unending rat race for material acquisition that has denuded the planet to dangerous levels.
Violence is a natural outcome in such circumstances, with the violence of Mother Nature having no parallel. Violence, unfortunately, breeds violence, and it all snowballs into one huge lapse of rationality. The voice of reason advocated by the Pope finds little room for expression in the cacophony of self-serving agendas. The spread of Islam took place through its appeal to reason, and not at the point of a sword.
The Islamic leadership, especially during the early years of Islam, took forceful issue with injustice wherever it prevailed, and having vanquished it, liberated those subjected by it with no strings attached. This demonstration of compassion and even-handedness in the dispensation of justice is what drew converts to Islam. So while the sword may have been visible during the spread of Islam, it was there to counter the rule of terror and to that extent impose the Will of God.
It is a substantial coincidence that in the midst of this controversy the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, better known for her diatribes against Islam, has died after a prolonged illness with cancer. She maintained that the integration of Muslims into western society was a nightmare, describing Islam as the ‘enemy in the house of the West, and incompatible with democracy’.
While there is no similarity between the Pope and Fallaci, except Italy perhaps, one is tempted to think that there was certain premeditation on the part of the Pope in the framing of his pronouncements, with his advisors, the learned Cardinals, fully seized with the unsettling consequences that it would generate within the Muslim world. For too long now the world has demanded that mainstream Muslims play a more proactive role in the inter-civilisation dialogue, and leave not the interpretations of Islam to hard line radicals.
Writing in a Pakistani newspaper about the challenges facing the Indian Muslim community, Yoginder Sikand, an associate of the Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, has chided the educated and empowered Muslims of India for staying aloof. “They seek to downplay overt signs of their Muslim-ness in public. They make conscious efforts to distance themselves from the Muslims in the ghettos… to convince their non-Muslim peers that while the Muslims of the ghettos maybe ‘obscurantist’, they themselves are not.” This entirely unacceptable stance has handed the high ground to radicals, and not just in India.
September 11, brought unprecedented worldwide focus upon Islam. The US invasion of Iraq and the mayhem that has followed, has forced Muslims, as indeed every other thinking human being, to dig deeper into inherited wisdom, and understand it in the context of the modern day world. The process continues. The Pope has helped.
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