In Firdausi’s Shahnameh, Rustam and Sohrab face each other in battle, fighting on opposing sides, not knowing they are father and son, until Sohrab is fatally stabbed by Rustom. In one tragic moment, the enemy becomes the beloved. How easily aggression has turned into compassion.

The recent deadly events in Palestine reveal the extreme polarisation of world opinion as oppressors become the oppressed and the oppressed become the oppressors, in a dizzying interchange. The world is in a moral confusion of right and wrong. At the pivot of this conundrum are the primal emotions of love and hate, bound together in an uncomfortable union. In order to love one’s own, the other must be ‘hated’.

This forms the basis of the training of soldiers who must hate the enemy enough to be able to kill them although, in some ways, they are the same, as Wilfred Owen expresses so poignantly in his poem Strange Meeting: “I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark,” and “Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also.”

There is much discussion on the close relationship of love and hate as two sides of the same coin. Freud theorised that the human psyche is made up of two basic instincts: Eros, the preserver, and Thanatos, the destroyer. However, hate has to be inculcated in adults. Hate does not come as naturally to humans as does love.

Divisions and a hatred of the ‘other’ are often manufactured by those in power in order to maintain control or protect an exclusive identity

It is often people in power that inculcate hate in order to maintain control or protect an exclusive identity, whether tribal heads, nationalist politicians or school bullies. In the world of football, Arsenal fans say “stand up if you hate Tottenham”, rather than “stand up if you support Arsenal.” The French politician Marie le Pen insists her racist views spring from a place of love — the love of the French for their home.

Similar motivations drive white supremacists, the Hutu militias of Rwanda, the ‘Aryan’ Nazis and, ironically, the Jewish settlers in Palestine. One can say it’s Modi‘s love for the Hindu faith that leads him to purify India of the intrusion of people of other faiths.

On a much grander scale and across centuries was the hatred of the Jews, who were held responsible by Christians for the crucifixion of Jesus. The crime of Deicide (killing of a god) was nullified in 1965 by the Vatican Council. Jews were not allowed to own property or seek employment, with money lending and trade the only options left for their survival. German reformist Martin Luther, French philosopher Voltaire and many others supported their annihilation, which saw its most ghastly expression in Hitler’s extermination camps.

From the 12th century, Inquisitions were held by the Church to root out heresy amongst the Christians, in which the accused were tortured to extract confessions, and executed often by burning at the stake, finally ending in the 19th century. While Christianity has returned to a religion of love, the Zionists, in their desperation to have their own country, ironically call for the extermination of the Palestinians, with senior ministers labelling them “wild beasts” and “snakes” and calling for chopping off their heads with axes.

Today it is the Muslim who is the object of hate, a confrontation dating to the Crusades. When British Gen Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917, he declared, “The wars of the Crusades are now complete,” followed by a public pledge by the British to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Resistance by Palestinians, and Muslims supporting their cause, has turned into decades of suppression and the fanning of hatred and fear of the Muslim.

As the American philosopher Michael Hardt says, “Love versus hate has become a standard frame for describing today’s primary political divide.” What is not spread through war rooms, the press and cinema, is played out on social media. We live in a time of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ and digital name-calling in a sordid power game.

The writer David Mann says hate has to be whipped up because hate is difficult to sustain and left untended becomes indifference, or even empathy. As a new generation waits for love to triumph, we are reminded by Rumi, “God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly — not one.”

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist.
She may be reached at durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 29th, 2023