Muslims Should Learn to Tolerate Offence and Dissent
My article on the Afghan Koran protest – an unfortunate incident which left over 20 people dead and many more injured – generated many comments and criticisms on the internet. In fact somebody said the piece was informed by ‘racism and islamophobia’. Well I guess this fellow thought I was a white or a Christian or someone living in the West.
I do not in this article intend to respond to issues raised by those who read the article. For me let the debate continue. I have made my point. What I said in that piece – and in this very one – applies to many Muslims, not all.
So, once again in reaction to the protest over the Koran burning in the US and to other similar violent reactions of our Muslim friends to actions and expressions which they consider provocative or ‘an insult to Islam’, I say : learn to tolerate offence and dissent. You cannot expect to live in a world where nobody offends or disagrees with you.
Yes, Muslims should learn to live with actions and expressions which they find provocative or annoying.We live in a world of diverse religions and beliefs, so Muslims should not expect that nobody will do or say anything that will offend them. Look: that is not possible. And for those of them who think otherwise now is the time to realize that they are mistaken. Now is the time for them to have a change of mind and attitude for the sake of humanity and civilization.
Yes, our Muslim friends need to drop this idea that anybody who says or does something which offends them should be killed – beheaded, executed, imprisoned – or penalized. If we were to make that a universal law then nobody would be alive today; or most of us would be in jail. And if ever such a sharia law obtained in the past or during the days of prophet Muhammed then Muslims should know that it is out of place today. If that is what their Koran teaches then they should know that this time around Allah (or whoever must have put such an injunction into ‘his’ mouth) got it wrong; that on this issue they should disobey the Koran.
Because if we are to go by that sharia law we will find ourselves in a situation of perpetual conflict. Muslims or Islam will be on a collision course with humanity and civilization as is the case in some parts of the world. We will find ourselves in a situation where everybody including Muslims will be in jail or will be dead. In fact all human beings will go into extinction.
Our Muslim friends should learn to accomodate criticisms or caricature of Islam, of the Koran or of prophet Muhammed. They should know that not all human beings are Muslims. Not all of us are believers in Allah. Not all human beings revere the prophet Muhammed as Allah’s messenger. Not all of us believe in the Koran as the revealed word of Allah. Just as the actions and expressions of Muslims are in line with their beliefs, some other people’s actions and expressions are in line with their unbelief.
So Muslims should not expect non-Muslims to treat Islamic beliefs and the prophet the same way they do, just as one should not expect Muslims to revere other religious beliefs. That means some people are bound to make irreverent remarks or expressions about Islam and its doctrines just as Muslims also make or can make irrevent remarks – or remarks which others consider irreverent – about other religions or beliefs. And that is what freedom of religion is all about. If our Muslim friends in Afghanistan were aware of this then the Koran burning in the US would not have generated the violent protests it did. It would have passed without any incident. But it did not.
Meanwhile, I don’t think protests – violent or otherwise – would stop anyone who wants to burn a Koran or a Bible or any book at all from doing so. They will not. Not everybody who wants to burn books – sacred or secular – goes public as the US pastor did. Surely the pastor was not the first or the only person who has burnt or destroyed a copy of the Koran. On the contrary, violent reactions like the ones we saw in Afghanistan often make some people, who ordinarily wouldn’t have wanted to burn their copies of the Koran, to do so.
Books are people’s personal property which they dispose of in any way they deem fit. Violent protests by Muslims cannot stop them from exercising this right or power. Muslims must understand this and learn to ignore or react in any other civilized way when anybody decides to publicly dispose his or her copy of the Koran in a way they (Muslims) may consider offensive or an insult to Islam. Instead of saying ‘Kill those who insult Islam’ or ‘Behead those who defile the Koran’, Muslims around the would should begin to preach and propagate in their mosques and Koranic schools this saying: ‘Ignore those who defame Islam’. Or better ‘Dialogue with those who criticize Islam’.
For me that is a more civilized approach. As long as Islam remains in the public sphere, it cannot be shielded from public scrutiny, examination, criticism or caricature.
The same is applicable to the cartoons of prophet Muhammed. Those cartoons did not warrant the bloodletting we witnessed across the world at all. They did not! In fact it was Muslim clerics who made those cartoons an issue and brought them to the knowledge of the world. If Muslims had ignored those cartoons and the artists behind them, and had not reacted as they did, most people wouldn’t have known about the cartoons. In fact it was the riots that made me know that it was such a taboo to draw an image of Mohammed. When I heard about the cartoon riots, the question that instinctively came to my mind was “Who is prophet Muhammad that he cannot be cartooned?”
I still find it difficult to comprehend why Muslims reacted the way they did. Because if Muslims believe Muhammad cannot be cartooned, there are others who believe he can. If Muslims refrain from drawing the image of Muhammed or from cartooning him in any way out of belief, others draw his image or want to cartoon him in various ways out of unbelief.
And as we saw, the violent protests did not stop people from cartooning prophet Muhammed. In fact the protests by Muslims led to more cartoons, more printing and reprinting of the cartoons. I guess the way Muslims in Afghanistan reacted to the Koran burning in the US would make or might have made some people to burn or consider buring their copies of the Koran – in counter-protest.
So our Muslim friends should learn to tolerate anything they consider offensive to them or their religion. They should learn to register their anger or opposition in civilized ways without violence and bloodshed. Because some of these ideas, expressions or dissenting opinions which many Muslims consider offensive are actually bitter truths which are urgently needed to realize Islamic reformation, and the enlightenment and intellectual awakening of Muslims in this 21st century.
If the worst that happened to you was comments and criticism after your article left over 20 people dead and many more injured, you should count yourself lucky.
Brian
His article didn’t leave 20 people dead. You misread the sentence. The Afghan Koran protest left 20 people dead. An article isn’t an “incident,” whereas a protest is.
This is how those bigots justify themselfs: actually they restrict our freedom claiming it is a reaction to “insults” because freedom is a deathly danger for religions and, first of all, for Islam. In fact Islam was spreaded with violence, using swords instead of words. In a free country Islam has no future, and a free country has no future with a majority of muslim citizens. That’s why doesn’t exist an islamic democracy. Sad but true..
You’re overgeneralizing the events in Afghanistan to all Islam. Islam obviously is a key component, but the fact that only one country is actively beheading people over the Koran burning indicates that something else is involved in motivating the violence. One obvious motivation might be frustration and humiliation at the American occupation.
This over-generalization is not only unfair to Islam, it is unfair to logic. You can’t play synecdoche with religion. It’s unfair to say that Christianity has a problem with burning witch children, though obviously African Christianity does.
But I’m really quite strongly against threats of violence to limit speech. In fact, the more violence is perpetrated by reaction to blasphemy, the more we should blaspheme. If we all burn a Koran, draws a cartoon of Muhammed, and write overwrought 600-page novels about Mohammed, they can’t possibly kill ALL of us. They might even get used to the idea that people will have different opinions than them.
“It’s unfair to say that Christianity has a problem with burning witch children, though obviously African Christianity does.”
How is that unfair? That is a specific teaching of Christianity. That some Christians started were forced by legal authorities to stop following that teaching within the last 200 years doesn’t change that fact.
Unless they get the bomb, Inkadu. There are plenty of religious nutters who wouldn’t care if the whole world was destroyed if they believed it to be in accordance with God’s will; and, as you rightly remind us, they aren’t all Muslims.
Leo, the problem as I see it is that it seems reasonable to us to tell them, “if we have to put up with you, you can put up with us”, but unfortunately, some people do not want to hear this. All their upbringing and dogmas tell them that it is very, very wrong. But you are obviously right to go on trying.
You correctly say that an attitide of demanding that all revere the Koran and avoid saying contentious things is unrealistic and that to try and put Islam beyind reprioach is a recioe fir permannet conflict.
Well no-one could argue with that.
Unfirtunately, many muslims are already in permanent conflict with the rest of the world in order to bring about, through fear nad aggression, a situation where their religion is indeed put beyond reproach.
THis approach has already worked to some degree; witness the way “liberal” newspapers in the UK will fearlessly mock Christianity, while hastenig to condemn any insult to Islam. Witness a BNP candidate being sent to jail for burning a koran while mulsim protestors burning popppies and British flags go unscathed.
This approach is however out of kilter with the views of the majority who are increasingly becoming exaspertaed with the spineless attitude of the authorities and the arrogance of some muslims.
I think things are going to bgo badly in the next few years.
Very badly
“THis approach has already worked to some degree; witness the way “liberal” newspapers in the UK will fearlessly mock Christianity, while hastenig to condemn any insult to Islam. Witness a BNP candidate being sent to jail for burning a koran while mulsim protestors burning popppies and British flags go unscathed.”
At least one of the poppy burners was given a fine; while flag burning ain’t illegal.
I most heartily agree with Leo Igwe’s sentiments. No one is saying that all Muslims are violent, murdering fanatics. Some Muslims are, evidently.
My unease comes from the fact that so few publicly and vigorously protest when unspeakable outrages are carried out in the name of Islam – by inference, all of Islam. Does this silence imply assent?
David Amies
Muslims should grow the habit of reading the Holy Book in a language they understand I suppose, because in Islam it is said that you should ignore people who donot believe in what you do. More than just a few times in the Book muslims are ordered not try to change them, not to argue with them but just to let them be in peace. “Them” meaning people who try to defame, donot believe in the religion etc. Being a Muslim myself I cannot understand why Muslims around the globe gets all worked up and start beheading who ever they feel like just because some dumbass far far away did something very foolish and immature (not to mention creepy). It was terrible what happened in Afghanistan. I hope nothing like that ever happens again.
“In fact somebody said the piece was informed by ‘racism and islamophobia’. Well I guess this fellow thought I was a white or a Christian or someone living in the West.”
Yes, as far as I know only white Christian people in the West can be informed by Racism and Islamophobia. Are you even listening to yourself?
“I still find it difficult to comprehend why Muslims reacted the way they did”
Given the rest of your article, I’d say that’s because you aren’t trying. You haven’t the slighted empathy for these people and without empathy you can’t possibly understand what they are feeling. The way you focus on “offense” throughout the article, as if the Muslims were just living happy lives and got a bit peevish over the cartoons suggests you haven’t got a clue what you are talking about.
I’ll elucidate why the Muslims reacted the way they did. Not for you, as I suspect you don’t care, I suspect you have your opinion on Muslims and Islam, and will ignore anything that contradicts it, but instead for others who may wonder why, or are tending towards “they were offended” after reading you repeat it 99 times.
From their perspective it makes perfect sense. You have to realise that it is not the rich, powerful and well informed who riot. It is not the Prince of Saudi Arabia and his family throwing bricks, it is the poor and dispossessed. They know that the West has invaded their countries, stolen their oil, overthrown their governments. They know that their countries are occupied by an overwhelming force. They have heard both true and false rumours about the atrocities done by western troops. Rapes, murders, thefts, gang rapes of women, teenagers, even children, in front of their families. Desecration of holy places, qurans, mosques. Bombs falling willy nilly (in their opinion) on civilians. Targetted at civilians, some people say. To break the will of the Muslim people. They probably know someone who has been killed or raped by westerners, if not personally, certainly through extended family connections. They believe that the West hates them. They hear only about our most radical preachers and racists. They hear all about them, in far greater detail than we do, often with extra made-up bits added to what they actually said. They hear absurd and graphic conspiracy theories and exaggerated rumours and lies, but have no way to verify, no mechanism to find out which are true and which are not; and they have little impetus to try to find out either, as they have probably seen or heard of things that are as bad, and they don’t live the kind of easy peaceful rich lives that are conducive to measured research and fair skepticism. They know the hate that faces them, and believe we all feel it generally. THEN, to top it off, against this percieved backdrop of ethnic, racial and religious prejudice, exploitation and genocide that is aimed at them westerners put the boot in. They produce cartoons that are the visual equivalent of ‘Nigger’. Cartoons that are the equivalent of pictures of Martin Luther King Jr slapping a woman with “Adulterous Nigger” written below. Adding insult to serious injury. It’s the last straw. These genocidal, fanatical westerners deserve what’s coming to them. THEN, (as you will notice, most of the billions of Muslims do not riot all the time) some Muslims find themselves in big angry demonstrations that become mobs, and there is good research indicating how mobs operate.
So that’s why they do it. It’s nothing to do with merely being “offended”, and everything to do with poverty, lack of access to information, provocation from the west, incitement from their own – both truthful and lies, geopolitics, violence, invasion, murder, lies, conspiracy theories, rumours, adding insult to injury, and the known psychological effects of being in a mob .
None of that makes it right. But it certainly gives it context, and answers people’s plaintive cries of “I just don’t understand!”. It also shows why this article is completely moot. Rich educated safe Muslims, who do not feel under existential threat do not riot over “offense” and poor, oppressed and desperate uneducated people do. It has nothing to do with Muslims being more prone to offense than any other people. It has to do with people.