Killing for a Book
Afghanistan is a complicated place.
It’s full of fierce, brave people challenging entrenched traditions and trying to forge a new kind of society in the wake of the Taliban years. Its government is endemically corrupt and somewhat too keen to flirt with misogynists, but it’s blissfully moderate compared to the theocracy to its west, and the frightening common xenophobic opinions of the population to its east.
But some Afghans – or Afghan men I should say – are easily fooled into embarrassing themselves.
To date, nine people have been killed in violent demonstrations across Afghanistan in reaction to the discovery by some Afghan labourers that two Americans were incinerating bags of books that included copies of the Quran. The two were reportedly unaware that they were burning the Quran.
A simple accident. And the absolutely last thing that NATO or US forces would ever intentionally do in the current context, when the reactions are sadly predictable, putting their soldiers—and indeed all foreigners working in the country, not to mention Afghan civilians—at heightened risk. Last spring, 12 UN workers were slaughtered by an angry mob who attacked the UN compound in Mazar-i-sharif, incited by a Florida pastor’s threat to burn a Quran. In May 2005, 17 people were killed in Afghanistan after a Newsweek article reported that US soldiers had flushed a Quran down a toilet at Guantanamo detention facilities.
In each case, these tragic outcomes were followed by a chorus of smug commentaries in western media: those Americans should have known better. This time was no exception: both implicit and explicit statements of disapproval in news articles from the usual apologist suspects on up to the mainstream reporting. Angry comments were posted in response, suggesting the US must have done it deliberately (regardless of the fact that from a tactical military perspective, this makes no sense whatsoever).
Appalled reactions all round. But not towards the ludicrous violence with which offended protesters react to these incidents, but at the inconceivability that US forces in Afghanistan haven’t yet learned their lesson.
But the absurdity here is that there are sufficient numbers of Afghan men who allow themselves to get so wound-up over an accidental desecration of a symbol of their religion, that they feel compelled to take to the streets, armed with stones and/or other weapons, with the intent to maim and to murder. That is what’s appalling. That is what’s absurd.
The media, and much of the public in the west, is getting the story tragically wrong. We are so consumed in our cultural relativism that we take all religious practices as weighted equally: as worthy of serious respect and polite tolerance. We discard our criticism in favour of not stepping on toes (or setting off triggers). We get mixed up about who is actually instigating the violence: not US soldiers who did or did not damage a Quran nor even a batty pastor who most definitely did threaten to burn one. We stop seeing the obvious: that it’s the direct perpetrators of the violence who are responsible. They are the adults who make choices about how to respond to being upset. As with temperamental children, we no longer hold them to the same expectations that we would our own fellow citizens, to respond lawfully, and control their anger to the extent that they don’t need to kill others for the rage to subside. And we ultimately fail to see the utter senselessness of taking human life on account of harm to a book. That’s the story. It’s that senseless, violent reaction that should shock you, not that there is anyone left in the world with the gall to do it.
But the Quran is not just some book, someone will no doubt wish to remind me. It’s the very foundation of the Islamic faith. It represents Islam itself for believers. It’s holy for god sake!
Certainly some of my insensitivity comes from the fact that I’m not a believer – in any faith. But if I were, I would hope that the way my religion was manifested in my actions might be more critical than reverence for physical objects symbolic of my faith. I’d like to think that how I lived my religious values would carry more weight than how they were represented. (But I suppose once one starts to feel that way, there is little role left for religion anyway).
It seems to me that the continued obsession over physical objects—whether with reverence or disdain—has a whiff of the mass hysteria of 17th century Salem to it- paranoia about black cats, belief in magic ointments, evil plants, and protective amulets. Objects and symbols come to embody religious significance, rather than religious practice. Don’t the ardently faithful generally insist that their faith is about larger-than-life spiritual questions, its purpose lofty and its meaning well above the grasp of the physical world? Yet for the Afghan Muslim men who gathered in the streets these past few days, the transgression most worthy of the grimmest response is the desecration of a physical object. That seems, well, pretty shallow. Are other Muslims not embarrassed by the protesters’ rather narrow view of their own religion?
In any case, for a faithless person like me, it’s just a book. But for a Muslim, can it not be a valuable, important, symbolic—even magical—book, without also being a book that ever justifies bloodshed? In the vitriolic reactions that swept Afghanistan in 2005, in 2011 and in 2012, it was not only foreigners, but Afghan Muslims too, who were killed. Is the Muslim book more precious than Muslim lives?
Further violence in the foreseeable future may be prevented by exceptional care by US and other foreign forces in Afghanistan in their handling of Qurans. But this isn’t a real solution, leading to real peaceful co-existence. A real solution is one where the pious learn to live with sometimes having their sensitivities offended, rather than erupting into rabid tantrums so severe they resort to carnage and inhumanity; and where outside observers are brave enough to put a plug on their cultural sensitivity when things go too far.
[…] Killing for a Book. Lauryn Oates on the insanity of the lethal Afghanistan Koran-burning riots. […]
An excellent article, Lauryn, and precisely my sentiments. There is something sadly wrong when people are unable to make simple distinctions, such as that between something that is “just” a symbol, and whatever it is that it is a symbol for. Thinking about it now, I would want to go further than that, and say that we should regard nothing (no-thing) as holy, for this simply confuses categories. Things can’t be holy, for they are only things. The only “thing” that can be holy is not a thing. Of course, I would want, like you, to go on to say that there is nothing beyond the things that are, but for those who believe in such transcendent holiness, there is a serious need to distinguish that from anything which symbolises it. The fact that the Qu’ran itself incites to violence and murder — as do all holy books — indicates to me that it is (almost) impossible to make this distinction. Religion just is given to tantrums, as the pope and other Christians are demonstrating just now. It is only because of the accident of the Enlightenment and the subsequent dilution of Christian traditions, that Christians are less violent now. There are signs, as Christianity and Islam clash with each other, that the civility of Christianity is in the process of breaking down. We’re in for a rough ride. Thanks, though, for your eminently sane analysis of the crisis (which is what I believe it to be).
If I went berserk because someone damaged or destroyed a copy of my favourite book, I would be regarded as a deranged idiot. I see no reason why anyone who does this should be seen any differently.
“Further violence in the foreseeable future may be prevented by exceptional care by US and other foreign forces in Afghanistan in their handling of Qurans. But this isn’t a real solution, leading to real peaceful co-existence.”
But coexistence isn’t what these people want. They want NATO, and all foreigners, out of Afghanistan. The thugs, the warlords, the Taliban, even Karzai, who are battling for control of the country will always find an excuse to whip up hatred which is expressed in riot and murder. It has been thus since the US first sent troops into the country. And once we are gone the hatred and violence will be turned in even greater force on the Afghans themselves as those fighting for control pursue their ambitions. If we need a precedent we need only look at such places as Ireland. There will be no ‘peaceful coexistence’ until one faction or the other has taken control. In a country like Afghanistan this may take centuries. It has so far!
Ms. Oates adopts the perspective of “NATO and U.S. forces” to describe the Q’uran burning incident and the lethal consequences which followed; oblivious to a context which allows for an Afghan point of view. To the vast majority of Afghans, U.S. forces are an army of occupation. Aghans are benighted foreigners to us, but they are not foreigners in their own country. Believe it or not, we are the hated enemy and oppressor, robbing a sovereign state of its autonomous dignity and self-determination as they see it.
Ah ha!, you say but these people are violent, ignorant, superstitious and unreasonable; misogynist, authoritarian, divided and dysfunctional, living in a backwater torn by sectarian-ethnic violence, civil war, and endemic corruption at all levels of society and government. More legitimately you assert, we are there to eradicate the Taliban through a military expedition justified by self-defense given evidence that the Taliban harbored Al-Qaeda which carried out the attacks of 9-11. Yes, but we’ve been there for 10 lumbering years with no victory in sight proving that even the good guys can be clueless, aimless and dysfunctional.
The above serves as background to the main point. We Americans have never suffered the humiliation of occupation by a foreign military power. The Afghan in the street sees heavily armed soldiers patrolling the streets in armored vehicles, keeping him/her under surveillance, soldiers who do not speak their language or share their religion; soldiers who disappear into fortified luxury compounds while ordinary people are left to rot in poverty; soldiers who stop citizens at roadblocks and subject them, their families and their vehicles to humiliating searches, soldiers who “regrettably” kill or maim innocent civilians in shooting incidents or drone attacks gone terribly wrong.
Once we start to get the larger picture, we can understand why Afghans do not regard the G.I. burning of the Q’urans as “a simple accident.” With good reason, from where they stand, they cannot, should not and do not trust our soldiers, many of whom are not just nominally Christian but died-in-the-wool Christian fundamentalists whose feelings for Muslims range from disciplined tolerance to hair-trigger hatred.
Finally, and perhaps I should have put this first, I’m surprised that no one has cited the terrible incident which followed several weeks later in March on the heels of the Q’uran burning scandal. (Sadly this omission is probably testimony to how few people visit this excellent blog) This incident throws into telling, ironic relief Ms.Oates’ condemnation of “those people” who stupidly kill one another over a physical object, a mere book. Around March 13, an American soldier left his base in the dark of night walked two kilometers into a village and systematically slaughtered 16 Afghans, mostly women and children in their sleep. But here’s the missed connection that reinforces the fathomless hatred of the occupiers in the heart of Afghans. The soldier – portrayed merely as a mentally disturbed “rogue” in the U.S. media – poured gasoline over the corpses and incinerated them like garbage -or shall we say- old worthless books.
At unpleasant times like these we see our leaders, diplomats and public scurrying to find explanations for this abberant “regretable” and definitely embarrassing incident. ..Er .. I’ve got it! we can draw on General Westmoreland’s enlightened rationalization-consistent with implications in Ms. Oates’ commentary-concerning civilian casualties during the Vietnamese war. “These people don’t value life like we [‘real human beings’] do.” Returning to Afghanistan and other dysfunctional, impoverished and warring states in the developing world, we can statistically point out that “they” kill thousands of their own people while “we,” exercising our military force on sovereign territory, kill “only” hundreds.
Let’s not go there. Instead of scholastic insensitive debates about their reaction to our troops incinerating their holy book (in their country) or their reaction to our incinerating only a handful of their innocent citizens we should instead be asking if it is time to end an immoral decade-long military invasion and occupation of a nation whose development and destiny -augmented with foreign aid and investment – and, yes, surgical military action when necessary- must now reside in the hands of Afghans.
You do realize that Lauryn Oates spends much of her time in Afghanistan, I hope. She’s hardly “oblivious to a context which allows for an Afghan point of view.”
Ms. Benson I presume. It’s a pleasure not to be talking to myself. My apologies to Ms. Oates for knowing nothing of her extensive experience and humanitarian work in Afghanistan. I have no disagreement with the philosophical argument she makes for “peaceful co-existence” by which I presume she means peaceful non-violent resolution of conflicts brought about when one party desecrates or destroys, intentionally or otherwise, the sacred or beloved “physical” symbols of the other.
The article suffered principally from her tactless choice of an incident/example within a sovereign nation in which the perpetrators who burned the Qu’rans were soldiers of a hated occupying anti-insurrgency U.S. force. These men represented by no stretch of the imagination “members of an international peacekeeping force” as Ms. Oates elsewhere has characterized their fellows. Moreover the action of the U.S. soldier who murdered and incinerated Afghan families a few weeks later, only reinforces in grisly hindsight the problematic nature of illustrating how “they”-some Afghan men -so foolishly and violently reacted to the burning of a “mere book” (a subject which itself merits further discussion).
Regardless of the moral and rational power Ms. Oates’ brings to her skillfully argued case , the example she chose was a backfiring disaster. We cannot ask that a people living under foreign military power “be reasonable and civilized” with armed invaders who hold the power of life and death over them on a daily and seemingly endless basis. They hate us; they want us out and without giving them an argument about what is “best for them” in their own country – because they are right..and because we are tired, bloody and bankrupt – we Americans will pull out.
The fact that Lauryn Oates does spend much of her time in Afghanistan saves her from making simplistic claims like “they hate us.”
Ms. Oates neither mentions “the fact that [she] does spend much of her time in Afghanistan” nor concludes that this fact “saves her from making simplistic claims that they hate us” in her article. If she wishes to do so by way of response, then let her speak for herself. As her reader, I can only assess the article as she has written it. She implicitly supports U.S. and NATO intervention in Afghanistan as an international peace keeping mission (implicitly here and explicitly elsewhere) and, in fact it is nothing of the kind. It is a counter insurgency war conducted by 68,000 American troops (down from 100,000) burdened with the hopeless mission of eroding the Taliban and Al-Qaeda by killing as many of them as possible.
I grant that some of our leaders and our military usually act out of the best of motives. The U.S. and other coalition member states deliver humanitarian aid, security force training, and infrastructure improvement. It should not go without saying that such nation-building benefits arrive at an exorbitant price to taxpayers after one subtracts the embezzlement-extortion cost of doing business in such a corrupt place. Nonetheless our principal business still remains killing.
I would concede this much to the accusation of “simplistic claims that they hate us.” But the vast majority do hate us in spite of the fact that there is a minority who, for a variety of more or less legitimate reasons, do “love us.”
My problem with the article derives from what I see as a muddling of a credible proposition with a specific narrative framing which subverts credibility. The good Christian “boys” who accidentally burned the Qurans, and the murderous soldier who deliberately burned the Afghan corpses come from the same hated ranks in the eyes of the Afghan man/woman on the street. The article seems oblivious to the U.S. army of occupation operating right there under our noses and makes Ms Oates’ self-righteous selective indignation hard to swallow.
I’m not preventing Lauryn from replying to you, but I can reply myself if I like. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, my site.
And you did take my point and modify your claim accordingly, so the effort wasn’t thrown away.
I take on board all your points. You seem an eminently civilized, courteous and rational person. Forgive me for sometimes coloring outside the lines. I nonetheless stand by the main point I made in my original comment of which I will speak no further. Wishing you all the best with an intellectually stimulating and challenging site.
Well same to you, and it’s quite all right. Thanks for the exchange.