The Moderate Muslim Must Not Seek To Explain Away Violence In The Name Of Islam With Whataboutery, But Must Face Up To The Problems With Lived Islam
By Javed Anand
6 November 2020
It is evident from the responses to the
latest killings in Paris and Vienna in the name of Islam and its Prophet that
even the “moderate Muslim” still “doesn’t get it”. After every fresh act of
gruesome murder or terror attack by Muslims, the “moderate Muslim” does
cursorily condemn the killing but quickly rushes to absolve Islam of any blame.
Even France sets limits on
freedom of expression. But there, the basic principle is this: Ideas do not
have rights, people do. As the French see it, you, your father and your mother
are protected against hate speech because you fall under the definition of
people. (Illustration by C R Sasikumar)
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He culls out certain verses from the Qur’an
and some handpicked ahadis (plural of hadis, the tradition of Prophet Mohammed)
to emphatically affirm that “Islam means peace”. The problem with this argument
is that the extremist Muslim perpetrators of, and the masterminds behind, all
the violence in the name of faith also quote from the same Qur’an and hadis
compilations. The Islam-means-peace chant offers no solution because it fails
to address the recurring question: If Islam means peace, why is there so much
violence across the globe in its name?
Is Islam a religion of peace or violence?
It is neither a religion of peace nor of violence, argues Reza Aslan, an
Iranian-American scholar of religious studies and author of several books on
Islam and Christianity. “Islam, like every other religion”, says Aslan, “is
what its followers make of it.”
“Whatever else Islam, as any other
religion, may be, it is also that which is interpreted, lived out, aspired
towards, ignored and debated among ordinary individuals and communities,”
writes Farid Esack, a theologian and Imam from South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi,
the apostle of peace, drew his inspiration from the Gita and so did Nathuram
Godse, his assassin. So it is with the Qur’an.
The moderate Muslim could begin to be taken
seriously were he to honestly address the reality of the many lived Islams
instead of obsessing with the myth of “true” or “real” Islam. Because he
refuses to do so, the world ends up seeing him for what he really is — an Islam
apologist seeking refuge in whataboutery, searching for “root causes”
everywhere except in his religion (lived and textual), “exposing” Western hypocrisy
and double standards and asking what he believes to be the mother of all
questions, “Is there to be no limit to freedom of expression, what if someone
insults your father?”
Whataboutery: What about violence by
Buddhists…? A simple answer: Yes, far too many Buddhists in Sri Lanka and
Myanmar have hate in their hearts and blood on their hands, but they don’t kill
in the name of the Buddha.
The root cause: Look for the root cause in
geopolitics, colonialism, neo-colonialism etc., look anywhere except religion.
This is a line that moderate Muslims have borrowed from many left intellectuals
about whom Ghassan Hage, a Lebanese academic based in Australia, has this to
say on Facebook: “If your first reaction to the vile Islamo-fascist terrorist
attacks in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine and Nice is to go through the violent and
racist history of French colonialism and postcolonialism, etc, you are
ethically bankrupt.”
Limits to freedom of expression line: Here
the moderate Muslim is in his element, “exposing” the link between the
contentious cartoons of Prophet Mohammed today and the historical hostility of
the Christian West towards Islam and its Prophet. The cartoons, we are told,
are part of a “sustained, insidious propaganda” to incite hatred for the
Prophet and fuel Islamophobia in the guise of free speech. Also “exposed” is
the hypocrisy and double standards of the West in the selective exercise of
free speech only vis-a-vis Muslims. To this one is tempted to respond: Look,
who is talking.
Perhaps, it will be news to the moderate
Muslim that France, like much of Europe, has laws against “hate crimes” such as
racism and xenophobia — which includes anti-religious hate crime. Surprise,
surprise, France even has hate speech laws. Those laws protect individuals and
groups from being defamed or insulted because they belong or do not belong, in
fact or in fancy, to an ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion, a sex, a
sexual orientation, or a gender identity or because they have a handicap. The
laws forbid any communication which is intended to incite discrimination
against, hatred of, or harm to anyone because of his belonging or not
belonging, in fact or in fancy, to an ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion,
a sex, a sexual orientation, or a gender identity, or because he or she has a
handicap.
So, yes, even France sets limits to freedom
of expression. But there, the basic principle is this: Ideas do not have
rights, people do. As the French see it, you, your father and your mother are
protected against hate speech because you fall under the definition of people.
God, gods, goddesses, prophets fall under the definition of ideas, and ideas
are not to be protected from “defamation”. This is so because, universally, the
freedom of expression is believed to be meaningless without the “right to
offend”. For the French, the right to offend includes not only the right to
express doubt, question, criticise, ridicule, mock and provoke but also the
right to insult and outrage. Did not Prophet Mohammed greatly offend people of his
own clan/tribe by saying things which they considered to be highly blasphemous?
Not just you, moderate Muslim, many in the
West also consider the Prophet cartoons as highly offensive, and in bad taste.
But there are ways of saying and your total silence on the response of certain
heads of Muslim-majority states points towards the sickness in lived Islam of
which you seem to be a part. The problem is this. Not one of these “statesmen”
has dared point out that the butchery in Paris and in Vienna is rooted in the
widespread Muslim belief that Islam calls for the death penalty for blasphemy
and apostasy. Remember, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab in Pakistan, who
was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, in January 2011
for daring to suggest a review of his country’s infamous blasphemy law.
Like those heads of state, you too,
moderate Muslim, dare not get to the root of the Muslim sickness, or publicly
demand the end of blasphemy and apostasy laws anywhere and everywhere. Why then
blame others, if to them you sound like nothing more than an Islam apologist?
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Javed
Anand is convener, Indian Muslims for
Secular Democracy and co-editor, Sabrang India online
Original
Headline: The root cause fallacy
Source: Indian Express
URL:
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