SRSD

Muslims alone are enough to kill themselves

Since I’m feeling rather stale and somewhat fed up I thought that instead of writing the usual article I’m going to share some comments with you that I received after my last article, ‘All you need is spark’ which was about the anti-blasphemy protests. They make for a refreshing change from my weekly column for both reader and writer. Plus Dr Zeba is giving me a third injection in my eyeball on Saturday, which was yesterday, while I’m writing this on Friday, so I thought I might as well give my eyes some rest to reduce the pressure in them.

An Indian wrote that I am suffering from ARMD – Age Related Macular Degeneration – and surmised that I must also be suffering from brain degeneration. I found it a scream. Should I say that he’s suffering from ‘SRSD’ – ‘Stupidity Related Self-Delusion’? But I won’t. Obviously I struck a raw truth-nerve when I called India a large country with a small country mentality. The Indian proved it. Actually I’m suffering from Macular Branch Occlusion that has to do with wear and tear. After 43 years of endless reading and writing, including 23 years on computers, what do you expect?

Not all Indians are stupid. Another Indian made a rather helpful comment, saying what I need were Vitamin-B injections to give me “spark”. Actually I’m getting them from Dr Huang Haotai, the famous acupuncturist of Islamabad.

Here’s a rather witty comment from another Indian, allegedly made in some defense committee meeting: “No need to make Prithvi, Brahmos and Agni missiles or nuclear weapons. Make a stupid 13-minute video and the Pakistanis will burn their country to ashes.” Right on. I’ve often said that all that the enemies of Muslims have to do is leave them to their own devices and they will destroy themselves.

An intelligent comment came from America.

“Dear Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews:

“You’re living in the age of the Internet. Your religion will be mocked, and the mockery will find its way to you. Get over it.

“If you don’t, what’s happening this week will happen again and again. A couple of idiots with a video camera and an Internet connection will trigger riots across the globe. They’ll bait you into killing one another.

“Stop it. Stop following their script.

“Today, fury, violence, and bloodshed are consuming the Muslim world. Why? Because a bank fraud artist in California offered people $75 a day to come to his house and act out scenes that ostensibly had nothing to do with Islam. Then he replaced the audio, putting words in the actors’ mouths, and stitched together the scenes to make an absurdly bad movie ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad [pbuh].

“He put out flyers to promote the movie. Nobody – literally nobody – came to watch it. He posted a 14-minute video excerpt of the movie on YouTube, but hardly anyone noticed. Then, a week ago, an anti-Muslim activist in Virginia reposted the video with an Arabic translation and sent the link to activists and journalists in Egypt. An Egyptian TV-show aired part of the video. An Egyptian politician denounced it. Clerics sounded the alarm. Through Facebook and Twitter, protesters were mobilized to descend on the US embassy in Cairo. The uprising spread. The US ambassador to Libya has been killed, and violence has engulfed other countries.

“When the protests broke out, the guy who made the movie claimed to be an Israeli Jew funded by other Jews. That turned out be a lie. Now he says he’s a Coptic Christian, even though Coptic Christian leaders in Egypt and the United States despise the movie and want nothing to do with him. Another guy who helped make the movie claims to be a Buddhist.

“The men behind the movie said it would expose Islam as a violent religion. Now they’re pointing to the riots as proof. Muslims are ‘pre-programmed’ to rage and kill, says the movie’s promoter. ‘Islam is a cancer’, says the director. According to the distributor, ‘The violence that it caused in Egypt is further evidence of how violent the religion and people are and it is evidence that everything in the film is factual’.

“Congratulations, rioters. You followed the script perfectly. You did the propagandists’ work for them.

“Derision is that much harder to control. The spread of digital technology and Internet bandwidth makes it possible to reach every corner of the globe almost instantly with homemade video defaming any faith tradition. It can become an incendiary weapon. But it has a weakness: It depends on you. You’re the detonator. If you don’t cooperate, the bomb doesn’t explode.

“The hatred and bloodshed will go on until you stop taking the bait. Mockery of your Prophet [pbuh] on a computer with an Internet address somewhere in the world can no longer be your master. Nor can the puppet clerics who tell you to respond with violence. Lay down your stones and your anger. Go home and pray. God is too great to be troubled by the insults of fools. Follow Him.”

Good advice this: “Stop following their script…you’re the detonator… lay down your stones and your anger. Go home and pray. God is too great to be troubled by the insults of fools. Follow Him.”

Here’s the last comment from an American professor: “Thanks for Gauhar’s thoughtful article. It rings true. There is another factor I would add to it. When a country gets richer and has stable laws, the need for ANY religion drops.

“In richer countries with stable laws, religion becomes less and less important. In poorer areas with weaker laws, religion assumes the role of law and sets the framework governing the interaction between people. In these places religion is the strongest law, to be respected by all. When religion is criticized or debased in anyway, it also and more importantly erodes the administrative structure in these countries and can lead to serious instabilities. Hence the violent protests about the anti-blasphemy are not tolerated. This is true in the Southern Bible belt.”

Some may not totally agree with this last comment, but it is partially true nevertheless. It’s easier in rich non-Muslim countries where they can separate church from state and become secular (meaning temporal or worldly) states. In Islam that is not possible because it recognizes no church or clergy. Secularism is inherent in Islam because it has to do with both the worldly and the spiritual.

There are many rich states where religion subconsciously determines behavior: “In God we trust”; “Commander of the Faith”; head of state also being head of the Church of England which is tantamount to amalgamation of church and state rather than separation; the heir apparent unable to marry a divorcee (until recently) or a catholic, and so forth. England has an anti-blasphemy law and even a law making it a crime punishable by death to bed the wife of the heir to the throne to maintain the purity of the royal bloodline. That people in rich countries don’t often let clerics determine their temporal affairs is more due to high levels of education, what Muslims need the most: not wealth alone but contemporary education, both of the temporal and spiritual kind. Only then will they be able to think for themselves rather than let political clerics do their thinking for them.

The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted at [email protected]