Let’s grow up

In a ‘which religion is the most superior’ contest, everyone’s a loser

Remember back in kindergarten when you had a regular round of ‘my dad is better than yours’ with a classmate? Or if you have conveniently forgotten your childhood’s embarrassing details, you should be able to recall other kids having that brawl, which was a matter of life and death for the contestants. Do you remember who won the matchup? Which father was unanimously agreed to be better than the other? Neither of them of course.

Both kids would, however, be adamant that they have ensured that their own father reigned supreme, because after all he was their dad, and who on mother earth could possibly be better than their dad? They wouldn’t realize that they barely know the other person’s father; they are obviously biased towards their own dad and can’t possibly see any flaws in him through their own rose-tinted glasses. Fighting over whose father is better is a pointless exercise – pitting religions against one another is no different.

The faithful believe in the supremacy of their holy scriptures, before they actually go through them; they believe in the ‘unquestionable’ superiority of every single word that their faith preaches before they utter their first words as infants – they are ‘completely enlightened’ about their parent’s god and their family’s religion, at an age when they aren’t enlightened enough to control the saliva dripping out of their mouth.

And just like those kindergarten kids, most of the contestants in religious scuffles barely know anything about other religions. The only knowledge they have about their own religion is obviously prejudiced because their history was scribed by followers of their own religion, conveniently concealing the appalling acts and glorifying everything that they did left, right and center. Similarly, like the toddlers grew up extolling everything their father was and did, until they reached an age where they could form a subjective opinion about him, the ‘religious’ brigade spend their early years blindly venerating their own faith – except that the growing up bit never comes for them.

Whatever happened on 21st September was the natural offshoot of the Muslim world’s constant refusal to grow up. Someone takes a lowly jibe at your faith and you burn down your own country? That sort of petulance is something even toddlers would frown upon.

While we were self-destructing, we regularly chanted anti-American slogans, with our global immaturity and naivety preventing us from realizing that the US or their government has no reason to apologize for the sacrilegious YouTube video. Just because a nut-head misuses the “freedom of speech” clause in the US constitution, does not mean that the video was ‘state funded’ or had anything to do with the US whatsoever. By that logic, we should first of all issue a formal apology to the Vatican for the churches that we burnt in the name of love in Mardan and Karachi. I mean who are we to launch vitriolic criticism against the US constitution, do we not realize that we live in a country whose constitution declares that denigration of the “glory of Islam” is blasphemous, while burning churches is not?

And then our “free-thinking” Muslims showcased their immaturity by questioning the West’s double standards with regards to freedom of speech when a pregnant nun ice cream advertisement was banned in the UK recently. I am sure most of us would know that the UK and the US are two different countries. The “freedom of speech” clause in the American constitution that allows criticism of religious beliefs is not present in the British common law – UK does not have a separate constitution or Bill of Rights – and therefore, even anti-Islamic sentiments would be (and are) banned in the British advertisements. Similarly the argument used by a lot of Muslim leaders – most notably Muhammad Morsi, the Egyptian president –about Holocaust denial being illegal in the West – well it’s not in the US. In Germany, for obvious reasons, it is illegal, but the Germans again do not allow religious insults as well.

Western countries have consistent constitutions. Even if they have clauses that ban certain things that affect certain communities a little more than others, it’s still the same rule for everyone – it’s not like countries like the US have a different set of rules for minorities, altogether. It’s not like Saudi Arabia banning minorities from constructing their places of worship, or not even allowing non-Muslims’ entry in the two Holy cities. It’s not like Pakistan, declaring sentiments against Islam blasphemous, while openly spreading bile against Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism in its course books.

So yes, contrary to popular opinion, the West is not conspiring against the Muslims because, and this would hurt, they have better things to do. They are busy sending Curiosity rover over to Mars to find out about the potential of life on the planet, while we try digging out evidence from our scriptures to prove how the Martians – if they exist – should be Muslims; they are working on cloud computing, while we take pictures from cloud patterns on the sky, photoshop them to make them look like a holy verse to prove the ‘authenticity’ of our religion.

Do we honestly believe that the West needs to conspire against the Muslims at all? If they really want to destroy us, all they need to do is post something ridiculously insulting on the web and we shall dutifully self-capitulate. They don’t even need nuclear arsenal to destroy Islamic counties, all they need to do is dub a South Park superhero episode in Arabic and watch the Muslim countries burn –quite literally – with rage.

So let’s let go of this paranoia of Western and Zionist conspiracies against Islam, and let’s learn a thing or two from the West just like they learnt from the Islamic civilization when it was at its apogee. Let’s abandon this unwarranted superiority complex and pointless clashes of religions that distance us from the developed countries and prevent us from working mutually for the greater good of the world. Let’s grow up, because in all honesty in a ‘which religion is the most superior’ contest, everyone’s a loser.

The writer is Editor Business/City (Karachi), Pakistan Today. He can be reached at [email protected] and tweets @khuldune