Thought Picnic: Big Brother contributing to the decline in human civilisation

An appeal to the savage

If reality television had an audience like me, that genre of entertainment would have long since died out like the dodo, never to be revived again, except for a retrospective on one of the darkest ages of humanity, where the surfeit of education and enlightenment, along with significant technological innovation, has made our behaviour resemble that of wild animals driven by nothing but survival instinct.

Readers of my blog are likely aware that I am hardly a fan of these unscripted interactions that caricature the worst of a few for the spectacle of the many. I have allowed myself the occasional glimpse into talent shows, experiencing some surprise or shock, especially from the unexpected gems that can bring tears of sadness or joy.

Our escape is not enviable

Everything I observe is usually through snippets and playback on YouTube, because something has crept into my social media feed, or it has been granted more importance in the news than is ever necessary, considering everything else happening in the world. Yet, these are seen as an escape or distraction, and somehow these fleeting shots of the dehumanisation of our civilisation have become hot topics of public engagement.

By now, you may have realised that one aspect of this reality television series encompasses every variation of the Big Brother shows, whether featuring celebrities or everyday people. At times, one might think that the money paid to celebrities to subject themselves to scrutiny, or the prize offered to public participants, lures them into this macabre theatre where humans are caged for titillation and entertainment. It is popular culture, sadly.

There is more to this—a quest for a spectrum of notoriety, alongside the cohesion or dispersal of virtue, expressed in word, deed, contest, chicanery, or some other unwholesome thing. People have gone on to forge careers from either fame or infamy displayed in these settings.

This theatre of the worst

In my view, Big Brother represents the absolute worst of everything; the house is, in fact, a cage. The 24-hour camera focuses on everyone, with edited versions of the sensational and controversial being spewed from a broadcast drainpipe, reeking of sickening human waste on our televisions.

It contains every element of an animal zoo, where curiosities taken from their natural habitat are brought to a location for our fascination. I have long since eschewed visiting zoological gardens or sea life centres that are nowhere near the sea.

I see in Big Brother a schemed setup that gathers many people with issues and problems better kept from view—opinions that should barely be invited into thought, fragile egos, those too easily offended, and others with rather forthright views considered too confrontational for the baseline of the insipid inclusivity that defies essential common sense.

Imagine placing a chicken, a fox, a cat, a mouse, a crocodile, a venomous snake, a mongoose, a lion, a deer, an elephant, a horse, and a hyena in the same cage and observing what occurs. Like prey and predator, the vulnerable and the inviolable, the aggressive and the docile, the fearful and the bold—every characteristic on display, all while the intervention against nature punishes each animal for acting out its known role.

Utterly thin-skinned lionhearts

Everyone knows that Big Brother does not present a paradise of easy coexistence, and this is where it gains its gawping audience, peering through the cages to observe examples of themselves portrayed by others. It is utterly, utterly loathsome, but then, each to their own.

The current Celebrity Big Brother, which features a range of forgettable has-beens, has invaded my timeline, leaving me to wonder how people fall apart at simple criticism of their abilities. The truth cannot be told about too many individuals who, due to their lack of communication and basic social skills, take offense at a look or a comment. The total absence of nuance or irony in a situation that participants have willingly subscribed to shows how ill-prepared they are for the kind of life many of us face.

Is that all he said? Or is that what they did? Then, there are many more questions along that line of thinking within the context of feigned political correctness, orchestrated niceness, and playing to the gallery.

Big Brother is both a reflection of a microcosm of the basest instincts of its participants and, for those of us engaged, either explicitly or by scant observation, we have become so civilised that we have lost all means of understanding what the advancement of civilisation truly means. Our brains are better stimulated by this tragedy of the jungle in a zoo of humans.

A WEIRD prism is just one perspective

Influences of significance

When my dad said over a decade ago, “You have always thought like a Westerner.” I feigned ignorance of what he implied, but it got me thinking about things that baffle me daily. How it is that my worldview on many issues and situations are so radically different from many with whom I am supposed to share a heritage.

Then again, I realise that I have also fallen into a trap and a misconception about culture and values needing to converge to a Judeo-Christian Western construct with the view that those who appear to deviate from such might not represent the best of our humanity.

How marriage changed us

Indeed, many of our international laws of trade, of industry, of life, or of diplomacy follow a broadly western model that has become a synonym for modern and civilised, we miss out on understanding other constructs, cultures, civilisations, and customs that makes other members of our diverse humanity uniquely different, interesting, and rich.

This was brought into stark relief when I listened to a podcast The West and the Rest by Matthew Syed on BBC Radio 4 on his Sideways series, which started with the observation of different psychological responses to what was studied and expected in the West to how intriguingly the advent of Christianity changed marital norms like forbidding marriage to cousins, opening clans to strangers and birthed the kind of innovation and mindset that typifies the West today. [BBC Radio 4 Sideways Podcast: 3. The West and the Rest]

Weird as we come

It begs the question about who the weird ones are, we in the west or the non-western cultures. Whilst there is no way I will pass for a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), I am most definitely one of the WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic), a psychological term that was defined in the 2000 book, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich.

Having an audible copy of this book, it would probably give me an appreciation of why I think differently and why I should make ample accommodation for how other cultures will not converge to my worldview. This would mean we need to negotiate and agree on certain principles, attitudes, and rules for the good of humanity even if implementations will differ.

I come away with the insight that cultural divides will only be bridged with an openness of the mind and the putting away of the western hubris that has led us on spectacularly failed escapades of sowing seeds of our kind of civilisation around the world.

Read or listen

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous [Amazon]

 

Thought Picnic: Celebrating freedom without offence

My society

I was walking home last night when in a recess of a building just off the main street I saw two men canoodling in a deep embrace on anticipation of possibly greater pleasure later on.

Whilst it was a somewhat unusual sight because not a few streets away is the gay village where they could have been in a bar or club up to much more than could not be printed here, I was gratified.

Gratified that I live in a civilised society that allows the full expression of self without the fear of sanction or harm. Maybe just half a century ago, this simple act of affection between two consenting adults would have attracted the charges of outraging public decency and gross indecency, we have really moved on.

The offended mind

Now, some people might well be seriously offended by this sight, the problem in my view is theirs rather than of the men. The free world we live in makes allowances for diversity and co-existence in the face of difference and what is out of the ordinary.

It was my guess that the men would go home together to be up to whatever they may wish in bed without harming anyone, society or humanity at large.

It is with that in mind that I tweeted yesterday, “The hallmarks of civilised society: Two men kissing on the street and no fear that anyone will be bloodied by an irate mob.”

The hallmarks of civilised society: Two men kissing on the street and no fear that anyone will be bloodied by an irate mob.

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ (@forakin) April 7, 2016

Beyond these lands

That tweet was in recognition of another man who happened to express love in a same-sex liaison with another, Akinnifesi Olumide Olubunmi [Graphic Content] who died on the 18^th of February from the injuries he sustained from an irate mob in Ondo State, Nigeria. They took the law into their own hands to rid their savage and primitive community of the homosexual and celebrated their conquest on social media.

Akinnifesi Olumide Olubunmi is one of many same-sex attraction people, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, intersexual or gender neutral people who have been set upon by the mob or adherents of bigoted and extremist belief systems, thinking they are cleansing their communities by murder and the blood of other fellow human beings on their heads and their hands.

Sometimes, we fail to appreciate the liberties and freedoms that have come from escaping intolerance, ignorance and bigotry.

In response to my tweet, someone remonstrated and posited a fallacy about whether I would want my son doing that.

My response:

My son is my son, my duty is to love and support him through any situation in his life including his sexuality. https://t.co/F9m04wFXxb

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ (@forakin) April 7, 2016

Dishonourable parental conduct

The perceived sense of honour we arrogate to ourselves at the expense of people who in a difficult, diffident and uncompromising world need our support is shocking. We would easily sacrifice our wards to belief systems, to traditions and bizarre customs rather than protect them from harm and stand proudly with them against a hostile world no matter the cost.

Parents disowning their children because the kid is different, others taking their girls to abattoirs of female genital mutilation when there is no medical need for this outrageous practice than to satisfy a primitive custom. Parents believe religious quacks that their children are practitioners of witchcraft and giving up the children to brutalisation and evil wickedness in the name of exorcism rituals. Worse still is the ones who murder their children in what they term honour killing.

There is no honour in murder, to love differently might leave us disappointed, but that is no excuse for murder. How will any honour be restored by shedding the blood of your child to restore your status in your community, such thinking is not only warped, by such actions you cannot be deserving of anything but the toughest sanctions without the option for parole or mitigation.

It is not that the battle for the freedom of expression has been totally won, many battles remain amongst us and beyond us, I celebrate the fact that anyone can choose to love who they want as adults and not fear to express that love openly – that is the hallmark of a civilised society and we must all strive towards that state of living and let live; the amicable coexistence of our human diversity.

Opinion: Finding Against The Gospel of NOT - That EHRC Judgement

The rise of religious politics

Each time I think about the ministry of Jesus Christ when he trod the lands of Judea and Samaria as depicted in the gospels I am at times wont to channel Mahatma Gandhi when he was purported to say, “I like your Christ but dislike your Christians.”

Over the last few decades or so, a brand of this religion has emerged which looks very much like modern-day expressions of other Abrahamic faiths, political Judaism with its cauldron in Israel has held the world to ransom with Gentile guilt for the Holocaust and other pogroms that go back centuries, political Islam first expressed in Saudi Arabia, then radicalised in Iran before it was hijacked to be become a potent terrorist movement once spearheaded that the Al Qaeda crusade and political Christianity.

This, I dare say is more widespread and finds expression in social issues that polarise, attempt to ostracise and in terms can be quite discriminatory in a world that is tending more towards secularity than the Dark Ages of moralising sententiousness.

The Christian right and wrongs

In America, it started with the abortion wars, then the issue of homosexuality, gay marriage and stem cell research. God or at least the Christian God is inserted into every debate of the right to have slaves then to prayer, to bear arms, to limit opportunity where a majority of Americans are not by any stretch of the imagination native to the land they have colonised corralling the Native Americans into reservations with money-making casinos and attendant mental issues.

In Africa, they have not rallied round the cross Jesus so succinctly said they should bear and follow him but around an obsession with homosexuality as observed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and a gullible flock of bees feasting on the narcotic pollen of the prosperity gospel.

The activist Christian

In Europe, homosexuality and gay marriage and aggression secularism taking hold in our societies have become the gospel of Not as preached by the Holy Padre in the Vatican, who without much distraction cannot have been oblivious of the clergy who have said mass in the name of the Catholic Church whilst satisfying their lascivious tendencies with the innocence of the small – much prosecuted for redress and justice in North America and Europe but no one has lifted the lid on possible heinous deeds in Africa, Latin America or Asia.

The issue of women having titular roles in the Anglican Church is as engaging as it is disheartening much as gay marriage, abortion issues, reverse missionary journeys – where Africans are coming to Europe to open churches along with pervasive issues of financial impropriety or excess – our televisions have become the means of intruding on our lives without necessarily affecting our lives.

It isn’t Christians in the love for humanity

The most compassionate of our humanity campaigning against grinding poverty, debilitating disease, bad governance or war are hardly religious, they are pop stars and billionaires who openly shame the many followers who have long departed from the ideals of the founders of their systems of faith and have become activists portraying a sense of being under siege from the world around them and being discriminated against.

That many have conflated persecution which comes from adherence to faith with discrimination which is borne of taking social positions against secular norms that allows for diverse strands of humanity to live in some semblance of communal bliss is most interesting and it is exemplified in symbols and beliefs that seek to discriminate and differentiate, ostracising those who in a secular setting have a right to service denied them by those paid in public service to be professional about their vocations.

The cross and the belief

Four Christians having exhausted all legal process in the UK when to Europe to seek redress and a judgement on the matter was pronounced on Tuesday.

Two of them were challenging the decision of their employers to exclude and sanction them for wearing crosses and the other two working for social service organisations put their beliefs before the interests of people who presumably have lifestyles they disagree with.

I am glad that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) proffered arguments that came out in support of one and against the other three.

Christian identity most morose

On the matter of wearing a cross, whilst it might well be symbolic of Christian faith, it is not mandated as an expression by law or doctrine that practitioners of the faith should wear a cross to portray what some have called a Christian identity.

Christian identity in my view is political-speak and if what that means is wearing jewellery moulded as a cross and a representation of the amazing gospel of the man that walked the roads of Judea and Galilee two millennia ago, then we are much poorer for what it really represents apart from the fact that it has patently lost its power to affect people’s lives.

Christianity is supposed to be a light and lamp, a light to gain perspective of beauty and a lamp to show the path when one walks in the dark. That same light when shone brightly into the eye for all the goodness and pleasure it bring to sight and vision, risks blinding the person – In other words, it should never be in-your-face whilst at the same time efficacious.

Reasonableness always wins

I can very when agree that it is reasonable to wear a cross in the workplace as long as there are no requirements for sterility in a controlled environment like a hospital. It would be trite to bring up the matter of whether cross wearers do sterilise their crosses and that is beside the point that there are many who wear crosses that are hardly Christian in belief or in practice.

In the case of the other two, one with professional duties of conducting marriages on behalf of the state and the other trained to provide relationship counselling, in a society comprised of diverse belief systems and governed by a compromise of secularity that seeks to get everyone to co-exist, it is antithetical to professional conduct to refuse to despatch services you paid to provide because of a sentiment.

Our secularity is paramount

The need to separate church and state cannot be more pertinent than to have individuals arrogate to themselves rights that conflict with community in order to prove a religious point – we do not live a theocracy and we do not believe the same.

It goes without saying that I am of the opinion that if such people intend to place their beliefs above secular co-existence, they should seek employment where only their beliefs are paramount.

The moment we engage with the public we become subject to the norms that promote societal cohesion as is necessary for the compromise of secularity we have adopted in our somewhat mature civilisations that confers the freedom to religion but not that right to use it to discriminate and contemn the lives of other members of our diverse humanity.

Where I stand

I take no positions on any of the matters I have raised apart from these reasonable views, we should protect our children from sexual exploitation and pursue to the ends of the earth anyone who have abused and violated children for any ends.

The matter of abortion should be between the woman, her doctor and her conscience, if health issues are of significance, then the law should support the safety of the female over the consequences for the unborn.

That the Israeli-Palestinian issue should be brought to a resolution that allows Israel to exist safely whilst restoring a greater sense of dignity to the Palestinians in their land with all that rightfully belongs to them.

To reason to all

That the separation of religion and state must be inviolable, Christians do not own the institution of marriage and whilst their beliefs are widespread their views cannot be allowed to denigrate the beliefs and lives of others – we need to reach an accommodation and that is mostly on the side of religionists than on the side of secularists.

I applaud the judgement of the ECHR, there was no discrimination in the case of the three that lost; they tried to assume victim status to excuse their unprofessional obstinacy that many including the judges saw through.

The Gospel of Not has lost against the fight to live and let live – long may it be so.

Burning Up The Rapist's Manual

This is my contribution to 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Say No – Unite to end violence against women.

Loving rape

This topic always gets to me and it has become one of the ones I have returned to write about again and again.

The issue is rape but worse still, it is the justification of rape by reason of what some might call indecent, ungodly, improper or provocative dressing.

This school of thinking that included an Attorney General in Nigeria suggests that the rape victim is almost entirely responsible for their rape because their dressing provoked the rapist to act uncontrollably such that the rapist had to satisfy the jungle animal lust presented by sighting a provocatively dressed object of desire.

Animals, we are not

I could well agree if this happened amongst animals but out there in the jungle animals are not in clothes and essentially they are not human-beings.

In fact, even in communities where nudity exists as a matter of course, I doubt those societies violate the bodies of each other without consent, as human-beings we are civilised and one element of civilisation is self-restraint in the face of serious provocation.

We are equal

Another issue I want to address is that of relationships between men and women in society. From a moral standpoint there is a tendency to dehumanise and objectify our womenfolk with the idea that the male gender collectively and individually automatically have lien over all women to such an extent that men believe they should have control on all issues that affect women.

That is why we still have to content with issues of rights, rape, abortion, trafficking, abuse, harassment, dressing, mutilations and much else with the law almost giving perpetrators the licence of impunity without consequence.

Women have rights

I contend that beyond the primary sphere of influence if there be one that subscribes to the primitive view of the inequality of the sexes, the woman out in the street minding her own business in whatever state of dress she might be in is in her own right an individual, equal before the law and she should be able to make the decisions she deems fit for how she presents anywhere she have the right to be at.

We cannot because we are men attempt to control every woman as if we are husband, father, son, brother, nephew or relation to suit some preconceived notion of some play being honour and dishonour requiring violent sanction.

No licence to violate

Basically, no man by nature, by law or by divine instruction has acquired the right and licence to violate another person for whatever purposes they might want to use to justify that heinous act. This applies to rape, sexual abuse, physical violence or harassment and we need to address whatever allows us to condone any violation forthwith.

In a series of tweets that I have collated into a Storify titled The Rapist’s Manual, the total sum of my compelling argument is found in this tweet - Let me as categorical as I can ever be. There can NEVER EVER be any grounds or mitigating circumstances for rape.

If I were to leave my readers with one analogy framed in a question it would be this – If a woman is responsible for her rape because of her indecent dressing, are you responsible for an armed robber pointing a gun at you?

Further Reading

A Hard Look At Violence Against Women – The Resurgence

3 commissioners suspended for improper dressing in Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Violence Against Women Online Resources

Thought Picnic: Our Jungle Colonies of Mob Justice

Our jungle colonies

We need to reassess what we have become as a people. That has been the opinion of many with regards to events that happened in Nigeria over the last week.

For me, the news broke on Twitter that 4 students suspected of theft were lynched by a mob comprised of the people from a community that harbours a university – the same university that produced our President.

If the news was not harrowing enough, the fact that someone stood by to record the event on video and post it online should elicit much more debate about the victims, the lynchers, the community, our country at large and the impunity that allows for such acts without restraint.

A people devoid of culture

Sadly, what it suggests is that we have lost the sense of community that allows us to live peaceably with each other in civilised settings enabling law enforcement to take the lead in terms of dealing with suspects, crimes and criminality.

When we speak of our culture or value systems, we honestly must begin to wonder if we have any left that we can identify as our own.

The commonality of traditions we have once shared in respect for authority, accepting diversity without accentuating the differences, the respect for elders and the voice of reason have departed for something rather bizarre.

We are not civilised

When we attempt to compare ourselves with other supposedly civilised societies that we imagine have no culture or traditions, some things are evident in those societies that we struggle to exhibit.

Their communities have over time developed rights and freedoms that are protected by the force of law and yet they have not stagnated but have progressively found new causes to espouse and confer rights and freedoms on. From our somewhat sanctimonious perspective we agree amongst ourselves that those societies are decadent and that their values are un-African. Yet human rights should not be defined by anything but our humanity.

However, every person born into those societies is treated with dignity, respected and protected; they can seek and obtain justice and fairness from the cradle to the grave and where there is abuse, society acts decisively to seek redress, punishment and compensation.

Our detrimental cohesions

There is separation of religion from the state, everyone has the freedom to have a faith or have none at all and yet respect the fact that difference does not mean we cannot be agreeable. That is the fundamental of civilisation.

We have used our diversity to accentuate our differences, we coalesce into tribal Bantustans ready to be called into mob action than be inspired by reason and reasonableness. The ends of religion we adhere to border on the fundamentalist feeding a seething intolerance of blood-letting bigotry – No, that is not civilisation, it is language of the primitive and the expression of the savage.

Even in the most conservative interpretation of the foreign religions that have swept away the core elements of our value systems and mythologies, none recommend death as a sentence for death; yet, the call to mete violence out to fellow human beings is heard and responded to without flinching, we participate explicitly or voyeuristically through justifying those acts and pretend to a civilisation we do not possess.

Where we must go

It is empathy borne of civilising ourselves that will usher in the rights and freedoms we so desire for ourselves but rarely defer to others in our prejudices and judgements. Starting with the right to life, the right to justice, right to fairness, the freedom to pursue happiness individually and communally, the freedom to practice the faith of one’s choosing and the absence of fear because the government stands up to its responsibility to secure life, livelihood and property whilst enforcing extant laws.

We have to ask ourselves that question whether the union that is our nationhood is united in our minds and we must learn that our safety, freedom and security can only be assured if we attempt to walk in the shoes of the victim and strive above all else to be one another’s keeper.

Nigeria: The Nigerian Proclamation, my support for the President

A year on

I participated in the Nigerian Proclamation collective launched by SolomonSydelle last year where the goals were to seek the ideals of good governance through fair representation.

A year has past since this proclamation and a lot of commentary has been made about a year that has been tardy, uneventful, without vision and wasted.

I do not entirely subscribe to those views, I have written a number of blogs on Nigerian politics and have observed certain small steps and principled decisions being taken which may not seem radical but in the end would be far-reaching.

Nigeria is a big ocean liner, it cannot be steered like a jet ski or else it would list violently and capsize before our eyes.

Just above average in the circumstances

In my view, the President’s tenure so far has not been outstanding, I would place him just above average whilst expecting him to improve considerably in his second year or lose credibility and respect.

So many issues with his first year can well be teething problems; sorting his executive council out which has many times been hit by body-blows of corruption or ineptitude, the legislature has been involved more in internal politicking than oversight and enacting legislation until recently and the judiciary has been like the wolf at every politician’s door, not many have been able to settle down to their jobs.

This should all change for the better for the second year, I am quite hopefully that the seemingly intractable issues of power and the Niger Delta would see a bit more movement – so far, President Umaru Yar’Adua has my unqualified support.

Anniversary Proclamation

Reading the anniversary proclamation on Nigerian Curiosity yesterday, we have had opportunity to express disappointment and frustration, at the same time, we should dig deep to find areas for encouragement, praise and support – we have leaders who probably need to be chaperone with the carrot and stick approach.

We cannot always beat them to a pulp with the stick such that they completely unable to gain any nourishment from eating the carrot for their wounds and pains. This is food for thought for all of us.

Quotes and interpretation

The anniversary proclamation took issue with a particular statement that President Yar’Adua made in his interview with the Financial Times; I think we have a difference of opinion on that statement.

The truncated quote was “you find even in personal dealings, business dealings in the market place, between individuals, there is no respect for decent dealings that are governed by civilised behaviour. Respect for the rule of law is the basis for civilisation.”

The full statement in answer to the first question about the achievements of the President in his first year of service was – “I think my greatest achievement is the effort to institute a strict culture for respect for the rule of law in Nigeria.

All the problems this country is facing can be traced to breakdown of respect for the rule of law, regulations, procedures and due process in almost every aspect of our national life, including interaction between our citizens.

Once you have a system, where law and order, established regulations and procedures are not being respected, you find even in personal dealings, business dealings in the market place, between individuals, there is no respect for decent dealings that are governed by civilised behaviour. Respect for the rule of law is the basis for civilisation.”

Context and implication

It would appear the President’s statement was made in some Messianic poise to lead Nigeria to some civilisation, but I read the President talking about contemporary Nigerian society and the way we seem to do things that do not align with what was a foretime our respect for the rule of law.

I do not believe the President, intended or implied impugning the historical facts about Nigerian civilisations of old where I believe there was also respect for some sort of order, probably in this case where the king and his council were the law.

There again, would still have been a sense of fairness, truth, justice and humanity else the people would revolt and dynasties would have been toppled.

Maybe the President should have used civilised society rather than civilisation, but from my reading of this statement and this statement has to be read as a whole and never in part, it can never be misconstrued to mean that Nigeria had no civilisations as part of its historic past – the burden of society today is how to keep the values and mores of those civilisations relevant and valid for today.

That is not doing Nigeria down; in fact, I would suggest, it is asking us in the words of our national anthem to – Arise, O Compatriots to the task of making Nigeria great – or great again, if you feel ever so strongly about it.

Mr. President, you have your work cut out and I support the ideas you are trying to inculcate in our political, economic and social lives.

Good luck, President Umaru Yar’Adua.

Whose apology is it anyway?

Religion of peace allowing violent protests?

An article on the Times Online site today expressed my sentiments in words I probably cannot better.

Just like we saw during the carton riots, one really has to try and reason out the paradox or irony that excites Muslim protests.

Anyone from Mars would be at pains to understand the oft held belief that Islam is a religion of peace only to see that the adherents when aggrieved about the infraction of one the bastions of their faith, take to the streets in rowdy, violent protest in a kind of mass hysteria of rage that shows nothing of the peace we have been schooled to expect.

The whole logic escapes me, in a world that is moving to a stage where conversation and dialogue should resolve disagreements and grievances; we find no intelligent debate to press those grievances rather than the blackmail of “offenders” who are forced to recant their views for the fear that the street violence would go out of hand. Imagine, protests concerning the cartoons lead to the loss of dozens of lives.

This ought not to be so.

Whose apology is it anyway?

The demand for an apology is facetious in the least, like I did say during the cartoon riots, if the name of Mohammed or some Islamic principle is besmirched, who really stands up to absolve the offender when an apology is made?

Who is the figure-head leader of Muslims around the globe who would take supplications and offerings of penance when the good name of the Prophet or the God of Islam is insensitively debased?

What really constitutes an apology, a recantation, self-flagellation or even worse and by whose standard is the offer of an apology judged to be sufficient enough to assuage and placate the offended?

Is there anyone who would lead a new civilization in Islam that would say, we have a religion of peace and rather than call people into the streets would we lead a debate that reasons out the issues and convinces the offenders of their faults?

Invest in raising literacy rates

It is time for the Mullahs, the Clerics, the Imams, the Sheiks and princes of Islam to take a commanding and leadership role to excite edifying and constructive debate on what is turning out to be a clash of civilisations.

There is no way we can reach a place of understanding if one side seeks erudite discourse and the other excites mass hysteria in street demonstrations – that results in a communication breakdown – it also means that certain sides should invest more in the education of their people rather than subduing them by allowing illiteracy to thrive such that they do not have minds to make reasonable and rational decisions.

We seek an age of enlightenment that raises not just literacy rates but creates skills meet for community is evolving in response to the juggernaut of globalisation, it is unlikely that people gainfully oiling the engines of globalisation would be on the streets burning effigies – however, that is a debatable generalisation.

References

Global Literacy

Literacy rates in Islamic Countries

Integrate Modern and Islamic Education

The people are high on opium - VI

A personal Islamic excursion

From the time the cartoon saga broke onto the global scene 4 months after the initial Danish newspaper publication, I have tried to study the actions, reactions, retributions, violence and commentaries that have kept this thing running for over a month.

Having explored the context of the cartoons, my Muslim heritage and the concept of freedom of expression, I intend to bring this “The people are high on opium” series to a close with one essential topic for reflection – predicated on the sayings of Mohammed (PBUH).

Our debt to Islamic civilisation

First, I call to remembrance that Islamic/Arabic civilisation provided us with the basis of our present day Western numerals.

Also, whilst Algebra (Arabic: al-jabr) does have a long progeny, modern algebra owes its existence to works of the Muslim Persian scholar Al-Khwarizmi in 820, four centuries before it was introduced to Europe by Leonardo Fibonacci.

In fact, we owe a debt of gratitude to Islamic civilisation for developments in mathematics, ground-breaking ideas in medicine and the concepts of civil society whilst the Western world then halted the advancement of the human race in the Dark Ages. See References [1][2][3]

Carly Fiorina the then CEO of Hewlett-Packard gave a speech just after the 9/11 incident and she said this much.

“The civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.

Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of tolerance and civic leadership.” [2]

The ink of a scholar

There was a time when Islamic scholarship made a whole lot of difference to civilisation as it has to humanity.

Nowhere is that admonition and call to a present-day Islamic Einstein most resounded than in one of Mohammed’s sayings.

“The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.” [4]

When I came upon this quote, I despaired about how some religious leaders had diverted viable Islamic resources from ink to blood and many who might have lived to become great scholars are shovelled down the path of becoming martyrs.

This saying of the prophet is further reinforced by this; "What is the best type of Jihad [struggle]?" He answered: "Speaking truth before a tyrannical ruler."  Riyadh us-Saleheen Volume 1:195 [5]

Tyranny [6] is described in terms of oppressive power or rigorous conditions imposed by an outside agency or force. That would definitely bring the Palestinian struggle under the spotlight.

The sufferings of the Palestinians is grievous indeed, but one can say more blood has been spilt in the Intifada than ink in the negotiations.

Furthermore, in the light of the atrocious insult and slur that the Danish cartoons depict, we hear the prophet say; “To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil.” [4]

This saying would probably appear in any other religious book and it shows how we all probably have gone astray, being lead down the cul de sac of discord instead of the open road of enlightenment.

Resurrect the age of reason

The context of this message is simple; it is time for the age-old tradition of enlightened Islam to come back to the fore, not that of fundamentalist Islam that skews the message and creates a clash of civilisations, but that which builds upon civilisation through scholarship.

We need the emancipation of scholarship that keeps the engine of knowledge cranking forward in aid of humanity and in spite of circumstances.

In quick-fire succession, we can see that the quest for knowledge is paramount for the Muslim as it is for all humankind.

Here are other quotes attributed to the prophet.

“The acquisition of knowledge is compulsory for every Muslim, whether male or female.” [7]

I would suspect the Taliban got it radically wrong there, considering Taliban means the seeker of knowledge; as they kept females out of school.

“Religion is very easy and whoever overburdens himself in his religion will not be able to continue in that way. So you should not be extremists, but try to be near to perfection and receive the good tidings that you will be rewarded.” Sahih Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 2, Number 38 [7]

Has anyone gone back to the book to see that this pervades every strata of Islam? No better quote to state that extremism creates no perfection brings bad tidings and offers no beneficial reward.

“Worship, without knowledge, has no goodness in it and knowledge without understanding has no goodness in it. And the recitation of the Qur'an, which is riot thoughtful has no goodness in it.” [7]

I think it is time for the protesters to reconsider their strategy, we now all know that those cartoons were insulting; however, in the light if all said and done, it is unlikely that Islam has been best represented by what ensued.

If Islam is the religion of peace; would the peacemakers please step forward?

‘Nuff said!

References

[1] In praise of Islamic civilization - Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard

[2] HP Carly Fiorina Speech: Technology, Business and our Way of Life: What's Next

[3] Islamic science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Creative Quotations from Mohammed (570-632)

[5] Muhammad - Wikiquote

[6] Look up - Tyranny

[7] The Pleasures of Learning - By Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed, Ph.D

[General reference] Islamic History and Civilisation, Islam in the West today