I like to debate. Especially written online debates. It gives you time to read your words again before posting. You can hardly make a slip of tongue in a written online debate. I have been in many online forums over the last three years and I have learnt a lot while debating in them.
One thing I have learnt is to be able to predict the argument pattern of white liberals. They pride themselves as being Rational, empathetic and accommodating. While that is largely true in many cases, I have come to realise that when it comes to religion, especially Islam, “accommodation” becomes something akin to deliberate and intentional blindness bothering on dishonesty.
While I’m more concerned about our home based terrorism than what happens in Europe, incidents like the Brussels attack opens up new avenues for debate and reactions concerning Islam and I always find the different views enlightening. The Liberal Whites are quick to point out that terrorist attacks such as these have absolutely nothing to do with Islam and will call you a bigot or racist for disagreeing.
They seem to think that saying Islam has something to do with it is branding all 1.2 billion muslims as perpetrators and/or Co-conspirators. But it not so.
The fact is that religion, by its epistemological nature, will always give rise to factions and sects each claiming to be the true and real one and most times, adherents simply follow the ones that speak to their nature. You will find the crazy ones mostly aligning with the crazy sects, etc. There is no objective way to know which is true and which is false because they all quote from the same source and their interpretations are varied.
That is why ISIS can recruit members even from liberal Western societies. They also quote the Quran. Whether their interpretation is valid is up for debate but what cannot be denied is that they get their justification from the Quran. And so, yes, islamic terrorism has something to do with Islam. When you point out the verses that encourage violence in the Quran to these liberals, they respond by telling you that you are taking it out of context etc. I find it a bit perplexing. I’m not the one bombing and beheading people. If you think these verses need a proper context in other to sound peaceful, you should direct such lectures to the people who are actually operating based on literal interpretations of those passages. What I do is show you where these terrorists get their justification from.
I have read the Quran a bit as an academic exercise and I have lived (and currently live) in a muslim dominated society, plus I was also religious, so I can understand how and why some people would kill others for their god. The problem here is why White Liberals keep insisting that these acts of violence have nothing to do with the religion of its perpetrators even as the perpetrators themselves keep saying that they are doing it for religious reasons. These white liberals seem to think they and their liberal muslim friends and family alone know what constitutes the correct and true interpretation of Islam. If they would only be honest and agree that Maybe these acts have something to do with Islam then 1 problem is solved and we can tackle the next one…
The next question would then be “If the bible contains more violence than the Quran why then are Christians not killing people just like their Holy Book says?”
Why bring Christianity up? Because white liberals and some muslims always try to point out the violence in the bible as a form of “You too! Why are you not talking about that one?” which is a distracting, dishonest tactic. The fact is that, Christians are not violent today in spite what parts of their holy book commands, and a true and honest enquirer who is interested in peace would want to why. . .
Part of the reason was the rise of Secularism coupled with the loss of political power by the religious authorities.
For hundreds of years in the past, Christianity was even more violent than Islam today. Over 400,000 women were burned at the stake for being witches and countless others were killed, chased, exiled and ostracised to not belonging to the Christian faith or for belonging to the wrong sect. These atrocities were made possible because the Church had political power. They had the power to make and enforce laws that were binding on everybody within the society. The concepts of Freedom and Human rights were non-existent. You did not have the right to NOT be religious or belong to the wrong religion for you would be persecuted and possibly killed.
The power of the Church to get away with this only waned because of the rise of Secularism, Democracy and the Decline of the powers of Monarchy and Theocracy. It was when the people decided to depend on themselves ONLY in order to choose their rulers and also the rise of concepts such as personal liberty, freedom of expression etc that the Church could no longer get away with forcing people to believe certain things.
Religion is Politics. It is all about Power and Control. When you believe that a certain book contains all there is to know about how to run a human society and then when you have a few people who claim to understand more than others, what such a book says, then what you have is a recipe for terrorism. Add to that the idea that such a book and it’s narrators can never be questioned or criticised then what you will have is a highly repressive society where personal freedoms cannot exist.
This is where Islam is today.
Of course there are nice and liberal muslims. Of course there are those muslims who are genuinely disgusted and saddened by what ISIS and Boko Haram are doing today but they are not more Muslim than the ISIS people themselves. The Quran says “there’s no compulsion in religion” but it also says “Kill unbelievers wherever you find them.” The nice muslim picks the first and ignores the second. The crazy muslim picks the second and ignores the first. Who are you to say one is more muslim than the other?
What then is the solution?
The solution as I see it is Secularism and Freedom of Expression.
First of all, we need to have a government that is interested in protecting the rights and lives of ALL its citizens irrespective of their religious inclinations, that is, a Secular Gov’t. Secondly, this same government also has to protect the citizens from harm. Thirdly, and most importantly, this government must protect the rights of citizens to free expression.
What I mean by this is that, I should be able to exist in a society where I can disagree with a Muslim without being killed and then blamed for provoking the Muslim. When Charlie Hebdo happened, some Liberals were saying that why did the Magazine make provocative cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. That is, they were blaming the victims of violence for bringing it upon themselves. I find this type of reasoning at odds with the freedoms they preach. Freedom of expression means that I am free to also say things you don’t like without being made to feel unsafe. I do not have to agree with you to live in peace with you. I do not have respect the same things you respect. Hindus venerate cows. I eat cows. Do I have to stop eating cows because I live among Hindus?
You see Mohammed as a prophet. I do not see him as one. In fact, I see him as a paedophile. A man who marries a 6 year old and sleeps with her when she’s 9 is a paedophile. I shouldn’t be threatened by you for expressing this fact. I shouldn’t be called a racist or bigot for expressing this fact.
As a liberal, you cannot champion freedom of expression and at the same time stop me from expression my honest opinion.
Islam should be brought into the 21st Century. Muslims should be made to understand that just because they consider a thing holy does not mean that everyone else must see that thing as holy too. Today, Michael Ewaen can make a joke about Jesus Christ, a carpenter being nailed to a piece of wood and some christians would laugh, but make a similar joke about Muhammed here in Nigeria and muslims will kill people in protest all the way from Nigeria to Libya and beyond. And this would be ordinary day to day muslims, not the jihadist, bomb wielding, terrorist types.
Liberals hurt the world more by blaming everything else but the actual problem. They blame poverty, provocation, racists, American foreign policy, anything but the regressive nature of Islam. When they do this, they give these crazy muslim types the impression that their ideas are somehow above criticism and are justified in reacting violently to whoever they perceive as having insulted their holy prophet or religion.
It is this Power that muslims and muslim authorities have that help this problem to fester. Saudi Arabia is a repressive Islamic Government and yet the Liberal West gets in bed with them and pretends not to notice their grievous human rights abuses. Why wouldn’t ISIS and Boko Haram want their own Islamic States like that of Saudi Arabia when they can see that such barbaric states can exists legitimately side by side with Secular Governments?
How then do you want to end Islamic terrorism when you are friends with the most Holy and Admired Islamic State on earth?
. Akorita writes from ijabijay@me.com.