Muslims, Non-Muslims Need To Battle Terrorism Jointly
By S. Amjad Hussain
2/2/2015
The recent attack on the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo brought into focus the menace of worldwide terrorism. There is no justification, religious or otherwise, for wanton killing. The attack has been condemned by people of conscience the world over.
World leaders flocked to Paris to stand shoulder to shoulder and show solidarity against terrorism and for freedom of speech. I wonder how many of them allow freedom of speech in their own countries.
In the West, freedom of speech is sacrosanct. Any attempt to curtail it is met with fierce opposition. Many claim that media are free to say and publish anything, and have the license to be equal opportunity offenders. This is not true.
When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, most other Western media restrained themselves and did not join that campaign. The principle of freedom of expression was set aside when the same newspaper declined to publish a derogatory cartoon about Christ, saying it would provoke an outcry.
“Je suis Charlie” — I am Charlie — has become a defiant slogan of freedom of speech. But in 2008, Charlie Hebdo fired cartoonist Maurice Sinet for remarks that were deemed anti-Semitic by the magazine’s management. The magazine’s double standard prompts me to say: I am not Charlie.
There should be one rule for all speech. In some European countries, denying or minimizing the Holocaust is a crime punishable by jail.
It would take people with distorted minds, extreme prejudice, or lunacy to deny one of the most horrendous crimes committed against humanity by Nazi Germany. But does the issue of the Holocaust need the protection of law? If we start making exceptions to a rule, soon the rule becomes useless.
In a commentary in Time magazine recently, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a Muslim and National Basketball Association legend, argues that terrorism is not about religion, but is about control and power. Religion, he said, is inadvertently dragged into the mess.
The killers in Paris wanted to avenge the honour of the Prophet Mohammed. The terrorists who slaughtered more than 130 children at a school in Pakistan last December supposedly wanted to avenge American drone attacks and a Pakistani army campaign in the tribal areas of Waziristan.
The bloodletting in Iraq and Syria is not about Islam. It is about deprivation, disfranchisement, and a sense of helplessness — just as decades of violence and bloodletting in Northern Ireland were not about the Catholic and Protestant religions, but about political power.
We should condemn the attack in Paris and the beheadings of foreigners by Islamic State. But we also should remember that much terrorism is directed not against Westerners, but against Muslims.
In the past 10 years, 50,000 Pakistanis have died as a result of terrorism. A sizable number of those killed were army and police personnel.
When people start hurling abuse at all Muslims, who number 1.4 billion worldwide, they are blaming the victims for the crime.
People ask me how they can help. Here is how:
Stop parroting the mantra of right-wing media, some Protestant pulpits, and politicians on the right that when Muslims don’t condemn terrorism, they must condone it.
Tell them that most Muslims condemn terrorism in a loud and clear voice, and that all major Muslim organizations in this country have done so repeatedly. Tell them that Al-Azhar University in Egypt, the oldest seat of Sunni Muslim learning in the world, has declared these terrorists outside the pale of Islam.
Terrorism is a deeply rooted disease that will take time to eradicate. Muslims and non-Muslims have to band together to oppose this menace.
Dr. S. Amjad Hussain is a retired Toledo surgeon whose column appears every other week in The Blade.
Source: http://www.toledoblade.com/S-Amjad-Hussain/2015/02/02/Muslims-non-Muslims-need-to-battle-terrorism-jointly.html
1:37 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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