NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
December 23, 2006
A poisoned cup
Do not read this column, unless you are going to read it to the end. I get too many letters from people who stop half-way through, and write in outrage about what they thought I was about to say. Or perhaps they did finish reading, but were blinded by the part they thought they understood.For I am writing today about “Islamism”, a word I persist in using to describe an over-politicized, and over-literalist version of Islam that is a threat to the West, as it is also a threat to every Muslim who wishes to live in reasonable freedom, and peace with his neighbours. I make the distinction because it must be made. I make it again and again, but people don’t get it. Be assured, I receive heat from both sides, for I am often attacked by correspondents who accuse me of “making excuses” for Islam, of making “a distinction that isn’t a distinction”. To them I can only say: that if Islam had been following the teachings of Osama bin Laden, or President Ahmadinejad of Iran, from its beginnings, it wouldn’t be a problem today. It would have perished centuries ago. It is only because Islam was able to offer a rich and credible civilized tradition, and the starch of an intelligible moral order, that it was able to last the centuries, and find itself enjoying today, as Christianity also enjoys, the acid bath of post-modernity. On the other hand, if I thought the Koran superior to the Gospels, I wouldn’t be a Christian, would I? For I do still live in a country where, in the words of Mohammed, “there is no compulsion in religion”. Or, relatively little. But I’m going to tell you an anecdote from Lahore, Pakistan -- a city of my childhood -- that, I hope, will make the distinctions I need. I see many items like this one, which happened to be forwarded through a Christian missionary organization. I am quite sure they did not make it up, for it is all too plausible. It is something that happened to a Pakistani Christian, one Nasir Ashraf. He was a stone mason, building a new room for a school at Manga Mandi. He was thirsty from the work. He drew water and drank from a glass chained to a cemented public tank by a mosque, as he had no doubt often done before. He was then confronted by a man I will call an “Islamist”. He was accused of having “polluted” the glass, with his Christian lips. The assailant pulled the glass off its chain, and smashed it. He summoned “Islamist” friends, and soon a little mob had formed around Nasir, calling him a “Christian dog”. This turned to violence when a provocateur yelled that beating Nasir would benefit everyone in heaven. Nasir was pushed off a ledge. His shoulder was dislocated by the fall, and his collar bone broken in two places. He regained consciousness in a local clinic. Now note what the mission source doesn’t make clear: that Muslim people must have brought Nasir to the clinic. He is now under protection, and getting the necessary medical treatment, from the Christian mission. I have sufficient familiarity with how things happen, in Pakistan these days, to credit this story. Things like that have come to happen too frequently. Even forty years ago, things like that happened; but then, rarely. As I would hope any imam would confirm, it is inconceivable that Islam teaches its adherents to beat Christians. The very message by that mosque cup would have said, as all such do, that it is for the use of “all the poor”. I tell this anecdote so my reader will appreciate what being persecuted means. I am not denying that Christians have also been persecutors in history, nor claiming that Christians alone are the victims of “Islamist” persecution today. But I am referring to a phenomenon that has become so commonplace, even around such civilized cities as Lahore, that you won’t read about it in the papers. Now: fanatics may arise in any society. They invariably arise. The question we put to the larger society is, what are you doing to suppress fanaticism? In defence of persecuted Christians, and all others persecuted around the world, it is worth carrying into the Eve of Christmas this one simple “secular” thought. What happens in the world, and what has always happened, when no one will stand up to the fanatics? David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top