Tags
2010 Qur'an-burning controversy, Arab World, Islam, Mazar-i-Sharif, Middle East, Qur'an, revolution, Suleiman Al Khalidi, Syria, United Nations, United States
That conflict yields casualties is a regrettable given and that they are innocents, more so.
This week an increasing number of casualties have been those whose presence is needed: United Nations workers dispensing aid and reporters heightening awareness of repressive regimes in the revolutionary squall.
In Mazar-e-Sharif the seven foreign workers paid for the idiocy one man: one who certainly was not representative of their views.
Four of the seven were former Gurkhas working as security guards; a fifth a 53-year-old Norwegian female pilot; the sixth a 33-year-old Swede and the seventh an as yet unnamed Romanian.
Two of the workers had been beheaded.
The impetus behind the blood-lust? An American homophobic, xenophobic used furniture salesman almost 12,000 kilometres away who put the Koran “on trial” and burnt it.
The question of who is to blame is sullied by the number of protagonists: the idiot who burned the holy text; the Imam who fired up the crowd at Friday prayer; and the crowd who did not question their actions but submitted to barbaric, primal impulses.
The tragedy is that those who died were the only innocents of the dastardly lot.
Moving towards the Arab world it is journalists who are persecuted: the latest being Jordanian Suleiman Al Khalidi, a Reuters correspondent who was recent held in Syria since Tuesday and released this weekend.
Al Khalidi is not the first and nor will he be the last; previous journalists and photographers have been detained for a number of days before expulsion.
While their fate is incomparable to that of the UN workers, it is the persecution of those who work towards a better society that rankles.
Without journalists and photographers regimes and their actions will never be questioned – it is this very suppression that enabled Ben Ali and Qaddafi to thrive over the decades, as well as the Asad dynasty.
Persecution and repression have no place in the new Arab world, but neither should prejudices such as those held by Pastor Terry Jones be tolerated in Western society.
In the West we applaud the uprisings and hope the plucky revolutionaries will triumph, for their challenge is epic and volatile.
But so is our’s: though it is slow, it is nonetheless a creeping mould that silently destroys cohesion.
Smug in the possession of freedom of speech, we boast of it proudly – it is what we want for the MENA region, too, as the media trumpets.
Yet, the question is how much freedom, for the outlet it provides for bigotry and prejudice can be as damning to society as repression.
And I am sure few would disagree that a little repression in the case of Jones and his ilk would go a long way.
Idiot that Terry Jones is, does this mean now that other idiots who kill unrelated individuals a half a world away are given license to kill anytime they are offended by those who don’t believe what they believe?
The former idiot is working within an established framework of freedom of speech, where such people are ignored until they pass into oblivion.
Do we really want the latter idiots will determine what freedom of speech is or isn’t, by bloodshed?
Is that what we want? Pakistani and Afghani sensibilities taking us back into times of ignorance? Where trumped up charges of blasphemy kill innocent people and an indigenous Christian population is forced to convert to Islam in order to live?
For me, there is no question.
Of course not, but ‘ignoring’ isn’t going to solve problems at a closer proximity.
Bigotry, xenophobia, racism, homophobia – the presence of these elements can be likened to arsenic: in small doses they slowly erode cohesion in society.
It would be extreme to link the suppression of such expostulations to a Talibanization of Western society, but in the case of Britain (which may differ from the US) the rising presence of neo-Nazi groups is a hindrance.
In terms of domestic security it is not merely a case of raiding mosques and questioning Imams; it is about respect. And in that instance the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006 could be interpreted as censorship/suppression – but I doubt it: only good can come from oppressing bigotry.
Where there is persecution and discrimination there will also be animosity and hatred where once there was ambivalence. In pursuit of the ultimate freedom, we are overlooking the basic values of morality.