Perspective 
 

Perspective

No Option Left

It would be naive of Muslims to think that the Western countries
would address their genuine concerns about blasphemy, religious
insults and hate speeches against Islam.

By Shahnawaz Farooqi | January 2021

no-option-left

We, the poor of the East, are so impressed with the enlightened West that even their wine decanters dazzle our eyes with their shimmering glow. In contrast, we have been left with an old, earthen jar that reflects merely the doom and gloom of the East, says Allama Iqbal, the poet of the East.

qazi-hussainAs rightly stated by Iqbal, when one falls in love, one often finds it difficult to see the ugliness lurking behind the beauty of one’s own. Head over heels in love, one finds a heart-ravishing damsel in a seemingly unattractive woman, while an ugly, feeble man is seen by her lover as a handsome, brawny hero. The same goes for the West, the most favourite destination of the secular and liberal lot, who tend to view every fact through the Western prism and thus are unable to mark the conceptual falsehood and blatant mendacity that characterises Western thought.

For instance, most liberal intellectuals and quasi-secular political analysts find ‘an impish mindset’ operating behind the publication of blasphemous cartoons and sacrilegious caricatures of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) appearing recurrently in the Western press.

Linguistically speaking, the word ‘impish’ refers to a child’s pleasure that he mainly derives from causing trouble that may be funny, attractive and not harmful to others. In this context, the word ‘demonic,’ instead of ‘impish,’ can truly define the evil mindset of the western press that derives immense pleasure from hurting the religious sentiments of over 1.8 billion Muslims of the world, that too over and over again.

As a rule, an impish act makes one smile and laugh just for the moment. In contrast, an act that triggers public anger can only incite mass reaction in the form of protests, verbal and even physical responses. However, more is the pity with those people, who are overly obsessed with Western culture and are impressed with its so-called liberal and secular values, since they can only find impishness and merely a child’s mischief in a blatant act of aggression and antagonism from the West towards Islam.

For the West-inspired souls living in Pakistan, having a dialogue with the West is the best option to help them realize about the severity of blasphemy acts. Likewise, most liberals believe this matter can be just resolved by discussing it at the UN and by raising the issue in the Western law courts. The earnest and a seemingly innocent desire to have a dialogue with the West is not new. However, most intellectuals tend to ignore the fact that the powerful never pursue bilateral dialogue with the weak. A dialogue always takes place between forces of equal strength and valour. But as per the current relationship dynamics between the Muslims and the West, the latter is powerful than the former. Therefore, whenever the West talks to Muslims, it never holds dialogue with them; it dictate them.

Late Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the former ameer (chief) of the Jamaat-e-Islami, was a firm believer in engaging in dialogue and two-way conversation with the West and for that purpose he used to often visit America and European countries with his all intentional purity and wilful sincerity. This writer once tried to convince Mr. Ahmed that his efforts would go in vain, knowing the fact that the West is only interested in dictating its own terms in place of having a constructive dialogue with Muslims. Qazi Hussain Ahmed totally disagreed with my view, but after having some bitter experiences in that regard, he later conceded his flawed judgement about the Western mindset, which only revels in giving orders to Muslims as well as in laying down rules to be just followed, forcibly or voluntarily.

James-georgeThe question is: why does the West behave like this? The answer is short and simple. The construct of modern Western behaviour is based on the principles prescribed by Sir James George Frazer, a social anthropologist from Scotland. In his groundbreaking book, “The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion,” first published in 1890, Frazer proposes that mankind has progressed from magic through religious belief to scientific thought. Classifying the evolution of the human mind and its intellectual growth into four different stages, Frazer believes the initial eras of human history were ruled by magic and sorcery. When the human mind evolved to some extent, according to Frazer, the age of magic was replaced by that of religion. Then the stage came when the religious era was superseded by the age of philosophy, so the era of belief in the gods yielded to the third. The fourth, the final and, importantly, the most mature era of human thought — the age of science - is now upon us.

Heavily influenced with Frazer’s views on religion and ‘the dying god’, the Western mind sees religious beliefs through the same prism and regards it as a thousand year-old symbol of human backwardness. Therefore, the West thinks it cannot talk to Muslims in equal terms, since they are religious, non-progressive and are a simply backward species that is still living in the old era of ignorance and religious irrationality rather tha being directed by science and technology.

Racism is another intrinsic problem with the West, which believes in white supremacy over all other races of the world. Rudyard Kipling, a Nobel-prize-winning English poet and writer, describes the East as a ‘half-devil and half-child.’ Kipling denigrates the Eastern part of the world as a ‘half-devil,’ since it is neither Christian nor white and as a ‘half-child’ because its people have not attained mental growth and maturity, and still cling to old-fashioned, religious beliefs. Suffering from such an erroneous perception, how could Muslims be able to hold a bilateral dialogue with the far superior West?

Since the commencement of the ‘War on Terror’ in 2001, the US kept fighting with the Taliban forces tooth and nail, but in the 19-year period of nonstop war, the US, together with the allied coalition, never called on the Taliban to come to the negotiation table. But earlier in 2019, it was such a rare occasion when the United States, the world’s superpower, was seen negotiating with the Taliban and that was only because the US miserably failed to defeat them and thus was looking for a desperate but graceful exit from the Afghan quagmire. This suggests that a meaningful dialogue with the West can only be held once it is exposed to severe and consistent resistance.

And those who insist on raising the blasphemy issue at the UN are again missing the point. As per the composition of the UN, it mainly comprises two major organs: the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council. All 193 members of the United Nations are members of the General Assembly, which is merely a debating club and nothing else. Since debates and verbal duels can never help resolve the blasphemy issues, resorting to the General Assembly is akin to running round in circles.

On the other hand, the UN Security Council (UNSC) comprises five permanent members, namely China, France, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. In practical terms, the UNSC is an elite club of the world’s most powerful nations who have been gifted with absolute power to veto any substantive resolution. Since none of the UNSC members is and could never be a Muslim country, how can one expect them to take any interest in the long-sought legislation of blasphemy laws on a global scale?

Therefore, the UN is an entirely irrelevant and worthless forum for the Muslims to play any role in. Similarly, raising the blasphemy issue in the western courts would also bring no results, since Muslims in Europe have been legally fighting for the right to wear a headscarf in public, but to no avail. Again, it would be a little naive of us to think that the Western court of justice would act differently this time and would listen to Muslims’ concerns with regard to blasphemy, religious insults and hate speech against them.

Many wise heads also advise young Muslims to not take such crucial matters in their own hands. They believe a violent reaction from some Muslim individuals could lead to a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam as they must let the governments of Muslim countries raise and resolve blasphemy-related concerns with the European Union. Could anybody find any single Muslim government in the world that subscribes to the theory of a civilizational clash between the Christian West and the Muslim world, and is taking any measures on the ground to safeguard the Muslim interest?

In fact, the Muslims, by and large, are angry over the apathy of their own governments for not doing anything to serve the Muslim cause in general and for not taking a tough stand against the Western countries in particular. Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, most Muslim rulers are enslaved in their Western ideals and are merely pawns in the hands of world powers. Thus, how could one expect a slave having the gall to see eye-to-eye with his masters? With no option left, what is to be done has to be done by common Muslims.

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