The
Charlie Hebdo debacle in Paris
evoked another round of discussions, protestations, ravings and rants in the
press from both the Muslim and the secular communities. In this post and the
next one or two I will talk about Muslim
pseudo tolerance. After that, I will turn to secular pseudo tolerance. Both
of them make grandiose claims to tolerance, but both are sadly lacking at that
front.
[Yes, a promise again. Sorry, but I have learned during my “promise
and failure” discourses in the past dozen or so posts that I cannot live, let
alone write, without making promises—and neither can you. Try living without
them and you’ll see! I will try my darndest to keep this one! I am also
learning another thing: not to talk so freely about promises so much as intentions. No more of “I promise…,” but “I intend…,” and always barring
more urgent circumstances.]
One
Shafic Bhalloo, in a letter to the Vancouver
Sun editor, distanced himself and the entire Muslim community from such
Islamist terrorism. He does not like the Hebdo cartoons but finds no
justification in Islam for such Islamist violence. “My Islam,” he declares, “is
a religion of peace, tolerance and forgiveness.”
Yes,
we know all that. Have heard it many times before as in my series Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations (www.lulu.com where the series is available as
an ebook free of charge, all 8 volumes!)
And yes, we also know that at one time Islam was more tolerant than the
West. Problem is that, while Islam lost its dynamism or even regressed, the
West opened up to allow the flower of tolerance to flourish beyond anything
ever seen in history—or so secularists would have you think!
Muslim
tolerance has serious limitations even at its zenith. Jews and Christians are
tolerated at this zenith, provided
they accept Muslim restrictions to keep their faith at home and in church, but
definitely not in public or the market place. But that is not freedom of
religion, for both Christians and Jews need freedom to engage the public and
the market places of the world. If those are considered “no go” areas for them,
then they do not have freedom of religion. In fact, such restrictions on them
lead to emasculation, a diminishing, and a shrinking, the total effect of which
is to trivialize them, to hollow out their dynamic character and to render them
unworthy of serious consideration—as has happened in many Muslim countries.
And
then there are the infamous dhimmi
provisions that, where half-heartedly applied, turn these Christians and Jews
into second-class citizens, sometimes under most humiliating conditions. Again,
check that series of mine.
Muslims
do not really extend their “courtesy” beyond Jews and Christians. Hindus, Sikhs
and adherents of Traditional Religions as in India
and Africa are not even accorded a place to
stand in the official Muslim scheme of things. They are a non-people without
any human rights, at least, in theory. Sometimes reality forces a certain
degree of tolerance for them, as when Muslims controlled large portions of what
is now India.
Hindus and others were so many that they simply could not be wished away
anymore than the US could
not wish China
away before the ping-pong era of President Nixon. At other times as in what is
now northern Nigeria,
Traditionalists were tolerated because, as dhimmis
in the form of Maguzawa,, they
were recognized as a great taxation source.
They were even discouraged from converting to Islam, for that would
undercut the legitimacy of the tax regime imposed on them.
So,
there you go for the freedom and peace that is inherent in Islam. And I have not even asked about or mentioned the disappearance of large swaths of Christianity in ancient lands or, to bring
it closer to home, in the so-called Middle East
today. That is hard to reconcile with
that alleged freedom and peace.
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