The borderline is no longer drawn between believers and non-believers, but between rational humanists and totalitarian radicals.
“Freedom of Opinion does not include the dissemination of messages of hate”
Frankfurt: Burning flags, an angry mob provoking and chanting paroles in front of American institutes and repeatedly insulted Muslims – these pictures automatically set forth the image of a violent Islam, incapable of tolerance. They go around the world and imply that the entire Muslim world is in turmoil because of some defamatory movie about the Prophet.
Few people may be aware that in spite of the dominance of these images, the pictures show only a tiny portion of a very complex reality. These pictures show a minority of stirred up radicals and not the majority of rational Muslims who denies violence. It is especially ludicrous to think that this mob of people, who believe they must defend the Prophet’s honor in the name of Islam, is indeed acting entirely against the teachings of the same prophet.
Ridiculed and Insulted
Like all Prophets, the Prophet Mohammad was ridiculed, insulted and persecuted all his life. Countless Quran-Verses and Sayings admonish the believers to be patient and prudent. The Quran says in this respect: “Repel evil with that which is best. And lo, he, between whom and thyself was enmity, will become as though he were a warm friend.” (41:35)
But then how can it be that only Muslims – and never Christians, for instance – react this sensitively to affronts against their religion. Certainly, religion in the so-called Islamic world has a different significance than in the rather secular Europe. Many people love the Prophet of Islam more than they love their own parents or children. He is known as “mercy for all peoples” (21:108), as he is described in the Quran – in other words, as the person with the highest moral qualities.
Muslims also protest when other prophets such as Abraham, Noah, Moses or Jesus are disparaged, as these are also sacred to them. The Quran admonishes Muslims to respect everything that is sacred to others; however, there is no verse that mentions an earthly punishment for blasphemy. And yet, an extremist mob reacts with violence. The root of all this is not Islam, but complex social and political circumstances which are exploited by agitators wherever possible, in order to get attention and distract from internal or foreign affairs of the state. The influence of fundamentalists, such as Salafists or the Hezbollah, diminished in the past few months. This Movie is a welcome opportunity for them to gain center stage.
Similarly the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, which found itself in financial distress after a loss of prestige and circulation numbers in the past few years, recently printed new Mohammad-Cartoons. Agitators on both sides form an unholy alliance passing the ball to each other. They rely on each other in the struggle for influence, attention and not least in their market-based calculations for economic profits. And this is where these originators of disharmony on both sides have something in common: They exploit religion for the benefit of their own selfish interests by trampling fundamentalist Islamic views under foot to provoke the radical Islamists, while these pretend to defend Islam.
Under the pretense of defending the freedom of opinion, radical Anti-Islam-Agitators go so far as to insult what is most sacred to people in order to increase their print run with such low marketing-ploys, thus counteracting the original idea of the right to freedom of opinion. What else can be the purpose of printing offensive cartoons and sharing vulgar movies? If it were substantiated criticism then a meaningful and constructive argument would be a lot more rewarding than adding fuel to the fire like this. Freedom of the press, the arts and opinion did not just come into existence in some mindless space. The original idea behind the empowerment of the individual in the course of enlightenment was the humanist idea that every human being, irrespective of his origin and religion, must have the right to an autonomous and free life. The idea was to protect the dignity of man and his right to lead a life with integrity.
When the same freedom of opinion is abused in order to hurt the dignity of people and to endanger the public harmony, it constitutes a mockery of the humanist idea behind it. Ideas are not refuted by killing their initiators. Still, we must not be taken in by either of the fanatics on the two sides, who present themselves as the heroes of this feigned war of cultures which they staged and enacted themselves. The borderline is no longer drawn between believers and non-believers, but between rational humanists and totalitarian radicals.
Condescending Tone
There are also antireligious fanatics – the secular fundamentalists, if you will – who seem to have forgotten that a questioning and qualifying of one’s own limited view is an essential rationale of enlightenment. The paternalistic and condescending tone, which is habitually omniscient in this discourse, plays into the hands of the warmongers. Stigmatizing Islam as irrational and ignorant for the sake of feeling superior in comparison has always been part of the anti-Muslim offense.
If, as a reaction to the enemy stereotype of the West that Islamists design, we respond with the enemy stereotype of Islam, then we bring the agitators on both sides to victory. The Quran says in this respect: “O ye who believe! Let not one people deride another people, haply they may be better than they” (49:12). It also says something else which both the anti-Islam agitators and the Islamists are completely oblivious of: “And if thy Lord had enforced His Will, surely, all who are in the earth would have believed together. Wilt thou, then, force men to become believers?” (10:100)
Hence, it is not some intolerant version of Islam which puts the world’s peace at stake, but the egotism of people, who think they must play God because they have lost the humble awareness of being nothing but a tiny human being with a miniscule view on the world.