"We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust," said United State President Barack Obama at the Pentagon on September 11 while commemorating the victims of attacks on the country by a group of Islamic terrorists that day nine years ago.
Those words carry special weight in the backdrop of divisions in the U.S. over the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero and the planned (later cancelled) event of Quran burning by a pastor. Passionate debates kicked up by these issues ahead of the 9/11 anniversary are a clear reminder that religious fervour that propelled those terrorists to fly hijacked planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon will continue to be a target of public outrage, scrutiny and even derision and contempt. They also show that attempts to invoke Islamophobia - to counter genuine and not-so genuine expressions of concern about the religious frenzy driving people to kill innocents - hardly succeed in silencing those who are prepared to talk about religious ingredients that they fear are still making some people violently crazy.
Islam is in the news these days, no matter whether it receives bad or good press. In this age of modernity and openness facing threat from forces that are committed to undermining them, the second largest religion can be seen, on the one hand, as either battling all those negative images reinforced by both acts of terror carried out by small fringe groups among its adherents and also retrograde customs practised in its name by many of its followers or, on the other hand, as a faith being showcased for whatever inherent qualities it claims to have, depending on which side of the argument you are inclined to. But whichever way one looks at Islam and the question whether it is compatible or not with modern universal values, one can't resist comparing it with other major religions. Both those calling for close scrutiny of Islam vis-a-vis the practices that are antithetical to the modern values and those defending their faith seek to present their arguments by underlining this comparative approach.
Authors sceptical of the proposed mosque and cultural centre near Ground Zero including atheist Christopher Hitchens and Irshad Manji, who calls herself a reformed Muslim, have singled out the so-called moderate Muslims (like Imam Feisal Rauf, the man behind the Islamic cultural centre in New York which includes the prayer hall for Muslims) for their censure of their tendency to delude themselves when they talk about their religion. Hitchens says that tolerance of a religious faith is not synonymous with free exercise of religious practices that are incompatible with contemporary democratic values. Manji points out that "thanks to its [the cultural centre] provocative location the nation will scrutinize what takes place inside." And she asks the Imam certain questions which include this one: what the centre will teach about homosexuals, agnostics, atheists and apostasy?. That is another way of asking for, what Hitchens calls, 'domestication' of Islam.
Countries with secular constitutions have laws to supersede religious prescriptions that go against the modern values. Other major religions have undergone the process of being tackled by the secular constitutional values. Islam cannot be an exemption. True, most Muslims are certainly not adherents of retrograde commands and passages in their sacred texts. But if you show them the sheer irrelevance of those prescriptions in the age of democracy and modern values, many of them will end up blaming 'incorrect' interpretations of the tenets of Islam. They will also invariably throw a red herring in their argument: other religions also have passages equally reprehensible to modern tastes. Here the comparison of Islam with other religions takes all the characteristics of denialism. When somebody points out some issues about Islam, they tend to say that some other religions also have same issues.
That calls for another comparison. What will be the response of a non-fundamentalist and non-fanatic Christian or Jew when asked if he/she upholds the terrible things written in the Bible. The answer will be NO in no uncertain terms. The Bible is also filled with many acts of crimes and barbarism, but no sane Christian today will endorse them. Are there Salman Rushdies and Ayan Hirsi Alis living under murder threat for their critique of Christianity or Judaism?
Perhaps the success of the democratic system lies in this climate which encourages comparisons. Democracy asks of a person to reconcile himself/herself with the idea that his/her best religion or ideology cannot claim special insulation from criticism and scrutiny, especially when lot of bad things are carried out in the name of that religion or ideology. President Obama’s juxtaposition of the liberties the West cherishes and the walls of suspicion and mistrust is only a political way of extending the comparative approach. The liberties that he admires are far better than and superior to the culture of suspicion and mistrust that he condemns.
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