Adil Najam
This is a painful post to write.
Ideally I would have preferred not to have had to write this post. But I have over 300 messages in my in-box of people fussing over the so-called “Draw Muhammad Day” page on the social networking site Facebook and now the Lahore High Court’s decision calling for a ban on Facebook has forced the issue. And that is what pains me.
I hope that Facebook administration will remove the page. Not because of any “banning” movement and not because of the Lahore High Court. Just because the page and the idea behind the page is inflammatory and offensive. Regardless of what your belief or religion might be, to throw out offensive and hateful vitriolic for the simple and primary purpose of hurting someone else’s feelings – when you know that (a) those feelings will be hurt and (b) when hurting those feelings is really the only purpose of doing what you are doing – is inhuman, cruel, and clearly offensive. If Facebook does not recognize that, then it knows nothing either about “social” or about “networking” and certainly not about “community.”
But at one level, that matters little now. Whether Facebook removes the offensive page or not. The page and its creators have already fulfilled their purpose, met their goals. And it is we ourselves who have helped them do so. And that is what pains me.
I have not visited the offensive page in question and do not intend to. I had also not intended to help publicizing that offensive page, but by having to write this post that is exactly what I am doing. And that pains me. I am offended by the idea that page purports and the goals it seeks to achieve. So, why should I dignify it by a visit? Why should I publicize it? Why should I give it the attention it was created to seek. Yet, all of us (now me included, which is why writing this is uncomfortable) are doing exactly that.And that is what pains me.
Many of the emails I have received give me the link to that page and invite me to visit it so that ‘I can see for myself how offensive it is.’ I do not need to do that. Yet, that is exactly what we have been doing. We have been acting exactly as the creators of that page intended us to. Acting as the promoters and publicists of that page. And now having turned it into an international legal matter giving the attention seekers behind the page the exact thing they wanted: Attention.
But we have done more than that. With the Lahore High Court decision we have allowed the PTA and authorities another precedent and excuse to aggressively “manage” the internet; something that can and will be misused in the future.
I have not been receiving emails from the proponents of that page. The only ones who seem to be noticing us is us Muslims (and for some reason Pakistani Muslims more than any other). If we too had ignored the offensive page – as it deserves to be ignored – it would have gone the exact same way to oblivion as thousands of other sophomoric attempts at cheap attention seeking on the Internet. Instead we have now turned it into an international incident and given it far more limelight than it ever deserved.
Let’s think about it, what did the creators of the offensive page want to do when they set it up? First, they sought attention, and hits, and notoriety in a world where attention is too easily confused with fame. Second, they wanted to ridicule Muslims by the reaction they excepted from this. If you think of it, irrespective of whether Facebook removes the site or keeps it, the organizers of the page have achieved their goal. Well beyond what they expected. Now every other Islamophobic nutcase will get new ideas about how to have his little 10 minutes of fame spewing bigotry and hatred against Muslims.
But more importantly, they simply could not have done this without us. The only people who have turned this from nothingness into a huge issue is us. I am sure that those who set up the page are jumping up and down and thanking us for making their page such a huge success! And that is what pains me.
I am also pained by the sacrilege of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that this entire drama signifies. As pained as anyone else, and as pained as I would have been at the sacrilege of any other Prophet or religion. But unlike for many others, that pain is neither reduced nor resolved by protesting against Facebook. For me, the antidote to that pain is in the teaching of the Prophet (PBUH) themselves. What would the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) have done in such a situation.
The one thing I am absolutely positive of, is that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) would not have done what we are doing now: making an international public spectacle of ourselves. Most likely he would have just walked away and ignored (the ‘look the other way when someone throws garbage at you’ model), he might have negotiated with Facebook on the basis of their own stated rules (the Hudabia model), he might have reasoned with detractors (the discourse and discussion model). Nearly certainly Muhammad (PBUH) would have handled it with grace, with composure, and maybe even with a touch of good humor. Most importantly, the Prophet (PBUH) would have kept focusing on his own actions and proving his point with his own deeds rather than with slogans, banners and naara-baazi.
I agree with Scott when he points out that teh real intolerance comes from teh so-called “west”
“If another religion (say judaism or christianity) were to become as sensitive or hostile to western secularism as some muslims currently are, the focus of secular critique would shift to that religion”
What globalization has done is that it has brought many different cultures to the world stage and the West is struggling on how to deal with it. Because of its arrogance it cannot do so and you find these apologists from the West talking just like fundamentalist Muslims, as if ‘their’ way is the only right one. As if the US constitution is something the whole world should follow. The fact is that the West is in decline and globalization is ruled by other forces, mostly China and India and Muslims because of their numbers.
As Scott points out, the West will have problem with any view that is different from it because West is incapable of tolerating others. Unfortunately for it, the West’s view is no longer the dominant one and is less and less important to the rest of the world. Luckily other emerging powers like India and China are far more tolerant.
Scott says:
May 31st, 2010 2:08 pm
One thing that globalisation (and facebook) shows us is the chasm between cultures….
==========================================
Well said. And very well written.
It is also true that the first Europeans that came to North America were looking for religous freedom. Lots of people were persecuted in their homeland, so they went to North America.
Whenever I see disrespect toward ANY religion I turn away and say a prayer for those people that were disrespectful.
Sometimes even the flag of the US is ripped apart or burned by people that don’t like the current government policy. That is also considered free expression. As far as the law is concerned nothing is sacred.
On the other hand anyone may read from the Quran or the Bible on any street corner.
The only expression forbidden in public is pornography and profanity.
One thing that globalisation (and facebook) shows us is the chasm between cultures.
While your article speaks of a phobia of islam and bigotry (and those things certainly exist), the cultural divide really isn’t about anti-islamists vs. islam. It’s about the inherent problem of a post-religious culture (the west) co-existing with a religious culture.
The reality is that secular westerners (either as individuals or as governments) do not recognise blasphemy of any religion as a crime. The vast majority of westerners do not recognise blasphemy to be wrong. Indeed, there is a philosophical tradition of critical thinking of religion (principally against christianity) dating back to the 18th century which has become integrated into the western psyche.
This post-religious thinking doesn’t reflect a hatred of islam specifically. It’s simply secular.
If another religion (say judaism or christianity) were to become as sensitive or hostile to western secularism as some muslims currently are, the focus of secular critique would shift to that religion.
Part of your article appears to recognise this where you argue that if believers would simply ignore the taunts, the taunts would cease to exist. That’s probably right. At a minimum, they would cease to be effectual–by definition.
Anyone with access to mainstream western television can see how secular western culture has become since the 18th century. It’s not islamophobic; it’s religiophobic.
Where one side sees bigots and blasphemers, the other side doesn’t even know know what blasphemy is, as the concept no longer has any legal or moral meaning to them (and hasn’t for a couple of centuries).
One of your readers argues that the only way correct this cultural divide is for westerners respect the prophet just as muslims respect jesus and moses. But this argument assumes that secular western culture respects the religions of jesus and moses. While these religions certainly exist with millions of western adherents, the western societies and legal systems in which they operate do not protect them against their blasphemers.
It’s actually just the opposite…it is the secular blasphemers whose speech is protected by western secular law, not the hurt feelings of jews or christians.
So we have the inherent conflict that occurs when one culture places the right to criticise religion (actually the right to criticise anything and anyone) above respect for religion, and another culture places respect of its religion above freedom of speech.
In the west, the intensity of this conflict has largely dissipated, as jews and christians have become accustomed to living in a secular society which protects their right to worship, but also protects the rights of infidels and blasphemers.
Facebook ban lifted by Lahore High Court. Fro Express Tribune:
A timely message indeed by Adil Najam.
Banning sites doesn’t serve any purpose, neither do the large scale demonstrations on streets- burning tyres- forcing shopkeepers to shut down or to attack foreign owned banks , network cos. and other joint venture / multinational business concerns.
We demonstrated against the caricatures by a Danish cartoonist but the same caricature is still on display on every Google image page once you enter the word ‘images, caricatures’. Now you can’t ban Google because it is such a powerful search engine that provides among other things information which all of us need in our day to day life. To my mind tools of the cyber world are like any other tool we use almost every day. We use a knife to cut up vegetables but the same knife can be used also to cut up throats of human beings. That’s the negative side of using that tool but you can’t ban a knife just because it is also being used by criminals to take human lives.
So what we need is our own attitude towards the teachings and actions of the holy prophet. I think had the prophet been here amongst us, he would never have condoned the actions of these so called ‘prophet lovers’ for he was the man who pardoned even his arch enemies, he was the man who blessed even those persons who had subjected him to an extreme type of humiliation, pains and tortures. Unfortunately our actions are exactly opposite to what the prophet would have ordained under such circumstances [although his teachings are even today the most appropriate guidelines to follow].
In this age of information when propaganda has turned into a high valued marketing tool [interestingly negative propaganda has many a times proved to bring positive results for the product or service itself], through our stupidity we have given an out of bound feedback to that particular page on facebook and this is exactly what the publisher of that page would have wished to.
P. S.
Thanks humanoid. You have very aptly said it too: “Blaming west is senseless; they have achieved something that we didn’t. We need to respect our opponents and need to elevate ourselves to a level that they think twice before indulging into such acts”.
Nayyar Hashmey
http://wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com/