A Matter of Respect

The following blog came to my attention in an email - during the whole 'cartoon' debacle. It's worth a second, even a third look. It's worth patient contemplation, followed by action on the part of people of true goodwill. Read on!

A Matter of Respect

"The West must have respect for Islam instead of just showing tolerance. Acts of violence by a raging minority claiming that violence is justified because shabby cartoons of Muhammad have shown a lack of respect, unmask the protesters as hypocrites. This issue needs to be addressed."

- Walter Brehm, St. Galler Tagblatt,
Switzerland.

In the current controversy over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad there is much talk of tolerance or lack of it. However, tolerance implies a relationship where power plays a role. The strong tolerate the weak. It makes more sense to see this issue as a matter of respect.

Respect builds relationships between people, cultures, ideas, and religions, where all stand eye to eye on level ground. The Islamic world accuses occidental cultures of a lack of respect. The West is seen by many Muslims as a form of sickness. This seems to be confirmed by the histories of both cultures. The Muslim experience of the decline of former greatness, their former domination by European colonial powers, followed by a neocolonial influence of The American way of life, all are very real issues to them.

The paternalism of the West

The West risks making a grave mistake by now using certain historic insights to formulate yet another paternalistic relationship towards Islam, while the Islamic world is in danger to exchange legitimate sentiments of self respect with playing the victims role. A misplaced tolerance by the West can lead to self-censorship that prohibits any kind of critique of developments that are currently happening in the Islamic world. Such approach would end up being less tolerant towards Islam than the advocates of Western self-censorship have in mind. Either knowingly or unwittingly, the self appointed defenders of Islam in the West risk to become part of the main problem, namely a total lack of self critique by the Muslim world. For this reason respect would be more helpful than a mere understanding of the situation, or a show of empathy.

The relationship between Religions

There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet, thus runs the Shahada, the Islamic creed.
A deciding factor of relationships between the monotheistic world religions is that they have appeared in sequence. Those who came later have claimed ascendancy over those who went before. This is based on the fact that a new religion succeeds the previous one. It therefore allows an attitude of tolerance towards those who went before. For example, under Muslim rule Jews and Christians were not accepted as equals to Muslims, but they lived under Muslim protection.

While Judaism is based on the belief that God spoke only once and has made the Israelites his elected people, Islam sees earlier religions as fore-runners in a linear progression of Gods plan. Earlier religions are deemed as preliminary, not as useless or false, but not yet fully perfected. The religion of Jesus Christ that emerged in the time between Judaism and Islam, is looked upon by Islam the same way as Christianity looks at Judaism when it claims that Gods new Covenant has replaced old Judaic law.

Until the middle of the 19th century Islam saw itself able to exercise tolerance within its own sphere of influence. Moses and Jesus were both accepted as prophets, but Mohamed was the Seal of the Prophets. He was taught to be Gods emissary who had brought Gods final message to the world that would be valid forever.
The audacious claim of the Baháís

But a little over 160 years ago, in May of 1844, a young man who became known at the Báb, the Gate, announced the coming of a new religion, and he did so right in the heart land of the Islamic world. Just like John the Baptist, the Báb announced the imminent appearance of new prophet, Baháulláh, the founder of the Bahá’í faith. Without getting involved here with the history of this latest monotheistic religion which has over five million followers world wide, the Bahá’í faith presented Islam with a sudden and completely unknown challenge. For the first time ever the Muslim community, the Umma, had to deal with something other than old religions from the distant past, and it immediately lost all its former tolerance. Tolerance is an attribute that is always easy for those who believe to be in sole possession of the truth.

A Denial of Respect

Both the Shiite clergy and the secular rulers of Persia reacted against this heresy with the utmost brutality. Throughout Persia many thousands of followers of the new religion were massacred. In 1850 the Báb was publicly put to death. For the next 40 years the new prophet Bahá’u’lláh was incarcerated and exiled, until he finally was taken to Haifa in today's Israel. To this day some 300,000 Bahá’ís in Iran are more than ever brutally persecuted by the Shiite clergy and by Iran's government powers they have usurped.

Now, God is no liberal, and especially not his followers who are organized in different religions. However, the human freedom that occidental western cultures have discovered after many centuries of violence and suffering can best be summarized this way. Since by the will of God the human being has been endowed with reason, it must be man alone who decides about his or her relationship to God, and no religious organization or government. This relationship an individual has to God may change during the course of a life time. And over longer time periods there can come change to entire cultures and to relationships between religions. An era of faith can change into a time of unbelief. Because all this lies in the realm of the possible, a believer ought to accept that that such changes are also subject to Gods will.

?and Hypocrisy

It is precisely because man cannot fathom God's will and wisdom that he wants to have faith. This will always lead to differences between those who have another religion, or no faith at all. These differences cannot be resolved by man, not even by force and violence. They must be accepted and suffered by all alike. This then is the line that followers of religions who believe that there is but one God for all humanity must not cross. Whoever claims that he believes in a single God must also believe that God alone, and no cast of priests and preachers is guiding all
humanity.

As long as the renunciation of faith by fellow humans is decried as apostasy by religious zealots who claim to worship a supposedly Almighty God, but in his name will resort to murder, torture, abduction and persecution, then any calls for respect, including those coming from Muslims, are pure hypocrisy. Nothing must stop us from facing up to this issue, no paternalistic tolerance, and certainly not a true respect for Islam.