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What could I say to a grown up Canadian daughter, to help her speak to her Canadian mother, when her mother is being sympathetic to Muslims murdering in France? “Mother!”
After some Muslim-on-atheist violence in Paris, the mother pointed out the Muslim killers had felt provoked… that the westerners hadn’t needed to act that way. Well. At the time, I didn’t know if there was anything the daughter could say. I mean, nothing that her mother didn’t already know. But I do now.
But first: Of course I am familiar with the concept of cutting religious people slack if they are “sincere,” and giving religious authorities who say stupid things “diplomatic immunity” from being told they have said an awfully stupid thing. (Our indulgence for this is rapidly declining)
Despite this slack, when a teacher was beheaded on the sidewalk after school, people reacted. As you know, French President Macron is saying to the world that France believes in Freedom of Speech, even unto insults. Hearing this, Muslim leaders are insulting France, boycotting French goods, and saying that perceived insults to the prophet should not be protected.
As the rest of us look on, what many observers don’t know is that in certain Muslim lands, both Arab and otherwise, assault and murder is OK, publicly condoned, if there is a “good reason,” such as insults to honour. Thus a bodyguard who betrayed and killed his patron, the governor of Punjab, is a hero to many in Pakistan. He was hanged.
Here in Canada, I remember when our university bookstore was too afraid to stock a certain controversial book that “allegedly” (no public investigation or verdict) insulted Mohamed. A Muslim, without saying he himself would attack the bookstore, (In those innocent days before 9/11, nobody dreamed he could ever attack people) publicly defended his aggression, saying we should surely understand his feelings, since we ourselves would take revenge on anyone here in Canada who insulted Queen Elizabeth. I rolled my eyes and thought, “Sure, for Queen Elizabeth the first!” What, are Muslims from a different time and space? Well, yes. Certainly they are from a different political ecology. Not like native French Muslims.
On their “fifth republic” now, with living memory of living under Nazi Fascism, Frenchmen know in their bones the danger of NOT allowing equal justice for all. To them, the freedom to think and speak is for everyone, or else it’s for no one. (Yes Mother, this includes minority Muslims and women)
Needless to say, the mother would already know this, at least to some degree. Maybe both “sides,” French and Muslim, are locked into their “self identity.” To “democracy,” and to “religion.” Despite the “Arab spring,” the evidence is plain: So far no Muslim public anywhere believes in democracy badly enough to fight and die to establish it. Maybe they still believe in a “benevolent dictator:” As impossible as a unicorn, of course, but sightings may happen during a national Stockholm syndrome.
Here’s my plan: Never mind, for now, the danger of thought police stifling art, creativity and quality of life. Instead, I’d focus on violence, saying to the mother, “A country that allows private violence is a country that eventually attacks Islam: Muslim extremists will do mass killing of “unworthy” Muslims peacefully gathered in a mosque…”—which has already happened. Learning how to prevent this has not happened, not in Asia… To prevent killing, whether of a decent man by his body guard, or of a congregation by gunmen, requires public belief that “good reasons” are never an excuse for private violence.
Everyone is insecure if anyone may kill by his own conscience; crazy opinions are as widespread as crazy people. A Pakistani said (Muslim) extremists fervently desire this sort of public insecurity in Pakistan: He said they believe if they make his country unstable then a trembling public will yearn for a (conservative) dictator.
I wonder: How does any society control certain people? As in the know-it-alls, the young know-it-alls, the small teenagers with big guns, the angry fathers who make their own wife and children live in fear, daily terrible fear…
We sometimes speak of such egotists as “playing God.” The remedy is ancient: “Rule of law, not men.” No one above the law—not the bishop, not the dictator, and not his benevolent thought police, not for any “exceptions” or “good reasons.” Everyone submitting humbly to God, to being only human. No citizen being judge and jury and executioner. No defensive machine gun needs to hang under the robes of the Pope. In a civilized society, “Let the law take its course, like a righteous river running to the sea.”
The daughter could declaim to her mother, “Yes, it’s hard to have self control, it’s hard not to take the law into your own hands when you are angry, but civilized life requires people to have self control everyday; yes, even in the face of religious rabble rousers and demagogues. And Donald Trump.”
Into every generation are born the Napoleons, and the would-be Napoleons. Only by the rest of us insisting on the law, under God, are such men kept in check, with every mosque safe from machine guns and grenades… Even at a cost, which we are proud to pay, of allowing idiots to insult Canada’s dear old Queen Elizabeth.
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Sean Crawford, comments with self control are welcome,
In a land with 300 years of self discipline,
Also known as “the enlightenment,”
January 2021
News feature on Arab cinema, post-Arab Spring: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210113-how-the-arab-spring-changed-cinema
Notes: You have to have “justice for all.” Any Arab who think it’s perfectly safe to allow a king or dictator to make “a few exceptions” to human rights should STOP and remember the story of the camel’s nose in the tent.
The mother is in the book I wrote about on August 15, 2020, Dog Says Don’t Label Me.
Not every culture has the same ecology as ours. Mark Manson, in his recent essay Fear of the Unknown, said “Basically, if an entire society collectively fears the unknown, they will defer to authority and not rock the boat.”
Like house-breaking a puppy, nation-wide messy self-discipline had to start somewhere, at some time and place. Here’s a nice song that gives me an ear worm, beginning, “Inequality, the relics of feudalism, Revolution in France”
