Think

The cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed sallallahu alaihiwasallam (‘may peace and salutations be upon him’: Muslims are to say this after mention of his name) were drawn, and immediately, battles lines were drawn. Why did the Danish cartoonists draw them? To express themselves. Why did a lot Muslims burn and destroy a lot of things? To express themselves. But the two types of expressions cannot be the same. One is seen as “civil”, the other, “anarchic”. Being labeled as terrorists in the current political and media discourse doesn’t help the Muslims’ cause either. In the words of Imam Zaid Shakir, a teacher at a US-based Islamic school, the destructive actions of my Muslim brethren have turned the falsehood of the caricatures into semi-truths.

Why semi-truths? As the international media have repeatedly stressed in their articles (next to photographs of wanted terrorists and violent demonstrations of Muslims), Islam is a religion that, like any other religion, stands for peace. (For me, it is not even a religion because the term ‘religion’ would bundle Islam to a corner of the room called ‘life’, as a box to be opened and closed as and when one feels like it. Instead of ‘religion’, I would term Islam as a ‘worldview’, a ‘style of living motivated by obvious truths’. So I would not seek to separate Islam from my thoughts. But for the sake of the discussion here, let me just go on using the word ‘religion’). To disprove this statement, and thus sort of make it a semi-truth, is what a lot of mob of Muslims did by torching embassies and breaking things and going all bonkers.

The caricatures portrayed my Prophet in a number of satirical stances, one of which was of a terrorist, to summarize the general sentiments and without getting into the nitty-gritty of the illustrations. Any sane Muslim dude/tte with 2 ounces of “maanam” (self-respect) and “rosham” (English escapes me) would tell you that to hear that someone has mocked what he thinks is the exemplification of proper human conduct, he’d be pretty mad. He’d want to shake him and ask him: What’s up with you and your damned cries of “free speech”? Imagine someone insulting your father or mother in front of you. For many millions of Muslims around the world, to insult the Prophet is to insult a man they hold far higher in regard than their parents.

The Prophet being a close character in every Muslim’s heart, I felt like that, and I still do. We seek to live our lives the way he did, not just in the practical aspects, but also in the underlying philosophical and spiritual aspects. The Prophet Mohammed, after whose very name is mentioned we salute and give peace to, is a remarkable figure in the history of mankind, and should be studied by anyone, regardless of religion, for the lessons to learn from his life as a teacher, as a stateman, as a judge, as a preacher, as a general, as a philosopher, as a spouse, as a friend, and as a human being. To insult him or to disparage him based on nuggets of inaccurate and frequently acontextual information would be an affront to intellectual rigour and pursuit of the truth.

To also caricature him with Danish humour would naturally upset folks. ‘Free speech’, my friends, is not to be taken lightly, and it definitely not be bandied about in defence of speech (or drawing) that knowingly attacks a set of beliefs held by a prominent and long–standing community in society, thus upsetting this large group. David Irving, British historian, spends 23 of his 24 hours in solitary confinement for declaring that some long-held truths of the Holocausts are, in fact, false (he previously even denied that Nazis were responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews). Heck, eleven countries have laws against Holocaust denial. Can David Irving use ‘free speech’ as a justification for his denial? Apparently not.

Free speech carries with it responsibility and accountability. I am offended by the actions of the Danish paper, and I accept its apology. But offence was been taken by many Muslims around the world, and this is where it begins to turn bad, reflecting the much-needed introspective of how we should think and act as Muslims.

Let’s do this slowly. Why should a Muslim get angry? Because his Prophet has been insulted. How? Because he has been drawn to be a terrorist. And worse still, they’ve drawn him, when it’s forbidden for him to be visually portrayed. But consider this:

No one alive today has sent the Prophet s.a.w., so the Danish cartoonists are completely off the mark. If they insist that whatever they drew signified the Prophet, they’re absolutely mistaken, beyond the proverbial shadow of a doubt. So they did not draw the Prophet. They drew a caricature of what they thought was the Prophet, using their limited mental capacities and stereotyped images of Islam and Muslims. So we as viewers or media consumers, are totally free to reject their depiction, and are obliged to voice a counter-argument in a similar fashion, which can be via a letter, another cartoon or anything else.

Anything else is but an over-reaction, maybe in the form of violence and bloodshed. It’s unnecessary and it makes us look like fools. And this is what precisely has happened where leaders use Islam to work up support for their own agendas to maintain power and gain support. Thus the rebuttal of the cartoons should’ve been left to Muslims who are able to think on a higher level, and voice it out, and console the Muslims who may be on a lower plane thought (which much of the Muslim world is languishing in due to poor education). This could only happen if the Muslim ummah or nation is united under a single banner, under good, rational-minded leaders, which, alas alas alas, is not the case.

Before anyone jumps on my butt, to “think on a higher level” is not to be elitist nor is to be on 'a lower plane of thought' denigrating. It just so happens that Muslims like myself, who very fortunately live in the rich world and have the luxurious access to information at the touch of a button, and who are also (hopefully) be able to engage in some thoughtful discussion with rational folks, have the duty to purposefully and unequivocally rebut falsehoods or inaccuracies about Islam in a manner that is equal to the degree of the provocation. Folks in the lower education category, who don’t have such luxuries, have to rely on popular press sentiments, word-of-mouth or at the very least, their community leaders like their mosque Imams, to get the context and details. Even then, their opinion might be made for them by questionable opinion-leaders, who might be support-hungry opposition parties in a disgruntled dictatorship (which sadly, again, a lot of Muslim nations are). The Danish cartoonists did not break up embassies to prove their point. Hot-headed mobs of Muslims did, making the ummah look bad. Bad PR, bro’s.

Islam is not meant to be taken separate from rational thought. In fact, rationalism and knowledge are vital prerequisites to have a good understanding of the faith. Thus a saga like this has come to highlight a major black spot within the ummah: the loss of rational thought. We need this badly to recoup, recover and reinvent ourselves.

The saga has not ended; it has opened a can of smelly worms that will come to pepper discussions about freedom of speech and Islam in time to come. I call for a robust discourse of Muslim intellectuals to promote sophistication in thought through a thorough re-examination of basic Islamic tenets, the example of our Prophet Mohammed’s life and our methods of rebuttal in countering any falsehood.