Clash of civilisations

Julio Ribeiro

The French have always been irreverent about anything to do with religion. Perhaps this almost national attitude to God and God’s attributes was a fallout of the French Revolution. It is not surprising, therefore, that French President Emmanuel Macron made an off-the-cuff statement that conveyed to the Islamic world that the French government would uphold the right of its citizens to dabble in cartoons of the Prophet.

The issue arose because of the beheading of a Paris school teacher who had shown the cartoons drawn in a popular French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, a publication that specialises in political satire, to his pupils in a classroom. Ordinary Muslims take umbrage to the depiction of their Prophet in picture form. Cartoons, of course, are the worst form of picture depictions since the artist intends to draw wry humour which fragile minds cannot stomach.

More than any other religion in our universe, Islam smells apostasy and insult in any rejection of its beliefs, however casual the intent of the culprit. In Muslim nations, the apostate would be put to the sword. In non-Muslim countries like France, the violent reactions of true believers would send out messages of dire consequences. The beheadings in Paris and Nice and the stabbings in the latter city were the responses of extremists who really believe that violent revenge would win them grace in heaven!

What brought me cause for joy and hope was a body of local believers calling themselves ‘Muslims for Secular Democracy’, led by my friend Javed Anand, husband of an even bigger friend, Teesta Setalvad, who in castigating the beheading of the teacher, Samuel Paty, made secular liberals exult. Here, at last, was a group of moderate and sensible Muslims that knows that no religion and no God will condone the brutality of murder and mayhem.

The very next day, to the consternation of the same secular liberals, thousands of Muslim protesters took to the streets of our cities, condemning France and its President for standing up to the legal rights of its citizens! Cinema houses in France and other countries of Europe have often screened films debunking some core beliefs of Christians regarding Jesus Christ, while hardcore Christians protested peacefully outside. Peaceful protests are par for the course in mature democracies.

France enforces strict segregation of the Church from the State. In its schools, religious symbols like crucifixes are not displayed. They are, in fact, not permitted. In many Christian lands, the crucifix is prominently displayed above hospital beds — but not in France or the Nordic countries which pride themselves on their secularism.

In his seminal work, The Clash of Civilisations, political scientist-cum-writer Samuel Huntington had predicted that the North-South divide between democracy and communism would be replaced by the East-West divide between the more populous but economically backward Muslim countries of the East and the established Christian-led economies of the West. The Islamic concept of a caliphate led to the establishment of the ISIS which tried to conquer lands and cities with economies based on oil revenues in Syria and Iraq and actually controlled vast territories in those lands for a decade. It established its capital in the Syrian city of Rakka, then under its control.

A French journalist named Anna Erelle went undercover to befriend an Algerian-descended ISIS emir or captain of French nationality. Her book Undercover Jihadi Bride gives a fair account of the murders and beheadings ordered by ISIS forces in and around Rakka in the decade before the organisation was ousted from the Middle East and its caliph killed by the joint forces of Syria, Russia and the US.

The depredations linked to the ISIS should caution like-minded Islamic jihadist adventurers from dreaming of the unattainable! But they continue to dream and to feed on promises of rewards in the after-life made to them by semi-literate mullahs. Lacking secular education and skills to compete in a secular environment, they fall back on antiquated religious practices that can only lead them to despair and from despair to crime and from crime to destruction.

Candidates to avenge perceived wrongs are never wanting. I have seen this in the Khalistani terrorist scene in Punjab. The emotional chord is one that is easily touched. It leads soldiers of terror to self-destruct sooner or later.

The problem with jihadi terrorism is that it transcends boundaries and even geographies. The ISIS and the Al-Qaida attracted recruits from all over the Islamic world. The ‘ummah’, the brotherhood, provided the cannon fodder from among the gullible who were fired by visions of Islamic rule in the world, with the Sharia law dictating how men must pray and dress and eat and how women should be treated.

In India, extreme elements of the Hindu right were disgusted with the terror strikes by jihadists in a land that had been populated from times immemorial by the Indo-Aryans and the people they had conquered but later assimilated into Aryan society at lower graded levels. These disgruntled elements decided to take matters in their own hands and give a befitting reply to their tormentors. But they went about the riposte in a very amateurish manner, with the result that they were soon discovered and put out of commission.

The moral of the story is that the call to arms by extremist elements of any religious persuasion will be answered by disgruntled young men who have smelt insult to their religion and its culture. But those who answer the call will soon repent because those who want to live peaceful and conventional lives outnumber them by wide and convincing margins.

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