It has been another week of horrors.[1]
On Monday Sydney’s CBD went into lockdown as Man Monis captured staff and
customers in the Lindt Chocolat Café. !6 hours later three people were dead. A
day or two later seven armed men attacked a school in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Within a few hours 132 children and ten adults were dead. In both case armed
intervention saved many, many lives, but for the families of those who died
there will never be release from the weight of grief.
Three lives lost in Sydney generated infinitely more pixels and
print columns in NZ media than 142 deaths in Peshawar. Philosophers speak of
“otherness.” Australians in Sydney are only a little bit “other,” so we care.
Pakistanis in Peshawar are a little more “other,” so we care a little less. Six
thousand Africans die of Ebola and we fail to blink. One person dies in the USA
and the whole thing becomes a little less “other.” Slowly though the enormity
of the Peshawar horror grew on us, and we began to care. We have incidentally
long forgotten to keep on caring about 276 Nigerian school girls; they were not
shot, but probably sold into sex slavery of some form or other.
We notice that the perpetrators of Sydney’s and Peshawar’s
atrocities were very “other.” The Taliban in Pakistan and Man Monis in Sydney self-identify
with Islam (no matter that Islam’s International leaders disassociate from
Taliban or the Da’esh group that Monis claimed to support). To most of us
that’s very “other.” We descend into paroxysm of fear of otherness, and hatred
erupts: this is why we mustn’t let “them” (the great word of “otherness”) into
“our” country. Muslims in non-Muslim communities cringe once more as hate
vomits in the streets. We lower ourselves to the standards of Taliban and Man
Monis.
Suddenly a remarkable counter-culture takes off: the hashtag #I’ll
Ride With You erupts, expressing of practical compassion. Ordinary people begin
saying that other ordinary people should not be victims of hate just because of
the actions of haters in the Lindt Café or Peshawar. Ordinary people ride the
Sydney trains with Muslim people, saying “actually you’re welcome here; we no
more judge you by the actions of Taliban or a mentally deranged fake sheik than
we judge Christians by the action of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh or one time
theological student Joseph Stalin.” Ordinary people exercise radical compassion
and practical love.
There will be the usual cries that religion is the source of all evil.
Taliban and Man Monis identified as Muslim and wore non-western garb, clothes
of “otherness.” Practitioners of evil have always used religion as their
excuse: recently Buddhists have killed Muslims in Burma and Sri Lanka. Jews have killed Muslims in the West Bank,
retaliation for Muslims killing Jews in the same place. Sunni Muslims of Da’esh
have killed Shia Muslims, Christians, Jews, Yasidis and others in the Levant.
Christian extremists (terrorists), particularly in the USA, have killed
Muslims, Sikhs, and abortion doctors (and anyone else they didn’t like)
whenever they have reinvented the voice of God inside their heads.
Nationalism, born of the arbitrary lines drawn on nineteenth and
twentieth century maps, born of European exploitation of the rest of the world,
born of oppression and disappointment and anger, has far more to do with
extremism than religion. Religion becomes a foil for hatred, exploitation and
revenge. Practitioners and non-practitioners of religion alike occasionally
rise to moments of counter-cultural brilliance: #I’llridewithyou was not a
religious movement, but a deeply human and countercultural movement that those
of us who are religious should applaud. Religious practitioners must bend over
backwards to demonstrate that hatred of the “other,” that violence and
exploitation and injustice are not the truth to follow. The Taliban in Peshawar
and Man Monis in Sydney are products of oppression and perpetrators of hatred.
We only advance their crimes if our response, too, is to hate and oppress.
Christians this month will celebrate the birth of the God-child.
That exemplary child of Bethlehem exercised volatile action only once: when he
took to exploitative hypocrites in the temple of his faith. Our task is to
exercise practical love and justice, learning from those like the #I’llridewithyou
initiators of Sydney, breaking cycles of hatred exercised by false religionists
like the Taliban and Man Monis, and ensuring that love, not hate, has the final
word.
