Meer Abass
Today, what has happened in the Christchurch has reminded us that the Clash of Civilization is as real as it can be. The attacker not only represented a Civilization which assumes itself to be the Master Civilization but also reminded us that they see us as a Muslim and a part of Civilization and Ummah. The attacker didn’t kill them due to their “Nationalistic” identities but because of our worldview, Civilization and belief system. To them and to the attacker, we are Muslims and it is Islam which they seek to eradicate. The western leadership, media, intellectuals, and academics will try to divert this issue and will try to turn it into an Individual act of violence. Liberal elements within Western Civilization will try to blame it on Far Right White Supremacists. But the history of Modern Western Civilization, Enlightenment, Romanticist discourse tells us that the roots of such incidents can be traced within the Ideals of Modern Western Civilization.
What is essential to understand is that Western Civilization is a unique entity unlike any other. Muslims ruled Central Asia for centuries, and even though communist regimes currently rule there, Islam is still, thriving. Muslims ruled India for a thousand years and today close to 200 Million Muslims live in India. In contrast, Muslims ruled Spain for 800 years and when they lost Spain, Islam was gone for good. This is a Civilization when it was doing extinction of native Americans, Australians and the New Zealanders, thinkers like John Locke were giving his philosophical justification of the genocides of the natives which later on further validated by men like Kant and John Stuart Mill. Western Far Right White Supremacists, on the other hand, had always given their racist and religious legitimacy to such heinous acts of genocide. For example, when Europeans were burning the natives of America alive, their Evangelicals were giving religious legitimacy to those acts.
Muslims fail to understand that it is not a common man, it is not average Joe who makes the decision, it is an elite group of people who make decisions what Quran call this specific group of people as “Al-Mala” (The leadership). Let me give you an example to make it clear “In Bosnia, Muslims were very much integrated, they used to drink, intermarry with Christians, but all it took for Milosevic to turn the tide of society was some fabricated history and some Nationalistic songs, and the Serbs turned against Muslims and killed more than half a million of them.” Similarly in Gujarat Indian Muslims used to celebrate Diwali with Hindus, but when BJP, VHP, RSS leaders gave few nationalistic and anti-Muslim speeches they (Hindus) turn against Muslims and kill, burn and rape them. Then, on the other hand, we have elements within our ranks who are defeatist, colonized and synthesized to an extent that they still are blaming Islam and Muslims. To them, the roots of Islamophobia is in “Political, radical” Islam.
(The author is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English Govt Degree College Handwara)
