Amid the chaos, do not go softly into the night

Amid the chaos, do not go softly into the night

A short while ago on a flight to Jakarta, my fellow passenger, a
woman from Beijing, told me about her fears regarding security in
Indonesia.

I downplayed those concerns, saying that the outside world
generally had an exaggerated picture of the situation in
Indonesia, and that life in Jakarta was in reality no more
dangerous than in most big cities around the world.

After Sept. 9's bomb blast, I doubt she left Jakarta feeling
that way.

Terrorism is not confined to any one culture, religion or
race. Whether it is Tamil Tiger suicide bombers or the IRA or al-
Qaeda, it signals the end of engagement in normal political
discourse and negotiation.

For ordinary people like you and me, we are faced with a
terrible sense of helplessness and vulnerability because it seems
there is no way to respond to and deal with these acts of
violence.

In the last few years, this feeling of helplessness has grown;
it seems we can hardly switch on the TV or radio most days
without learning of some new act of terrorism around the globe.

And the worst of it is that some of these things are now
happening in our own backyards or those of our friends.

Granted, the world is a very complicated place and there are
many legitimate grievances out there, from Palestine to Iraq.

Granted, there are many people out there fighting for what
they believe is their right to independence.

All this is granted, but there still remains no justification
for the taking of innocent lives.

Terrorism is not exclusive to any religion but rather
exclusive to people with serious kinks in their makeup. Still,
the cold fact remains that these days the headlines are more
often than not about some act of atrocity carried out in the name
of or somehow linked to Islam.

Like it or not, a perception has been created in many people's
minds where terror is equated with radical Islam, leading to a
kind of Islamophobia.

The question is why do some Muslims around the world allow
themselves to be tainted by association to these madmen who would
destroy the world for their own purposes?

A while ago the then Archbishop of Canterbury came under fire
for saying that the Muslim world, particularly leaders in the
Middle East, had not made enough effort to unequivocally condemn
and thus curb terrorism.

And when one reflects that acts of terror are carried out not
only in the "infidel West" but in the heart of the world's
largest Muslim nation, where most of the victims are inevitably
Muslims, one does indeed wonder why there is not more outrage.

I am no scholar of religion and perhaps unqualified to debate
religious matters. Nor do I wish to. But surely it is time to
demystify and delink faith from ideology.

Terrorism is here and real, but what does it have to do with
faith? A bomb kills without discrimination. This is not about
religion -- it is about humanity. It is inhumane to kill another
human being. It is a kind of inhuman madness to twist and
interpret the writings of any religious text to justify and even
glorify mayhem and death.

What has happened is that a handful of people living outside
the bounds of normal morality have been allowed to project their
version and interpretation of the world around them and to
justify it in the name of religion. And the sad truth is they are
getting away with it.

Many terrorists in the past and present have used and abused
religion for their purposes whether it be Hindus, Buddhists,
Catholics, Protestants, Muslims or Jews. It does not say so much
about the various religions as it does about the type of human
beings they are. These are people who choose to see the world in
rigid destructive dichotomies -- black versus white, believer and
unbeliever, us against them. This is what we all have to fight
and resist.

It is too simple, lazy and unquestioning to demonize the
Americans and the West because of certain misguided actions or
decisions taken by their leaders; it is equally too simple, lazy
and unquestioning to demonize Muslims because the headline-
grabbing terrorists today call themselves Muslims.

When we accept these dichotomies, the terrorists have won
because we have accepted their way of looking at the world.

But all this will not be helped by quiescence. To say nothing,
to do nothing, to not express outrage in the strongest possible
terms and in the loudest way possible is to acquiesce in crimes
carried out against humanity.

Muslims around the world owe it to themselves to speak up
louder or to make their leaders speak up on their behalf, to show
the world that they will not allow themselves to be tarred with
the same brush as these criminals. They also owe it to themselves
to weed out those criminal elements in their community that would
twist religion to suit their own deadly purposes.

To do that they must stand up and be counted against terrorism
that is carried out in the name of their religion.

-- Maxine Hon