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 all the millions of 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