I am horrified with this recent event of bombing in London.
My short memory of this extraordinary city makes this even more painful.
However the sorrow is not only for the death tool but also for the unfortunate situation
of increase in religious and ethnic based hatred in Europe. Masoud Behnoud who
is by far one of the best ever known Iranian intellectuals who lives in London,
sent in this report describing what he has seen in London in his Persian blog
and among his words he is mentioning harsh confrontation of public opinion
against middle-eastern individuals around. I think the analogy is wrong in the
first place. They are not extremist just because they are Islamic but because
they are misusing religious orders and brainwash people to obey their cruel ideologies
as if they are orders from God!
I live in a country where religion is truly imposed by the
government and I can feel to some extend how this ideology works and how in a
radical way, it can persuade some people to blow themselves to kill others. Let
me express my opinion on this:
I think human ability for survival in the world has come
firstly with the ability to adapt with changes. Our system of life crushes when
we fail coping with our surroundings. What I can see around, tells me that there
are some people of faith who truly believe that the exact orders given by the
time of the prophet Mohammad can be applied exactly to the year 2005. This is
very unfortunate but when you get to believe that you are following the way of
the last prophet, then you come to conclusion that any one who is in war with
you, shall be like those who fought him. By that time, early Muslims used to do
lots of sacrifices to make Islam grow and to remove the cruel discrimination
imposed by rich Arabs of Mecca. They called this effort “Jihad” and those who got
killed in it, would have gone straight to the heavens as they believed. Those
days, Jihad was a manifestation of struggle for freedom against the dark ages
of ignorance on human soul.
Islam is transformed now and sometimes I see that this faith
is translated as absolute truth that is to be obeyed with no or little
compromise. These people are not many but unfortunate thing is that the wrong
impression they make is a big stride in a wrong way that deteriorated the
status of misunderstanding and divergence within human society.
One should not also forget the fact that this idea cannot be
fought in a war and I think the fact that we see these bombings now in London,
some years after 9/11 since the war against terror began, can provide an alert
for the world leaders that “Culture of hatred” should be tuned with “Culture of
tolerance”. The basis for this idea comes from the humble opinion of mine presented
above. The extremists when they talk to followers tell them about the cruel
west, the bombings in Baghdad and demolition of houses in Palestine. The ban of
Islamic covering in France and killing of what they call it “Muslim brothers”
in Afghanistan and then it comes to ideology that west is to wipe out Islam and
it is duty from God for them to make westerners what their “Muslim brothers”
feel at home. From my experience in Iran I can feel that when you make something
“holy religious” it becomes hard to criticize it and so it is for the
intellectuals of Islamic world to do this.
This hatred when it gets mixed with the same kind of
approach from Christian extremists makes the situation even more complicated.
Every human life is precious and for protecting some, there is
no need to jeopardize the lives of others. This is condemned, unacceptable and
away from any logic no matter what tool they use to implement it, a Little Boy over
Hiroshima or a horrific bomb near Big Ben. Peace.
