Closets

No doubt someone will do a word search and find how many times our media has mentioned ‘Osama’ and ‘Obama’ since Osama was killed by SEAL team 6. I wonder who would win that particular contest. Since we don’t really have all that much useful to do, we might even try to find out how often reporters and talking heads have used these two names interchangeably. They’re really quite similar – the only difference being, that one is dead and one is still alive. Both have killed, after all. (And don’t let me go into degrees of killing – killing one, or thousands – and get all caught up in an argument to determine at which point killing actually becomes a menace.)

Now you might say that one is on our side while the other one wasn’t. Fair point; but let’s define ‘sides’. Let’s say there are ‘sides’. Our side demands submission; that is to say that we expect their side to refrain from killing us. Their side appears not yet convinced that such submission is to their benefit. In Islam, submission is the ultimate goal. They will kill enough of us to convince the rest to submit. The same is true of us (in a way).

Killing is the ultimate statement anyone can make. In taking a life we become god-like, and thus assert that we exist. After one has done it, there is no walking it back. It is the finality of it that should frighten those who subsist on the illusion of death. Submission, on the other hand, is to bow to one’s fate. One continues to live, but one might as well be dead. When the Palestinian suicide bomber (whose vest failed to detonate) was asked why he did it, he claimed that he was already dead; that the Israelis had rendered him dead long ago. Another example is the phrase, “Give me liberty, or give me death” – the American apple pie version of the same thought.

It’s difficult to work things out and enter into an understanding when one has abandoned all reason; when reason needs at the very least to have a foundation on which both sides can agree, such as life being better than death. Islam doesn’t work that way. Therefore, the default position is power. Islam has discovered that the slow action of water running over a stone will over time reduce that stone. Islam has seen the action of water create great canyons. It is committed to chip away at what it believes to be evil and transient. In fact, Islam demands it.

We cannot connect. We are far too busy with our own lives to grasp the abstractions on which Islam builds its theology. We see them simply as aggressive and unyielding, without realizing that we are unyielding as well. What we call ‘advanced’, Islam calls ‘evil’. We claim to be non-violent, but it is us they are reacting to. Our money is perceived as poison by them. It threatens the purity of their abstract view. It is we who are the bulls in their china closets. What we think of as our kind-hearted outreach only shatters more of their china. They see us as aggressors. It is we who fail to recognize their purity; who label their purity as dangerous and corrupt and threaten to overwhelm it. It is they who find themselves backed into a corner from which they snarl and fight …and wear away our belief in ourselves like the stone at the edge of the ocean that eventually becomes sand.

We stand at a crossroads. Will we stand up and fight as Krishna demanded of Arjuna during the epic battle of Kurukshetra, or will we continue to appease, knowing that appeasement – like valium - becomes addictive? We too have a right to practice what we believe. In our ever shrinking world, can we really afford to build enough closets for everyone to live separately?
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Picture: Arjuna's Penance, Mahabalipuram, India.