In our time there is no denying of the enormous influence of the social
media employing web- and mobile-based technologies to support
interactive dialogue and communication between organizations,
communities and individuals. Thus, mass communication which was once a
very expensive avenue to propagate one’s views is now almost a free
item. Social media are also unregulated in most parts of our world,
thus, allowing every John or Jane Doe to express and share his or her
views on any matter big or small whether or not he or she is qualified
or knowledgeable on such matters. It is, therefore, possible that while
expressing one’s unfiltered views others can feel abused, demeaned and
hurt. And consequently, those feeling hurt, demeaned or abused can react
either proportionately or disproportionately, which can turn into
violence.
Consider, e.g., the latest case involving the posting of highly
inflammatory and offensive pictures in the Facebook by someone named
Uttam Barua, a Buddhist in Bangladesh. Consequently, angry mob have
ransacked some monasteries. There are rumors that Barua may have been a
foreign agent working for the Myanmar regime to incite such violence.
In repressive and authoritarian societies where the government controls
most outlets of social media, its views define the narratives on most
matters. For years, thus, in places like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria
it was always those governments that had a tight control on what needed
to be fed and consumed for their public. But with the social media like
the Internet and Facebook, which could not be controlled by the
governments, the general public was no longer willing to digest
government narratives on any matter of importance unquestioning. By
offering an alternative source of communication, the social media have
triggered something like a revolution of the mind, thus, freeing
hundreds of millions of people around our globe. Thus, one after another
yesterday’s despots were overthrown yielding place to the newly elected
democratic leaders. Probably, one of the days not too far from today,
other despots like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad would also be removed.
Social media can, however, as already hinted above, be abused spreading
lies and deceptions, promoting hatred and intolerance. And we have been
witnessing many such abuses of freedom of expression in many western
liberal democracies, especially in its treatment of Islam and Muslims in
the post-9/11 era.
According to the U.S. government accounts, the tragic event of 9/11 was
brought about by terrorists that were linked with OBL’s al-Qaeda. [Note:
there are many credible engineering experts who doubt the government
narrative on this tragedy.] In spite of Bush Jr.’s announcement that the
religion of Islam had nothing to do with this tragedy, it was no less
of a person than his own attorney general who would later go on to say
that ‘Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to
die for Him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends His son to die
for you.’ John Ashcroft is an evangelical Christian and his bias is
understandable, although he later indicated that his remarks to
Christian columnist Cal Thomas did not “accurately reflect what I
believe I said.”
Sadly, Ashcroft was not the lone Republican politician in this media
campaign against Islam and its adherents. Others like Giuliani,
Gingrich, Palin, King and Bachmann joined the hate campaign. Many of
these promoters of hatred are individuals with very flawed moral fiber
and their views on Islam revealed far more about their own evil selves
than anything else. And then there were others — intimately tied up with
the Zionists on the contentious Palestine-Israel debate — who for their
own religious or political beliefs or inclinations jumped on the wagon
of intolerance. They became the mouthpieces for the land-grabbing
Zionists in Israel. Nine-Eleven for them was a Reichstag Fire moment to
launch an all out war against the Muslim world so that not only could
Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestine with settlements and
dehumanization of the Palestinian people be sanctified the entire Muslim
world would be brought down to their knees as a subjugated people. They
even planned for redrawing the map of the Muslim world. However, with
the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq going wrong, dragging valuable
American resources and killing thousands of soldiers, their evil plan
had to be shelved.
The intellectual leadership for Islamophobia and intolerance of anything
Islamic was provided by some pen-pushing frauds and charlatans who
mastered the art of cherry-picking Qur’anic verses out of context to
suit their ludicrous theories about Islam. Thus, came disingenuous and
greedy guys like Ibn Warraq and others, who basically repackaged the
centuries-old missionary polemical writings against Islam to justify
Islamophobia and bigotry against Islam. With material support provided
by powerful pro-Israeli Americans and Europeans, virtually anyone (or so
it seemed) who could ridicule Islam soon became a media celebrity. In
the post-9/11 era of Islamophobia, they were to become the new faces of
‘experts’ on Islam.
Interestingly, many of these ‘experts’ (including some with Arabic
sounding names like Irshad Manji and Ibn Warraq, and other Christian and
Jewish zealots like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, respectively)
hardly know the language of the Qur’an. But who dare question their
expertise on Qur’an and Islam or the Muslim world when they are promoted
as experts in media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s TV channels, tabloids,
newspapers and magazines, and have powerful advocates like Daniel Pipes
and Ann Coulter!
But probably nothing was more sinister in this scheme of things
Islamophobic than the Jerusalem Summit, a think tank that was sponsored
by Michael Cherney Foundation, which provided the first venue for
anti-Muslim zealots (including Hindu and other extremists from countries
with records of deep intolerance against their Muslim minorities)
around the world to unite on a common agenda in Jerusalem in 2003. The
ideology of the Summit was summed up by its four-point declaration:
radical Islam is a threat to civilization, the United Nations is a
failure, Israel is in need of defense and the war on terrorism is a
righteous cause.
Lost in that mendacious campaign are the facts that it is Israel which
with its racist Likudnik Zionist leaders is a threat to every Arab
neighbor and the entire region, and it is the Palestinians, Iranians and
other Arabs who live in the Middle East that need protection against
Israeli terrorism, and that when it comes to extremism – no religion has
a monopoly there. All the extremists – religious and non-religious
alike – are a threat to civilization, and they are the ones who need to
be defeated. That is, secular fundamentalists in France and other parts
of Europe and the Americas are no better than the Muslim Talibans of
Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the Hindu extremists in India, or the
Buddhist extremists in Myanmar and Cambodia, or the Christian extremists
in the Philippines, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Serbia, or the
Christian/Jewish Zionist extremists in much of the western world. As a
matter of fact because of the support that many of these non-Muslim
extremists (e.g., the likes of Narendra Modi and L.K. Advani of India;
Gingrich and Bachmann in the USA, and so on and so forth) enjoy from the
government apparatus in their respective countries they are seemingly
more dangerous than most Muslim extremists who don’t enjoy such support.
In essence, the neoconservative organizers and participants of the
Jerusalem Summit wanted nothing short of a civilization war with the
world of Islam. Fear of Islam and its people was exploited as one of the
most surreptitious and invisible powers to denigrate the religion of
nearly a quarter of humanity and encourage open promotion of intolerance
and hatred against Muslims.
It is because of such a common agenda that the limit of freedom of
expression to insult Islam is ever pushed to its newer heights where
anything and everything to do with Islam is a fair game. Thus, the
Danish Cartoons and the recently filmed ‘Innocence of Muslim’ are only
part of this long list of hatred and intolerances hurled against the
Muslim world. These are meant to provoke Muslims and ultimately bring
about a clash of civilizations. They also have powerful backers with
links to the citadels of power from Jerusalem/Tel Aviv to Washington
D.C. Many of these provocateurs are also criminals who should have been
locked up in the prison for the good of the society.
These hatemongering provocateurs ought to know that like anything in our
world there is always a limit to freedom. With freedom comes
responsibility. When their fists hit someone’s nose it is an abuse of
that freedom to stretch arms. Freedom cannot be a tool to promote hatred
and intolerance against anyone, and much less against a religious
community. Government cannot shy away from its responsibility to punish
the abusers of such freedom that breed hatred and lead to violence,
which can result in the deaths of innocent human beings.
In recent months, we have witnessed quite a few of such demonstrations
of hatred against Muslims in the Internet, the Facebook and the YouTube.
What is interesting is that some of these social media sites had clear
guidelines against promoting intolerance. However, when it came to
insulting Islam and Muslims, none of those guidelines seemed to matter,
and those sites did not feel obligated to remove such offensive
postings. What a double standard!
During the early days of latest extinction campaign against the
Rohingyas of Myanmar, I was simply shocked to see an overabundance of
highly inflammatory and offensive pictures and racist remarks posted by
Rakhine and Burmese Buddhists that were sure to pain most Muslims. I
pondered how could any person live with so much hatred against a fellow
human being? After all, hatred is taught and no one is born hating
anyone. Who have been teaching the Buddhist Rakhines and Burmese to hate
non-Buddhists? As I know better, in societies where such evils are
promoted, it is no longer an individual act but rather a national
project in which others are willing partners in such crimes.
As I hinted earlier, authoritarian regimes use government controlled
media to manufacture and spread their lies. They can act as the ultimate
architect of genocide or crimes against humanity. For years, within
what was Burma, and known these days by the name Myanmar, propagation of
hatred against the Rohingyas, who are ethnically and religiously
different than the majority Buddhists, has been part of the government
campaign. Falsely depicted as outsiders, land- and job-stealers, the
Rohingyas have been robbed of their citizenship in the land of their
forefathers, and they have been dehumanized to such an extent that no
one dare say anything to restore their legitimate rights in this
Buddhist majority country. An open display of racism and bigotry thus
became a norm rather than an exception.
The rape and grisly murder of a Buddhist woman was exploited as what had
triggered the ‘race riot.’ However, as Dr. Maung Zarni, an expert on
Myanmar, has recently mentioned there was no trace of rape on that
murdered Rakhine woman – Thida Htwe; and that one of the so-called
perpetrators of the crime Htet Htet (who was later declared dead in his
prison cell) was a Buddhist. And yet, Myanmar’s Ministry of Information
which micro-manages all official publications and broadcasts went on to
characterize incorrectly the three perpetrators as ‘Muslims.’
The military regime has often been the greatest perpetrator of such
hateful crimes and then blamed others to incite race riots. I won’t be
surprised if we, one day, learn that the local government officials and
security forces in the Rakhine state were the architects of this
gruesome murder to incite Rakhine violence against unarmed Rohingya
Muslims of Myanmar.
As a result of this targeted pogrom, thousands of Muslim owned homes,
businesses, shops, schools and mosques have been burned down and
destroyed; nearly a hundred thousand of the Rohingyas continue to live
without a shelter. No Muslims are now noticeable in places like Akyab,
the capital city. As I write their historic Jam-e Mosque is torched by a
Rakhine mob; and this, in spite of the government imposition of the
Section 144, which bans all movements of 5 or more people in groups.
While the Rakhines are allowed to roam around and burn Rohingya homes,
all the homeless Rohingyas are caged in camps with no freedom to go out.
Denied adequate food, many are starving to death as a result of this
extinction campaign. As to the casualty, we may never know the number of
deaths. Myanmar regime won’t share that information. None of the
perpetrators of the ten Tablighi Muslims has yet been arrested while it
is widely known that some 300 or so of the armed Rakhines attacked them
in front of police and security forces. It is no accident that human
rights activists have called the latest campaign as part of a wider
ethnic cleansing campaign that started since the time of Ne Win in 1962.
Can the provocateurs of hatred and intolerance be taught to love their
targets or objects of hatred? Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin,
or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if
they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more
naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” I wish Mandela is
right.
Hatred and intolerance are unacceptable. They are like cancers and need
to be routed out one way or another. If unbridled freedom promotes such
cancers, a society is probably better off controlling its deadly spread
through painful radiation therapy before it is too late.
Just
as concerning though is the fact that this conflict has spread into
nearby Bangladesh – a country that is predominantly Muslim but contains a
number of different ethnic Buddhist groups – including Rakhine
Buddhists. Last week a dozen or more Buddhist temples and monasteries
were burnt down in what many have seen as a revenge attack by Muslims
upset by the treatment of Rohingya in Burma – and I am told by sources
that two of the temples destroyed were Rakhine temples. 
