This is my view on the wish of Islamic groups to apply sharia law in Bekasi, West Java, and various comments from the readers about the issue.
Islam is what Islam preaches, it's not about what it does because Islam does not do anything. Only its followers can do anything. We are quick to blame Islam for what its followers do, but at the same time we are not ready to accept the Muslims' claim that what we do in their countries is due to our secular way of life.
What is the difference between those Bali bombers and our Fallujah bombers? In both instances innocent civilians were targeted. (Now, I do not want to hear that nonsense that I condone terrorism - I have seen many use this nonsense with Muslims to silence their criticism of our brutalities). We are not the rational, humane people we claim as we are, are we?
It does hurt us more when we are the victims. So strong is our national bond. It also does hurt us more when our Australian cousins are the victims as in Bali. So strong is our racial bond. There are is nothing wrong with our "us and them" mentality. But if a Muslim displays his ideological bond, and feels for his fellow Muslims who are the victims of our brutalities in the MW, then that is not right, huh?
Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
What is so universal about it? It is a set of European values which we tout as universal. There is nothing universal about it. Many civilizations have better values than our European values.
After all, it is a value which we ourselves do not believe in. If we did, then we would not have had "Guantanamo", "Abu Ghraib" and so on. We have no moral right to impose upon the "other" our values, which we do not believe in ourselves in the first place . More over, many commentators have argued, quite convincingly in my view, how our own values have created a society with many social evils.
It may be right! One, in the Muslim world, may not exercise the level of freedom of speech that is available in Europe. But that is fully consistent with Muslim values of submission to the word of Allah, which they have conviction in. But let us see if we can be true to our belief in the value of freedom of speech. It is argued that freedom of speech is becoming increasingly unavailable to whoever relies on our own government's foreign policies. This is achieved by promoting an Islamophobic climate.
Look at our hypocrisy again when it comes to democracy. People can choose any law as long as it is not from the Islamic text, huh? People can choose to have whatever secular laws they want, but if Muslims choose Islam we want civil war, huh? Why can't we accept that "Muslims do not believe in secularism, its false prophets and foul teachings"? Why don't we let them organize their life with the way they want?
We talk about how evolved we are and how we have evolved to where we are now, from a stage where we burnt the winches on stakes. (We believed then that we were doing the right thing). Maybe, we will say one day in the future that we have today evolved to where we are from a stage where we believed secularism was the height of evolution. We do not believe in anything, mate!
We will continue to wander in the wilderness. Muslims on the other hand do believe in whatever they believe in with strong convictions. For them there are many constants in life, and that gives them certainty to "forward march" in life.
Paul
Padang
