CARTOONS AND VIDEOCLIPS
PART 1
Reactions in Provocation
Occasionally, the Islamic ummah is provoked. A few years ago, there was a furore about the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad SAW, and more recently the YouTube clip trailer purporting to be about the life of the Prophet SAW. The reaction of many Muslims across the globe were hostile, and this led to tragic loss of lives.
How should we react the next time this happens? Where do we draw the line?
Why would the West mock Muhammad SAW?
Whenever a non-Muslim portrays something that is offensive to Muslim values, it is likely that he did it out of ignorance and misinformation. Non-Muslims are non-Muslims fundamentally because they either do not believe in the Oneness of Allah, or they do not accept that Muhammad SAW was a Prophet.
This is a very important point. Being non-Muslims, they are not under the same compulsion to respect and honour Islam, Allah and Prophet Muhammad SAW as the rest of the Muslim population are. They are not, by their own sets of beliefs, forbidden from voicing out negative opinions on these subjects.
Now let us consider – why would anyone want to malign Islam or Prophet Muhammad SAW and the message that he spread? If anyone understood the excellent character of Muhammad SAW, they would know that such character assassination is unjustified. No reasonable person would do this.
Hence, it is likely that this was caused by their prejudice, ignorance or hostility. If so, then maybe it is time to put ourselves in their shoes, and to see what they see when they look at the state the Muslim ummah is in today.
Who is responsible?
Have we ever questioned ourselves, as Muslims, how the non-Muslims perceive us? On an international level, Islam has been long misunderstood as an intolerant and violent religion. We can, to an extent, blame that on biased press reporting by factions having their own political agenda.
However, what about the personal arena? If non-Muslims were to see our behaviour, do you think their negative view of Islam is justified?
As Muslims, we shoulder the responsibility of being Allah’s vicegerents – khalifah or representative on this earth – the embodiment of the ultimate package of good behaviour, kindness, patience and mercy. The responsibility does not just fall on the scholars, leaders and imams, it is carried by all of us, individually and collectively.
For many non-Muslims, the only glimpse they have of Islam is what they see of our behaviour. Let us admit the truth – often, the picture that we paint of Islam is a gloomy one, and sometimes, we are to blame for their negative perception of Islam.
Muslims v the “evil West”
There are numerous issues, which have led to a culture of distrust between Muslims and the West – roughly, North America and Europe.
For example, the long term impact of colonization. Muslims in these colonies were exposed to a Western education system and the influence of Christian missionaries, both of which systematically eroded the true knowledge of Islam to bare remnants.
Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed the mass migration of citizens, predominantly from the newly independent colonies located in North Africa and the Indian sub continent, to the West. In the beginning, the West opened its doors to these immigrants, many of whom happened to be Muslim. Countries such as Denmark and Switzerland, being humanitarian and neutral, tried to accommodate these immigrants in their otherwise homogenous societies. Some other countries had little choice, as immigrants from the very countries that they had previously colonized flowed through their borders through legal and illegal means. Even now, many refugees enter these countries illegally, imposing themselves and burdening the already strained economic and social infrastructure.
Yet, even after all these countries have opened their doors to the Muslims, look at how the Muslims are behaving. Instead of showing appreciation by being productive members of society and conducting themselves well, many of the Muslim refugees, who have voluntarily migrated to these environments, refuse to integrate or even assimilate with their new surroundings, and adopting what is good, like cleanliness, punctuality, being honest and keeping their word. There may be certain values of the new society that the immigrants do not agree with, but there are ways of showing objection and disassociating from such practice in a proper way. Instead, they hold on to their own bad habits that have no place, and are even offensive, to the values of their host countries.
Are these the people of Islam?
Migration in Islam is allowed under four circumstances – to spread Islam, to seek useful knowledge with the intention to go back and benefit your own people, for business (but this has to be very limited according to Shariah law) and to escape fitnah and hardship i.e. religious persecution. In reality, majority of Muslim immigrants do not fall into any of these categories. They were instead motivated to flee their economic hardships in search of better opportunities.
Are they really the people of Islam: those who are seeking to establish and spread the glory of Islam? Are there Islamic leaders and scholars amongst them, or do these people carry with them a skeleton of Islam, which is full of gaps and wrong understanding?
Islam therefore has become a cultural label, rather than a proper practice. With the birth of the second generation Muslims, the knowledge of Islam was further corrupted and watered down. Islamic manners and behaviour were not taught, and in fact, many of the children are badly raised and have poor manners, adopting neither the positive values of their own culture nor those of the new one.
Unfortunately, a number of these naturalised immigrants do not display proper Islamic behaviour. Although they are not representative of the whole Muslim population, their Western hosts perceive them as the embodiment of Islamic values. To generalise, what the hosts see are a people with dishonest habits, lacking in consideration, spiritually poor, and without even a proper sense of manners or civic mindedness. This is displayed in the way they do not observe even basic neatness and cleanliness in the private and public spheres, the way they deal with others and their disrespect for the rights of others.
One rotten apple can spoil the whole bunch – and unfortunately, because of the conduct of a minority that the whole of the silent Muslim majority is stereotyped
Overstepping the Boundaries
This situation is made even more tense when Muslim minorities voice ridiculous demands such as the implementation of Shariah law in the host state. Their understanding of Islam is so poor that they do not realise that what they are asking for, given the circumstances and their status as minority immigrants, is wrong even by Shariah standards. The West would be quite justified to be alarmed by these demands, and even more justified being hostile in their reaction.
Have we forgotten that after the conquest of Jerusalem (which occurred peacefully and without force), Umar ibn Khattab RA, the second Caliph of Islam, was invited to perform salat in one of their main churches and refused? He instead performed the prayer outdoors, for fear that Muslims might later destroy the church or claim it as their own. He respected the sanctity of the non-Muslims’ place of worship. How low our manner has sunk since then.
It does not help when a few immigrants bring from their home countries horrific traditions purportedly in the name of Islam, such as honour killings and forced marriages. Even within their private lives, their non Islamic behaviour is mistaken to represent Islam – for example, spousal abuse, which is misunderstood by the West as being acceptable in Islam because more than one perpetrator happened to have been Muslim.
On the other hand, we have lost our mercy. We do not consider the rights of others. For example, if we are living in the countries of others, study what the Shariah says. These countries have rights over us. For instance, we are bound to obey their laws. We cannot simply have our way and behave however we want. We should be civic minded in the way we behave, the way we talk and the way we transact. We might dislike certain things or disagree about our new environment, and while we do not have to follow their lifestyles, we still have the respect of the people or the citizens where we live.
The suspicion, confusion and distrust accumulate. Fed up of what they wrongly perceive Islam to be, a few irritated non-Muslims make hate remarks about Islam. The incident gets blown out of proportion, death threats are issued, and the media has a field day celebrating the maniacal behaviour of Muslims.
