Friday, March 18, 2005
Haiz, penat ji!
I gez today was probably one of the most tiring days in my 19 years on this earth...
Haiz, since it a Friday, the Muslims would then grace the mosques islandwide to pray Sholat Jummat. Im not sure if any of you had listen to this but one of my friends told me a weird yet believable story during one of Friday prayers.
Ok, it goes like this: One day, a man dressed up as a terrorist went to a mosque who are about to perform their duty to God( Friday prayer). Then he shouted: "Any one of you willing to sacrifice yourself in the name of Allah?! as he raised his gun. I predict it could be an AK-47.
Guess what! 90% of the jemmah(muslims left) and it was estimated only 2 safs were left after that! Then, the man who had juz terrorised almost the entire mosque told the Imam: You may continue now, for those who are true Muslims shall fight and sacrifce themselves in the name of Allah and Islam. He undressed his mask and it was a fruitful prayer indeed!
Well, this story boils down to a question that keep popping in my mind? Is religion, between and within its dimensions, promotes violence or isit grounding its followers to protect human security? We do hear the ever resounding religionist that declares their commitment to peace and claim that religoion can bring about a more peaceful world.
Nowadays, many religions tends to promote inter religious co-operation aimed at a guaranteeing a secure present life for all humans. Yet, in contrast to reality, such claims to be myopic and flawed if actual European history is clearly examined and accesed. The Europeans, since their establishement of modern secular civilisation, clearly divided the world into 2 parts. Communist vs democracy. It's clearly shown that the framework of these 2 political system are entirely different, with its implicaton on economic, social, religious and political issues became the order of the day. During the period of the Cold War, the world had been the main audience viewing the US and the USSR promoting and "selling their political systems with each coutry became its customer.
Well, to expect all non-western societies to follow the eg of western civilisation in secularising themeselves is also a rather naive belief, propogated by the fundamentalists of their western secular democracy. With the end of the Cold War, one version of this alt secular religion, the Marxist-Stalinist states lost power(but not entirely), but the neo-liberal version stressing universal liberism now prospers under the hegemony of the United States, making them the ruling state of the world, allowing themselves to practise their main assimilations of their forefathers, in the name of Benjamin Franklin, Roosevelt(and the list go on), Equality Fraternity and Liberty.
In such circumstances, it does inspire the French in their for French revolution, and US and French forged quite an alliance with the French granting one of the most recognised monuments in the world to the Americans, the Statue of Liberty after the US had intervened in the 100 years Anglo-French conflict which ended in a sweet French victroy!
Yet, this is not to say that the victorious US had, in thier hands, stop any religous conflict all over the world. In fact, here i am proposing this simplistic picture of communinst and democrats and take a more complex approach, distinguishing among the difft socio-cultural realities which are loosely grouped together under the label of religion, ignoring the differences and tensions which exists among them.( Dalam ni...)
Unfortunately, wars and conflict do occur, yet one have to be reminded that such events does have a beginning an ending. The death of Lenin in 1924 saw the reign of communist for another 63 years later after the fall of the berlin wall. Hitler, whose initial concrete dream boasted the reign of his NAZI for 1000 years, only solidified for a period of 12 years after the end of World War II. Hence, with the help of carefully drawn international legal instruments define the rights and obligations of belligerent and neutral parties in inter-state wars. In the case of domestic conflict, where racism prevailed as a result of Social Darwinist theory, humanitarian law and human rights law tries to protect the security of the civilian population, the members of armed forces and guerillas though not "terrorist". The beginning and end of these conflicts are blurred in an endemic state of insecurity. Thus, the question of religiosity, among many others, somehow undermined its role and power in this world, where religon have yet deteroriate in a godless European civilisation, where the embracing religion have somehow played really a minor part in one's life.
We must thus look at the historical-structural dynamis of each religion. Perhaps the 3 main religion: Islam, Christianity and Judaism( Jews) which purely based on stats, have the most number of followers. In all periods of human history, either ancient or modern, different type of religiosity supported the formation of difft sets of security communities, with varying forms of interaction, conflict and co-operation among them. Their impact on the communities was determined not by the religion as such, but by their interactions with political power groups, whose interests, whose interest determined the intepretation of their creed, the performance of their rituals and the models of good practices. Roman catholic originated from Rome, with one of its Roman emperor( alamak lupa ah), presided the Council of Nicazea, which eventually establish Chrisitianity along with the help of their religous scholars, became a religion that longed believe the power of Jesus Christ, the Father and the Holy Ghost although some elementary dyanamics of Christians had been influenced by ancient Egyptian religion and Paganism with the cross, being one of the ultimate sign of the Christian, was in fact derived from ancient Egyptian religion. Pagans, particularly in British, were suprressed under the period of prosperity and decadence, fervour and moderation of Christianity.
Thus, the different historico-structural complex systems of each religion, or within each religion in fact!( pls check my earlier blog on BLOODY MARY!), had in fact led to the complex modes of interaction between religions, which involve syncretism, debates, reciprocal influences, tensions, mutual denigration and even violent hostilities. For instance, the Palestinians, who were drived out of their homeland by the Jews in Jerusalem, the continous Muslim vs Chrisitian conflict in Indonesia.
It is within such complex interaction between security communities and inter-religious trends and strucutes that we can realistically address the question of whether religons are for or against human security.
"Abu Hurairah reported that the Prophet( sallahu 'alahi wa sallam) said: Black Banners shall emerge from Khorasan( i.e an area which is now included in Afghanistan, Pakistan and a little in Iran and Central Asia) and no force will be able to stop them until they are inserted in Aelia( Jerusalem)."
(Sunan Tirmidhi)
