Red, White and Black

I set out to pen some thoughts on the Facebook debacle [1, 2, 3] of the past two days. But then I found the following two articles in my mailbox, which very gracefully discuss some of my feelings/concerns. Adil Najam wonders why did we even have to throttle this shameful act to the fore? Why could not have just ignored it and moved on?

Let’s think about it, what did the creators of the offensive page want to do when they set it up? First, they sought attention, and hits, and notoriety in a world where attention is too easily confused with fame. Second, they wanted to ridicule Muslims by the reaction they excepted from this. If you think of it, irrespective of whether Facebook removes the site or keeps it, the organizers of the page have achieved their goal. Well beyond what they expected. Now every other Islamophobic nutcase will get new ideas about how to have his little 10 minutes of fame spewing bigotry and hatred against Muslims.

But more importantly, they simply could not have done this without us. The only people who have turned this from nothingness into a huge issue is us. I am sure that those who set up the page are jumping up and down and thanking us for making their page such a huge success! And that is what pains me. [#]

Another blogger, Nabiha Meher, laments our incapacity to entertain multiple perspectives, our choice to be offended by the drawing competition and our “persecution complex”. She notes:

And I ask you: why do I HAVE to be offended? Is our faith so weak that a cartoon will destroy it? And even if I am offended, why am I not being given the option to boycott facebook voluntarily? A voluntary ban would have been much, much more effective in order to send a message out. A blanket ban has only lead to exactly what we like to cry about so much: negative publicity in the world press and many outraged Pakistanis protesting the ban such as me. How conveniently we pick and choose from religion! Lest we forget, I would like to remind the Muslims reading this of the incident of the woman who used to throw garbage at our prophet. The prophet, in whose name we claim we are protesting, was a peaceful, cooperative man who forgave people who pelted him with garbage and rocks. Responding with an intelligent dialogue, responding with patience is, in my opinion, the best way to protest one’s concern.

There is one other matter that concerns me. Why are our limits of tolerance so fragile? And for that matter, why do the organisers of this cartoon competition believe that their twisted view of freedom of speech exonerates them of all responsibility? But returning to our limits of tolerance. Today at the Karachi Press Club, Awab Alvi and some friends were almost mobbed by some members of Jamaat-e-Islami for protesting internet censorship.  Note that they were not condoning the cartoon competition. Far from it. They condemned it, but argued that in a civilised society blanket censorship of this nature has no place. And for their troubles, they were attacked by some members of the media and then had to escorted out under police protection. Read the newsreport here. I first learnt of the story on television and the news report made it sound like they were supporting Facebook’s position on the matter. The questions this raises is this: why are we so intolerant of perspectives that don’t agree with ours? And why do we possess such over-bloated and sanctimonious religious egos that are hurt at the drop of a pin? These are tough questions that we, as a society, need to answer. For this is a very slippery slope that we are navigating. And why aren’t we willing to question these attitudes of ours? Is this is what is entailed by being Muslims?!