Tom Friedman wrote an editorial in the Times on Wednesday titled, “Calling All Pakistanis.” His plea was for the average citizen in Pakistan to step forward and denounce this extremism—not just for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake as well:
Why? Because it takes a village. The best defense against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicly and repeatedly the murderers — and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or “explain” their activities.
Friedman’s message is very similar to a blog posting that came to my attention a few days ago by way of my good friend Laurence. Paul Marek, a second-generation Canadian whose grandparents fled Czechoslovakia just prior to the Nazi takeover, posted the following piece in February of 2006. Both these articles speak to the concerns I am carrying daily about the devastation in Mumbai and what must happen to avoid another episode of violence. (BTW, Marek’s blog, Celestial Junk, is a very unlikely place for me to find a point of view that speaks to my sensibilities, so all the more reason to enjoy a confluence of thought on this topic.)
Why The Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant
By Paul E. Marek
She misses the point: Her job is to prevent the fanatics from hijacking her faith
I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.
“Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”
We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority” and it is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The Average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a war mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of Killing that included the systematic killing of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
It seems to me that to say (and believe) that the fanatics are the only ones that count is to feed their power. Being peaceful is not the same thing as being complacent and it’s not the same thing as being anti-fanatic. Any one who is actively promoting peace in his or her everyday life – whether it’s a busy commuter choosing awareness over reaction in rush hour or Sufis gathering to meditate on God – is not cowed or extraneous. The subtle, unquantifiable nature of peace is its power, I say.
For an outsider to designate a vociferous minority within another culture “fanatics” is almost meaningless, when that designation — to matter — should come from moderate insiders who are a majority.
Boy, do I ever denounce and reject the Christianist fringe, all the while hoping the fringe isn’t getting longer than the rug. But it’s not so easy to know what I would do about that fringe, when, though they do not speak for me, they are free to speak because of laws I deeply believe in. Yes, they’ve gone too far — raising their children to disdain science and disregard the obligation to be stewards of the environment. Raising their children to think the End Time is nigh. Yet, while I object away, they go farther than too far, and they achieve political power of truly threatening proportions. I might live long enough to be legally compelled to give the appearance of believing what they believe, risking life, liberty and property if I can’t make a good job of it. When does fanaticism — minority schtick by definition — become mass psychosis? What is my responsibility to prevent that occurring? Am I less on the spot than a moderate Muslim in Cairo?
Debbie, your point is taken, and very well argued, but I believe that the power of fanatics is fed, also, by our pretending they matter less than they do. For a long time, Nazis didn’t matter much — until they did. And, Ayatollah Khomeini was an old man exiled to France — until he became more than that. Choosing to live peaceably is never a cowed or an extraneous thing to do, and I hope it is not a preparation for being overwhelmed.
Thank you D and E. This is material I spend a lot of time thinking about and do not see obvious answers, easy categorizations. It is an ongoing dialog, or should be.