Dikwels
gebeur dit dat ‘n hele gemeenskap vir die radikale optrede van individue of
groepe binne die gemeenskap verantwoordelik gehou word. Ons sien dit wanneer
Afrikaners as rassiste uitgebeeld word, Duitsers as Jode-haters en Engelse as
skynheilig.
Die woede en
skok oor die bomaanslae en die wrede dood of skending van mense wat daardeur
veroorsaak is, lei onvermydelik tot die soek van sondebokke. Gepaar met ‘n
fundamentalistiese oortuigings oor ‘n mens se eie onfeilbare, diepsinnige besit
van die waarheid en ander godsdienste se valsheid, was dit ook nie te vermy dat
Moslems en die Islam onder skoot sou kom nie.
Mense is
kwaad. Hulle wil die oorsaak weet en die probleem verwyder sien. En hier is ‘n
maklike teiken.
Die
onderstaande stuk verskyn in vandag se NYT. Dit is deur ‘n Moslem geskryf en
gee ‘n boeiende insig in die Moslem-gemeenskap in Amerika.
Net die feit
dat dit verskyn, vertel ‘n mens al iets van die gemoedstemming in Amerika. Die
vooroordele teen Islam woed hoog. Die media weet hulle moet begin perspektief skep. Want waar sulke
latente woede bestaan, sal diskriminasie en viktimisasie nie wegbly nie.
Vele mense
in Suid-Afrika sal, veral na goeie nadink, instem met die sentimente in die
artikel. Die Moslem-gemeenskap is immers by ons ook bekend vir sy besondere,
unieke bydrae tot die Suid-Afrikaanse gemeenskap (dink I.D. du Plessis). Wie
sou, byvoorbeeld, vir Taliep Pietersen, die minlike musikus van die Kaap, op
enige manier met ‘n gewelddadige Moslem-gedagtegang wou verbind?
Die vele,
gewone, toegewyde, knap kunstenaars, professionele mense, tegnici, vakmanne wat
ons hier in die Wes-Kaap as bure het, vertel ‘n verhaal van gewone mense wat
nie bomplanters is nie.
Maar wat my
veral interesseer in die artikel, is die kensketsing van die drie
wêreldgodsdienste. Die skrywer dink die Judaïsme fokus op die wet, die Christendom
op die liefde en die Islam op ontferming.
Dit is ‘n
gewilde onderskeid.
En daar is
nogal waarheid daarin.
Maar as ‘n
mens die spiritualiteit van al hierdie godsdienste van nader bekyk, sal jy merk
dat hulle almal eintlik ook die liefde as kernbegrip vashou. En dat hulle
volmaaktheid en heiligheid soek– dit is, om ‘n lewe in ooreenstemming met God
se wil te leef. Vir Christene is die liefde byvoorbeeld die vervulling van die wet.
Tog is daar wel 'n fokus wat uitstaan: Islam maak
veel van ontferming: Allah, roep hulle daaglikse geloofsbelydenis uit, is
immers die genadige, die barmhartige een. Juis daarom is die wrede optrede van
Islamitiese radikales so onaanvaarbaar en in stryd met die hart van Islam.
Dit is tyd
om, wanneer dit onstuimig in ons binneste is, nie die boom vir die woud aan te
sien nie. En wat hier geld, geld van die hele geestelike reis: immer en altyd is die wagwoord: onderskei die geeste. Skep ruimte sodat die Gees 'n mens kan lei om steeds weer reg te laat geskied aan die ander - veral hulle wat so anders as 'n mens self is.
Hier is die berig:
JUST hours
after the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were identified as
Muslims, Representative Peter T. King of New York, the Republican chairman of
the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, called for an
“increased surveillance” of Islamic communities in the United States. “I think
we need more police and more surveillance in the communities where the threat
is coming from,” “The new threat is definitely from within.”
Mr. King’s
hypothesis, and the widespread surveillance policies already in effect since
9/11, assume that the threat of radicalization has become a matter of local
geography, that American Muslims are creating extremists in our mosques and
community centers.
But what
we’re learning of the suspects, the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,
suggests a different story, and one that has itself become familiar:
radicalization does not happen to young people with a strong grounding in the
American Muslim mainstream; increasingly, it happens online, and sometimes
abroad, among the isolated and disaffected.
The YouTube
page of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, for example, does not contain a single lecture from
a scholar, imam or institution in America. One report suggests that he found
the theology taught in a local Cambridge mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston,
unpalatable: while attending a Friday service in which an imam praised the life
and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Tsarnaev shouted that the
imam was a “nonbeliever.” The younger Tsarnaev brother seems to have rarely
attended a mosque at all.
Representative
King’s theories also fail to explain why, if young people are being radicalized
within mainstream Islamic communities, there aren’t more attacks like the one
in Boston. By some measures Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United
States, and the last decade has seen a rapid expansion of Muslim institutions
across the country.
Yet what’s
most obvious to anyone who has spent time in these communities is that whether
they are devotional or educational, focused on the arts or on interfaith
cooperation and activism, this mediating set of American Muslim institutions is
keeping impressionable young Muslims from becoming radicalized.
Take the
Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and its range of devotional, arts and
educational programs, from preschool to a seminary. Or Chicago’s Inner-City
Muslim Action Network, complete with a medical clinic, civic leadership
education and a summer music festival that draws on the biggest names of Muslim
hip-hop to promote peace through community organizing. Or Zaytuna College in
Berkeley, Calif., the nation’s first four-year Islamic liberal arts school.
These
institutions and others have different aims, but they abide by a common idea:
if the center of Judaism is the law, and the heart of Christianity is love,
what Islam requires, above all else, is mercy. And whether on display in health
care provided for the poor at South Los Angeles’s UMMA Community Clinic, or in
a patiently handled Arabic lesson that will one day lead a new convert into the
fullness of the tradition, Islamic mercy, preached and practiced within the
community, allows no room for radicalization.
Representative
King and others have it exactly, completely wrong — the American Muslim
community has actively and repeatedly, day in and day out, rejected such
radicals on religious grounds: they do not know mercy.
More than a
decade since 9/11, this should no longer be any secret. Across the nation, the
doors are open, and more are opening every day. And despite whatever misplaced
fears the Boston bombings evoke about radical Islam and homegrown terror, we’ll
all find ourselves increasingly secure as more Muslims heed the call — coming
to Islam as it is in the United States, as a real, living community.
Webb is the imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. Korb,
who teaches writing at New York University and the New School, is the author of
“Light Without Fire: The Making of America’s First Muslim College.”
