Intolerance

Do you ever wonder why people have such a hard time letting other people just be themselves? In the West we like to believe that we’re more tolerant and open-minded than people used to be, and that’s probably true, generally. Unfortunately, along with our sense of enlightenment comes a kind of smugness and arrogance, and, too often, an inability to comprehend the intolerance of others. We tend to think intolerance is a symptom of ignorance, perhaps even stupidity, and maybe that’s true. I think intolerance is a Darwinian kind of survival mechanism that served early people well by helping them to preserve the accumulated gains of their micro-civilizations. It gave them cohesion and thereby protection. It is natural to be suspicious of strangers - people from outside your familiar group. A common aphorism we’ve all heard: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”

In recent history - in the West at least - we’ve outgrown a lot of that. We recognize racial and gender equality, religious freedom, free speech and other licenses of the individual to ‘do his own thing‘. That is not to say that we’ve abandoned suspicion or even paranoia - far from it - but we have moved significantly along the continuum from intolerance to tolerance, and I think most people would agree that’s a good thing.

At the same time, it seems to me that we’ve lost the ability to accommodate different points of view, in a way. Specifically, we don’t understand people whom we see as being less tolerant than we are: people who are still afflicted with “righteous blinders“, as I like to call them. They exist within our own society, where they are increasingly marginalized by the ‘enlightened’ majority. More importantly, they exist in vast numbers in other societies, and they pose a serious threat to us and to themselves.

Consider the so-called anti-Islamic Cartoons. Modern Christians have become accustomed to joking about God, Jesus, the Church. It’s symptomatic of a growing secularism and part of our learning to be tolerant has been and continues to be the loss of things held sacred. Muslims, on the other hand, have not traveled so far down this road. Granted, there are many secularists. Many modern Muslims have the same disdain for religious zeal that the preponderance of western Christians do. They’re not stupid and they’re not ignorant. But why do the Cartoons create such a stir?

Islam is no more a single religion than Christianity. It has its sects and no shortage of strife among them. That much is obvious. Like Christianity, it also has it’s share of individuals who need the structure and the dogma to help them cope with the realities of a life that is often very hard. And they fight among themselves about it. But if you think their intolerance for one another is bad, it’s nothing compared to what they can put together in the face of an outside threat.

Ordinary citizens in the middle east, educated and aware individuals, believe it is the conscious agendas of governments and organizations that have stirred up the ire of Muslims to react violently to the Cartoons, as if they were yet more evidence that the Christians are out "to get them". It’s a classic case of Us vs. Them. Uniting Muslims against the Infidel is pretty much the only way you can unite them. They are such a diverse group of people, spread all across the globe, and in much of their range they are politically oppressed, and many of them recognize it.

So what to do? Ah, now we really have to be tolerant. Responding in kind to expressions of hate serves only evil purposes. If it is indeed time to circle the wagons, then I suggest what the West must do is to include the Muslim community inside the circle. They are not the enemy. Those who seek to subject them are the enemy. Those who lie and mislead them, painting pictures of enemies to be feared and to be fought, merely to enslave them with that fear are the enemy. Tyrants and fanatics. People who are militantly intolerant and people who exploit them for political purposes.

We are taught to love our enemies - does anybody do that anymore? In fact, it is the only strategy with any hope of success. We must bring the Muslim community into our circle of wagons - learn to understand them, accept them and show respect for them. Meet them as Brothers and Friends. It all starts with communication. Then comes understanding. Then Trust, Co-operation, Unity, Progress, Peace.

We have the greatest communication tool ever devised by Man at your fingertips. Probably the greatest use to which we can put it is the pursuit of Peace.