Arab Animosity

[I intended to shelve this post after I had written it for fear of being too judgmental. However, recent experiences on my travel to Istanbul through the Middle East have cemented my opinions and made me decide to publish this post]

What makes Arabs such a charged, hyper tensed race of people? Readers will rightly argue that I am generalizing here since there are bunches among the Arab race who are the calm-composed types. But having experienced the Middle East, during my growing up years, I have time and again come across Arabs who seem to have very little of  attributes like patience, composure and diplomacy. Don’t get me wrong; Arabs are in general, honest and hardworking people, but they lose their cool more often than not, bickering about the most trivial of things. It is no wonder that countries like England and U.S who descended upon the Middle East with imperialistic intentions regret it for the most part even to this day!!

Many Anti-islamists have blamed Islam to be the reason for such attributes citing evidences of how the religion spread through the sword. Whether Islam spread through the sword is a topic for another day but my view is that Arab animosity comes from a variety of related factors, religion contributing very little. A few years ago, shortly after the Danish cartoon incident, I ran an experiment with some friends who belonged to various ethnicities and religions. I showed them two cards, one with the picture of a silhouette holding a sword and the other of the exact same silhouette meditating- sort of in a saintly pose. I asked them to identify in their opinion which one represented the prophet of Islam (pbuh) more accurately. 90 percent (including a few muslims), chose the card with the sword! It demonstrated to me that often great people in history are misconstrued by popular belief rather than facts. Arabs today are seen through the eyes of the media portraying violence and chaos which may indeed be the case for some countries but not all. This has unconsciously fed the minds of people to think that an Arab prophet could be violent.

The fact is that Muhammed(Pbuh) was introduced to Islam in a cave while he was MEDITATING. The fact is that he never had intentions to fight where force was not required. The fact is he used his sword only where his near and dear ones needed protection and to these near and dear ones, he treated them with respect, honour, humility and kindness. If not anything, the religion he bought turned a race of barbarians into a people with substance whose expanse traversed from central Asia all the way to Europe. At the time, a muslim was identified as one who would leave an ownerless gold coin lying on the road untouched. Where then did these divine attributes disappear in the Arabs of today? 

 The truth is that these divine attributes turned human and thus came about divisions within the religion and a quest for power, fame and wealth. These characteristics passed on from generation to generation inciting hatred and disunity. The discovery of oil in the 19^th century created more chaos with imperialistic powers meddling in the affairs of the Arab folk. In the end, the Arab society who were identified by tribes at one point where now identified with wealth. Wealth disparity is so widespread in the middle east, it’s only natural for the common Arab man to be so pissed about everything! After all, while he struggles with unemployment to make ends meet, his tribe member who was once considered an equal, now owns oil fields and enjoys the finer things in life

The birth of an extremist

 The major faiths of the world today are grappling for existence; their existence threatened by a new wave of religious intolerance aptly called ‘religious extremism’. Over the last decade or two, no faith has seen this more closely than the faith of Islam. To that effect, I have in my circle of friends seen many a times a transformation that has been hard to explain. The most docile of people with innocent ambitions and views turn into monsters with ideologies that would make even the most fearful tyrants shudder. For years, I have wondered how a tranquil religion like Islam could ever be diseased in essence and ideology by a group of cowards whose motivation comes from personal good rather than the collective good of their people. The more I thought about this, the more ideas started to form patterns in my mind. Most interesting of these ideas was this constant element of depression in every case of extremist transformation. It got me thinking- have you ever heard of a ‘happy terrorist’? 

There is a definite correlation between extremist transformation and depression. The symptoms are quite evident in most cases and in fact almost quite natural – A personal calamity turns into depression. Unable to bear the thought of being more depressed, the person looks for answers in faith and suddenly miraculously sees the realities of his/her existence; sees everything that is wrong with this world. There is a need now to blame one person or entity or sectarian group or faith for the mess that has ensued. Thus is born the extremist. In many cases, a personal calamity might not be the sole trigger. It could be a combination of one or more factors or sometimes just an epiphany of sorts. At the end of the day, the only common thread seems to be that these individuals live a lonely and depressed existence. The loneliness soon vanishes as they find more of themselves and what is left is a group of depressed beings fuelled by the fear of an apocalyptic world.

To add more fuel to this extremist fire, there follows a mechanism of profiling by external entities such as the media and individuals. Extremist groups are given names, advertised as a vast network operating in the underbelly of the world’s most prolific cities with finances coming in from the most unexpected of sources. My view is that 80 percent of the so called extremist groups that exist today have no organization, no motive and are merely the snow ball effect of creating with much hype a few such groups (Al Qaeda and others). What really annoys me is the media’s distinction between an extremist Muslim and a ‘moderate’ Muslim. I find it ridiculous to call a Muslim ‘moderate’. In my eyes, there is only the extremist and the Muslim, the extremist and the Christian, the extremist and the Jew..in sum, the anti-faithful and the faithful