I received a message over the weekend asking if I would give a Buddhist perspective for an inter-faith New York website on the current storm in the USA about Pastor Terry Jones from Florida who had planned to burn the Koran in the grounds of his church and the wish of the Muslim community for an Islamic centre in the financial heart of New York.Pastor Jones claims that Islam is the Devil’s religion. It is easy to dismiss Jones rather than acknowledge that he touched a resonant chord with fearful and hostile America.
The media frenzy around this story has gone along with media frenzy around the proposed establishment of an Islamic Centre, a few minutes walk from Ground Zero in New York City.
After weeks of skirting the issue, President Obama finally said: “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.” but he refused to comment on the wisdom of the Muslim community to have a centre easily accessible for Muslims working in local offices.
I am immediately reminded of Seng Tsan, the 8th century Buddhist master, who famously stated that to be “for or against is the mind’s worst disease.” In this context to be for President Obama and against Pastor Jones, to be for the USA and against Muslims, even at a subtle level, would confirm the mind’s worst disease.
I believe we need to examine views, delusions and intolerance. President Obama marked the ninth anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks by declaring that America will “never” be at war with Islam. Are you sure, Mr President?
Could both Pastor Jones and President Obama be trapped in delusion? I suspect that Pastor Jones has never read the Koran, never engaged in dialogue with Muslims, never travelled to an Arab country. Does President Obama not know about the extent of Islamophobia in the USA that keeps on growing due to the policies of his administration and previous ones?
Islamophobia starts at any US airport –arriving or departing. I witnessed it for years on my visits to the USA. You are under suspicion if you are a Muslim or have a Muslim name, arriving from a Muslim country, or elsewhere, US immigration offices may pull you aside on the slightest pretext. If you are a Muslim with a green card or applying for a green card, US authorities may subject you to severe questioning or worse. The FBI has networks of informers and spies in numerous mosques around the USA. There are Hollywood movies, computer war games, Jews, Christians, scientists, politicians, rich, middle classes and poor alike whipping up suspicion, fear and hatred of Muslims.
Mainstream television news channels, cable news, chat shows and newspapers regularly quote those determined to demonise Islam. The language of “Islamic terrorists,” “Islamic fundamentalists” “radical Islam” and “war on terror” is the common voice. USA publishers market Rumi, perhaps the best selling poet in the USA, as a Sufi – as if a Sufi belonged to a very distant branch of Islam. Sufis are found in all the main traditions of Islam. There is no such sect as Sufism. Heaven forbid, Rumi might be known as an Afghani Muslim as that might turn off God fearing Americans from buying his radical poetry.
Recent polls show that 60% of the USA population are against the Islamic Centre near Ground Zero. Half the US population believe that Islam encourages violence. One in five Americans believes President Barack Obama is a Muslim. He refers to himself in pubic as a “devout Christian.” Half the USA “has a problem with Islam.” There is plenty of evidence of strong anti-Muslim sentiment in the US. Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be allowed to sit on the Supreme Court. Around one in three want a ban on Muslims running for president. This is active discrimination against 2% of the population.
Made in the USA, the 2006 documentary called Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West, compares Islam with the Nazi doctrine. The documentary depicts Islam as a threat to Western civilisation, religion and values. Around 28 million (yes, 28 million) DVDs of this documentary were posted freely by direct mail to households in the USA, as well as to the media for review. The film was shown on internet, on US campus, as well as segments shown on CNN and Fox News.
It doesn’t end there. The USA and its allies invaded Iraq even though Iraq held no weapons whatsoever of mass destruction. The USA invaded Afghanistan even though not a single Afghani boarded an aircraft on 9/11 that inflicted so much grief on America and America’s subsequent desire for revenge. After 9/11, the USA refused to engage in national reflection after decades of discriminatory American foreign policy towards the Arab world to uphold Arab regimes, obscenely rich Arab families, military dictatorships that supported the USA and undermine the aspirations of hundreds of millions of Muslims. The present regime in the White House continues the same policies.
Ask Muslims in the USA if they feel discriminated against?
Between 600,000 to 1,000,000, Muslims have died in Iraq. USA armed forces have committed terrible atrocities such as the massacre in Fallujah (Iraq’s beloved “City of Mosques” about 70 kilometres West of Baghdad) where thousands were killed or maimed. US military used white phosphorous to burn the civilians alive, destroyed 30,000 homes and destroyed more than a third of the city’s 200 mosques. Afghanistan has suffered intensely due to the occupation. Drones, the unmanned missiles, launched from military computers in the USA, bomb villages in northern Pakistan, a sovereign country, week in and week out, in the USA’s blind obsession with “Islamic fundamentalists.” Let us also not forget the US backing for the terrible tragedy and ongoing violence of the occupation of Palestine, Guantanamo Bay, bombing by proxy in the Yemen, threats against Iran and more.
What is a Buddhist response to all this? It is a situation to apply the Four Truths of the Noble Ones.
1. To identify the suffering, as above.
2. To identify the causes and conditions for the suffering – desire, suspicion, fear, projections, shadows and national hubris.
3. Knowing the resolution.
4. The way out. Withdrawal of all troops engaged in the occupation, compensation for citizens in the Arab nations who have suffered under the occupation, establish the state of Palestine and a major dialogue in the USA and its allies in every town hall about the fanaticism of belief in Western democracy and the human cost of American policies and its allies at home and abroad.
May all beings live in peace and harmony