A lesson learned

I'm 34 years old and I am still learning.  Ask me six days ago and I would have told you that the attackers in Paris 'weren't Muslim', as if that pronouncement somehow explained the whole sorry situation.

It is not for me, or you or Barack Obama or David Cameron to pronounce what is and is not 'Muslim'.  It is a source of much debate among various scholars the world over just what is the true way to embrace Islam as a faith, and these are people who are brought up in the faith, who study all of its texts and traditions.  It is not for me to spend a few minutes on google, or watch a video by one person claiming to represent Muslims in Britain, or Europe or wherever and weigh in with a definitive view on who is getting it right.

There are Muslims killing Muslims the world over, because of the various iterations of opinion.  This is an inescapable fact.  The jihadists/Islamists/terrorists are certainly not representative in their actions of the majority of Muslims who live in Europe and America - that much is patently obvious.  But to dismiss them as simply 'un-Muslim' is rather to miss the point.  They represent the radical and scary end of a whole spectrum of interpretations of a book and some pronouncements by various clerics throughout history.

There do however seem to be one or two unifying factors of interest amongst the extremists:

1. They are led by men (and it seems to exclusively be men) who are NOT scholars.  These men are not stepped in years of study of the faith and the Qu'ran.  They are not philosophers or clerics as you and I would understand it.  They are doctors, lawyers, scientists.
2. These leaders, much like the men that they lead, seem mostly to have embraced Islam either from scratch or certainly to a more dedicated degree much later on in their lives.  Anjem Choudary is a prime example - a former lawyer who spent a lot of time partying and taking drugs back when he was known as 'Andy' studying the first year of a medical degree which he never completed (he went on to study law and became a solicitor) Now one of the leading figures in extreme Islam in the UK.
3. These men, when confronted with anything or anyone which contradicts their world view, will simply deny and/or dismiss it.  If you have time, go to YouTube and dig out any interview of Choudary being interviewed.  Watch how he attempts to derail every question put to him.  Watch his refusal to answer a straight question such as 'do you believe that apostasy should be met with the death penalty'.  He doesn't speak like a man possessed by a fanatical faith (to whom the answer to that question for example would be 'yes' - under Sharia law, which he himself says repeatedly he would like implemented the world over, apostasy is a capital offence), he speaks like a lawyer, obfuscating and circling around the actual point so that he cannot be legally held to account for anything he says later.
4. Additionally, watch Choudary being interviewed by a woman, and see how dismissive his tone, gestures and words become.  This is a man for whom women are second class citizens, who should be shut quietly away and not allowed to voice opinions, particularly opinions which question men.

It is uncomfortable, even unfathomable for us who have grown up in a liberal western democracy with a dominant religion which is - relatively - tolerant of those who don't follow it, to conceive of men who are willing to kill for their faith.  Obama declares that 'no religion condones murder' which simply proves that he didn't study his history all that closely. People have killed, and continue in many parts of the world today, in the name of religion.  It is one thing to say that those people are wrong, it is quite another to arbitrarily wall them off and deny the fact of their religious beliefs because they don't fit your own world view of what a religion should be.

Yes, I know plenty of Christians who are appalled by the idea of killing done for any reason, much less in the name of their faith.  Interestingly some of those same people have no problem in declaring that they don't approve of gay marriage (or indeed of gay people at all), despite not one of them being able to point me to where exactly in the new Testament Jesus says 'and love thy neighbour, unless he or she happens to be gay, in which case cast them out and harangue them'.

People do shitty stuff.  Sometimes they do it in the name of their religion.  If they believe that they believe, then me denying that they are part of that faith is no better than them telling me I'm deserving of death or will go to hell because I do not share in teir belief.

The point is this (yeah, I will get there in the end).  In spite of what the radicals and their preachers tell you, there isn't a mass movement of jihadists living in Barking or Dagenham or Winchester all waiting to rise up and kill the infidels.  Radical Islam is an issue, no doubt, and a major one at that.  There are areas of the world where these fanatics are great in number, even running countries, and they are doing unspeakable things on the name of their own interpretation of their faith.  But here, in a part of the world where freedom is much more prevalent, and in which it is easier for Muslims to embrace a different and more liberal interpretation of their faith, there are far fewer fanatics.  They still exist, and they are still an issue, but one that can be dealt with by the nature of the very society on which we live.  If we allow fear and extremism to dictate our behaviour, and we meet radicalism with radicalism, then we will exacerbate a small issue into a major one.

But most importantly, if you take anything away from reading my waffle here, let it be this - there are many different types of Muslims in the world.  Just because the only ones that you see on the TV are either preaching hate and Sharia and the end of western decadence, or else expressing that Islam is a religion of peace and love and that all they want is to be friends with everyone, don't make the mistake (as I did, which I freely admit) of believing that it's a binary system.  Basically, remember that Muslims are people too, with all the myriad possibilities for loveliness and humility as well as wickedness and arrogance which that condition allows for.

Because it is lack of extremism which allows me to learn.  To change.  To admit that I may have been wrong before.  The fanatic must by necessity deliberately blind themselves to any evidence which may sway their fanaticism.  They exist as a fixed point, incapable of learning or growing.  It is this fact, alone above all others, which will ensure that the future never can and never will belong with any permanence to the fanatics.