Salman Taseer was murdered in Pakistan a few weeks ago. He was the governor of Punjab province and a member of the secular Pakistan People’s Party. The man who killed him, Mumtaz Qadri, was lauded by some as a hero, showering rose petals on him. Photos taken at the scene show him smiling.
Taseer had dared to speak out against Pakistan’s stringent anti-blasphemy law, calling for leniency for a Christian mother sentenced to death under the blasphemy ban. A national group of 500 religious scholars praised the assassin and issued a warning to those who mourned Taseer. “One who supports a blasphemer is also a blasphemer,” the group said in a statement, which warned journalists, politicians and intellectuals to “learn” from the killing. “What Qadri did has made every Muslim proud.”[1]
Nice, really nice, very civilized. It’s no wonder that decent, god-fearing Americans believe that this kind of thinking and behavior justify Washington’s multiple wars; that this is what the United States is fighting against — Islamic fanatics, homicidal maniacs, who kill their own countrymen over some esoteric piece of religious dogma, who want to kill Americans over some other imagined holy sin, because we’re “infidels” or “blasphemers”. How can we reason with such people? Where is the common humanity the naive pacifists and anti-war activists would like us to honor?
But war can be seen as America’s religion — most recently Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and many more in the past — all non-believers in Washington’s Church of Our Lady of Eternal Invasion, Sacred Bombing, and Immaculate Torture, all condemned to death for blasphemy, as each day the United States unleashes blessed robotic death machines called Predators flying over their lands to send “Hellfire” (sic) missiles screaming into wedding parties, funerals, homes, not knowing who the victims are, not caring who the victims are, thousands of them by now, as long as Washington can claim each time –- whether correctly or not — that amongst their number was a prominent blasphemer, call him Taliban, or al Qaeda, or insurgent, or militant.
How can we reason with such people, the ones in the CIA who operate these drone bombers? What is the difference between them and Mumtaz Qadri? Qadri was smiling in satisfaction after carrying out his holy mission. The CIA man sits comfortably in a room in Nevada and plays his holy video game, then goes out to a satisfying dinner while his victims lay dying. Mumtaz Qadri believes passionately in something called Paradise. The CIA man believes passionately in something called American Exceptionalism.
As do the great majority of Americans. Our drone operator is not necessarily an “extremist”. Sam Smith, the publisher of the marvelously readable newsletter, the Progressive Review, recently wrote: “One of the greatest myths draped over this land is that the so-called wing nuts mainly come from the far right and left. And that there is, however, a wise and moderate establishment that will save us from their madness. In fact, the real wing nuts are to be found in the middle. … having captured both public office and major media, [they] spread disaster, death and decay with impunity. Take, for example, the 60,000 some American troops killed in pointless wars beginning with Vietnam. Now count the number of political assassinations, hate murders, terrorist acts and so forth. There is simply no comparison. Yet every war that we have fought in modern times has been the direct choice of the American establishment, those who pompously describe themselves as moderates, centrists, or bipartisan.”[2]
Extending the comparison: In 2008 a young American named Sharif Mobley moved to Yemen to study Arabic and religion. American officials maintain that his purpose was actually to join a terror group. They “see Mobley as one of a growing cadre of native-born Americans who are drawn to violent jihad.”[3] Can one not say as well that the many young native-born Americans who voluntarily join the military to fight in one of America’s many foreign wars “are drawn to violent jihad”?
Notes
[1] Washington Post, January 5, 2011
[2] Progressive Review, January 27, 2011
[3] Washington Post, September 5, 2010
I am afraid the author is confused. Certainly religious bigotry, atheist/communist cultural revolutions, and American oppression of the native Americans can be brought out to be connected as ideological misbehaving. But to stay superficial fails to offer analysis and remains a mash of opinion that starts with a society that kills you for being different and equates that to a soldier who kills you because you are labeled the enemy. The one killed does not care about motive, but the killer and the system of justice in which she operates does.
The connection between two killers is always a belief that I can kill for what I believe is right. The disconnect is that one does as an actor within a legal framework – a police officer, a soldier… And, in the highest appreciation of the difficult task of having to kill another human being, the Gita offers that it must be done as it is one’s duty and not for personal gain nor for ego. The other acts outside of a legal construct. Or rather, constructs a vigilante, state of nature, system of justice that cares only for the ego and self glorification (in heaven or on earth). A police officer who shoots an armed, shooting murderer is not the same as the murderer. It is a travesty of human justice to equate the two.
Rather, it is important to face the ideological source of hatred and the pseudo- justice indoctrinated in haters by books as the bible or the koran or Mein kampf or Mao… When a god says he hates, that god propagates the worship of a hateful god. That is what blaspheme laws hate. The idea that man could say to god, “you are wrong” – and worse, for the man to be right. These laws say to disagree with a book is to defile god. Such nonsense that a god could be defiled, let alone by simple human acts. Certainly the CIA says that it can be defiled by an opinion. But it does not teach hatred as a sacred duty. Certainly the US has participated in the horrors of human history. But it does not demand that you bow to only one god, one book, one man.
Humanity can do better. The Egyptian people are trying to show that. As they quote Obama in their placcards, as they put the cross next to the crescent, as they applaud a google guy, the Egyptians show humanity can do better. It can ascend beyond the darkness of biblical/koranic false gods and morality. We do this together, the blasphemer, the soldier, the terrorist, and the pacifist. When we say we can not hate, we must act by seeking what is right, not by seeking our salvation, not by seeking wealth, not be seeking power, but rather that these things are by products of seeking the egoless renounced action. Humanity will do better.