Religion has a deterministic influence on the current situation in Gaza. From both sides, the eternal unholy alliance between religion and state is unmistakably detectable in this crisis. The whole world is crying out and condemning Israel for inhumane behaviour, even genocide, as the Israeli Defense Force is pressing on with its land invasion of Gaza in its pursuit of Hamas. Western news sources put the death toll in Gaza at 24,000 at the time of this writing.
Human rights are a most laudable and commendable endeavour and are the foundation of humanism, the prevailing ethical system in, e.g. middle Europe today, where I live. I experience this daily, and it is demonstrably the foundation for a tolerant and civilised social environment and lifestyle. In addition, the tendency to sympathise with and intuitively take the side of the oppressed is undoubtedly also a praiseworthy human quality. However, in this instance, I believe there is a bigger picture. Human rights are only possible and sustainable in a democratic and free environment. And “free” in the sense of freedom of speech, movement, ownership, sexual orientation and relationships, residence, etc.
There is not and will never be a democratic and free environment under Islamic rule. The tenets of Islam make for a theocracy under Sharia law and enforced by jihad as proclaimed in the Q’uran and the hadith. It is also Islam’s vision for the whole world, with no exception. Islam claims that theirs is the last and final revelation from God, and there cannot be another one. The Q’uran is God’s last word, comprising all the answers to the world’s problems. I have repeatedly heard these claims in the last ten years of my corporate career, working with company representatives in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Emirates. And these claims came from a.o. graduate engineers.
The indoctrination, the fear of not complying and the conviction that theirs is a superior culture are so powerful and ingrained by their holy scriptures that, in my opinion, references to moderate Islamism are an oxymoron. Here are two simple examples:
- How many moderate Muslims publicly objected when Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 issued a fatwa over the British writer Salman Rushdie, ordering and giving any Muslim the right to murder him on sight, anyplace, anywhere? Not a single prominent Muslim openly protested against the fatwa. When Yusuf Islam (previously Cat Stevens, a 70s British rocker) was asked if he concurred with this fatwa, his answer was: Yes, this is justice.
- In 1786 (when America was hardly a country), pirates under Ottoman rule attacked American merchant ships in the Mediterranean, seized the cargo and killed or enslaved the crew. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (later the 2nd and 3rd presidents of the USA) went to Tripoli to complain to the Ottoman ambassador Abdul Rahman Adja, pointing out that America never had a gripe with the Ottomans, were not part of the crusades and not involved when the Europeans fought the Muslims in Spain. Rahman’s answer was simple: The Q’uran gives Muslims the right and duty to make war upon infidels, enslave or kill them, and take their property. Period.
Israel is by far the most democratic and free society in all of the Middle East among a multitude of Islam totalitarian kingdoms and dictatorships run by kings, princes, emirs, sultans and other despots. All of them hate Israel with a passion and will stop at nothing before the state of Israel is run “through the river into the ocean” and obliterated from the face of the earth. Their religion presses it upon them, not only as a right but as a duty. This hate was not born with the statedom of Israel, but I would venture as far as to say that it has been there ever since Mohammad couldn’t compete with the Jews as a businessman, and when he came up with his God revelation story, the Jews were the first to reject it as nonsense. It does not matter what Israel has done in the past or will do in the future; this hate has always been there and will always be there.
Israel is fighting for its very survival as a state. It is my opinion that if Israel agrees to a long-term ceasefire and pulls back from Gaza at this point, it could be the beginning of the end of the state of Israel. It is also not unlikely that antisemitism will get another scary boost, as Jew-haters all over the world will start crawling out of the woodwork again. The democratic and free world will lose out to a backward and dangerous culture, growing in leaps and bounds as a result of indulgent riches simply oozing out of the ground.
I see a difference between terrorism and collateral damage. When a group intentionally and deterministically target innocent women, children, and even babies and indiscriminately kills, rape and murders and takes survivors into captivity – that is called terrorism. When their supporters, at the same time, gleefully participate by taking pictures and videos, sending these across the globe to celebrate the slaughter – that is called barbaric terrorism. Incidentally, in the week after this massacre, before Israel lifted a finger, Islamic supporters all over the Western world gathered in their thousands in the streets of Western capitals, celebrating the slaughter; the same as what happened in the days immediately after 9/11.
When an army declares war against terrorists and, in its pursuit of them, tries its utmost to minimise innocent deaths, made impossible by the terrorists hiding behind and using their civilian population as human shields – that is called collateral damage. In an apparent free election, the Palestinians voted a militant and fundamentalist Hamas into power in 2005 and are now suffering the catastrophic consequences.
The argument about who the land belongs to goes back a very long time but is, in my opinion, for the most part irrelevant. Colonialisation, for example, was inevitable and would have happened with any nation/civilisation/ethnical grouping in similar environments at the time (the same can be said of apartheid; it was unavoidable in some form or shape). I sum up my position on this with the following hypothesis: If, for example, Julius Malema today claims AND can prove beyond any doubt that he has Khoi San ancestry and therefore has a claim to Southern Africa, my take would be: Tough luck, go away.
Bruwer Swanepoel
Author of Faith: Full Circle – The Religious Journey of a Baby-boomer Afrikaner
PS: As a general observation, it is my opinion that all three monotheistic religions are a danger to the free, democratic, tolerant, civilised and progressive society we treasure in the Western world. At this moment in history, though, Islam has revealed itself to be, by far, the most dangerous of the three. It has been said that Islam has “bloody borders”; meaning that where Islamic states have land borders with states with other religious beliefs, there exist permanent border conflicts.
