09-03-2004, 02:58 PM
It has taken me a while to come to this conclusion, but I believe it is well formed from my discussions with people on this board over the past however long I've been on this forum. I also draw from muslims I know, both friends and non-friends of mine. My thesis I guess you would say, is that a zealous need for pride and honor is the most destructive thing in Islam (as well as in Judaism and Christianity.)
I have heard many a person on this forum state that honor is more desireable than peace. That they would rather fight until the death before they compromise with the Jews (or Zionists as racist Muslims seem to refer to all Jews as.) They would rather have the blood of their children running in the streets if they could have the satisfaction of "winning." This is not only true for Islam, but for the other two Abrahamic religions as well, but for the sake of discussion (since this is a Muslim message board) I'll stick to how it affects Islam.
The conflict in the middle-east, to most Americans, seems rediculous. It's two people who look alike, live in the same area, and share a common ancestor fighting over a piece of land the size of New Jersey. Both sides refuse to budge. The Jews want Isreal to be a sovereign nation and to spread. The Muslims want Isreal wiped off the face of the earth. When outsiders hear Muslims on TV or radio or see them in print talking about how Allah is commanding them to fight the good fight and they will relinquish nothing to the Jews, it makes the outsider less likely to care what happens with the whole situation. What seems to get lost in all the dialogue in the middle-east situation is that no matter what happens, the Jews and the Muslims are going to have to live together NO MATTER WHAT. You'll never rid the world of Jews and you'll never rid the world of Muslims. Eventually, both sides will have to stop placing their own egotistical pride and honor about peace and settle down and talk.
Think about it this way. Two men are in a bar fight, we'll call them Bill and Mike. Bill is punching and swearing at Mike, whereas Mike is trying to block Bill's punches and saying "Bill. Why do you seek to hurt me? Can we not settle this peacefully?" Who do you think outsiders are more likely to take sides with? A raging violent alcoholic? Or a rational, calm, peace-seeking Mike? When I see Arab Muslims on TV talking of jihad and "getting back" at the Jews, I can only think of one word to describe them. Stupid. Has jihad ever worked? Do you think that bombing the Jews will make the Jews less likely to attack you again? How about what the outside world thinks? How does that make you look to America, Europe, East Asia?
Islam has a chance to rise above the hatred they see in Judaism. It called taking the moral high-ground. Sometimes, you have to suck it up and take one for the team. I can only thing of the Dalai Lama. A man who's country was invaded and taken over by the Chinese; millions of Tibetans killed and tortured. If he were waging terrorist attacks on the Chinese from his home in India, would he be in any better shape? WOuld Tibet all of a sudden become his? No. His Holiness instead acted peacefully and reached out to the outside world. Tibet now has millions of people all over the globe sympathetic to the Tibetan cause, simply because the Tibetans had no pride to defend, only peace. I am Irish-American. Ireland and England have been, essentially, at war for the past 600 years (if not more.) Pride is what fuels the IRA the Ulster Unionists. Peacefull effort to mend the wounds of the Irish and British are always thwarted by Irish and British terrorists, and both Islands are worse off because of it.
The point it, pride and honor are not more important than peace. Jews have too much pride; they refuse to share a nation with the Muslims. Muslims have too much pride; many of them have a near insane hatred for the Jews and want to constantly "win." Christians have too much pride; they have carried out crusades against millions of people just because they thought their way was the right way.
A lot of you will probably say "But you can't possibly understand the situation. You're not a Muslims or a Jew." or "You are just ignorant. You have not seen the light of Islam." But perhaps it is my inability to see the light that keeps me from becoming blind to reason and sanity.
As a post-script, I think it goes without saying (however, I'm saying it. Funny huh?) that OF COURSE not all Muslims place pride over peace. I know pleanty of muslims from the middle-east and Africa who just want peace and don't care how it comes about. It's easy to call for death for honor if you aren't the one strapping on a pack of dynamite. A Sudanese friend of mine who fled the Arab militias of Sudan said to me once something along the lines of "the Arabs came and bruned my village, so I was very mad at them. But then, I realized I was more mad at the violence itself. I wish I could tell the Arabs that I was willing to live in peace with them, and there was no reason to be fighting."
There is NO reason to place pride and honor above peace. Freud would call you a sociopath or an egotists.
Salaam.