On the cartoons
Somebody, I can’t remember who, once told me that anger was about control, or more specifically, about losing control. If somebody makes you angry, you’re ceding control to them because they are causing you to be angry. I don’t think the theory necessarily applies all the way across the board, and even if it does, I think there are some things that are worth being angry about. Genocide. Human rights violations. Famine. Racism. The destruction of our environment. So many things merit passion and activisim and standing your ground because you just can’t take one more minute of it. Too many to list, really.
But insults towards Allah (SWT)? Somehow, I think Allah can handle Himself, and the strongest insult man can offer is not even as noticeable as a mosquito bite.
Last year, The Sane One did a post partially about extremism in religion where she said everyone is talking about extremism, but nobody is actually defining what’s “extreme”. And then she said, “Extremism is going beyond [or below] the Prophet (S).” So following allowing that line of logic, and borrowing from an over-marketed Christian slogan (I think the Christians would agree with me here), in this situation, what would the Prophet do?
I don’t even have to wonder about this, actually, because I know what he would do. When people threw trash at him, he did nothing. When they hurled insults in his face, he did nothing. When they threw rocks at him, when they ran him out of town, when they tried to starve him, he did nothing. Even when Allah, through the angel Gabriel, asked the Prophet if he would like the people who treated him so cruelly to be destroyed, he refused.
The Prophet was about kindness and gentleness. I do not think he would have approved of the kidnapping threats or the death threats.
And there’s always the basic truth that if we had not allowed the cartoons to make us so angry, if we had not ceded that control, millions of people would never have never seen them in the first place. We did their work for them. They waved the red flag, and we charged. I don’t disagree that it’s hurtful, but not to this extent, not to the point of threatening and committing violence. Marches and rallies, sure. Boycott the newspaper in question, by all means. Let’s get ‘em where it hurts most: in the pocketbook. Protest as much as you want, but don’t wave a gun while you’re doing it. The only way we can defuse the cartoons’ claim that Islam is all about violence is to react firmly, strongly, and peacefully.
On another note, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf mentioned a hadith that says if somebody has wronged you, then you have the right to revenge… but if you choose to forgive instead, Allah will forgive one of your sins for you. These cartoons, they are hurtful and cruel, and they were meant to be so, but we should try to forgive and let Allah decide the fate of those who drew them. He is, after all the, best of judges.