Proportionality is a great variable and tolerance a superb attitude. Both are truly undervalued as misjudgments and assorted extremist acts overtake whatever semblance of humanity is left in the age of failed globalisation and unrestrained exploitation. Both deserve greater attention as mankind ought to finally awaken to the basic notion that each and every human being is precious and that no single individual, no matter his station in life, is entitled to defame or belittle another.
We are all appalled by ongoing wars and utterly disgusted by bombings and other criminal acts. Except for deviant and intolerant souls, the overwhelming majority is flabbergasted when an 18-year-old brainwashed thug forces an 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest celebrating the holy Eucharist to his knees, and slits his throat. One is similarly stunned when a so-called “professional” drone flyer in Nevada launches rockets at a convoy or a wedding procession in Yemen or Afghanistan, killing dozens in a blink of an eye, unaware of the blood spilt in such instances.
The bombardment of 300,000 people trapped in what used to be Aleppo in Syria, or similar spots in Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere, confirms this tendency. In fact, while we are rightfully appalled by Father Jacques Hamel’s murder, we ought to also shed a tear for the millions who perish around the world in the name of this ideology or that righteous belief.
To be sure, we are at war although it ought to also be clear, as Pope Francis declared a few days ago on his way back from Poland, that “We must not be afraid to say the truth, [that] the world is at war because it has lost peace.”
Once again, it fell on the Roman Catholic Pontiff to clarify what troubled many, as he stressed that he spoke of the “wars over interests, money [and] resources, not religion. All religions want peace; it’s the others who want war,” he hammered. The Pope maintained that it was wrong to identify Islam with terrorism and insisted that if he were to “speak of Islamic violence, [he was morally obliged to also] speak of Catholic violence.”
He stressed that “not all Muslims are violent” and had the courage to add: “I know it [is] dangerous to say this but terrorism grows when there is no other option and when money is made and it, instead of the person, is put at the centre of the world economy.”
We are, all of us, confronted with what the triumphalist Francis Fukuyama concluded a few years ago was The End of History — where Western liberal democracy emerged as the final form of human government — and when Samuel Huntington predicted a new clash of civilisations, especially ugly religious confrontations that besmirched the Creator. Neither bothered with the consequences of social injustice and the idolatry of money and neither could possibly understand why a man like Father Jacques Hamel would help the Muslim community in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray to build a mosque, inaugurated in 2000, on a plot of land that was donated by a local Catholic parish.
Nevertheless, and while the 18-year-old murderer was little more that fodder for the fire of intolerance, French religious leaders invited Catholics to attend Friday prayers at mosques on Friday and Muslims to join mass celebrations on Sunday in churches. What actually occurred last weekend was exceptional, as thousands of Catholics stepped into mosques to pray with their Muslim neighbours and welcomed thousands of Muslims in churches in reciprocal visits.
It was a gesture of interfaith solidarity, of course, but it was a whole lot more as believers rejected religious divisions. On Sunday, French television broadcast moving scenes from across the country, with Muslim women in headscarves crowding the front rows of Catholic cathedrals in major cities, but especially in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, where the two neighbouring congregations united in prayers. Two days earlier, many entered a mosque for the first times in their lives, watched, listened, heard, and participated in the prayers that Muslim believers offered, all of which soothed broken hearts.
Proportionality is indeed a great variable and its practice can enlighten us. We ought to feel no compunction to declare loud and clear that the dictator Joseph Stalin’s infamous quotation “The death of one man is a tragedy... The death of millions is a statistic,” is not acceptable, and that we value everyone.
Likewise, and unless we aim to fulfil Huntington’s prediction for fresh confrontations, it behoves us to practice tolerance with unparalleled vengeance.
As monotheists, it really does not make any difference where we pray, as long as we glorify Godby being tolerant of each other, tolerant of our practices and rituals, and tolerant of our respective cultures. Let’s give it a try and open church, mosque and temple doors to all. A small step indeed but one that might prevent wars of religion.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of the just published From Alliance to Union: Challenges Facing Gulf Cooperation Council States in the Twenty-First Century (Sussex: 2016).
