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Posted October 10, 2002
So, the Reverend Jerry Falwell called the Prophet Muhammad a terrorist.
What did you expect? Calm, peaceful language? Respect for the founder of a religion he doesn't believe in?
Surely everyone knows by now that Falwell responds to almost any tragedy with an unerring ability to provoke. Why, it's almost as if he thinks upsetting people is his job! Who does he think he is, a prophet or something? Doesn't he know that religious people are supposed to be nice?
Getting upset at Falwell is precisely the wrong reaction. A chortle strikes me as wiser. Does Falwell recognize how tricky that terrorist
label might be to other figures he admires? Moses and his plagues, Jesus and the charges of rabble-rousing and temple-razing... Do you expect Falwell to show a nuanced approach to such unpleasant interpretations? No. Does he keep quiet? No. Is there any reason to expect otherwise? No. Laugh at the clown, laugh.
The protests were inevitable, though. Some hail from America, of course. But an article in the Malaysia paper, The Star, struck me as the most wonderfully silly. But perhaps silly
is the wrong word. How charmingly this online article repeats standard Western inanities! If I must read simple-minded politically correct gibberish, let it come from the mouths of people in far-off lands, that's what I say.
Non-Muslim religious groups have criticised US preacher Jerry Falwell . . . saying his views did not reflect the sentiments of the majority of Christians who believe in peace.
As if a person who accuses someone else of terrorism does not hold to some standard of peace! Note: terrorist
is something we call someone who wars on innocents in order to somehow forward their political agenda. If you approve of the terrorist, in America you call him a freedom fighter.
Young Women Christian Association national executive council member Tai Sim Yew said the US pastor's statement smacks of extremism.There is no such thing as religious monopoly. It does not give one the right to claim that the Prophet of another religion is a terrorist. This only shows his shallow thinking.
As if monotheists do not traditionally claim precisely what Tai Sim Yew says does not exist! Akhenaten, Zoraoaster, Moses, Jesus — these religious leaders did not make their mark humbly advocating their views within pluralistic societies, without all-or-nothing demands. They were, in a word, extremists. Why should we expect their followers to be any different?
Malaysia Hindu Sangam president A. Vaithilingam said the sensitive [sic] statement would serve no purpose.
Except of course the obvious purpose: to rally Falwell's followers around the war that their Republican leaders so desperately desire. Though Bush cannily insists that the war against terrorism is not a war against Islam, the way to sell this never-ending war to one sector of the American public is to make sure that the religious nature of the war is crystal clear. (And it is that religious aspect of the war that provides one reason why a few of us in America oppose the thing so vehemently.)
MCA international affairs bureau chief Fam Lee Ee said Muslims should dismissed [sic] Falwell's remark as the preacher was regarded as an extremist in the United States too.He thrives on controversy and has openly attacked human rights and labour groups. He has even criticised rock and pop music.
And here we descend into the thick-headedness that I expect only from secular Westerners: that rock and popular music is somehow obviously above criticism, that anyone who objects to it is obviously a nut. But anyone with a serious religious background should understand how profoundly Dionysian most rock music is, how vulgar the bulk of its lyrics are, and how sexually oriented the culture is. To pretend, as it is popular to do, that rock 'n' roll is innocent
is wilful ignorance. (People like to pretend to innocence, even as they court carnality and knowledge and what some might consider corruption. And so the hypocrisy goes on. Too few who like rock truly embrace it for what it is; they must pretend it is unimpeachable, or high art, or something equally ridiculous.)
The ideas that our Malaysians have imported from the West show little sign of degradation in transit. All the key inanities we find in America or Europe are there in Malaysia, intact. The politically correct maxims and bromides of the age fit nicely in the East. Now that they have scaled these heights, now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
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