Talking about Islam
Since the war on terror started following the attack of September 11th, 2001, westerners have been talking about Islam. Some of them are trying to fight the anger of other westerners who might want to encompass the all Muslim people into one and single group called "Bad". Other westerners have been talking about Islam to understand and show tolerance about something they did not know. They felt also the need to address the "good Muslim" and show their difference.
The temptation to talk about Islam comes from the need to treat every religions equal, every men and women equal in the name of "monotheism", in the name of Human Rights, and probably also in the name of evolution. To fight the discrimination and intolerance, the people talk about the "good Islam". They even read the Koran, provide abstracts to explain and show the way it shall be. Even if they are not Muslims, they do the education about Islam that even most Muslim don't do. Some Muslim countries will prevent from having young Imams, but some other countries will use the youth of the Imams as a weapon, that education through Islam may cure.
I have been working in the biggest Muslim county in the World, Indonesia, and I have been working in France. Both countries have shown me two very different faces of Islam. In Indonesia, the people were converted to Islam while their natural culture still very strong. You can find Muslim matriarchal and matrilineal people in Indonesia, both combining with Muslim patriarchal people on a very close area. Both are ethnics that live on a same territory.
Patriarchal ethnics have usually been converted through the trade, boats of Muslim merchants coming to Indonesia, settling in the cities where they could sell and buy. Some of them became permanent inhabitants marrying local women who had to convert to Islam. The only matriarchal matrilineal Muslim people I know are the Minangkabau of Sumatra, while their close neighbors are Mandailing, Angkola and Malayu, who are patriarchal people. Mandailing and Angkola were converted from the West Seas, people coming from the North of India, in the area of Pakistan. The Malayu are mostly Chinese Muslim marrying local women. The Minangkabau have a common background with the Malaysian people, while in Malaysia, they became patriarchal.
In France, Muslim people are mostly patriarchal, and they mostly are Arab, people from the Arabian peninsula who married with local women from North Africa. They migrated to France following World War II. They usually are very poor people and for the majority, poor educated. When they arrived in France, they accessed a kind of living they did not have in their countries, apartments with private bedrooms, bathrooms, water, heat and all the services that a city can bring, but this kind of living has been shown as a discrimination raising anger.
The Muslim of Sumatra are usually well educated and mostly because of women. The women are the real traders, selling, making business, buying gold, selling gold, they have a strong social power. To compare, the Muslim women from the immigration in France don't have a real existence other than the homework. They don't speak enough French to educated their children, they don't have authority and modern times are getting worse under political pressure.
I was in Indonesia when the "headscarf" affair was raising in France, and though, we had to talk about Islam. Well, I am not the kind of person who really talks. My "best realizations" were not talking at all but making the situation for other people to talk, explain a problem to a journalist, organize a reception, bring the people to find compromise. I usually don't talk, but I can agree, disagree, and keep thinking.
Once, I was working on a camp and westerners were explaining to the parents what was good to the children. Learn English, learn computing, play with the other children. The westerners were talking and the parents were listening until the talkers made the first mistakes. It became a real crisis when the parents started to argue that the westerners were making proselytism. Something was shown to the children that was believed to insult Islam, after what, every games and activities went to be rejected by the parents.
I am not an advocate and I am not a lawyer, but at this time, I had a mission to find a solution to the crisis, and I felt I could not argue with the parents. If they thought that it was not good for their children, then it was their own right, who would have told them what to do. We can educate the people, but most of them already know what is best for them, hygiene, food, school, library. You take a camp full of people, you draw two roads outside the camp, one going to the clean, well educated and cultural village, the other one to the dirty camp, no school, no library and the kind of food OMS provides. Guess where they will go ?
I did not felt talking about Islam, but I felt that the people wanted to talk about it, why they wanted to have headscarf, and why it was important. I could argue and explain why I felt it the different way. Women in their own village don't wear the headscarf, the little girls in their own homes don't wear the headscarf, even if they go to visit a neighbor. They don't wear it because they are at home, and a school is like a home, where all children have to learn to be equal. How to expect them to know what equal mean when they are adult if they do not learn it at school. School is the place to build kinship.
We never had to talk about any headscarf again. Every time they wanted to argue with the rules of Islam, I argued with the most sincere feeling I had to answer. I did not try to give a reference from the Koran and expose myself to be good or bad. I just tried to be the best human I could be, see when people are hurt, why they feel hurt, and how to explain. Sometimes, they had good reasons to be hurt, but sometimes also, they exaggerated their feeling.
The exaggeration of feeling is very ancient and during the Pharaohs, it was believed to be a way to address the Gods. Usually, the people who do not know to put words on their feelings will exaggerate their emotions as an actor would do express an emotion. This is acting, but in traditional cultures, they don't feel acting. They just feel more human showing their thoughts and belief.
Women plaing the cries in Saqqarah
Les pleureuses of Romont in Switzerland
Pleureuses from Burundi
A Chinese girl playing cries
Talking about Islam, is like having an old Muslim woman acting her cries and westerners mirroring the cries louder. Westerners should talk about the reasons why they believe something is good and right, rather than try to find the good in Islam. They can bring a consolation, but they cannot be the consolation. They cannot compensate the cries with their conversion talking about Islam rather than their own belief. A Christian shall talk about the Bible or the Gospel of Jesus. A Jew shall talk about Judaism. A Buddhist shall talk about Buddha, but none of them shall talk about Islam unless they are Muslim. The good that comes from Islam must be shown by the Muslim people themselves, because it is their own duty, their own mission into their own belief. What else would God may expect from them and what chance would they have to be good if we don't let them to be good themselves? That's the only chance they have to progress, and that's the only chance we can offer them.
The problem with terrorism is not new. It always was. Islam has spread all around India by destroying the Universities, the caves and the temples. In Indonesia, trade was the soft way, but there were also Padri wars where Jihadists used to burn the villages, kill the women and the children. It was a war of horror to force the conversions. Soft and hard ways are both a same strategy because the "Bad Islam" force the non Muslim people to talk about the "good Islam" and start the conversion, because those talkers want to show the "good Muslim". The "good Muslim" does not exist yet, this is a process of conversion.
North to the Minangkabau are living the Batak people. They are a kind of people whose culture is partly built on Islam, but without the allegiance to Saudi Arabia. The king of Barus who was Muslim did not have any children. It is said that he adopted the first Si Singamangaraja, a national hero in Indonesia. The last Si Singamangaraja died on June 17th, 1907. The stamp, the armorial bearings and the white headdress where inspired from Islam. The tradition was local and the place of birth of every Si Singamangaraja is very close to the story of Jesus. The mission of Si Singamangaraja was to bring the peace and none of the Muslim merchant could enter the Batak land. On the maps, it is referred as a place for cannibals.
Flags from Aceh, in the North of Sumatra
The Si Singamangaraja flag
When trading with Muslim merchants, Si Singamangaraja could hear what the good was from Islam, he took what appeared to bring the peace to the people, the acknowledgement of a kind of authority that would ease the trade, but he never adopted the allegiance to Islam and the Arabian Peninsula. In some way, we could learn from the Batak people, because they have known to stay themselves. When they converted to Christian, Jesus became a kind of Si Singamangarala devoted to bring the peace. They had a belief, they only took what they felt good to them. The Angkola and Mandailing people are Batak who converted to Islam, but their cultural background is the lineage they have with any other Batak. What they want is the peace above all.
The peace is not a fancy word that we play saying to build a discussion. This is a way of living. People who live in peace will fear the war, while those who live at war may feel boring in a usual life, you know, when you have to work, raise children and have real opinions. There is a laziness at war that really attracts the young people. The price of a kind of freedom is granted with war games, more real than TV. Terrorists have an easy job to make to enroll young jihadist with pictures while peace looks like the tea party for grandmother.
Hollywood makes Sci-fi with real actors and fiction. The jihadists make their own shows with exhibits and documentaries. They are acting without the fiction. Would you say that America is a Sci-fi film ? No, and to a foreigner who would threaten America because of his belief in Sci-fi films, you would explain that a film is fiction and what "good America" is. Extremes show the contraries and the more a picture is bad, the more the reality seems brighter. Islam is using the same means to achieve a global willing that is common to most Muslim people, which is to not have to share the world with anybody else than Muslims.
Islam does not rule the soul, it rules the ordinary life of the people, the way people interact each other. Most Muslim people believe that Muhammad being the last prophet, Islam shall be the universal religion, whatever the meaning of religion would be. This bring to all kind of combinations of the religion with the politics that make the real purpose of Islam unclear. Some western countries have become very cleaver to play on this wave. Some countries have also become dangerous to other people because the politics of Islam is also linked to the politics of oil that somehow, makes it insane.
Money make some Muslim people very rich and some other Muslim people very poor and no rules are trading the equity. The horror made with the terrorism and the "talking" about the "good Islam" has become a different way to raise "antis". Anti-American, anti-Zionism, anti-Judaism, anti.... They mostly reject the modernity and its own rules, like communism would do. They have experienced the past, they are unhappy with the future and they cannot imagine the present.
When there is no hope, the reasons are usually the same. Bad past, no good future, and absolutely no imagination for the present. This is what many people experience daily because of poverty, wars and extreme dictatorship. To the poor people, I would not talk about religion. Some religions do. They explain that poor people must accept their fate because God will save them. The level when the resignation starts is unclear, but someone poor needs help. Unless feeling sane losing faith, there is no reason to resign, cure, feed and build a society.
Instead of talking about Islam, I shall rather talk about the cities, the schools and the libraries that I would build to show the people why America is mastering the good experience. I would explain that Islam is a belief in a world where other people have other believes, show tolerance but tolerance only. Take the children as they are, give them love and give love to their parents so they can love their children better. Give the parents the tools to build their own cities, give them the knowledge to fight their own willing of war. Show them how bright is modernity and how faith can prevent them to fail into the laziness of extremes.
I would not talk about Islam because I do not think that Islam is a religion of peace. Muslim people can want the peace and manage it very carefully, but because their natural faith bring them to favor this peaceful understanding of Islam, while the goal since the creation of Islam was to convert all the people. Muslim people cannot talk themselves about Islam because they know what the goals are, and they are shame of it, but if we don't let them have their own crisis, they will never live in peace.
Islam must change but Islam can only change because the Muslim people have the guts to change. I had a friend who did not wear the headscarf. She went to Saudi Arabia once, she started to wear the headscarf when she returned and she got a promotion. You never see a woman wearing the headscarf going to Saudi Arabia and coming back leaving her headscarf. You'll never see a woman feeling more confident, more feminine or more powerful returning from Mecca. And this is the real reason why we shall be talking about our own belief, be more human and more sincere talking.
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