Hope and Bigotry: Putting the Heart Before the Sword

     I must begin by telling you that I am so disheartened and disappointed that I don’t know quite how to put it into words. A few days ago someone I know, someone who I consider a good and intelligent person, sent me the following email. Maybe some of you have seen this one going around, but maybe not—thankfully I’ve only received it once:


If there is one thing you forward today……let it be this.
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of PanAm Flight 103!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the military barracks in Saudi Arabia!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001!
REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks!
Now the United States Postal Service REMEMBERS and HONORS the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a commemorative first class holiday postage stamp.
REMEMBER to adamantly and vocally BOYCOTT this stamp when purchasing your stamps at the post office. To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.
REMEMBER to pass this along to every patriotic AMERICAN you know.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
LONG MAY SHE WAVE

     I was very upset upon receiving this, not simply because it was going around the internet but because someone I actually knew was forwarding it. I cannot object to this kind of rhetoric strongly enough. It is, apart from untrue and prejudicial, extremely divisive and inflammatory. Its only effect is the propagation of hate and the suppression of kindness and empathy.
     My friend stated, in her own defense, that the email doesn’t say that ALL Muslims are bad, and also she said that she didn’t write it, she only forwarded it. I would counter, on the first point, that omitting such a caveat as the fact that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, loving persons is as bad as saying that they’re all bad, because it incites hatred and mistrust through implication. On the second point, if you forward something you endorse it—you put your stamp of approval on it and claim it as your own.
     That said, all of the tragedies mentioned in the email were horrible beyond description, and their perpetrators are sadly and dangerously misguided. But our goal is to achieve a state of relative peace and harmony in the world, not simply to exact retribution or punishment. If we kill all of the terrorists responsible for these crimes there will be a million more to step up to the plate. And why? It isn’t because Muslims are evil or because Arabs inherently hate Westerners, it is because there are very complex social problems and differences between us that are so poorly understood. There are important issues that need our sober, civilized attention, not our bombs and our soldiers. You cannot erase this extremist hatred with death, you can only cure it with knowledge of the conditions in which it grows. As long as those conditions remain, this root contempt for the West, and ultimately the United States, will flourish.
     So, to make a long story short, I responded with the following email. The person in question was extremely offended, and accused me of being high and mighty and hypocritical. I’ll admit that I was a bit heated when I wrote it, but my intentions were sincere. I won’t go into the minutiae of the debate, but I must state for the record that I didn’t mean to be preachy—that’s the last thing in the world I want to be. I was speaking of ideals, of the way we should be, behavior we should aspire to. I never meant that I was perfect in my own views and behavior, but simply that the only way to conquer our problems is to recognize them. The first step to getting along with each other is to realize that so much of our aggression is just reflexive egoism, instinctual and evolutionary holdovers. If we could only understand this, it would be the first step to controlling our tempers and approaching the problems of the world with our hearts and our minds instead of our fists.
     I wrote:

     Peaceful brotherhood among humankind will only come when we stop hating each other. By childishly attributing the acts of a few misguided individuals onto an entire culture, we make the situation worse, not better. It is like a fight between two children repeatedly slapping each other again and again, both of them too ignorant and immature to see that such tit-for-tat retaliation has no end. The only solution is to stop, stand back, and try our best to understand each other. No one does anything out of a desire to be “evil”, all actions by everyone (including ourselves) are performed out of a desire to protect self, family, culture, etc. The fact that the disparate parts of the human population put so little effort into understanding each other’s positions and so much energy into separating, conquering and belittling is the reason that our state of affairs is as dangerous as it is. In fact, you only need to imagine the righteous thoughts of a terrorist as he is killing himself and others to realize how intellectually isolated we are from each other. Think about it—suicide makes sense to him! It isn’t because he is evil, but because he has such desperate issues, issues which we refuse to try to understand. Only empathy can help us to survive this stupid battle, not retaliation. To gleefully forward letters that take such perverse joy in the dissemination of hatred and prejudice is the worst thing to do. The fact that it comes so easily, though, and that so many people will eagerly forward it, feeling strong and proud as they do so, shows exactly why we are where we are. For all our society’s talk of Christian values, the true values that we practice are the values of the rabid dog, quick to foam and eager to bite. Hatred is our passion, bigotry our fuel. Love thy neighbor. Forward that.

     Apart from all the other bits of hell I caught for this, she said to me that I was being foolishly idealistic, that we will never get along with each other. Can you imagine that? To believe that peace and harmony for humankind is a futile wish, the stuff of fairy tales? I disagree with that more strongly than just about anything I’ve ever heard. That she believes that, though, is so bleak, so sad… I just didn’t know what to say to her.
     I believe that our most important goal, our only goal, is for the whole of the Human race to put the heart before the sword. If one truly and sincerely does this, then to swing the sword would be unthinkable. All pain is our own pain, each death our own death.

November 21, 2003
by Peter Patrick Barreda, material copyright 2009, all rights reserved