Anti-Muslim speech has been curtailed in the U.S. since 9/11 so far as official channels go. Popular sentiment and right-wing radio are another matter. The Bush administration has been chastised for using terms like “war on terror” and ’clash of civilizations” as code for an attack on Islam itself. The Obama administration has tried to erase those phrases. But words don’t cause wars, not directly. They reflect the consciousness of the speaker, which is a much more potent cause of conflict. By his relative silence, Feisal Abdul Rauf is following his long-avowed policy of not getting his hands dirtied with nasty politics. Yet many moderate Muslims have tried this tactic, only to find that they are leaving a vacuum that is quickly filled by extremist voices.
Like attracts like, and in the Muslim world the most powerful magnets are extreme. You are known by the company you keep — so the adage goes — but also by the words you share. When Sarah Palin twitters about stopping the “mosque at Ground Zero,” she knows who will take the bait. Most obviously, it will be her base, but she is also rousing the opposition, people who know that there is no mosque being planned and that the location of Rauf’s Islamic center isn’t at ground Zero. Palin knows this too, but demagogues don’t bother with fact-checking. They want the war of words to continue. Their aberrations are deliberate and crude, mirroring the attitudes of xenophobia and intolerance that are part of their consciousness.
What is difficult here comes down to two things. The first seems hard enough: how to get moderate Muslims to begin to pull their weight against the jihadis. Al Qaeda stands for nothing that would build a future in any Arab country, but circumstances favor the irrational right now. Burgeoning birth rates, a surplus of unemployed young males, and a history of oppressive governments who ignore educational reform — these are familiar obstacles throughout the Arab world. As long as they exist, consciousness cannot rise. When the only book you know is the Koran and it is being interpreted by firebrands in the guise of holy clerics, your future is spelled out in ignorance and hatred of Islam’s enemies.
If the first obstacle seems daunting, the second is worse. Everyone is convinced by their own level of consciousness. How could it be different? You can’t look beyond your own mind, and for all of us, the most powerful beliefs that guide us are hidden; we inherited a vast amount of conditioning from the past that remains unexamined. To overcome the unconscious requires self-awareness. That’s the ultimate solution to the whole Mideast mess. Only if people become self-aware will they look at obvious facts in a new light. It’s obvious that Israel and Palestine must come to an accord that suits both sides. It’s obvious that oil-rich Arab countries could resolve the poverty on the West bank with a fraction of their yearly income. It’s obvious that Iraq and Iran are going to form a Shia alliance one day, that the Iranian bomb is a foregone conclusion, that despotic regimes in the Mideast cannot last forever — and on and on it goes.
Published in the Washington Post/On Faith
Perhaps quality public television could help
Dear Deepak,
It is always a pleasure to read your analysis. I am not sure all of your obvious conclusions about the future will come true or not. It is certainly true that consciousness is what determines reality. It is also true that for the world to avoid a terrible war of religion with 1.5 Billion Muslims against 2.0 Billion Christians, that moderate Islam must survie and flourish here in the USA.
The world has seen religious wars of Pagans against Jews, Christians against Pagans, Christians against Jews,Muslims against Catholics against Protestants,and Muslims against Jews. Technology makes wars much worse now.
Modern technology makes a war with the consciousness of the past a recipe for disaster. Let us embrace the enemy of our enemy. Moderate Islam is the most potent enemy that radical Islam has in the world.
All three Abrahamic religions have as their source the experience of love and peace that Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed shared with the Divine. How can three religions founded on love and peace have such a history of warfare?
Consciousness of peace and love makes peace and love manifest.
love and light,
Stuart
http://stuartmarkberlin.com
Hello Deepak,
Religious beliefs imo are the sticky glue holding our consciousness hostage and it's prisoner.
For instance, I was reading a book about a very aware, bright, intelligent young woman who adopted a child from Russia. It turned out that this child has autism. Being a child with autism they are very sensory sensitive to sounds and touch. This young woman's religion is Jewish and she gets great comfort in practicing her religion. She wants to share her religion with her child. In order to do so, he must be circumcised. He is two years old and he is autistic so this circumcision will be done on a child who is altra sensitive to touch. Now, maybe, health wise this needed to be done anyway since his being autistic he would have a hard time performing the hygenics necessary to keep himself clean.
My point in this is really about the young woman and the Jewish religious belief that in order "to be Jewish" one needs to be circumcised? Really? There is no flexibility in this? Is this really a truth? Can this really be a truth. Can one be Jewish without being circumcised? There is another belief where in the Jewish faith the "jewish seed" is passed from the mother to the child so if the mother is not of Jewish orgin and the father is, the children are not Jewish. Now, I am only using the Jewish religion as an example because I am reading about it at this time, but all religions have their, what I call, absurd dogmas and beliefs that their followers will uphold no matter how much education or awareness they have rather than confront, try to change or rise the consciousness of their religions. I find it interesting that people will adhere to beliefs and dogmas no matter how non-sensical they are. No matter how unnecessary those dogmas and beliefs are to living one's live with love and care.
This young woman by the way is amazing in caring for her child, it is just the whole religious stuff I am having trouble with.
I could not take seriously a religious belief or tradition that just did not make sense to me. Maybe it is important for people to have something that their consciousness can adhere to rather than to allow their consciousness to free-float.
There are billions of people sticky gluing their consciousness to a religious belief or tradition come hell or high water, both of which our world is experencing too much of at this particualr time.
Looking at our species need for the "sticky glue" it may be consciousness may need the help of nature to unglue itself from beleifs and dogmas that our species truly need to let go of, but, on it's own cannot, will not, for fear of "free-floating" having no-thing to cling to.
Recently, Stephen Hawkings claimed that if humans are to survive they will need to live in space. I think the space suits that man would need in order for that to happen couldn't be manufactured on Mars, as cheaply as they could be in China but you never know.
I think what Stephen meant was that man's consciousness needs to live in "space" not man's body. Man's consciousness needs, in order to survive, to be untethered to beliefs and dogmas that keep it "sticky glued" to hell and high water.
If educated men and women adhere their consciousness to practices, beliefs, and traditions that keep our species under the power and influence of the non-sensical than what hope does mankind have?