In the wake of “Je Suis Charlie” there is a lot of self-righteous “My God is better than your God” chest pounding going around making Islam a hoodlum religion with baggy pants. Let’s everybody take a breath. Christians, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, and the many splintered angry offshoots of the same.
I am not an Islamic scholar, but it only takes a moment to reflect upon the fact that in the Muslim faith Jesus is considered a prophet born of a virgin, died and resurrected. Recognizing Jesus as a prophet is a basic tenet of the religion.
If you want to talk religion, I haven’t heard the Christians honor Muhammad as part of their religious teachings. Toss an olive branch, perhaps. A moment of silence. A prayer of peace. I don’t know. I’m just sayin’.
As for the violent religion, America is a Christian nation and Dr. King said it best: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own government. I cannot be silent.”
Both religions ask us to love one another.
Muhammad said, “You will not enter paradise until you have faith. And you will not complete your faith until you love one another.”
Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”
As far as I know, neither Jesus nor Muhammad pronounced an addendum to exclude certain people: Jews, anarchists, hippy socialists, Republicans, dark people, atheists, gay people, the man who cut you off on your way to work, or the sister that you haven’t spoken to in seven years. It is just a simple. “Love one another.”
Jesus told us that if we have fed “the least of these” we have done it to him. Muhammad says, ‘He is not a perfect Muslim who eats until he is full and leaves his neighbor hungry.”
For those people itching for a Holy War, I think it is safe to say that you can leave Jesus and Muhammad out of it. I love to hear the pundits, intellectuals and activists lobbing verbal grenades at one another from the left and the right, each claiming superior moral authority over the “Charlie” outrage, or Ferguson, or whatever the horror du jour might be. They have time to think up pithy slogans and tortured intellectual hyjinks because they have a home to go to. They are fed well everyday. Their children are fat and warm.
There are others who are not so fortunate as to be parsing the words of the Holy Koran or the Bible. They have no home to go to. Astute Biblical or Koranic phrases do not feed their bellies. Their children die of starvation in their arms. They never heard the phrase, “Je suis Charlie” because they are “Je suis hungry.”
The United Nations Food and Agriculture organization estimates that nearly 870 million of the 7.1 billion of God’s children on the earth are starving. In Asia and Latin America the numbers are waning because of socio-economic reforms but in Africa and the developed countries those numbers are on the rise.
Some 1 billion people live on $1.25 a day and 2 billion people live on $2 a day. They are probably not enjoying electricity, good schools, a bank account, safe water and access to medical services. They are not watching Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow, getting a shot of Starbucks to start their day, talking about TGIF, thank God it’s Friday and who’s down for Happy Hour.
They are not contemplating the intricacies of oppression and capitalism. Or whether “Black lives matter” is a racist slogan. But then again, many of the radical jihadists who choose heaven over earth come from the disaffected and disenchanted that have nothing left to lose. Are they hungry? Are they malnourished? I don’t know, but I know that they thirst for justice. They seek revenge against the greed, smug bigotry, arrogance and disdain of the “developed world” that would see them as invisible. They send a message in blood and die a martyr’s death to get to heaven. People across the globe, victims of a bloated system that profits off the backs of the weak and the poor, whether it is the American prison industrial complex or capitalist ventures at home and abroad, are rising up. The Ferguson tragedy, the police murder of Michael Brown, ignited international protests. China, Egypt, Germany, North Korea, Russia, Turkey said “enough.” Islamic jihadists promised to recruit in the Ferguson community.
As I write these words, my belly is full and my home is warm. Starbucks is right around my corner. Armed with all my slick American privilege (even as a black woman in the world) I have no clever ways to tell you that every 15 seconds that I write this, I have allowed another child to starve to death. All I can say is that I gave a dollar twice today because someone on the street asked me. I loved my neighbor. I did that.
What are you going to do?
2 Comments
Aha! As I suspected, only someone who had read all of the ‘Books’–and not just the one handed them by their parents, would have such sentiments! My own response to 9/11//01(after remembering 9/11/73) was to re-read the Koran. So, thank you, Auset. By the way–Jesus’ miracle of feeding everyone at the Mount. He knew there were folks who came with nothing, but others came packing, but not showing what they had tucked away in their robes. So if you put a loaf and a fish in a basket and handed it to someone who you knew was holding and would like to be spared the embarrassment, they might sneak more into the basket than they appear to take out…. If only. In RT.com, they just reported that the majority of kids in public schools now qualify for help with meals at school. It’s chilling (in Hell)… Keeping the faith. Peace, Howard
Yes, Auset. Thank you.