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When we speak about tolerance we
speak about something very minimalist, very negative and very
passive, said Abul Magd.
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Abul Magd further said he finds the word tolerance
derogatory of Islam.
When we speak about tolerance we speak about
something very minimalist, very negative and very passive, he said in an
impromptu speech before the seminar, which is part of a UN-sponsored
series on Unlearning Intolerance.
What we are aiming at is such more positive (sic)
than the mere tolerance. Usually you dont tolerate something you admire
or like but you tolerate something you are going to live with although you
do not like.
Abul Magd added peoples of the world need to act in
unison make life on this planet more peaceful and more enjoyable. So we
need each other to join hands in a common effort.
We need to use other terms other than tolerance and
the same goes for co-existence.
Abul Magd further regretted that the west all of a
sudden has forgotten the remarkable contributions and cooperation Islam
has made to the humankind.
Now we are faced with depicting Islam as a threat to
the march of progress, democracy, modernism and peace
The sadness in this
irony or paradox is that we are made to forget a long history of
cooperation not only in past ages but also in the last century
the last
half century.
He could we forget, for example, during the World War
II all Muslim countries and the Arab world sided with allied forces
against [then Nazi] Germany and helping the so-called free world to curb
the growing influence of communism and Marxism? He wondered.
How could we forget the role played by Islam as a
faith, a system of law, a code of values and a code of ethics?
(Click here to listen to Abul Magads
speech on the UN Web site).
A Matter of Hatred
Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington
University in Washington, DC, also questioned the use today of the suffix
phobia, saying that when Islam rose and covered land from France to
China within one century, the Christian West had a fear of Islam that was
both religious and political, according to the UN Web site.
By contrast, the non-Islamic world today was very
powerful from many points of view. Unfortunately, the reservoir of
historical consciousness had been resurrected and Islamophobia was not
only a question of fear, but also a matter of hatred, he said in his
keynote speech posted by the UN News Center.
Muslims were not trying to be aggressive, they were
trying to be themselves, he added, but in many areas that effort had led
to fanaticism and the fanaticism on one side was feeding the fanaticism on
the other side.
In analyzing Islamophobia, therefore, it was
important to take into account not only the role of extremism in Islam,
but also the role of extremism among Christians and Jews, Nasr
said.
Frequently Distorted
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Prof. Nasr also questioned the use
today of the suffix phobia.
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Opening the seminar, Annan said that seeing Islam as a
monolith, and distorting its tenets are among the many practices that
now make up the term Islamophobia.
Islam's tenets are frequently distorted and taken out
of context, with particular acts or practices being taken to represent or
to symbolize a rich and complex faith, he told the seminar.
Some claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy,
or irrevocably hostile to modernity and the rights of women. And in too
many circles, disparaging remarks about Muslims are allowed to pass
without censure, with the result that prejudice acquires a veneer of
acceptability.
He said that no one should underestimate the
resentment and sense of injustice that members of one of the world's
great religions, cultures and civilizations felt as they looked at
unresolved conflicts in the Middle East, the situation in Chechnya and the
atrocities against Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.
Like other religions, the Islamic world grouped
together modernizers and traditionalists and the most populous Muslim
countries are not Arab, but are located in non-Arab Asia, from Indonesia
to part-Asian, part-European Turkey, Annan said. (Click here to read Annans speech in
full).
