Communal Egos and Inter-Community Conflict
There was once a man who was very strict with his children. He used to constantly scold them. No one had ever heard him speaking kindly with them. His children were so terrified of him that they did not have the courage to even open their mouths in front of him. As soon as he entered the house, they would fall silent and run away.
One day, the man climbed up to the terrace of his house. When he got there, he saw, to his shock, one of his sons perched high up on an electric pole. The boy’s kite had got stuck on the electrical wire and he was trying to get it down by climbing the pole. As soon as the boy saw his father, he was terrified. But, instead of shouting at the boy as he normally did, the man spoke to him very gently.
“Son, what are you doing there?” he asked. Then, very lovingly, he requested the boy to slowly climb down the pole.
Later, the man related this incident to somebody, explaining, “I smiled and spoke in a very gentle manner with my son because I feared that if at that delicate moment I scolded him, he would fall down and injure himself, or worse. This delicate situation compelled me to speak to him sweetly, contrary to my habit.”
This example has valuable lessons, not just at the individual level but also at the social level. It applies to entire communities, too, just as it does to individuals. If you are conscious of the sensitiveness of a situation and are very careful and concerned about it, your awareness, care and concern will compel you to exercise tolerance, rather than to get agitated and angry. It will impel you to avoid confrontation, and in this way you will be able to move ahead. Instead of getting stuck in a debate about who is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, you will focus on trying to solve the problem you are confronted with.
If, however, you are not conscious of the delicateness of the situation you are confronted with, you will, start screaming at seeing your son perched atop an electric pole, as it were, even if this means that because of this he will fall down and break all his bones.
The whole of human history testifies to the fact that if a person is sincere about something, his approach and behaviour will be different, totally contrary to that of a non-serious person. Only a sincere person will be willing to realize the significance of the issues he is faced with. Only such a person will be able to properly appreciate the delicateness of a situation that he finds himself placed in. In contrast to a sincere man, an insincere man will refuse to accept any evidence or argument that does not suit his way of thinking. He will use every means to rebut this evidence, raising all sorts of unrelated and irrelevant debates in order to obfuscate matters. If someone convincingly answers his arguments, he will set off a new debate, simply in order to refuse to change his stance. Such a person is unwilling and unable to see things as they are.
Once, I met some Muslims from a certain town. Some days before this, a small inter-communal riot had erupted in that town. As is my wont, I spoke about the need to act with patience. But the men said, “In our town, Muslims did not do anything provocative. It was people from the other community who unnecessarily started fighting with us.”
I asked them how the riot had started.
They replied, “In our town, there is a mosque. Just next to it is a place of worship of our non-Muslim brethren. When we placed a loudspeaker in the mosque to announce the call to prayer, the non-Muslims began ringing bells at the time of their prayers. The sound of the bells could be heard inside the mosque. And so, we told these people, ‘Please don’t ring your bells while we are praying.’ But they did not listen to us. When we repeatedly asked them to stop ringing their bells, they got angry. And that is how the riot started.”
I said to the men, “What Shariah-related issue is this that you insist that during the Muslim prayer-time a non-Muslim should not ring a bell in his place of worship? Such a thing is mentioned neither in the Quran nor in the Hadith. Neither have any of our scholars of Muslim jurisprudence made any such claim. In fact, not a single Muslim ruler ever issued a command that when it is time for the Muslims to pray, non-Muslims cannot play their trumpets or ring their bells in their places of worship. This being the case, why did you get so agitated about this matter? If someone rings a bell, let him do so. It doesn’t cause any disruption for Muslims in their prayers. Nor has the Shariah made it incumbent on us to ensure that bells aren’t rung during our prayer-time.”
The men did not accept my point, however. Although they had no answer to the evidence that I had cited, they kept harping on their argument very zealously.
In India, most communal riots are triggered off by such small incidents. What is the reason for this? When the Islamic Shariah has not ordered us to stop non-Muslim processions passing by our mosques with their music and singing, and when it has not commanded us to prohibit non-Muslims from ringing bells in front of our places of worship, why do Muslims want to do so?
The reason for this is entirely communal, not religious. As a result of the politics of a hundred or more years, Muslims have turned such things into a supposed symbol of their communal honour. They have made them a question of their honour. If a non-Muslim procession playing music passes by their mosque, they take it as a personal insult. And if they manage to stop the procession, they imagine they have boosted their community’s prestige.
This is an entirely un-Islamic approach. God and His Prophet certainly do not prescribe this. It is only their own egos that instigate some Muslims to behave in this manner. Their egos want to provoke them against other people, people who Muslims should be to inviting to God. These Muslims’ egos stoke the fires of communal hatred and make sure that they can never relate to others as Muslims should, because when Muslims and others are divided by intense suspicion and hatred, the task of dawah, inviting others to God, which Muslims should engage in, can never happen. Needless to say, far from being rewarded by God for stoking communal conflict, it is very much possible that by giving their communal foolishness a so-called ‘Islamic’ label, such Muslims will be punished by God.
