I read on my Facebook news feed, a guy commenting on a group page about forbidding mosques in Sweden to have their call of prayer (the adhan) broadcasted in speakers so that people in the surrounding areas can hear. It’s become kind of a buzz thing, and I now and again see people writing about it on my Facebook news feed. Mostly what they write is pure racism and prejudice. And usually it’s not even about the prayer calls, not really, it’s just used as an excuse to write bad (and false) things about Islam. I understand why someone would want to have a discussion about the prayer calls on the account of them being a kind of public disturbance – but that’s also where the discussion should end. It rarely does, though. It always ends up being about Islam not being part of the Swedish culture, that we shouldn’t let Musilms take over our society and that we shouldn’t encourage those inherently brutal Arabs.
What made me react in this particular guy’s comment was what he wrote about Islam and war. That we shouldn’t allow the prayer calls, because that would be another step in letting Islam spread in our society (as if it was a disease) – and this spread is something we should really be worried about. He wrote that it’s not chance that the wartorn regions in the world are concentrated to Muslim countries and Muslim movements.
And I just couldn’t believe him. This guy, I don’t really know him, he’s a friend of a friend and I only met him a couple of times back in my late teens, but I got the impression that he was a smart and sensible guy, really into music and kind of considerate. I thought that he would be the kind of guy who could check his facts before he went out in the world and started to preach mistrust and arguing for political change. I guess I was mistaken.
But yeah, it’s the war thing. I spend my days reading about war, listening to lectures about war, discussing war. I am on high alert, always scrutinizing peoples statements about war, trying to tell them about the latest in research on the subject if their views lack foundation in fact. So maybe I’m overreacting here. It just annoys me, that people care so little about supporting their beliefs with facts, with science. They just believe, and that becomes their world.
Because, the facts are these: the majority of the worlds armed conflicts are in Africa, even though the mass media in Sweden seems to want us to believe that it’s in the Middle East. A pretty large number of these conflicts are about religion, that is true, and are fought between parties that have different beliefs – but all of them are not Muslims. We have the Christian extremists in Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and the rebels in South Sudan, who are Christian/animist. To name a couple. So you can’t say its only the Muslims.
What you can say, though, is that what most of the conflicts in Africa, and in most other parts of the world, have in common, is that they persist in countries where the states are extremely weak or corrupt or marginalizing. From my perspective, it seems like it would be easier to blame the politics than the religion. All the lecturers I’ve had this far would probably agree – they always end up blaming it on the politics.
Claming that wars are caused by Islam because some of the world’s conflicts are justified by claiming it’s for Allah, is like saying that because the majority of murders are committed by men, men in general are murderous. As an argument, it just doesn’t hold. Not with the empirics currently at hand. If anything, just look at the bloody, brutal history of Christianity. People always find ways to justify their violence in their pursuit of power, money, or bare survival. Looking at the justifications won’t solve the problem. If anything, blaming the justifications will only make the situation worse.
I should probably communicate this somehow to that Facebook acquaintance of mine. But I fear it’s a battle I’ve already lost. I don’t think I would be able to convince him. Tonight, I feel pretty pessimistic about the world. So instead, I write. To get rid of my frustration.
Katja Malmborg 