Suicide: A
Sin, a Disease, a Vampire or
All Combined - III
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
THE WORLD: A VALE
OF TEARS. The current streak of suicidal missions
carried out in the name of religion, Islam, is similar
to those once carried out in the name of Christianity,
as described by Alvarez: “Stoic claim was
easily assimilated into the religious hysteria of
the early Christians… Christianity, which
began as a religion for the poor and rejected, took
that blood lust, combined it with the habit of suicide,
and transferred both into a lust of martyrdom”
the glorious company of martyrs came to number thousands
of men, women and children….martyrdom was
a Christian creation as much as a Roman persecution”.
In other words, the more powerfully the Church instilled
in believers the idea that this world was a vale
of tears and sin and temptation, where they waited
uneasily until death released them into eternal
glory, the more irresistible the temptation to suicide
became… “Why then live unredeemed when
heavenly bliss is only a knife stroke away? ...
Christian teaching was at first a powerful incitement
to suicide.” Is it not interesting that Islam
in its distorted form, gets abused for exactly the
same reasons by those who are in the business of
suicide industry, as Christianity was once.
The syllabus is the same. The “Martyr/Shaheed”
would be received half-way by a troupe of more than
70 virgins Hoors; he would have an all-season ticket
to Paradise; he would have the power to seek redemption
from the past and future sins, and a free entry
into heaven for all members of his family and close
relatives; he would have the honor to choose a certain
number of his friends within a radius of 4-5 miles
of his residence for placement in the paradise;
he would meet the most envious and noble end in
place of a life full of degradation and humiliation
in this world; his name would remain preserved in
the annals of history for ever; posthumous glory
would bedeck his name for ever. All this would be
his and much more, if he blew himself and “the
Western oppressors and their confederates”
with him.
The Romantics of the 19th Century, however, were
a queer lot. They sowed the idea that suicide was
one of the many prices to be paid for genius. Men
of intellect must have this fashionable trend. Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron were all “half
in love with easeful death”. Suicide permeated
Western culture like a dye that cannot be washed
out. Whatever the outdated laws decreed, it was
never thought of as a criminal act. Melancholy remained
a rationale behind such trends in this era. Spleen
replaced melancholy next. Absurdity and futility
outmoded spleen. In a symposium a question was asked,
“Is Suicide a Solution?” The answers
that came were an emphatic “Yes”. Artists
of great repute developed great fancy for it. Rimbaud
abandoned poetry at the age of twenty, Van Gogh
killed himself, Strindberg went mad, Virginia Woolf
drowned herself; Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan
drank themselves to death; Antonin Artaud spent
years in lunatic asylums; Delmore Schwartz was found
dead in a run-down Manhattan hotel; Joe Orton was
murdered by his boyfriend, also a writer who later
committed suicide; Gorki, Mark Gertler, Jackson
Pollock and Mark Rothko, all these great painters
committed suicide. Hemingway also followed them.
Gifted artists who did not kill themselves were
rare exceptions. The better the artist, the more
vulnerable he seemed to be, became a law in the
Twentieth Century. . Eliot, Joyce, Valery, Pound,
Mann, Forster, Frost, Stevens, Ungaretti, Montale,
Marianne Moore didn’t job the club, but that
did not set the figures right.
IS THERE A SOLUTION? As Durkheim said, suicide is
not an endemic problem; it has its roots in the
society, which in the present times is global in
nature. We have already discussed that neither Christianity
nor Islam promote suicidal trends; in fact, both
emphatically declare it a mortal sin. Some vital
steps, however, need to be taken as early as possible:
1. There should be an unequivocal condemnation of
suicidal killings, with no ‘ifs’ and
‘buts’. No appeasement from any corner,
no half-hearted approach. Pakistan that once gloated
on its happening in Kashmir, is a victim of it itself.
It just backfires on those who father it.
2. The expensive ‘mistakes’ America
has made in Afghanistan and Iraq must be corrected.
The war should be against terrorism, not against
Muslims or Islam.
3. America must encourage a rule of true democracy
in Pakistan and in other countries, and its support
should not be a mere lip-service.
4. In the tribal areas the altruistic suicide trend
finds an easy relevance because people adhere to
the group or clan there. According to the Economist,
June 23, “Perhaps it is carelessness or perhaps
it is just a spell of back luck. Either way, the
spate of Afghan civilian deaths carried by Western
forces is as dangerous as the most callous of Taliban
suicide-bombs.” Even a docile Karzai feels
constrained to say, “Civilian deaths and arbitrary
searches of people’s homes had reached an
unacceptable level”. Despite ‘abject
apologies’ from the Allies, the ‘mistakes’
go on.
5. Not all religious people in the Tribal areas
are extremists. A good majority of them are just
pawns in the hands of foreign extremists, and are
just ‘sympathizers and mourners”. A
strategy must be evolved that brings them back into
the mainstream fold, and are once again linked to
the desire to live. Now they deem death as a good
release from the kind of life they are forced to
live. Poverty is a major factor behind all forms
of extremism.
6. Islam bashing has served a doubly negative purpose:
it has given strength to the extremists in their
propaganda against the West; it has demurred and
dismayed the majority Muslims who are moderate and
progressive. And are as much lovers of freedom and
democracy as the people of the West. Denigration
of Holy personalities, Holy Books and Holy Beliefs,
can never be construed as a sane and logical way
of dealing with extremists. In fact, this is exactly
what they impatiently desire to happen.
7. Since the Red Mosque siege, some 50 soldiers
have been killed by suicide bombers in the Tribal
areas. In the words of Ahmed Rashid, Al-Queda has
found the space and support to regroup in Pakistan’s
tribal areas; the Afghan Taleban have found a safe
refuge in Balochistan and Pakistan Taleban have
spread their propaganda across the Pashtun belt
of northwest Pakistan. It is a very delicate situation.
The country’s survival is at stake. Without
strong political support, which in the past came
from the Mullahs, who have never been a part of
the solution, but a part of the problem, it must
come from the two main political parties whose leadership
remains exiled.
8. Extremism appears to have come full circle in
Pakistan, which makes the task easier to deal with,
but the solution warrants an unswerving and honest
commitment to make no deals with the extremists.
Extremists always find a reprieve through their
religious counterparts who play a double game. It
is through such reprieves that finally they found
haven in the heart of Islamabad. Remember, 80% of
the students in the Red Mosque came from the Tribal
areas.
9. A powerful judiciary should have been an asset;
President Musharraf chose to have confrontation
with it. Correction of mistakes should never have
been as hard as he thinks it is.
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