Mozart and
Muslims
By Dr Akbar Ahmed
Washington, DC
Sept. 28, 2006 - The voluntary
closing of the Deutsche Oper Berlin because of
the anticipated sensitivities of Muslims hearing
about their Prophet’s severed head assumes
great symbolic significance in the age of globalization
in which we live. Images, events and words--as
we saw in the case of Pope Benedict a few days
ago--have the capacity to inflame societies across
the world in a matter of hours.
Although I totally support free speech and freedom
of _expression, and have been saying so publicly,
all of us need to be sensitive to the culture
and traditions of other faiths. I am not talking
of a purely academic or idealistic discussion
but the possibility of people losing their lives
as a result of some perceived attack on faith
made across the world. I believe that the lives
lost and the properties destroyed--including mosques
and churches--after the Danish cartoons controversy
erupted could have been avoided had there been
people of greater wisdom and compassion at the
start of the crisis.
The first crisis that acted as a catalyst in the
context of our discussion was that of Salman Rushdie’s
book “The Satanic Verses.” It appears
that we did not learn any lessons from that controversy.
The West continued to insist on freedom of _expression
and the Muslims continued to insist on their right
to protest when the central figure of their religion,
that is, the Prophet of Islam, was under attack.
Lives were lost and property damaged across the
world. From the Salman Rushdie controversy to
that generated by the pope’s remarks, we
have seen relations between the West and the Muslim
world steadily deteriorating.
The tragic events of September 11, 2001, in one
sense could be viewed as a symptom of this growing
crisis between the two civilizations. Five years
ago, the world was poised at the crossroads: one
road led to a clash of civilizations and another
toward dialogue and understanding. Developments
after September 11 have confirmed in the minds
of millions across the world that there is a global
conflict in progress. Nearly 3,000 American lives
were lost on that day and another 3,000 have been
lost in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is
estimated that tens of thousands of Muslims have
lost their lives in these wars. As a result, an
entire generation of young Muslims is coming of
age that sees the world through the lens of an
ongoing attack on the foundations of its faith.
It is in this context that anything that can provide
these Muslims with an alternative paradigm should
be encouraged. It was the reason why Pope John
Paul II reached out to the Muslim community by
changing the direction of relations between Christianity
and Islam after a thousand years of confrontation.
He visited mosques and apologized for the Crusades,
which won him admiration among Muslims. Another
example is that of my friend Judea Pearl who overcame
the impossible burden of his son’s brutal
beheading in Karachi to reach out and begin a
process of dialogue with the very people whose
society had killed his son.
It is time for Muslims to reciprocate these gestures.
As a Muslim committed to interfaith dialogue,
I would appeal to the president of Iran not to
make provocative remarks about the Holocaust nor
to threaten the Jewish population with extermination.
It is time for all of us to think about the boldness
of the theater owners in Germany. They did, after
all, stop a production of Mozart, the quintessential
iconic Germanic figure, in order to express their
belief in the dialogue of and understanding between
civilizations.
(Akbar Ahmed is chair of Islamic studies at American
University and former high commissioner from Pakistan
to the United Kingdom. He is also author of “Islam
Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor
World.”)
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