The other day an obscene video clip started appearing on the internet. It showed a young woman, from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, being held down by two men and whipped by another. Apart from its barbarity, this treatment of women is not permissible under Islamic (or any) law. I am no expert in any law but I do know that at the core of every religion and all law is the ‘Golden Rule’ – to treat others the way you would like to be treated.
People who try to control others, with barbaric physical punishments, in support of a cause, diminish themselves as human beings and do their ‘cause’ no good at all. The reason for this poor woman’s punishment is not given but it will have been for some alleged breach of Sharia law (as interpreted by the Taliban). Properly administered by well trained and knowledgeable practitioners Sharia law works well – in fact I understand that some aspects of Sharia law were even incorporated into English law during the middle ages (from contact with the Moors in Spain and Portugal and from those who returned from the Crusades). The trouble is that today, and certainly in the Swat Valley, Sharia Law is generally administered by village or tribal elders or by clerics, all with varying standards of education based on problematic, and often fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran.
I appreciate that no one religion, society or grouping of people has a monopoly on ‘goodness’, hence the vast number of religions, divisions within religions, belief systems and cults that are present today. Each claim to have some ‘special’ quality absent from the others and which makes theirs, presumably, ‘better’. Adherents will often go to extreme lengths to support their beliefs and the organisations that promote them. This idea that ‘my religion is better than yours’ gives rise to a ‘them and us’ mentality - those in the fold (us) are ok, because God loves us, but those outside (them) are not ok and are therefore, in some way, lesser beings and are not loved by God. In this regard it may be worthwhile to reflect on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in Gaza; what American troops did at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and with their infamous ‘rendition’ programme; what Islamic extremists did on 11th September 2001 and why the Taliban are fighting in Afghanistan.
I also know that in the name of religion, in the name of God, were conducted some of the most appalling atrocities in history – Christianity was party to some of these, as was Islam. In times passed such behaviour could take place with relative impunity, as it would be known to only a few people, (normally those in authority), who, for self interest, would make sure it stayed that way. The situation today is thankfully quite different. Not that these events do not still occur, but that when they do, they are often disclosed to the broader community by way of the internet. There is also a much wider acceptance of human rights – hence the international (and domestic Pakistani) outrage at this young woman’s treatment.
It beggars belief that in this twenty first century of the current era, some 5 million years after the first proto-humans first shuffled around walking on their knuckles and some 5 billion years after the first forms of life appeared on earth, we still cannot resolve our differences without resorting to violence. We humans have a particular knack of alienating our fellow beings and I am really not sure why - most probably because we adopt the ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality. This ‘allows’ us, with some mental gymnastics, to justify our actions because what we do is in the name of ‘our’ God as defined by our belief system. We conveniently forget or disregard the ‘Golden Rule’ and bring about a great deal of misery thereby. It may serve us, who do disregard the ‘Golden Rule’, to be aware of the consequences – the Law of Cause and Effect cannot be deflected and an ‘effect’ will always be visited upon the perpetrator(s).
To lighten up a bit and to put this in perspective, someone once told me that violence against others is really like committing violence against yourself - if you hit someone a few times they will eventually become annoyed and hit you back. So why hit them in the first place?
You tell me.
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