Words spoken by our minister Sunday 11 January, following the attacks in Paris. Us and Them I have spent a lot of time this week reading the news. I’m sure that many of you have been keeping up with the terrible story out of France where two extremists murdered cartoonists at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and another murdered a police officer elsewhere. You probably followed the continuing coverage as the suspects were cornered, took hostages, killed more people, and were finally killed by French police. The emotions rolled over me: anger, fear, sorrow, relief, compassion… But before I could hope to figure out how I could understand what was going on, I was bombarded by everyone else’s take on the situation. I’m sure you heard it too. There was anger: There were those who saw the attack as an indictment of all muslims and of Islam itself. To them, immigration is the problem and those people - them - should be barred from coming to western countries - to us - and sent back where they came from if they’re already here. There were other angry voices blaming security - blaming Charlie Hebdo for not having sufficient precautions; blaming the French authorities for not preventing the attack; and blaming the judicial system that works on evidence and deeds rather than suspicion and didn’t imprison the suspects forever. And there was fear - enormous fear: fear on the part of many non-Muslims that they and their loved ones are not safe - that the next attack could strike directly into the hearts of their lives. Who might be the next targets, they asked? Jews? Journalists? LGBT organisations? Anyone with British, American, or French government associations? There was fear from French, British, German, and other Muslims in western Europe - the vast majority of whom disagree with and abhor the violence of the extremists. They know that hostility toward them will increase - that they are less safe now than they were just a week ago. They knew too that no statements of disavowal and condemnation of the violence could fully dissociate the word Muslim from the word Terrorist and take them out of the cross-hairs of the angry. And, it must be admitted, there was joy: amongst some small numbers of Muslims, here and elsewhere, there was satisfaction and celebration that the cartoonists who had insulted their religion had been executed. To them, this was what their religion called for. To this small minority, murder was justice. The past week’s news reminds us that our world is a dangerous and scary place. It has always been a dangerous and scary place. It is worth remembering two important things. First, the number of people killed annually in conflict has dropped tremendously and steadily over the past century. Although news is more immediate and more available so that the horrors that have always been there have become more visible, the world has actually become safer. And second, the vast majority of people are like the Muslim clerk who saved hostages by hiding them in a refrigerator in the cellar of the kosher market in France and not like the extremist who attacked the market and murdered four other innocents. At times like these, we can be tempted to regard one another with fear - suspecting that every person we don’t know would harm us in one way or another if they had the chance. The truth is that most people are like you and me. We have our anger. We have plenty of fear. We worry for ourselves, for our families, and for their futures. We mostly want to be loved and to give love. We feel good when they help people. We do not wake up each day with murder in our hearts. And yet, terrible, terrible things happen in the world. Most human beings need to be conditioned to do terrible things to other humans or even to non-human animals. In war, it is said that most normal people - when faced with the the opportunity to kill the enemy - will be unable to do it. We have an innate sense of compassion, of empathy, of brother and sister-hood. Enabling soldiers to kill people for whom they have no personal enmity requires a careful, deliberate preparation. Most of all, soldiers need to learn to see the enemy as “not like us” - as other, and ultimately to see the enemy as inhuman - as less than human. My ancestry is Jewish. Seventy years ago this month, the Red Army liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. They found there the evidence of industrialized mass murder on a scale never seen before. In all, 11 million people were systematically put to death in the holocaust. 6 million of them were Jews - on of the primary targets of the Nazis. How could it be possible? How could it happen there and how could it happen in places like Cambodia, in the Belgian Congo, in Rwanda, to the Armenians and more? Can can such things happen when we are human and recognise one another as kindred souls? In each case, the victims had to first be seen has less than human - they had to be dehumanised. Only then could they be treated like objects or like the vermin to which they were compared in so many instances. The process begins with “othering” - with coming to understand that “they are not like us.” “They are different” in some unalterable essential way. They don’t feel and ache and love and have compassion and goodness like we do. The other - “them” - can next be depicted as less than human. Think Jews, African slaves, and just about any national enemy in warfare. Think of the propaganda pictures you’ve seen that depict human beings as monsters, as animals, as vermin. Exactly this process is playing out in the news of the past week. Terrorist extremists thought of their targets - cartoonists and Jews - as less than human. It made their actions possible. But it’s not one-sided. To many non-Muslims in the west, Muslims are “other” - not like us. They don’t feel and ache and love as we do. They don’t value life as we do. And it becomes a small step to dehumanize and turn to cruelty. What about those we here - we enlightened lefty folks -are inclined to call monsters - inhuman? The terrorists themselves? What about the right-wing and racist movements in our own country or those in France and elsewhere in Europe? Are we not quick to dehumanise them as well? Martin Luther King, Jr. was born 86 years ago this Thursday. Like Ghandi before him, King took the very challenging path of love. His words: “Darkness can can never drive out darkness; Only light can do that. Hate can never drive out hate; Only love can do that.” These were not empty words. King was determined to live them. When the marchers on Selma Alabama came upon racist troopers manning a barricade, they sang a gospel song to them with modified words: “I love the troopers in my heart, in my heart, I love the troopers in my heart. You cant make me doubt them, Cuz I know too much about them, In my heart, in my heart.” And even the notoriously cruel Sheriff Jim Clark was serenaded in this way: I love Jim Clark, in my heart, in my heart, The original words of the song are about Jesus. Truly. They substituted their oppressors for their God in a song proclaiming their faith. I wish I could tell you that the path of love is a certain and rapid route to world peace and that with a little more love flowers will replace guns and bombs everywhere. We know that’s not true. But we also know that killing or even demeaning our enemies is not and has never been a reliable path to peace. It satisfies vengeance. It provides an outlet for our fury. But it leads to greater anger, resentment, and polarisation in the long run. Us and them become more entrenched, more foreign to one another, and more certain of the “otherness” of their opponents. It is natural for human beings to divide into “us” and “them.” It is natural for “us” to begin to imagine about “them” that they do not feel as we do, and for “them” to imagine the same about “us.” It is time that good people, like King and Ghandi before us, spoke of a different way - a way of love. It is a hard path. It is a path that causes us discomfort as we try to get inside the heart of an enemy. It is an uncertain path and a long road whose end is beyond our own lifetimes if there is an end at all. But we know where the road of anger and dehumanisation leads and we have had enough of that journey. Let us work toward a world where understanding and love are the tools with which we address conflict. May it be so for you.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 12:10:59 +0000
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