Cultures in Collision - or a Call for Renewal?

Rushdie Describes Years In Hiding Under Fatwa

As the amateur film Innocence Of Muslims causes widespread anger, Sir Salman Rushdie discusses the fatwa Iran issued against him.

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One might get ridicule or vitriolic hate for espousing a view that others find offensive - whether they understand it or not! but until Mr Rushdie's experience, no one (in this country or in any other liberal democracy) had received a religiously backed and nation backed death threat along with a willingness to carry it out as if it were not murder but duty to God.

The shock waves are still present as a sense of a sword hanging over our heads if we should be believed to speak of Islam or the Prophet Mohammed in a way that is felt to be offensive. There are cultural tectonic plates that are irreconcilable. The tendency has been an appeasement policy along with a similar mirror mentality arising in the west called; 'war on terror'.

Mr Rushdie was doing similarly to what anyone else in creative writing does, and in a culture that was felt to be finally becoming free of medieval religious dictates. His protection is not a personal favour so much as protecting the values of our culture - such as it has grown them.
But the mind is not as it thinks itself to be and there are many levels and strands to our consciousness, our culture and the world. If your death hangs in the balance of what you say, then make sure that what you say is in the truth of your heart!

Threat of death doesn't invite or command respect for God, but only a veiled obedience to cover a disdain beneath! Power in the world can dictate a form but cannot truly inspire or share or love.
The ones who made the hate video are the same mind as the ones who want to kill 'insulter's of Islam'. They thrive on hating 'evil' as they define it.
Globalisation has many aspects, one of which is that our local mythology no longer stays effectively private and our words can be taken as malevolent attack by those already nursing grievance or hatred within, who have the active willingness and capacity to retaliate.

War is the failure of communication, and is often the way tectonic shifts occur. A willingness to communicate is a great treasure, because we have to put our own self aside to hear and feel the other. Opinions are cheap and voicing the opinions of one's social group as if to be bigger than we are, is also cheap.
Mr Rushdie didn't know that his book would have such a result on his life - and on all of our lives. But if he hadn't wrote it, someone else would have effectively triggered the same response and with similar effect.

For better and for worse we are having to be more conscious with our communication. But if 'correctness' is imposed by threat rather than expressing a shared sense of worth from within, it will all be sterile - that is, devoid of any real communication at all!

The insult of the powerful over the powerless rides roughshod over them, but to those in defiance of such earthly power, retaliation seems a blow against evil.
I feel a Call for a true Cultural renewal - that is - to put our self construct aside and listen and feel for truth that is not of our own thinking, (adopted or otherwise). Within that context, we can give form to what is felt in a way that can find, one step at a time in a true willingness to communicate.

PS:
The subjugation of the dominant global market culture - as personified in the US and Western Europe, has nation states with arsenals of weaponry both financial and hardware of war. No one can realistically 'fight' this and much about it seeks domination and control regardless of the consequences to other peoples including their own! While this pervasive power has tentacles all around the world, it justifies itself by being a better system than what would otherwise prevail - and it gets self validation from seeing the evil in the 'other'.
This imposition of power doesn't justify issuing fatwa, but it does create a broad feeling of antipathy and distrust of the cultures that talk freedom and deal otherwise. Whenever there is a broad feeling or undercurrent of discontent, it becomes a soil in which extremism finds tolerance or support at some level rather than rejection.
All attempts to control life create reaction. The answer is to become conscious of such action and reaction so as to put that script aside and listen in simple trust for a communication of Wholeness. This may sound crazy to those who are addicted to their own thinking - but it is natural to our being.

Blessed indeed is the Messenger of God (by all names and any Name or without name), for Wholeness restores a perspective in which guilt, fear, pain, grievance and loss - are healed. The habit of a mind of reaction persists and is undone one step at a time - as it rises to awareness to be released. This is the crucial part; when it rises in our mind, we take it as our own and act out of accord with the wholeness of our being. This reflects as our experience of life in the world - which is always interpretation. Experience of dissonance is a call to our mind to wake - and not a call to put it on the other and deny or kill it. That kind of old magic does not eradicate guilt - but feeds it in the dark for a brief feeling of alleviation.

To look within is to observe our own mind and see directly - in place of living out the stories and spin that we have constructed in attempt to control our own mind.The baggage of fear and guilt is much more deeply embedded than the surface mind would imagine - and yet is baggage associated directly with the very urge to control.
Growing or restoring trust does not begin with making demand, but with a willingness to listen and a capacity to trust the embodiment of what is felt as a result of truly listening.

When love's messenger is killed

The true religious sense is of a Holiness or Sanctity of being - of which there are no conceptual or symbolic frameworks by which to speak of it that hold the meaning of the experience itself.

Yet cultural structures are created as inspiration grows around such intimately felt truths that can only be truly known through willingness for love's shared presence.

The structural and institutional nature of the human mind that seeks rather for its own righteousness or validation will cover over and blindly usurp the inspiration of Love's presence and guidance with fearful rules that claim authority from a structural interpretation of the revealed Holiness, love or inspiration. And seek to gain a sense of assured personal salvation from fearful punishment by assuming a self appointed role as protector of the true faith.

The living expression of a true faith in the power and sanctity of love is the messenger of God - and requires no outward form or show of the concepts or symbols of God to be love's purpose shared. Love doesn't have to prove itself true in terms of the local culture to be truly love.

It is characteristic of this world and of the mind that is active within it - that fear is worshipped as power - in place of love - and that love is killed in the name of ‘God’.

Terrorism is within our own heart - when we hide rather than share the truth of what is alive and moving as the very desire of our heart - for the sake of a maintaining our sense of security amidst the tyranny of fear.

The depth and complexity of fear in the mind of man should not be underestimated - nor of its capacity to have us acting out our beliefs as ones who ‘know not what they do’. For until we look within and see fear’ deception at work - we will continue to be deceived by it - regardless of our cultural background. We will see our denied and projected guilt and fear in the ‘other’ and hate it to feel better.

The childish mythological and magical aspect of religion - lends itself to fearful manipulation. Those who seek personal advantage through the use of manipulating through inciting fear are themselves deceived by a wish to gain special advantage at the expense of their brothers and sisters.

When we accept the terms set by such a mentality - we lose our own capacity to listen and trust and feel the heart, Whether we are religious or spiritual or humanist in our outward cultural expression.

Righteousness made by man - in God's name - or by any ascribed external authority - is a fearful attempt to validate oneself or one's group. But attacking the position of any who are actively engaging in fear will always validate their perspective.

A true righteousness embodies a demeanour of unselfconscious love - a love that honours and acknowledges itself in others. That inspires and encourages others to awaken from and move through fear. It does not arise from a desire to be personally right but from a willingness to be helpful; to serve and extend love's work - and to share in its fruits.

The opportunity of our times is to awaken from fearful deceit and regain the Meaning of love, which is always beyond reach of the meanings that human minds attempt to make of it - and indeed of the scientific mind that pretends it doesn't exist in a context of intimate relatedness  - but asserts itself as an independent power - all by itself - amidst mechanism and matter - to tame and bend to its will - in order to prevail a while amidst a dead universe in which love is at best a genetically contrived illusion.

Unless there is a movement for sanity that we embody and so becomes a momentum - then insanity prevails and we suffer to live so much less than we are - and amidst such tragic misperception of all that life can hold and share.

Meaninglessness is the trigger for an awakening process in man - but there is little cultural support for this and much liability to interpret blind self interest in others as an evil intent and set up false gods whose power comes from opposing perceived evil.

When the truth is apparently shot, we must beware that we do not believe it. Truth can not BE killed. But trust in our own being can be undermined by fear.

The desire to control and make truth fit our private agendas is the ubiquitous human ‘sin’ of usurping God - in which our own awareness of love is denied or killed by guilt and fear. When the God symbol or concept is used without such awareness of Love's Presence - there is already in some sense a blasphemous act. But this simply calls for correction and NOT for punishment.

Any religion that becomes an embodiment of guilt and punishment is not a joining with love. Where then is its authority?

Whatever our own part - we can listen beyond the mind that loves to hate - and deprive the mind that feeds on conflict - by uncovering an unconflicted response.
I am saying that we can - but it is clear that we can also be sucked into wars and insanity.