It is a fact: religion, like sex, is a personal and deeply intimate matter. Those who fail to understand or accept this have understood nothing.
« Since when have you enslaved people when their mothers gave birth to them free?” »
« متى استعبدتم الناس وقد ولدتهم أمهاتهم أحرارًا؟ »
ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb*
Likewise, those who seek to force others have understood nothing of their own religion. Or perhaps their perception of it is already distorted? For all too often, in doing so, they act in contradiction to the very teachings of their own faith.
As for those who engage in excessive proselytism—might they, in fact, be desperately trying to convince themselves, in light of their own existential uncertainties, attempting to compensate for a profound lack of being?
This applies to all religions. The examples are blatant: the rigid Wahhabis, from whom the so-called Salafists emerged, themselves the source of extreme violence. The same can be said of nationalist-Zionist evangelicals in the U.S. and elsewhere, ultra-conservative Catholics (also in the U.S. and beyond), certain Buddhist orders in Myanmar (Burma), Hindu nationalists (Hindutva), Jewish supremacists (currently in power in Israel)—and many more.
All of them, at some point, resort to terror to promote and impose their ideology.
So by what right—if not the will to dominate by force—do they interfere in the private, intimate lives of human beings? This applies just as much to religion as to sexual matters.
And speaking of sex, radicals are not found only on the right, or even the far right—although these may well be the more dangerous. For, as has been widely discussed, there is also radical wokism, as it has taken root in the United States and in parts of Europe, all in the name of equality.
Gender equality? But which genders? Sexual gender—where women are, in many cases, reduced to just that? But not ethnic groups? A focus more on ‘gender’ than on humanity itself?
Yet another self-centered Western vision—at times even self-gendered (true of a number of individuals and small groups)—and indeed a racist one, when it comes to the very notion of ‘gender’.
And what are we now witnessing? Two extremes clashing, to the detriment of the majority—especially real victims—and to the detriment of the stability of nations.
For in truth, extremes often meet—and always at the expense of others.
Footnote
ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (584–644) was a close companion of the Prophet Muhammad. He became the second caliph of Islam, succeeding Abu Bakr, Abd Allah ibn Abi Quhaf (573–634), the Prophet Muhammad’s (570–632) father-in-law.
