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Paris Attacks: When Language Inspires Hate and Terror Vs. Hope and Reason

Paris Attacks: When Language Inspires Hate and Terror Vs. Hope and Reason

Last updated on: November 24, 2015 at 6:23 pm by Guest Contributor

Paris Attacks: When Language Inspires Hate and Terror Vs. Hope and Reason 2015-11-24T18:23:45-04:00 Guest Contributor

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“LeCarillon151115” by DangTungDuong at Vietnamese Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Ahmad Khawaja

As the world begins to recover from last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Muslims around the globe have been on the receiving end of misplaced outrage, including right here at home. Mosques have been burnt down, people have been violently assaulted and one UK woman was even pushed into an oncoming train.

These brazen responses serve as a stark reminder of what ignorance is capable of. A few years ago I had the pleasure of reading a book entitled “Looking Like The Enemy” by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald. Gruenewald outlined life as a Japanese-American in World War II-era California. She witnessed random violence, accusations of disloyalty and the events leading up to and including life in the internment camps, one of the darkest chapters in American and Canadian history. One of the major resonating messages from the book was the incremental infringements that led to society’s accepting of Japanese internment.

Although the present conditions do not immediately reflect those of Gruenewald’s, the rhetoric beginning to emerge is alarming. Renewed calls for internment and the wearing of special ID patches by leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination (Donald Trump) are unacceptable and fuels the same misguided vigilantism that the Japanese community were victims of.

Chris Hedges in his book “War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning” writes:

In wartime the state seeks to destroy its own culture. It is only when this destruction has been completed that the state can begin to exterminate the culture of its opponents. In times of conflict authentic culture is subversive. As the cause championed by the state comes to define national identity, as the myth of war entices a nation to glory and sacrifice, those who question the value of the cause and the veracity of the myths are branded internal enemies.

States at war silence their own authentic and humane culture. When this destruction is well advanced they find the lack of critical and moral restraint useful in the campaign to exterminate the culture of their opponents. By destroying authentic culture-that which allows us to question and examine ourselves and our society-the state erodes the moral fabric. It is replaced with a warped version of reality. The enemy is dehumanized; the universe starkly divided between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. The cause is celebrated, often in overt religious forms, as a manifestation of divine or historical will. All is dedicated to promoting and glorifying the myth, the nation, the cause.

The work of authors like Hedges serve as our voice of reason, identifying dangerous language and speaking out before a regret reminiscent of Martin Niemöller’s Nazi-era apology.

The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky writes ironically of a dichotomy between the “wise” and “unwise:”

People appeared who began devising ways of bringing men together again, so that each individual, without ceasing to prize himself above all others, might not thwart any other, so that all might live in harmony. Wars were waged for the sake of this notion. All the belligerents believed at the same time that science, wisdom, and the instinct of self-preservation would eventually compel men to unite in a rational and harmonious society, and therefore, to speed up the process in the meantime, “the wise” strove with all expedition to destroy “the unwise” and those who failed to grasp their idea, so they might not hinder its triumph.

The call to respond to attacks in a “merciless” and “pitiless” manner as French president François Hollande has suggested only serves to strengthen the same demons we seek to defeat (not forgetting Raqqa, the Daesh stronghold, is home to over half a million innocent Syrians unable to escape the conflict). Hollande’s comments support the false dichotomy, contributing to the “Us vs Them” image that empowers Daesh and that results in the misdirected backlash that innocent Muslims are experiencing.

Language, it is evident, has the power to move some to tears and to move others to act. The outpouring of support from many politicians to the Muslim community is comforting. Our allies sharing videos by Mehdi Hasan, Hamza Yusuf and Reza Aslan helps. However, in order to solve our mutual problems, it is important to begin addressing some very real grievances that the global community has. In light of recent world events and in light of the importance of language, I’ve written this poem which is an ode to Dostoevsky’s famous dichotomy and also serves to pay homage to Wilfred Owen, W.H. Auden and Robert Frost.

Paris 2015

No to war in Syria, Iraq, and Crimea,
As they say violence can never silence an idea.

Ten months ago they said the same,
But ideas unchallenged intellectually remained.

We wonder what drives men to do such crimes,
The product of children who fear blue skies.

No books, no schools, no tools to literate,
these hearts deceived begin to militate.

Promised lands taken by helping hands.

A war to end all wars,
A peace to end all peace.

Blind contempt and ardent glory.

“Merciless” and “pitiless,”
Their leaders and ours.

Ahmad Khawaja is a graduate of York University with degrees in Kinesiology and Philosophy and is a community activist based in Toronto, Canada. Connect with Ahmad on Twitter @ahmadk_90. A version of this article originally appeared on the author’s blog.

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