A reflection on Islam, contrition, and responsibility

October 30, 7:08 AMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

Previous Next

9 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Spiritual Life Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

The risk of writing publicly is equal to the privilege: People will be offended, even angered.  Even greater is that people will think.  All this is to be treasured and valued in such a democracy born of healthy contentiousness and freedom of expression.  But when people are wronged, a writer must reflect.

In a recent piece about Pope Benedict and his dealings with the Anglican Church, I lumped the Islamic people as a whole—a proud, ancient yet evolving civilization of millions across the globe—with that segment of Muslims who are associated with terrorist or threatening activities and ambitions.  

This is an unfair and untoward evaluation, lacking in value or truth, serving no purpose other than to exacerbate the already tragic confrontations of enmity and distrust that permeate our world.

I regret this, plain and simple, just as I would regret (and have often condemned) the inequitable linkage sometimes made between ultra right-wing fundamentalist Jews who would “expel” Palestinian populations from the West Bank to “the Jews” as a whole.

I love history, and fight for its integrity and its literacy among young people and adults in times when things such as language, facts, chronicles, even spelling are being crushed by cyber-devastated attention spans, too many instant authority figures, knowledge-reductive 24-hour news services, and a nauseating idolatry of shallow and inane celebrity figures.  One becomes passionate about truth and right and what really happened; one comes out of the Vietnam era and sees the same dreadful patterns and the same good nation now so depressed and hyper-vigilant.  Guess what: It does not permit the wanton profiling, unwittingly or not, of any of God’s children.

That is not what the moral example of M.L. King taught me.

Let me reiterate that all “comments” that are not racist or inflammatory will always stand under this column.  Meanwhile, "the truth" lies somewhere in between the layers of pain, subjectivity, and human experiences. Also--this is America.

Incidentally, an examination of my over 330 Examiner essays will reveal a number of nuanced pieces about the heartbreaking Israel-Palestinian conflict.  Nonetheless, I remain very proud and unapologetic about the singular achievements of Zionism in raising a people from near extinction to life and creativity. I lived there as a child and smelled the orange groves. It was the smell of hope and rebirth; woe onto both sides that the groves have been burning. 

But I do apologize for having unnecessarily offended a lot of good folks in my own recent zeal.

 www.benkamin.com