Climate of Fear (8 page)

The event was the elaborate inauguration of the project Dialogue of Civilizations at the United Nations headquarters in New York, attended by several heads of state, other world leaders, intellectuals, ministers of religion, and so on. There it was that President Khatami of Iran, the main sponsor of the project—in partnership with UNESCO—delivered a most enlightened speech, one that, I am certain, took his audience by surprise. On the minds of most of that audience, including mine, was unquestionably the keen awareness that we were listening to the leader of the same nation that, not quite a decade earlier, had imposed on the world a new era of fear by a unilateral appropriation of the power of life and death over any citizen of our world as it pronounced a death fatwa on the writer Salman Rushdie for his alleged offense against his religion, Islam. A major religion, deservedly classified as one of the world religions, but, just the same, only one of the structures of transcendental intimations, or superstitions, known as religion.

It is not my intention here to pursue the rights and wrongs of the province of the imagination, certainly not my intention to berate or defend a writer accused of disrespect or insensitivity toward religious belief. My concern today is simply to call attention to the contrasting activities of the leadership of that country, Iran, in a truly elevating mission to restore dialogue to its rightful place as an agent of civilizations. Also, it is necessary to remind ourselves that the consequences of that precedent of a global incitement to murder are still very much with us, a poisoned watershed in the relationships between and within nations. It has contributed, to a large extent, to the very condition of global intolerance, bigotry, and sectarian violence to whose dismantling an elected Iranian leader now committed himself in the halls of the United Nations. All over the world, with a frequency, frenzy, and impunity that did not exist before the Salman Rushdie affair, a Friday sermon in a mosque over a real or imagined slight has led to mayhem in normally harmonious communities, in places stretching from Kaduna and the Plateau state in Nigeria to hitherto obscure Indonesian regions such as Aceh. Some may consider this timing a coincidence; if so, it is a coincidence that some of us did anticipate and openly predict at international gatherings.

A dismal instance within my own nation, Nigeria, was that of the deputy governor of a largely Muslim state in the north, Zamfara, who catapulted his boss, for whom he was only a mouthpiece, into international notoriety by this mimic route, pronouncing a killing fatwa on a young journalist. Her crime? A comment that the Prophet Muhammad did not lack an eye for beauty in womanhood. This alleged insult, in addition to claims of provocation in the staging of a Miss World beauty pageant, whose so-called female immodesty a handful of zealots insisted was an affront to their religious sensibilities, led to the destabilization of the country's capital city, Abuja, and the unleashing of an orgy of death and destruction that stunned the world in its mindlessness and ferocity. Like a number of others around the globe, mine was a nation that, once upon a time, indeed as recently as forty years ago, could offer herself as a model of tolerance, but has suffered, in the intervening period, a spate of religion-motivated violence on an unprecedented scale, and is fast becoming only another volatile zone of distrust, unease, and tension.

We have a duty therefore to use every opportunity to disseminate efforts that counteract such moments of divisiveness and retrogression. President Khatami's challenge has been taken up in several fora, even to the extent of the emergence of a permanent NGO— Dialogue of Civilizations. Still lacking, however, is a manifest global commitment, especially a sustained and dynamic reciprocity from rival cultures and religions. The word, of course, is “dynamic”—perhaps I should even use the word “aggressive.” The globe needs to be saturated, almost on a daily basis, with such encounters. There have been a number, admittedly, including one in Georgia of the former Soviet Union, under the same rubric as Dialogue; another in Macedonia. Others have taken place within Iran as well. I participated in one in Abuja, Nigeria, in December last year, the scene of the religion-instigated massacre to which I earlier referred.

Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is
the right to life.
One of my all-time favorite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, “There is no lavender word for lynch.” Now, that is one line I would not mind converting to the service of rhetorical hysteria. It leaves no room for the continuation of the culture of impunity currently enjoyed by sacred but unholy cows.

Our experiences in Nigeria—shared by numerous others—testify to the frequency of the lamentable conversion of the mantra of piety to the promotion of the most hideous form of impiety, which, in my catechism, translates as the slaughter of other human beings in the cause of religious or any other conviction. For those of us who grew up in an atmosphere where the first dawn sounds that lulled one out of sleep were the sounds of the muezzin—the jarring loudspeakers had not yet been co-opted—calling his flock to the first prayer of the day, soon to be intermingled with the chant of the Christian creed from the catechist's household next door, it is an agonizing reversal to watch the faces of fanatics slavering after blood under the mandates of those same incantations. Those of us who are unlikely ever to be found intoning, either alone or amidst a congregation, those familiar spiritual calls such as
Praise Jesus, Hallelujah, Allah
akbar, Hare Krishna,
and so on should at least be permitted to retain whatever memories we have of these religions in their nonaggressive states, share the inspirational value that others clearly derive from them, and indeed continue to nurse even a fragmented faith in their potential for human regeneration. But we also have a duty to challenge a general reluctance to inquire why the adherents of some religions more than others turn the pages of their scriptures into a divine breath that fans the random homicidal spore to all corners of the world. Political correctness, itself an immobilizing form of hysteria, forbids the question, but, for those of us who prefer politically incorrect discourse to politically correct incineration or other forms of complicity in our premature demise, this question must be given voice: just what is it that turns the mantra of a beatific chant of faith, such as
Allah akbar,
into a summons to an orgy of death? Why did Martin Scorsese's
The Last Temptation of Christ
arouse violent reactions, condemnations, and exhortations to boycotts, as has more recently Mel Gibson's
The Passion of
the Christ,
but not a universal outcry for the murder of the cinéastes, or of those who dared participate in these interpretative exercises?

The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times. Even after half a century, films that touch upon the era of Nazi glorification, with their orchestrated chant of
Sieg heil,
continue to send a chill of apprehension down the spines of all with a historical memory. Scenes of mass religious frenzy increasingly resurrect these nightmares, and if Khatami's inspired Dialogue of Civilizations leads, eventually, to the dissociation of the chant of millions to the greatness of God from the gross ultranationalist politics lodged in the chant of
Sieg heil,
we will have lifted one corner, a not inconsiderable one, of the shroud of fear that now envelops life, and humanity.

Four

The Quest for Dignity

The Times
newspaper of London, on Saturday, February 21 of this year, carried the story of the suicide of a teenager in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Apparently, it should have been a double suicide, but that youth, after yet another bout of humiliation from his tormentors, decided that he simply could not wait. He was one of a close-knit group of seven, the report continues, who had attended school together and continued to spend all their spare time together. Of the seven, only two still survive. The motor accident that earlier took the lives of three of them may not have been deliberate, but it is on record that one of those three had also once attempted suicide. All lived in fear of some degrading punishment by the local vigilantes known as the INLA. In one case, a fourteen-year-old boy suspected of being a police informer was tarred and feathered, dragged through the streets, then “kneecapped”—that is, shot through the back of the knee, crippling the youth for life. Here is what a consulting psychiatrist in north Belfast had to say:

In a culture where it is acceptable for a young man to be dragged down an alleyway and shot, children grow up believing there is no such thing as respect for human dignity. They . . . often develop anxiety and a fatalistic approach to their own lives.

Now, why did the psychiatrist settle on that word “dignity” over others in his clinical notebook? Why had this youth—as had others—chosen to embrace death rather than live but be publicly tarred and feathered and/or kneecapped, subjected thereafter to cruel taunts by his own-age mates—we learn—who called out to the fourteen-year-old, knowing he had been crippled, “Come out, Barney, come out and play”?

We are trying to come to grips with the concept of “dignity,” and why it appears to mean so much to the sentient human, almost right from childhood. Why has it been entrenched in so many social documents across cultures, civilizations, and political upheavals? Why was it given such prominence in the charter that resulted from one of the bloodiest revolutions in human history—the French—and was further enshrined in the document for the enthronement of peace after the Second World War, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? In one form or another, the quest for human dignity has proved to be one of the most propulsive elements for wars, civil strife, and willing sacrifice. Yet the entitlement to dignity, enshrined among these human rights, does not aspire to being the most self-evident, essential need for human survival, such as food or physical health. Compared to that other candidate for the basic impulse of human existence—self-preservation—it may even be deemed self-indulgent.

Here is another incident from real life, involving, this time, not an individual but a nation, an attempt at breaking out from a walling in, a contesting of the reduction of volition, this time largely of the economic kind. About six years ago, I was approached by a Cuban ambassador to Nigeria with whom I had developed a warm relationship. He felt that I might know some influential individuals within the United States government or in the intellectual circles that relate to its policy makers. His government, he informed me, was anxious for a resolution of the state of undeclared war between the two nations (these formal and informal probes are part of public knowledge, so I am not revealing any privileged communication). Cuba had weathered the general economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. reasonably well, he said, but after the infamous Torricelli Act, whose provisions extended the ban on trade with Cuba even to her existing foreign partners, threatening them with sanctions unless they severed such relationships, that small island began to feel the economic stress of claustrophobia, and sought diplomatic means of breaking the deadlock.

The ambassador said, Cuba is ready to meet and talk with the U.S. on any platform, formal or informal, with no preconditions—oh, except one:
Cuba will not compromise her dignity.
It struck me as a remarkable statement, even then. We are a small people, he declared, we are powerless compared with the United States, but we will not compromise our dignity; we would rather starve to death.

That declaration—
We
shall not sacrifice our dignity
—is very much the language of nations, or states, to one another. During conflict negotiations or their aftermath— and I refer here to those unpublicized sessions, familiar to arbitrators—that phrase, an insistent, minimal appeal, surfaces with remarkable constancy, even when all else has been surrendered: let us leave these negotiating chambers with, at the very least, our self-respect. It is very much the historic cry of a defeated people, defeated either through a passage of arms or on the diplomatic field, when they discover that they have no more bargaining chips left. What their representatives are saying is simply: the very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent. Yes, we are compelled to make peace, we submit to force majeure, but leave us at least a piece of clothing to cover our nudity. This is the motivation behind every formula of diplomatic contrivance that is sometimes described as face-saving, and wise indeed is the victor who knows that, in order to shield his own rear from the elements, he must not denude his opponents.

Considerations of this intangible bequest, dignity, often remind me of a rhetorical outburst in the United Nations by a Nigerian representative—no, that desperate rhetoric did not lead to hysteria as identified in an earlier lecture, except if one chooses to remark the barely suppressed hysterical laughter in the hallowed halls of the General Assembly. The occasion was the nation's arraignment before the General Assembly on charges of violations of human rights and the denial of democracy under the dictatorship of General Sanni Abacha. In what our apologist must have considered the definitive argument on the subject, he challenged his listeners to combat in more or less the following words:

What exactly is this democracy, these human rights that we're talking about? Can we
eat
democracy? The government is trying to combat hunger, put food into people's stomachs, and all we hear is democracy, democracy! Human rights! What exactly is this democracy? Does it prevent hunger? Is it something we can put in the mouth and eat like food?

I felt bound to come, quite unnecessarily, to the defense of the United Nations and wrote an article in response, remarking that I had dined in the cafeterias and restaurants of the United Nations on occasion, and had never seen democracy on the menu, nor indeed on any menu in restaurants all over the world. So, what, I demanded, was the point of that statement?

Well, while democracy as such may not be on the UN restaurant menu, it is nonetheless on its catering agenda. So is human dignity. Needless to say, both are inextricably linked. Indeed, human dignity appears to have been on everyone's menu since the development of the most rudimentary society, recognized as such by philosophers who have occupied their minds with the evolution of the social order. Nothing is more fascinating, but permanently contentious, than the kind of binarism attributed to the motoring force of the evolution of this order by Hegel, Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Locke, among others. The historic man, according to these thinkers, would appear to be a product of a choice between abject submission or bondage, on the one hand, for the sake of self-preservation, and, on the other, a quest for dignity, even if this leads to death. Karl Marx, for his part, felt compelled to distance himself from their deductions, yet even he refused to ignore the importance of that element, human dignity, naming it as a reward that comes naturally with the evolution of man whose labor is un-governed by necessity. That is the phase when it becomes possible to celebrate
the dignity of labor.
What for us is worth noting today is simply the prodigious output of numerous minds on this theme, nearly all of whom emphasize that the pursuit of dignity is one of the most fundamental defining attributes of human existence.

We could utilize the animal kingdom as our entry point: I have listened sometimes to comparisons of household pets in terms of dignity—a cat, for instance, is usually accounted to be extremely dignified in comparison with a dog. The former is regarded thus because it is aloof, independent, and deliberate in its motions, while the dog exhibits traits of fawning, dependency, and easy excitation. These judgments are of course taken from what human beings have extracted from their own patterns of social conduct. Thus, a predator stalking through the jungle, a “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,” in those luminous lines of William Blake, is often regarded—especially in
National Geographic
and by conservationists—as the very epitome of dignity, but watch it when it is devouring its prey or snarling at interlopers and I believe that all thought of dignity is forgotten. I think also that we would all agree that there is not much dignity to be found in the execution of one of those natural functions that even the most exalted, elegant, and “dignified” among us cannot avoid. Or indeed when we are indulging in that activity that guarantees the continuation of the species, but is mostly undertaken simply for the ecstasy of losing ourselves in another being.

Obviously we cannot remain within those parameters of poise, balance, rhythm, control, and so on, those attainments that are within the capability or trainability of the animal family, of which our species happens to be a part—a unique species whose social rituals and conduct have defined it further and further away from the rest of the larger family since the beginning of evolution. Today, we can hardly conceive of the individual outside the membership of a socialized group that constantly reinvents itself; we do not equate ourselves with some static organism under observation in a permanently controlled setting, or indeed with a “dignified” animal in a zoo. Thus, it is within human relationships that the essence of a human attribute, such as dignity, is most meaningfully sought, not within the self as some mystic endowment, but as a product of social interaction. It is futile to seek out evidence of dignity in the life of an anchorite communing in the wilderness with only birds, reptiles, and the elements for company. The essence of dignity that is unique to humanity is manifested through the relations of one human being to another, one human being to the family, clan, or community, in the relations between one collectivity and another, however defined, including race relationships.

Regarding this context of relationships, however, one common reductionism that also courts dismissal is that of conduct under suffering. Superficially, acceptance or resignation may appear to convey dignified bearing. Would we, however, place a victim of torture, or of rape, within this category? Definitely, what the very act of violation achieves is to rob the victim of that inherent, individualized, yet social property that answers to the name of “dignity.” Something is taken away with the act of violation, and that innate entitlement is not restored by one's ability to fulfill social or theological expectations that belong to fortitude. There is no such being as a dignified slave, with or without the tarring and feathering that appears to have been appropriated from the Jim Crow culture of America for the contemporary humiliation of Irish youths in that territory of unrelenting anomie. When the being that is labeled “slave” acquires dignity, he has already ceased to be a slave.

The Yoruba have a saying:
Iku ya j'esin lo.
This translates literally as “Sooner death than indignity.” It is an expression that easily finds equivalents in numerous cultures, and captures the essence of self-worth, the sheer integrity of being that animates the human spirit, and the ascription of equal membership in the human community. This does not in any way belittle other human virtues—integrity, love, tenderness, graciousness, generosity, or indeed the spirit of self-sacrifice. Dignity, however, appears to give the most accessible meaning to human self-regarding. Its loss, in many cultures, Japan most famously, makes even death mandatory, exile coming as a second best.

To offer some intimation, at this stage, of our ultimate destination, let us remind ourselves that, as with individuals, so it is with communities and nations. Equally, to identify with a community beyond the self is to take upon oneself the triumphs and humiliations, the glories and mortifications, that the larger entity undergoes. The very development and maturation of self-consciousness involves the absorption into one's self of sometimes intersecting rings of community or association—the alma mater, sports clubs, religious societies, the professional register, and so on. To non-sporting individuals, or the indifferent, nothing is more absurd than to watch a gaggle of football fans, irrepressible and rambunctious on their way into the stadium to cheer their favorite team, slink out of the same arena like drenched fowl and sink into the pit of depression after their team has not merely lost, but conceded a basket of goals. To remind them at that moment, or even months afterward, that it was only a game is to court pity or transferred violence for one's failure to empathize with their sense of humiliation. Nothing will serve until their dignity is restored in a victorious rematch. Through a variety of habits, tastes, activities, social interactions, vanities, even hobbies, one acquires, or is inducted into, a new family, an extension of the self that may actually come to take precedence over the immediate family and community into which one is born and where one earns a living. I think of this sense of belonging as Community with a capital C—a community of thought, values, and sensibilities, one that, like the quasi-state, transcends boundaries and governments. Often Community is founded on shared historical experience that may be negative—such as political or economic bondage or social marginalization. Finally, let us not forget, or underestimate, the Community that is religion.

Dignity in the management of Community lies at the heart of our preoccupation. The global climate of fear owes much to the devaluation or denial of dignity in the intersection of Communities, most notably between the stronger and weaker ones, an avoidance of the recognition of this very entitlement, this craving, this inbred addiction, if you prefer, in chambers of negotiation, compromises, recitation of statistics and resolutions, including within the United Nations. It is easy enough to speak of, and even condemn, the building of concrete walls that turn whole peoples into prisoners in glorified camps, but somehow the expression of one critical, implicit denial is itself denied: that of dignity. Such a wall reaches beyond its physical terrain, and is experienced as a gesture of disdain against the Community of which such people form a part. If the Berlin Wall was held to reduce the inherent dignity of a people since it circumscribed their freedom, then a wall in Palestine cannot be viewed with the same regard as is elicited today by the Great Wall of China.