Sharon = Saddam??

This afternoon I attended an interfaith presentation sponsored by the Roman Catholic Chamanade University in Honolulu. The speaker was a Muslim man who I have spoken with and have had in a church adult class to represent the Muslim faith. He is gracious, intelligent, active in the small Muslim community in Hawaii, has a wonderful sense of humor and is in the process of becoming an American citizen. He is not a trained Islamic scholar and did not claim to possess any authority as a spokesman for his faith.

He spoke on "Islam and Peace." I know him to be a man who represents those who would like to see major reform in Islamic countries, including representative democracy. He was openly critical of Muslims to allow cultural values and traditions to supersede the imperatives clearly articulated in the Qur'an. All in all an honest presentation but not altogether convincing...far too much of Qur'an's approach to infidels and those who resist or threaten Islam was ignored, especially in the later revelations of the Prophet.

In the midst of affirming that all religious seek to raise human beings to their highest and best, he made a slip and, for a moment, stepped out of "religious" content and into the political.

In a short aside on good and bad people, his list of "bad" people included folks like Hitler. The final two names in his list were "Sharon" and "Saddam Hussein."

In the Q & A which followed the presentation, one woman, who identified herself as being Jewish, challenged the comment that appeared to equate Sharon and Saddam as equally evil.

The response revealed a way of looking at things that I found myself completely unable to understand (something that does not happen often). The speaker defended his comment and did not back away from it. There was clearly deep passion and emotion in his feelings about Sharon and he spoke far longer in response than he should have, given the nature of the gathering.

After he had spoken, the Moderator of the event (who is also a Muslim and the designated lay leader for the Honolulu mosque) added that the only difference between Sharon and Saddam was that Saddam murdered people in his own country whereas Sharon murdered people outside of his country.

I have spent much of the past three years trying to read and study Islam to the point where I can, in some small way, see the world through their eyes. The deeper I have gone, the more troubled I have become, even with this fine man today, who reflects personal support for a non-violent form of his faith.

In the Arab Muslim world, and by extension, the rest of the Muslim world as well, the existence of the state of Israel represents a deep and continuing affront, insult and injustice to the Palestinian people as well as to the Muslim faith.

Yes, we can all agree that Israel's current President, Ariel Sharon, has a more or less deserved reputation of having been a strong and sometimes unmerciful military commander whose role in what some call the massacre of Palestinian civilians is still hotly debated. His support of West Bank settlements and his brutal and often devastating response to the second intifada have, among most Muslims, raised him to the status of a war criminal and has become the personification of all that is hateful about Israel.

But, for Muslims, Saddam Hussein was their demon. He was their tyrant. He was a Muslim fighting and oppressing other Muslims. He was an embarrassment to some and a hero to others...because he was "strong" and stood up against America. I have experienced the same ambivalent hate/admiration dichotomy in the old Soviet Union regarding Josef Stalin. "He did some terrible things," Russians have told me. "But he was a strong leader and led us to victory against the Nazis in the Great War."

In a similar way, Saddam's perceived strengths more or less excused his excesses.

For Sharon, however, there are no redeeming virtues. He kills Palestinian women and children. He seizes and divides their land. He builds a wall to shut them both out and in. He is not to be trusted. He is evil.

There is a cold, hard logic here that I think I would need to be a Palestinian, an Arab or a Muslim to either understand or emotionally react to with the passion that I saw this afternoon.

Personally, I do not see the moral equivalent between Saddam Hussein and Ariel Sharon. The one was essentially a tyrant and an aggressor. The other is a freely elected representative of a more or less free people determined to, at all costs, preserve, protect and defend his people from those who desire to have them swept into the Mediterranean Sea.

The situation in Israel/Palestine has been disgustingly brutal during the past four years. I am not hopeful for any settlement that will ensure any lasting "peaceful coexistence" as part of a "two nation" agreement.

But I am hopeful the the level of violence can be reduced to pre-second inifada levels and that the terrorist wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah can be marginalized by a growing measure of political stabilization and rule of law in the West Bank and Gaza.

But, as I discovered this afternoon, the passion does run deep. One can only hope for the best and develop friendships that can somehow transcend our many and varied differences. As for me, I intend to continue my friendship with this and with any and all anti-terrorist Muslims. I will do so because I believe that friendship is always the first step towards peace. I will also do it because I believe it is what Christ Jesus would want me to do.