Who among us is unblemished?

Is there any nation or any community based on shared ideology, caste, religious faith, skin-color, place/region of birth etc. that has a membership made totally of spotless people? Are they all made of saints, arahats, holy men and women without blemish?

We are all human beings and as such have numerous frailties.  Being a Buddhist, Muslim, Christian or a Hindu or subscribing to some other religion, being white, black brown, yellow, red of some shade-mix of these colors, following this or that creed, living in a desert or a mountain, valley or condominium does not make you any better or worse than someone ‘different’.  The errors of one do not necessarily flow from fault of philosophy and certainly don’t reflect a general abnormality of the relevant collective. 

The vilification, unfortunately, tends to gloss over these ‘trivialities’.  We hear of ‘The Muslim World’ being ‘up in arms’ over some insult to faith.  We don’t hear (and this must be mentioned too) that the ‘Christian World’ ever took up arms and led to believe that Christians don’t think collectively. 

The following was posted on Facebook.  Obviously written by (or as an) American (of the US), it gives some perspective relevant to the above observation.  “Muslims vow to make USA pay for 1 crazy man.  Can you imagine us doing that? Oh yeah we did. Bin Laden.  We made Afghanistan pay for it.”

Salman Rushdie said a few days ago that if he had written ‘Satanic Verses’ now, no one would publish it.  He may be correct.  The madness of the USA following 9/11, beautifully complemented by the lunacy of people who call themselves followers of Prophet Muhammad, has turned the entire world into a tinderbox where a single word or even the refusal to say some word is enough to cause an inferno.  Just look at what happened.

Some insensitive person makes a tasteless video.  He happens to be an American (of the USA), and some ‘Muslims’ go berserk.  The US Ambassador to Libya gets killed.  No, not because a lunatic citizen of the USA infuriated a lunatic Arab (that’s too simplistic); there was cotton wool and fire close to each other and a small nudge this way or that set things ablaze.   Is the USA to blame?  Are Christians or Christianity to blame?  And was Libya, the Islamic faith or all its followers to blame?  No, no, no and no. 

And yet, it happened.  It has happened before and is happening all the time.  Not just Christians or Muslims but people of all faiths, not just white people or brown people but with people of all color. 

This morning some ‘Muslims’ agitated over the aforementioned video took to the streets in Ampara.  They threw stones at the Sammanthurai Court.  ‘L-O-G-I-C-A-L!!!’ (said of course with an ‘American’ rolling of eyes and the heaviest sarcasm possible). 

A Muslim friend shared (again on Facebook) a picture taken from www.muslimsarentterrorists.com.  Two images.  On the left a massive crowd of people with a simple caption: ‘Muslim Protestors’.  On the right a photograph of a beautiful mosque at fajr time.  Deserted.  Below it was the following question: ‘Is this how we show our love for Prophet Muhammad?’ followed by this observation: ‘Allah will not ask if you joined the protest but will surely ask if you prayed’. 

When we stop fighting for religion and choose to expend all our time on understanding the relevant teaching, we fear that our religion will get wiped out by aggressive religious others.  That fear is not religion/faith-born, but culture-bred.  In the long run, even if the survival of a religion is desired what boosts survival chances is meaningful residency in the faith.  It is hard to imagine (in the case of those who believe in ‘god’) that the divine, on Judgment Day (so-called) will ask how many you’ve converted or what you did to hold up an organization built in the name of that entity.  Crusaders are god-wannabes, even if they are atheists.  When they err (on account of human frailty), they cause more damage. 

I’ve seen some cricketers, when they score a century or cross some such landmark, look to the skies, as though demonstrating gratitude to some super-powerful astral entity.  If we looked at the sky more often and without such pretension, we might gauge the dimensions of the universe and obtain a sense of the dimensions of our ignorance.  We would, consequently, discover our ant-sized relevance.  We would go to the temples we prefer and leave the arrogant to rant and rave.  The world would be that much safer. 

None of us are without blemish.  That’s a ‘prayer’ or koan relevant for our times, I believe.