The Looking Glass War.

There are days and times when one comes close to despair, when there seems to be nothing but ugliness and horror all around, when the news is bloated with stories of humanity's inhumanity. Such has it been over this past week. Whether it's the massacres in Paris, or the killing of thousands in Nigeria, or the ongoing unfolding horror that is Syria and Iraq, or little men full of nothing but their own importance preaching of their own virtues, it's enough to make one sick to the stomach. I could turn off the TV and the computer, put virtual fingers in my ears, cover my eyes and listen to nothing but the silence of my mind; or I could stumble around, quoting Yeats.
Neither, of course, would be an answer.
Then again, re-posting satirical cartoons that mock the weak and not the strong is also not really a suitable riposte.
I have heard an unbelievable amount of crap being talked over the past week, neatly summed up by Rupert Murdoch's idiotic demand that all Muslims should apologise for the Paris killings, Richard Dawkins' latest histrionic rant, and the Fox News 'Expert' who claimed that Birmingham was a no-go zone for non-muslims. It never ceases to amaze me how the 'experts' crawl out of the woodwork to make their opinions known, before scuttling back into the darkness of their mind caves.
Why is it that we need, bluntly, white middle-aged male 'experts' on Islam whenever there's an 'Islamic' atrocity, when we would be (quite rightly) offended if some bloke with a beard and a robe started inveighing against so-called Christian transgressions? Such as, for example, Amjad Choudary, who is pretty much the Islamist equivalent of Outraged of Tunbridge Wells. It strikes me that many of these religious experts are well-versed in the acts of mankind, but distinctly lack much knowledge of the God they profess to understand.
I am not going to pretend to be an expert on Islam: I can't pretend, for that matter, to be an expert on Christianity, or any other religion you may choose to nominate. However, at least I do not dissemble myself into that most Protean of things, an 'Expert'. The ones I've been watching seem largely to be people who've done just enough reading to confirm their prejudices.
I have, however, had the privilege of living in a truly wonderful country that happens to be majority Muslim (Turkey, as if you didn't know..). I have to say this: the image of Muslims and Islam that is time and again represented in the western media is totally, entirely and completely unlike the people I knew that happened to live in a country where Islam was the main religion. I now happen to live in a country where Christianity is the main religion.
Does this mean that my life is dominated by the rhythms, orders, injunctions, requirements and demands of the Church of England?
Er, no.
Except for, nominally, Christmas and Easter.
And that is pretty much the deal, from my own experience at least, for most Muslims - religion touches one's life, but does not dominate it. Most of the Turks I knew smoked and drank and rarely went to the mosque, except during Ramadan and at times such as weddings and funerals - in other words, their interaction with faith pretty much mirrored life back home.
And 'mirror' is an important word here.
It strikes me that the horror of ISIS, the butchery inflicted by Boko Haram, the killings by a pair of disadvantaged, alienated men who were nevertheless a product of France, all of them, are a gross, distorted mirror held up to the 'West'. They reflect back our own prejudices, fear and anger, and in turn a mirror is held up to them.
Going back twenty years, the mirrors of societies were more normative - life in the UK both resembled, and was a reflection of, life in Turkey, both the good and the bad. Yet in the last fourteen years, the mirrors we as societies have held up to each other have become increasingly distorted, unreal, surreal even. The haters on both sides resemble no-one more so than their opposite number, while the normal middle, the ordinary, decent people who just want to live their lives as well as they can are squeezed out of existence. The mirrors of the worlds have become like those you see in a circus, emphasising above all else all that is baleful and grotesque.
What can be done about such stupidity and ignorance? Be full of passionate intensity or lack all conviction and do nothing?
I won't pretend to have all the answers. All I know is that we, the average, the ordinary, the meek and unremarked of this Earth, all of us who just want to live, need to wrest the mirrors of the world from those who warp them, take them back and render them back into their true shape.

Loving the Alien.

So, here, I think, is the culmination of many of the past few weeks' posts. Perhaps you should start by watching this video, where Reza Aslan, a professor of religion and author of Zealot:The life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, rips apart some spectacularly poor journalism and the lazy, cheap comedy of Bill Maher. On the other hand, perhaps you'd like to wait until the end of this post. Either way, I recommend watching it.

There are fewer things in life more depressing to hear than lazy generalisations, especially from people who should know better. It's a vice which I have been guilty of in the past and one which I try to remain entirely on guard against. I rarely, if ever, take things on face value (again, see my posts on advertising regarding this), and I will question, probe, doubt and ask for evidence. So when I watch and hear some of the vile nonsense decked out as fact when it is little more than opinion, as it is in the video above, it brings me to the edge of despair. There's an old adage, well-beloved of demagogues everywhere: A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.

And right now, everywhere I look, I see lies sprinting hither and yon.

Another image comes to mind: a great circle of people, standing in the half light, whispering something to the person in front, he message becoming increasingly distorted as it goes around this infinitely large circle until it is little more than the meaningless sussuration of bees, meaningless yet freighted with the meaning that each whisperer within the circle confers upon it.

Some of you who read this will, I know, be saying 'Well, religion is a lie itself - are you going to defend that?' Others among you may be thinking 'Well, yes, [insert religion here] is a backward/barbaric/[insert any negative adjective of choice] worldview'.  Some of you may want to remonstrate - 'Let me tell you, I've read/seen/researched [insert subject here] and I find that it is [insert suitable epithets here]'.

So I ask you: What do you know?

Not what you think you know, but what do you actually, solidly, concretely KNOW?
Not what someone in a newspaper, or on TV, or in a magazine, or on Facebook or Twitter says they know, what do YOU know?

I know my own answer to this. More importantly, I hope that I am honest enough with myself to be able to accept the limits of my own little knowledge and accept the darkened seas of non-knowledge that lap the shores of my thought.

If now you are asking what my answer is, I refer you back to my question above.

Seeing as I have put this post in the context of the current soi-disant Clash of Civilisations, let me bring in a few examples, although I will fare badly against Mr Aslan's succinct summation of things. If you're a Christian, or possibly a 'Christian', or if you just happen to come from the 'West', and like a mince pie and a singsong at Christmas, or an Easter egg at, er, Easter, I want you to think of three or four things you associate with Islam.

Off you go, now. Don't censor your thoughts.

OK?

Odds on at least one thing on your list was pejorative. But why? What do you actually know?
OK, another question - what are the tenets of Islam, and what are the traditions of cultures that happen to have Islam as part of their culture?
In fact, there are only 5 things you need do to be a Muslim -
State that you believe that there is only one God (and Allah - Al-Ilah - literally translates as 'God' in the Judeo-Christian sense);
Pray five times a day (way down on the requirements of some of the more bampot versions of Christianity);
Give to charity (via a tax called Zakat - similiar to Tithes);
Fast during Ramadan;
Go on pilgrimage if you are healthy and wealthy enough to do so.
 - And that is that. Not a beard, a burqa, a niqab, a tesbih, or an aversion to booze in sight (although I know that there will be muslims who will disagree strongly with that statement). Follow the five pillars of Islam, and that's it - you are a Muslim.
Now, what kind of Muslim you are - that's a different matter entirely, and as Mr Aslan says, religion is essentially what people bring to it. And if what they bring is shadows and fear, then that religion, or that culture, or that political system, or that civilisation, will be one of shadows and fear.
Now, just to give a bit of balance to affairs, another question: What are the tenets of Christianity?
Well, just two really - That Jesus is God and the son of God, and Love Thy Neighbour. That's it. No hellfire, no Ten Commandments, definitely no Leviticus, and not a sign of Sandals and tofu bicycles.

Yet how many nominally Christian people, or perhaps I should say those who protest their faith a little too loudly, do you know whose grasp on faith is, shall we say, a trifle wobbly at best?
Tony Blair, for example. Or George W Bush.
Or....well, the list is compendious.

Moving the spotlight away from faith for a moment, we can see that this tendency to fall into the habit or relying on cliche is pervasive. It's there when people start blaming immigrants for a loss of housing, or jobs, or benefits; It's there in the way President Putin calls the Ukrainian Government 'fascists'; It's there when gays and lesbians are attacked,imprisoned and murdered in Nigeria and other countries where there are laws banning certain sexualities; It's there when someone says 'All [insert group of choice] are...'; It's there, even, when we come to believe of ourselves that we are useless, or worthless, or less than good because someone else has bullied us.

How do we not do this? How do we love or understand what we do not know? How do we respond to the easy whisper in the ear, that hasping sound so full of doubt? How do we love the alien?

By reading, by questioning, by doubting all - by looking, first, to know what is in ourselves, because, I think, we have to first love the alien within us before we love the alien without.