Selective outrage and the death of ideas

IT'S scary when a person's religion trumps every other quality of a human being that should be worth anything – when one's character, views, actions are all slated as secondary or inconsequential, then a simple utterance of faith can create the 'us' and 'them'. And invariably, 'they' are always wrong. 

Decent people, with no violent impulse, are somehow polarised at the moment. Criticising, writing, debate is about taking a side. You cannot write against extremists, you are made to be against Islam by some. And as a decent Muslim, you have to keep quiet, let the mask of religion shroud the gruesome act of murder. And the aftermath is not about innocent lives being killed, it's about politics, or damage control, or a flat refusal to acknowledge what happened; maybe this too shall pass?

Of course, people will argue, and these people abound social networks, how we are not like that. The moderate man will in one breath condemn killing when asked, and then add the but – but why did they have to insult a religion. After the recent attacks on writers and publishers, which left one dead, it was sickening to see people on Facebook revelling like savages on the death of another human being. It was murder plain and simple – but to them it was divine justice. One asked rhetorically on a post about the attacks, why must these writers criticise Islam, when the Muslims leave them in peace. They make it out to be a world where peace loving people live completely tolerant lives unless of course the big bad 'atheist bloggers' bring violence on themselves.

We claim to be a tolerant country – with many religions and communities sharing the state, the common history of our liberation war. We fought the Pakistanis, didn't we? It was they who were intolerant, racist. Then why are there people who make jokes about Hindus and every other minority? Is it not insulting another's religion as long as they do not come after you with a machete? Tasteless jokes about bloggers and minorities are thrown around by even educated men and women, and it seems no one finds anything wrong with this. It's all in good fun they say. If you protest, you are 'too serious', cannot 'take a joke'. Our society is infested with vulgar jokes mocking anyone who is not 'us'. These same people can somehow justify killing people for allegedly (I say allegedly because I am still to meet some who actually bothered to find out what these writers and bloggers actually wrote about) being blasphemous. 

I don't believe the majority of the people are extremists – for years we have lived together. But the mentality of stereotyping minorities, making distasteful jokes about them is prevalent in our society. I cringe every time I hear a colleague or a classmate make a Hindu joke. And people laugh along, they high five each other on a joke well told. It's all in good fun, they don't come after us with machetes, do they? Do we feel a need to make ourselves seem superior by insulting everyone who is not one of 'us'? 

Any writer criticising extremism is a 'them' now. You don't have to insult God, just point the pen towards those acting in bad faith – the ground work's already completed. You cannot these days mention a blogger without someone raising an eyebrow. Blogging has been around for a long time, without most Bangladeshis even knowing what it meant. But after Rajib was killed in 2013, blogging became sacrilegious. A friend, who runs a blog with information about science and math Olympiads, was taken aside by a panicked mother and asked if it was true that he was a blogger. She was genuinely afraid for her very academic minded son's safety. And this is not one isolated incident; the panic has turned people into thinking in terms of this duality. Of course, she did not know what blogs were.

Selective outrage – that's what our generation suffers from. We are bleeding hearts when the US police mistreat an immigrant, when an African American man is shot for no reason. We stand in solidarity for those being persecuted in Palestine. And yet, writers in our own country get hacked to death, and all I see on Facebook are football memes. 

Our generation is more vocal than ever. Our hashtags support Gaza and demand punishment of violence against women during Pahela Boishakh. We swell in outrage when our Sundarbans are threatened and are disgusted when an American kid is arrested for making a clock. Then why should that fall short when it comes to defending ideas, when it comes to condemning a murder of a Bangladeshi writer, publisher, blogger – is faith that shaky that all who oppose or debate need to be eliminated so that we can live in a world of conformity? 

Maybe we stress too much on the word 'tolerance'. Most people seem to just barely 'tolerate' those who don't see the world as they do. Are we so full of ourselves, so sure of our ideals that everyone needs to bend to conform to our version of things? 

The writer is a student of University of Dhaka.