With book burnings, chants of ‘death to (insert your country here)’, stoning to death, economic upheavals etc., civilization seems to be heading back to the dark ages. While burning the Koran is a pretty deplorable action, the acts and threats of violence in response, can be classified as pretty idiotic too.

The Koran burning party has thankfully been canceled, albeit with some reluctance. As the majority of us concluded, it was a bad idea to start with. At the same time, it is flawed reasoning to accept that violence is a justified reaction, to this patently insensitive and offensive act. The media, military and even the U.S administration implied that violence was an inevitable response to Terry Jones antics. It was often suggested that the expected violent backlash, was the primary reason why Terry Jones should not go ahead with his provocative actions.

If that was not bad enough, we also heard Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf say something similar in support of building the Cordoba house. If it was not built at the same location as planned, he advised

“The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack… (there’s) the danger of the radicals in the Muslim world to our national security, to the national security of our troops.”And

“If this is not handled correctly, this crisis could become much bigger than the Danish cartoon crisis, which resulted in attacks on Danish embassies in various parts of the Muslim world.”

If the fear of violence is the primary motivation, to action or inaction… it only seems to prove that violence can bring results. It could be this inherently flawed reasoning, that Terry Jones and his supporters really find objectionable and threatening (it is). The oft derided ‘with us or against us’ stance is not to be encouraged for either side. Especially if understanding and accommodation is to be a two way street.

It seems that we are too happy to hold the ‘islamic street’ (the apparent recruiting ground of radical Muslims) to lower standards of conduct, than the western ‘mainstreet’. However this patronizing attitude may not be helping the moderate voices in those places. It only offers more credibility to  violence and threats as a solution. This appeasing tone strengthens the proponents of violence (on both sides) at home and abroad.

The western media (including the current social nature of media consumption) has given pastor Jones more power than he (with all of his 50 followers) would have otherwise wielded. At the same time, the average western citizen has many media enabled opportunities to make their objections heard. We use facebook, twitter and commenting options on blogs and media sites, to voice our objections and diverse opinions. The speed at which this happens allows us to quickly tap in to all sides of the argument, evaluate pros and cons as we come to our personal conclusions. Beside the ability to relay our thoughts, the rapid exchange of information helps mould as well as question opinions.

Lacking the same commonplace access to tools and infrastructure, it is probably easy to understand why people could be convinced to form extreme stands, based on cultural biases. Without access to diverse viewpoints, objectivity and reason easily take a backseat. This is probably why the ‘islamic street’, be it in Indonesia or Afghanistan, often lives up to the low expectations placed on it by the patronizing western ‘mainstreet’.  At the least, access to and the ability of the ‘islamic street’, to utilize similar media, could give the moderate Muslim voices a chance to relay their thoughts without the danger of direct confrontation with the radicals.

The questions we may need to answer:

Why expect such low standards of conduct, from the ‘islamic street‘? Standards that prolong the cycle of intolerance (home and abroad).

And most importantly, can we really hold others to the same standards we deem dear, if the access to media tools (amongst other things), that we take for granted, are still an impractical luxury for a majority of them?

These may be important questions to answer as we observe another anniversary of the unjustifiable tragedy that occurred on 9/11.

Your thoughts?