“Truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
— Martin Luther King Jr. (quoting William Cullen Bryant)
Sometimes, oceans are not enough.
Usually, the fact that we are barricaded on both sides by great bodies of water gives us in this country a certain sense of remove from the awful things people with funny names do to one another in strange places on the far side of the globe. But once in awhile, the thing is awful enough that you can’t ignore it, or pretend that it is less real.
Such is the case with Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl whose shooting last week on a school bus in the Swat Valley sparked headlines and outrage here and around the world. Yousafzai, who at this writing is in critical condition after emergency surgery, has been an Internet activist, agitating for women’s access to education
The Taliban considers that a capital crime. It claimed responsibility for the men who stopped the bus and boarded it, who asked for Malala by name and, when she was identified, shot her and fled. The group has said that if Malala survives, it will come for her again. It says her death is required under Islamic law.
But make no mistake: Islam is not their religion. It is their excuse.
There are two reasons this story crossed the ocean. The first is that it is appalling. Human garbage does not get much ranker than a man who boards a school bus to kill a child. The second is that it is recognizable, that we see in their mad religious and ideological fundamentalism ghostly shadows of our own.
Granted, the outspoken child in this country is not in particular danger of physical violence from religious or ideological zealots. But the abortion doctor is. The gay couple is. The Muslim-American is.
Fundamentalism is fundamentalism wherever it breeds, always the same dark stain of unbending literalism, always the same shrill claim that it guards the one true path to enlightenment, always the same crazed insistence that the one unforgivable crime against faith, the one inexcusable heresy of ideology, is to ask questions.
But where there are no questions, there can be no true answers. And where there is not freedom, there cannot be real faith. How real can faith be if it is not a thing freely held, if it is something required, coerced, enforced?
This is something fundamentalists never understand. They think people can be intimidated or mandated into silence. They think people can be shot or bombed into obedience.
Perhaps, for a while, they can.
But the great man was right: Truth crushed to earth will rise again. And he was right, too, when, in the same speech, he quoted the abolitionist Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Because there are not bullets enough in all the world to gun down the human will to be free.
So eventually and inevitably, there will always be someone who can neither bend, nor pretend, someone compelled by conscience — and yes, sometimes, faith — to stand and resist. There will always be a Mohamed Bouazizi, immolating himself in Tunisia, a Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in Alabama, a Paul Rusesabagina sheltering people from massacre in Rwanda, an Oskar Schindler hiding Jews from the Nazis in Poland, a nameless man standing before a tank in Tiananmen Square. And a Malala Yousafzai, age 14, defying the Taliban in Pakistan.
In taking their lonely stands, these people birth myths and memories that make us — and generations that come after us — braver than we actually are, or would otherwise be. In a word, they inspire. So the irony here is almost poetic. The Taliban was so threatened by the words of a little girl that they tried to kill her.
And in so doing, they ensured that she will never die.
Comments
wounded_soldier 7 months ago
Pitts is right. This is not the face of Islam to kill children or adults for political means unless it is in self defence and cerainly the killing of a 14 year old girl is not self defence. Islam states clearly that women are equal to men but not the same. It says that education is vital and required to promote a community and the nation. Islam says that men have a degree of authority over women because women are to be placed above men when it comes to childbearing and rearing. All in all it all works to an equality and consequently an everlasting love between the genders. God is right in His requirments and the Taliban is 100% wrong. Killing of one person is the same (in punishment) as the killing of all mankind and saving one from death is the same ( in praise and good deeds from God ) as saving all of mankind. So the men who tried to kill this little girl has tried to kill all of mankind.
JackMcKee 7 months ago
I thought this was going to be about #heblowsalot
Kathy Getto 7 months ago
I am shocked that our own home- grown fundamentalists are abstaining from belittling Pitts thIs morning. "The second is that it is recognizable, that we see in their mad religious and ideological fundamentalism ghostly shadows of our own."
Maybe, just maybe, they saw their own reflection in thIs statement.
snap_pop_no_crackle 7 months ago
Think of all the 14 year old girls shot for not following the religion of their parents by Presbyterians and Baptists in America this year..... Oh, wait, that doesn't seem to have happened. Can you say "false equivalence"?
deec 7 months ago
How about doctors shot by Christian religious fundamentalists? Do they count?
Kathy Getto 7 months ago
Look at child abuse stats, domestic abuse stats among the righteous fundamentalists. I won't bore you with the child porn addictions by christian fundamentalist clergy.
DoubtingThomas 7 months ago
I lived with it(physical abuse of women and children) when I was young. I grew up in the Time of Corporal Punishment. The leaders of these families don't see it as abuse. They are simply "asserting their Authority" and they believe The Bible gives them this right.
Kathy Getto 7 months ago
Yes, I suppose their belief that the bible is inerrant leads them to believe they have the right to do many things unlawful.
DoubtingThomas 7 months ago
It is no wonder people see striking similarities between the two Religions.
Armstrong 7 months ago
Wow deec what a trashy comment even for you.
deec 7 months ago
In what way is it "trashy?" Christian fundamentalist zealots have shot doctors. Dr. Tiller was shot and killed by a religious extremist in a church.
Or is this just another example of a conservative commenter attacking the messenger rather than the post's contents?
Katara 7 months ago
http://www.newser.com/story/155478/arkansas-goper-give-unruly-kids-the-death-penalty.html
voevoda 7 months ago
What about those children rescued from their parents' van in the Walmart parking lot just a few weeks ago, snap? Not such as "false equivalence" after all; those things happen right here in Lawrence.
vertigo 7 months ago
Oh yeah, Snap?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/oregon-faith-healer-parents-probation-sons-death/story?id=17273845
Liberty275 7 months ago
Men tried to kill a 14 year old girl. Bickering about it is tasteless. With that, I'll sit this one out.
cait48 7 months ago
by cait48
DoubtingThomas 7 months ago
I am praying she lives. For people who Believe completely in "God's Will", That would,Hopefully, be a message that resonates across their land and forces them to take a look at what they are REALLY doing to themselves and their own people. Unfortunately, due to what we have seen in their actions of the past,I am afraid it will have little effect on the "Extremists". I can only hope the general population rises up against these tyrants and drives them from their Religion. God Help Them All.
tomatogrower 7 months ago
I hope so too. The problem is these people have been intimidated for so long that they constantly live in fear. They don't think "Hey, I'm sick of this. I'd rather die that put up with this any longer." But they don't have the same history as we do.
DoubtingThomas 7 months ago
Yes,They have lived like this for a couple thousand years. That is what makes Malala so special. This type of behavior is unheard of in their culture. Sometimes the actions of children can inspire us all. Just might be the spark that is needed to ignite the Flame.
Kathy Getto 7 months ago
Because relgious fanaticism is wrong on any level. Why do you choose to ignore facts?
deec 7 months ago
The Inquisition. The Crusades. Genocide of Indigenous people in the name of civilizing them.
Armstrong 7 months ago
Pitts seems to have stirred the religious bigots and assorted trash today
Topple 7 months ago
I'm not sure pointing out the historic cruelties of those acting in the name of their God is bigotry.
WristTwister 7 months ago
Comparison of religious believers in the United States to extremists in the Middle East is absurd for lack of a better word. Yet the radical left often quotes scripture in support of their radical left agenda.
"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek." [1596 Shakespeare Merchant of Venice i. iii. 93]
cait48 7 months ago
Why is it that people that don't believe as you do are automatically "atheists"? (i.e. "infidels") And you think there is no grounds for comparing US extremists to the ones in the Middle East? Yeah. Right. I'd say you just provided a very fine, illustrative example.
voevoda 7 months ago
WristTwister, I guess you forgot the American who attacked the Sikh temple a couple of months ago. Is a comparison really so absurd? "Do not keep thinking how wise you are." (Romans 12:16)
Paul R. Getto 7 months ago
We forget the CHURCH tried hard for centuries to accomplish much the same thing. Several generations ago it was illegal to teach American slaves to read and write. Women in the Western world had to fight for an education too.
deec 7 months ago
I'm not sure the nation has evolved much when there are still politicians deemed to be credible who believe rape can't lead to pregnancy. We also have many Christian politicians who believe women are incapable of making their own decisions regarding reproduction. The positions conservatives take on most social issues fit rather nicely with those of conservatives in the Middle East.
vertigo 7 months ago
America evolved. A lot of Christians haven't.
What's the latest on teaching Creationism in schools in place of science?
deec 7 months ago
Killing others because they don't hold the same opinions and beliefs is more of a regressive behavior. Kind of like conservatives who threaten to shoot people for stealing campaign signs, or doctors who perform procedures they find objectionable.
vertigo 7 months ago
Twitchy- nice source.
Threats is one things... firing live ammo is another: "Denver police review tape from surveillance cameras after shot fired at Obama campaign office" http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-shot-fired-through-window-at-obama-campaign-office-in-denver-no-injuries-reported/2012/10/12/18ab7a52-14d6-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop
vertigo 7 months ago
Anyone can real time tweet lies, or truths. Heck I can create a dozen anonymous twitter accounts right now and start tweeting threats against anyone... doesn't mean they're true.
Sorry if a national newspaper isn't too your liking. Maybe you should call the Denver Police department and see if the Washington Post is making this story up.
Or maybe Fox news is more to your liking: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/13/shot-fired-at-obama-campaign-office-in-denver/
*smh
Agnostick 7 months ago
"Fundamentalism is fundamentalism wherever it breeds, always the same dark stain of unbending literalism, always the same shrill claim that it guards the one true path to enlightenment, always the same crazed insistence that the one unforgivable crime against faith, the one inexcusable heresy of ideology, is to ask questions."
Quite possibly the best-written paragraph I've read on this site... by any writer.
oldbaldguy 7 months ago
time for the paks to say enough is enough. they won't, this will blow over. another day in paradise in the big sand pile.
WristTwister 7 months ago
The left sites isolated cases of nuts acting like the nut cases that they are. The right sites isolated instances of nuts acting like the nut cases that they are. The point I made before still stands. Comparison of religious believers in the United States to extremists in the Middle East is absurd for lack of a better word.
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