A Hand Offered in Peace

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I was brought up a Methodist, among which's precepts is the tradition of referring to one another as Brother and Sister [not that we did at our church, but it was the 1960s by then]; although as I've said before, I've tried in the many decades since I left that church to follow my own styling of Zen Buddhism, light on ritual and heavy on introspection. My take is that when the realisation of one's innate frailty and tenuousness in this world takes hold, then one is best placed to accept the condition of others with whom we share this temporary, temporal, and corporeal existence. Tolerance is de facto the Lingua Franca of one enlightened by this self-knowledge. Having said that, even I have been moved to suggest all manner of unpleasant Old Testament visitations on the perpetrators of hatred that have been so in evidence in UK cities of late. The trouble is I [we] also run the risk of sounding exactly like the kind of swivel-eyed fascist lunatic - I won't ever grace their kind with anything as elevated as holding a 'political' opinion: they sit well outside of that spectrum - that we rightly want to see marginalised and defused in so doing.

In comparing the cold idol-worship of the established orthodox and high Christian churches with the sincerity and passion of Islam, Thomas Carlyle writes in the lecture 'The Hero as Prophet' [Friday, 8th. May, 1840]: 'Idolatry is nothing: these Wooden idols of yours, "ye rub them with oil, and wax, and the flies stick on them," - these are wood, I tell you! They can do nothing for you; they are an impotent blasphemous presence; a horror and abomination, if ye knew them.' We could reach a similar conclusion in comparing the flags and shibboleths of 'patriotism', with the reality of Islam as it is in modern inner-city Britain. The gesture of food offered to the mob by the Imam and worshippers of the Liverpool mosque under attack should stand as a salutary lesson in human conduct to us all in these febrile times: get a grip on your own humanity and you'll find your place in harmony with your brothers and sisters...

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