Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Stop the spiral of hatred

If there's one thing those Sept. 11 terror attacks against the United States proved is that it's possible to hate someone you don't even know. Indeed, it may be easier to hate the person you don't know than the people you do know. The person you don't know can be reduced to a symbol of some real or perceived evil. But once you do come to know a person, it becomes that much harder to turn him or her into an object that you can rationalize killing or exploiting.

One of the most disturbing follow-ups to the terrorist attacks has been the rash of hatred directed towards Arabic or Islamic people in North America. We've been through this before in Canada. During the First World War, thousands of Ukrainians were interred simply because some fantasized that they might be connected with the enemy. During the Second World War, it was Japanese-Canadians who were most poorly treated as well as German-Canadians. Jewish immigrants were virtually barred from entering the country even when it became known that Hitler was exterminating Jews.

These sorts of situations are precisely what Pope John Paul meant when he prayed that we be spared "the spiral of hatred" following the terrorist attacks. That hatred that was so cruelly directed at the American people is now being returned – albeit with far less ferocity – against innocent people who happen to be of the same ethnic origin or religion as the terrorists.

This is known as racism. It is an ugly thing, lurking below the surface in even supposedly civilized countries. There is something in the human heart that fears and wants to discriminate against people who are unknown and different. It's a tendency against which we need perennially to be on guard.

Two weeks before the terrorist attacks, the pope said, "Racism is a sin that constitutes a serious offence against God." God created each person with an immeasurable dignity, a dignity that racism seeks to deny. The Vatican's own document on racism said the root causes of intolerance lie in the human heart. They can only be eradicated through education and a process of reconciliation.

Precisely the wrong sort of education is taking place in hundreds of Pakistan's madrasahs – "religious schools" that teach a narrow violent version of Islam, but not even the basics of math, science and other secular subjects. The December 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine estimates that 10 to 15 per cent of the country's tens of thousands of madrasahs espouse a violent, distorted Islam that equates jihad with guerrilla warfare.

The schools encourage their graduates, who often cannot find legitimate work because of their lack of skills, to fulfill their "spiritual objectives" by fighting Hindus in Kashmir or Muslims of other sects in Pakistan. The magazine concludes that, by supporting the guerrilla warriors in Kashmir, and by failing to regulate the madrasahs, the Pakistan government is inadvertently supporting international terrorism and spreading a narrow, violent version of Islam through the region.

We do not need to contribute to a similar process by turning a blind eye to attacks on Muslims in Canada. Since the terrorist attacks, there have been mosque vandalisms, harassment of Muslim women and death threats against other Muslims. Canadians need to ensure that the spiral of hatred does not continue now or in the future in our nation.

The people of the Western world, like those everywhere, largely appear to want this month's terrorism to lead to a world that is more safe and more peaceful, and not less so. We may differ in how that should come about, but few want a descent into anarchy, war and barbarism.

Racism and fomenting of ethnic hatred will not lead us toward a better world. What was once a cliché needs to be reasserted – no person should be discriminated against or made the object of hatred because of their religion or ethnic background.

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