All over the world, especially in the western world there have been protests against a film made in USA, which is defamatory to the life of Prophet Mohamed, according to almost all the Muslims in the world . The violent protests in some countries cannot be condoned but it is very clear that the western media that has the power and the means to control the world public opinion is having a field day condemning the violence forgetting the film. The protests did not take place in a vacuum, and the Muslims world over, it may be a minority of Muslims who were involved but my gut feeling is that most of the Muslims are with those who took to streets though some may not agree with violence, had a valid cause to protest.
The Buddhists are not well organized as the Muslims but they also have reasons to protest against the western behavior when it comes to the attitudes and actions of those who have been brought up in the western Christian culture. When some French kiss the Buddha statue there are people in Sri Lanka with their media who would publish pictures of Christians (Catholics) kissing the statutes of Jesus Christ and his mother. What is implied is that it is not abnormal nor defamatory for Catholics to kiss statues of religious personnel. Even in the case of this particular film on Prophet Mohamed it is claimed that in the name of freedom of expression the person who produced the film had the right to make the film. I have not seen the film myself but the Muslims world over would not have taken to streets if the film was innocent as far as the Islamic religion was concerned.
Sometime ago when Prabhakaran was calling shots there were NGO peace vendors who insisted that the Tamils and the LTTE had no option but to take up arms and engage in terrorist activities. The world was told by the western media that it was the Sinhala Buddhist supremacy that was the cause of the problems. What was propagated for the consumption of the gullible people was that the LTTE would not have taken up arms if not for so called Sinhala Buddhist supremacy. In so many ways the pundits in the NGOs and their mentors in the west justified the terrorism of the LTTE. They also propagated the myth that the LTTE could not be defeated and the government had no option but to engage in so called peace talks with the objective of establishing a Federal state paving the way for an Eelam. The west engaged in that type of propaganda simply because the LTTE was the agent of the west against Sinhala Buddhist culture.
When the western media tells us that the person who made the film had the right to do so they talk from their vantage position as everything in this world is today decided by the western Christian supremacy. It is true that in the west they have made films such as Da Vinci Code, though the film was banned in Sri Lanka if my memory is correct, but these films are made in a world dominated by western Christian hegemony. The book and the film Da Vinci Code were produced by western Christian culture who are looking for a new interpretation of Jesus Christ against the Jesus of the Catholic Church. This should be the last step in the fight of Christianity against Catholicism, and I was not surprised when the Catholic Church here decided to ask the Sri Lankan government to ban the film.
The so called freedom of expression by the western Christian culture is used not only against Muslims and the Buddhists but against Catholics as well if the need arises. In any event even if it is used against Christianity it is not going to be effective as it is the Christian culture that is the hegemonic culture in the world. The Christian culture is in the saddle and the legal systems practiced in various parts of the world are based in the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya, just as much western science is based in that Chinthanaya, and the western Christian Law knows whom have to be punished to defend the western Christian culture. The Law, Science, Medicine including Dentistry, Arts etc., are all produced, created in the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya and one cannot dissociate say Law from Dentistry.
The west is in a position to control the protests by the Muslims against the film on Prophet Mohamed made by the American and he would go untouched, as if at all he would be tried under the American Law which is based on Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya. If he is tried under Sharya Law no doubt that he would have a different destiny whether one agrees with that particular law or not. The protests would not last long and the western media would get some Muslim religious leaders to appeal to the masses to be calm. However, this is neither the beginning nor the end of the tussle between the Muslim and the Christian cultures, and I think that we are already in the middle of a cold war between the two cultures.
The Buddhists who are more tolerant do not have the resources to take up the western Christian culture at the present moment. Their strength is more on the spiritual side but to develop an alternative scheme to the existing paradigms and Chinthanaya would take some time. What is forgotten by the westerners is that the present western Christian culture together with western Christian modernity came in to existence only about five hundred years ago and that it is not going to last forever. It is on the decline now and so called postmodernism indicates that the westerners in the Social Sciences are not in a position to create theories as they used to do based on Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya. In Western Mathematics the formal program of Hilbert has ended up with Gödel Theorem, and western Theoretical Physics is stuck with Copenhagen Interpretation.
The westerners who began their western science by absorbing knowledge from Hindu, Chinese, Buddhist and Muslim systems into their two valued logic based on Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya cannot proceed much further. The western Christianity culture which produced Capitalism as their economic structures has come a long way but fortunately cannot exist for ever. It will collapse with Capitalism not according to Marxism through a working class revolution but experiencing a natural death. The Muslims living both in the western countries and the non western countries would contribute towards the collapse of the western Christian hegemony taken as a world phenomenon. The western science will come to a grinding halt in the near future as the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya is not adequate to maintain the hegemony.
The Muslim protests against the producer of the film degrading Prophet Mohamed will not start a world revolution but they are indicators of what is in store for the Supremacy of the western Christian culture. What is needed is a broad front of the non Christian cultures against the western Christian culture but unfortunately the other cultures have been divided by the very same Christian Culture whose supremacy would be ended in due course. The unity of the other cultures would bring the collapse of the western Christian supremacy much closer to our times and in Sri Lanka if the Tamil Hindus and the Muslims understand that there is no so called Sinhala Buddhist supremacy but a bogey created by the western Christian culture that is only interested in maintaining its dominance then most of the problems in Sri Lanka would be solved. Sri Lanka could become the ashcharya if we can understand this unity can be achieved.
Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva