By Rashid Mughal

Politics governs our lives. Religion, too, is a form of politics, in that politics is the process and method of making decisions for groups. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions including corporate, academic, and religious.

The title of this seminar is “Politics, Religion and Terrorism.” We are here to examine the correlation between peace and violence, but I want us to forget about peace and politics, about religion and terrorism. I have deliberately titled my paper, “The Roots of Hate and Violence” since, in my mind, peace is associated with love, and love is a strange thing. As long as thought is woven through it, it is not love. That is because human thought, even about God, and peace and love, contaminates everything.

When you think of someone you love, that person becomes the symbol of pleasant sensations, memories, images—whether that person is Moses, Jesus, Muhammad or Mahatma Gandhi, Golda Meir, Madhuri Dixit, Marilyn Monroe or Glenda Jackson—but that is not love. Human thought is sensation, and sensation is not love. The very process of thinking is the denial of love.

Love is the flame without the smoke of thought, of jealousy, of antagonism, of usage and abusage, which are things of the mind. And the mind is a cunning, deathless animal that has evolved, over millions of years, to become the most ruthless product of human greed.

As long as the heart is burdened with the things of the mind, there will be hate, for the mind is the seat of hate, of antagonism, of opposition, of conflict. Thought is reaction, and reaction is always, in one way or another, the source of enmity. Thought is opposition, and opposition breeds hate. Thought is always in competition, always seeking an end, success for oneself or one’s brethren in religion, and its fulfillment is pleasure and its frustration is hate.

Conflict is thought caught in the opposites; and the synthesis of the opposites is still hate, antagonism.

Have you ever observed the process of hate within yourself? To see the cause, to know why we hate, is comparatively easy, but are you aware of the ways of hate? Have you ever observed this process as you would a strange new animal in the zoo?

Let us do so now and see what happens.

Let us be passively watchful of hate as it unrolls itself in us right now as I speak. Please don’t be shocked, don’t condemn or find excuses. Just passively watch it.

Hate is a form of frustration. Do you see that?

Fulfillment and frustration always go together.

Jealousy is hate, is it not?

If one loves, there’s no room for anything else. But we do not love. The smoke of jealousy, or hatred, chokes our life, and the flame of love dies.

If you observe without judgment and examine carefully the process of thought or the bundle that makes up your thinking, your credo, religion, whatever . . ., how cunning and deceptive it is! It promises release, but only produces another crisis, another antagonism. Just be passively watchful of this and let the truth of it be.

That’s all there is to it!      

The desire to do harm, to hurt another, whether by word, by a gesture, or more deeply, is strong in most of us. It is common and frighteningly pleasant. The very desire not to be hurt makes for the hurting of others. To harm others is a way of defending oneself, like our brother George W. Bush is doing with his biblical ‘do unto others’ before they do it unto you!

This self-defence takes peculiar forms, depending on circumstances and tendencies. How easy it is to hurt another, and what gentleness is needed not to hurt! In all this, where is our God and Religion, both of which teach us to unite against Nonbelievers to defend the faith, even unto death.

We hurt others because we ourselves are hurt, we are so bruised by our own conflicts and sorrows. The more we are inwardly tortured, the greater the urge to be outwardly violent.

Inward turmoil drives us to seek outward protection, whether under the umbrella of Religion, Nationalism, or what have you.

And the more one defends oneself, the greater the attack on others, be they infidels, kafirs, Communists, Marxists or simple-minded polytheistic idol worshippers. We somehow punish those who are not part of us because we are hurting so much why they should be apart from us, yet we refuse to see our God as an 'idol' fashioned by the cunning mind to divide us. It’s basically an Us and Them thing.

What is it that we defend, that we so carefully guard in our so-called Holy Scriptures or in our belief in some chosen person or authority, or what we assume is the authority of God when everything as we know it is shaped by the mind of Man?

Surely, it is the idea of our selves, at whatever level. If we did not guard the idea, the centre of all our accumulation, there would be no “me” and “mine.” We would then be utterly sensitive, vulnerable to the ways of our being, the conscious as well as the hidden. But, as most of us do not desire to discover the process of the “me,” we resist any encroachment upon the idea of ourselves.

The idea of ourselves—as Sunni Muslims, Shias, as Pakistanis, or whatever—is wholly superficial, but, as most of us live on the surface, we are content with illusions.

The desire to harm others is a deep instinct. We accumulate resentment by selecting from the junk-heap of history what appeals to us subjectively while rejecting the history of others, which gives a peculiar vitality, a feeling of action and life. We argue and debate. And what is accumulated must be expended—like America’s kick-ass military arsenals—through anger, insult, depreciation, obstinacy, and their opposites. It is this accumulation of resentment that necessitates forgiveness—which becomes unnecessary if there is no storing up of the hurt.

Why do we store up flattery and insult, hurt and affection? First, without this accumulation of experiences and their responses, we are not and would not be what we are. Second, because we are nothing if we have no name, no attachment, no belief. It is the fear of being nothing that compels us to accumulate, to identify as our own and to belong to the herd of sheep in search of a shepherd. And it is this very fear, whether conscious or unconscious, that, in spite of our accumulative activities, brings about our disintegration and destruction. If we can be aware of the truth of this fear, then it is the truth that liberates us from it, and not our purposeful determination to be free.

Who is free of violence today—whether in Canada, America, India, Pakistan, or Outer Mongolia? The Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Jew? No one, I tell you, no one!

Do you see that?

There are those among us who ask, “But how are we to overcome hate and envy? These feelings unite us against a common enemy. Well, we have to resort to violence because it is the only way to defend ourselves!”

Or we may agree that it can’t be got rid of so easily.

Have you wondered why not?

When you perceive for yourself that violence only leads to greater harm, is it difficult to drop violence? When, however superficially pleasurable, something gives you deep pain, don’t you put it aside—for example, cigarettes, booze, and greasy fried foods?

“On the physical level that is comparatively easy,” you might say, “but it’s more difficult with things that are inward.”

I’ve heard that before, and I am sure you must have, too.

It is difficult only when the pleasure outweighs the pain. If hate and violence are pleasurable to you, even though they breed untold harm and misery, you will keep on with them, but be clear about it. Don’t say that you are creating a new social order, a better way of life, for that is all nonsense.

He who hates, who is acquisitive, who is seeking power or a position of authority, is not a Mother Teresa or a Sufi who demonstrates so much compassion and humanity because she or he is outside the social order that is based upon these things—acquisitiveness and a hunger for power, position, authority. And if you and I, for our part, are not free from envy, from antagonism, and from the desire for power, we are no different than the rest of humanity, even though we may call ourselves Muslim or by a different name.

I might add here that we are easily carried away by our own words, which have in most instances come to us from the divisive scriptures that our prophets of old have left behind to fuel our more sordid urges.

I sincerely hope our understanding of inner peace and harmony with our neighbour will be different from now on.

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