Not in God's Name Read Online Free PDF Page A

delivers less than it once did’. 12
    The work to be done now is theological. The point was made in an historic speech at Al-Azhar University at the beginning of 2015 by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Calling for a ‘religious revolution’, he said, ‘The Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands.’
    The challenge is not only to Islam, but to Judaism and Christianity also. In November 1995 a young Jewish student, Yigal Amir, assassinated Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, whom he saw as endangering the future of the State by the peace process in which he was engaged. Like Barukh Goldstein, who killed twenty-nine Muslims at prayer, Amir was university trained, religious, and acting on religious principle. Goldstein, as far as we can surmise, believed he was fulfilling the command to ‘wipe out the memory’ of Amalek, the biblical symbol of evil (Deut. 25:19). Amir regarded Rabin as a
rodef
, that is, a threat to the welfare of others, or a
moser
, a traitor to his people. I believe with perfect faith that Judaism is a religion of peace. But not everyone interprets a religion the same way. None ofthe great religions can say, in unflinching self-knowledge, ‘Our hands never shed innocent blood.’
    As Jews, Christians and Muslims, we have to be prepared to ask the most uncomfortable questions. Does the God of Abraham want his disciples to kill for his sake? Does he demand human sacrifice? Does he rejoice in holy war? Does he want us to hate our enemies and terrorise unbelievers? Have we read our sacred texts correctly? What is God saying to us, here, now? We are not prophets but we are their heirs and we are not bereft of guidance on these fateful issues.
    —
    Why has this happened now? Because the world is changing faster than at any time in history, and since change disorients, it leads to a sense of loss and fear that can turn rapidly into hate. Our world is awash with hate. The Internet, alongside its many blessings, can make it contagious. You can spread hate globally through social media. You can have worldwide impact through YouTube videos of burnings and beheadings.
    The multiplication of channels of communication means that we no longer rely for news on established newspapers and television channels. Broadcasting is being replaced by narrowcasting. The difference is that broadcasting speaks to a mixed public, exposing them to a range of views. Narrowcasting speaks to a targeted public and exposes them only to facts and opinions that support their prejudices. It fragments a public into a set of sects of the like-minded.
    The Internet also globalises hate. Events that would in the past have had purely local impact now send shockwaves around the world. A provocation somewhere can create anger everywhere. Never has paranoia been easier to create and communicate. It is easy to portray an unintentional slight as a deliberate insult if you are communicating with people thousands of miles away who have no means of checking the facts.
    Nor has it ever been easier to demonise whole populations so effectively. Jihadists and suicide bombers are recruited by non-stop streams of images of the humiliation of Muslims at the hands of others who then become the Greater or Lesser Satan and can be murdered without qualms since you see them as persecutors of your people. Even at an everyday level, the Internet has a
disinhibition effect
: you can be ruder to someone electronically than you would be in a face-to-face encounter, since the exchange has been depersonalised. Read any Comments section on the Web, and you will see what this means: the replacement of reason by anger, and argument by vilification. Civility is dying, and when it dies, civilisation itself is in danger.
    In the West we tend to have a vague sense of what is happening without always understanding why. That is because, since the eighteenth century, the West, through market