1.0 INTRODUCTION
Peace is what most people want though the history of man has been a history of wars. From time immemorial, men have been locked up in perennial struggles of either to keep, add or recover. This struggle is the cause of war. War has littered man’s history such that peace is defined as an interval between two wars. Fulton Sheen’s review of a study made by a learned Professor of Brussels on wars from 1496 B. C to A. D 1861, a period equivalent to 3, 357 years is very instructive. The study shows that of those 3, 357 years, there were 3, 130 years of wars and only 227 years of peace. Put in a ratio form, it means that for every year of peace there were over fourteen years of war.[1] The study is revealingly conclusive: War was not only a struggle in the Hobbesian state of nature but an intermittent feature in modern social contract.
War casts bloody shadow across our paths. World War I killed as many as 8.6 million people. A quarter century later World War II left 50 million dead. There is the horror of holocaust of Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Vietnam. Our tears still drop for the Zionist invasion of Palestine with the connivance of some powers; the uprooting of settled populations; Israel’s expansionist wars; and the oppression and killings that continue. We know now that in the Balkan conflict, NATO’s attack jets fired weapons tipped with depleted uranium: 10, 000 rounds in Bosnia in 1994-95, and 31, 000 in Kosovo in 1999. European soldiers who served there are now dying of leukemia, or suffering from a range of symptoms including cancer, fatigue, hair loss, and sleeplessness.[2] Since 1945, several minor wars, guerilla combats and conventional weapons have taken some 10 million lives. There have been conflicts and civil disturbances in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Ireland, Serbia, Chechnya, in some Central and South American countries, and virtually every part of Africa. Nigeria is not spared too. In sum, the 20th century slaughtered over 90 million people.[3]
We note also the increasing rapidity of war. “The interval between the Napoleonic and the Franco-Prussian Wars was fifty-five years. The interval between the Franco-Prussian War and the World War I was forty-three years. The interval between World War I and World War II was twenty-one years.”[4] In our own time, war has become a permanent fixture in our daily lives. Report about Africans is either they have just fought or they are fighting or they are about to fight.
The Islamic world is all torn up into vast areas of confusion. Daily blood-letting is taking place in Palestine. Iran and Iraq fought war for decades. Syria and Iraq are being pounded by ISIS. Political unrest in Yemen has no proportion. Egypt and Libya have murdered sleep. Democracy is a casualty in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq where corruption, insurgency has permitted little or no hope for future.
Muslims are characterized as terrorists owing to underground activities of a very few extremists like Osam Bin Laden. Muslims all over the world are at the receiving end of destiny’s misfortunes, holding out a threat to peace.
2.0 WHY MODERN MEN ARE AT WARS
At the heart of modern crisis is the attempt to create man in the image of Europe under the guise of globalization. Every other factor is reactionary. Keep in mind that the dawn of the third millennium saw three proposals competing for relevance in the organisation of the human future. The first is the proposal of pragmatic utilitarianism which defines much of moral and political discourse in Western Europe and North America, veiled in the term, globalization. Next is the proposal of radical Islam which opposes the ideals of globalization while the last is the proposal of Catholic Social Doctrine which is a way of living freedom that ties freedom to truth and truth to goodness, a way of thinking about the human aspect that can be engaged by every person of goodwill.[5]
Globalization as a present high point of scientific revolution attempts to expel God from public awareness. And Joseph Ratzinger warns: “If God is expelled from the scientific sphere; religion is expelled from the life of man. If morality is expelled from law, our laws are deprived of values. If science and technology enjoy an unlimited guarantee, progress can become blind and destructive.”[6] The gods of globalization are not bringing new faith but are allowing people to express their faith in new ways. These gods identified within America are personality symbols like President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther Jr., both men who succeeded in changing the way people look at politics, race and society.[7]
Because globalization robs people of their honor, dignity, identity, beliefs and moral convictions it is shaking the structures of many traditional societies. Groups are forced to dislocate or live nearby other neighbours. In the process of dislocation, people are having little patience with the problems of others. They develop intolerance, political, moral, religious or otherwise, and express it through anger. It can take the form of a Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan who believed in human rights and fought within the law; it can also take the form of an Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda who fought outside of law and gave birth to terrorism. [8]
Next, globalization has created false hopes. The spread of modern education without accompanying compatible changes in the socio-economic bases of people’s has created a rupture in the traditional and modern way of life and inculcated aspirations and ambitions among the people with non-existent opportunities available for their realization.[9] The lack creates competition and struggle. There is urbanism without modernism, westernization without modernization. The end result is motion without movement leaving people in moral nowhere.
Again, the vehicle of globalization, the modern communication especially the mass media, has not helped matters. Before the advent of the mass media, there is much older, easier, and inexperienced way to reach people. Once under way, word of mouth is the most credible, quickest, and most lasting medium of all. It goes from friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor, worker to worker, relative to relative- between people who can afford each other long time credibility. Word of mouth goes out all the time but it is very hard to escalate to high levels of velocity or intensity. The reach out was very limited but information was less prone to manipulation. With small audience and undiluted message, the manipulation of public opinion or escalation of private opinion was minimal.
That is not so with modern mass communication. The mass media, be it print or electronic, are channels through which information is simultaneously disseminated to relatively large, heterogeneous and anonymous audience. They summarize and depict fairly accurately the chief events in people’s life as well as furnishing a mass of other information- sports results, market prices, weather forecasts. They expose, analyze, argue, describe and amuse.[10] Without media, life will be so miserable and many people uninformed. Yet, these enormous functions ascribe great power to the media. With agenda setting capacity, the media have also marred the society. If the World War II has taught any lesson, it is that nobody should underestimate the agenda setting power of the media. The media propaganda shaped the hatred that made Jewish holocaust inevitable. In 1946, Julins Streicher, the editor of the Nazi newspaper, Der Sturmer, was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg war crimes for a central role in preaching anti-Semitism. The success of Nazi propaganda awoke interest on the social effects of the media.
Explicitly, they claim to expose untruth and wrongdoing. Implicitly, they pass judgment on the information received by deciding whether or not to publish it and what prominence they should give to it. Such large claims as this can incline social communicators to abuse of positions. The one who brings a message soon ascertains that his role gives him power. By giving a false message, or an exaggerated one, by withholding a message or by delivering it at a great speed, by shouting it out when it should be spoken softly or by whispering it when it should be proclaimed from the housetops, he can affect events, advance or retard someone’s cause, earn money or lose it, make or break a career. The journalist knows this and unless he is a saint, he will sometimes exploit this knowledge. Sad enough, no journalist is a saint.[11]
There is a gigantic and notorious history of the abuse of press power which I do not suppose to rehearse here. One example will suffice. On May 9, 2005, the US magazine Newsweek printed a paragraph that read: ‘Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell Newsweek: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Koran down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash’.[12] The item with its treatment of the Koran was spotted by someone on the Arabic-language television news channel al-Jazeera and broadcast as news report. The event led to violent riots in at least six areas: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, the Palestinian territories and Indonesia killing a dozen or more. Pressure was on Newsweek to retract its report. The magazine checked with its source- a senior US official- who confirmed that he had come across references to the maltreatment of the Koran in the results of a US investigation into the mistreatment but he was no longer certain that they had come from the specific report he had originally named.
The professional weakness of the story lies as Pentagon spotted out immediately, in the vagueness of its sourcing. The magazine did not try to hide or deceive its readers about later development in the source. But the harm was already done. And for the al-Jazeera, if news broadcasting is about telling people what is of interest to them, then the station was only doing its job- even if that job is something which UK and US governments often dislike and suspect. All al-Jazeera did was to report what Newsweek was saying.
Not far from us is 2007 Kenya’s post election violence. Among the six Kenyans who appeared before the International Court of Justice (ICC) at the Hague alongside Deputy President William Ruto, Joseph Arap Sang, a career broadcast journalist stands out.
In Nigeria, the dubious role of media propaganda during the bloody civil war is well known. While Radio Biafra referred to General Gowon as ‘Boy Yakubu Wagon’, the Federal Radio referred to Ojukwu as a ‘Rebel Leader’. In 1968, after the pogrom of Igbos in the North, Ojukwu had sought the services of a foreign-based Public Relations firm, Markpress in Geneva, to sell Biafra’s plight to the world. The Military Government through Radio Nigeria preached against Igbos dominance in the East. Both actions delayed peace and affected the credibility of the media. For instance, not till Dele Giwa’s News Watch, Nigeria press was blind to pervasive social ills, erosion of individual and corporate rights of citizens and corruption that infested Nigeria body politics.
On the heel of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, the media induced panic with unverifiable reports that one section of the country was preparing for a secessionist war. The panic caused a lot lives and property. In the year 2000, media coverage of the riot in Kaduna over the introduction Sharia legal system aroused fear in the minds of the citizens. Again, not till the BBC video clips showing the killing of Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was released, everybody had believed he died in gun-battle with the military. Today, the Human Right Watch and the media which championed campaign against the killing stand aloof as his disciples unleash maximum pogrom on Nigeria populace. Even so, the media conflicting reports have prolonged the insurgency, sometimes putting words in the mouth of the sect members and government and at other time disclosing official security secrets prompting the sect to continually re-strategize.
3.0 TOWARDS VIBRANT PUBLIC MORAL DIALOGUE
- Moral Dialogue:
If you agree with me that globalization has become a social question, you must admit that the failure of the both military campaigns to restore peace conveys the urgency of dialogue through the scholarship of tolerance and moral obligation. Rome, Washington, London, Moscow, Paris, Cairo, Islamabad, Kabul and Tehran need to come together as a single moral community in theological dialogue. This dialogue comes only when goodwill is marched with sincerity in promotion of universal values.
A thousand years ago in Muslim Spain, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived and worked together to create a glorious civilization where libraries, public debates, and learning flourished at a time when the rest of Europe was stuck in the ‘Dark Ages’. And five hundred years ago in India, Akbar the Great (a Muslim who was married to a Hindu princess) ruled over a territory that encompasses modern-day India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and his reign ushered in a remarkable century of tolerance.[13] Such can still be possible.
If globalization has given rise to deep anxieties and tension among cultures and religion, there must be a vibrant moral culture that can discipline and direct those tremendous energies let loose by free economy and democracy so that they can serve the ends of genuine human flourishing. Culturally, intelligence needs to understand some of the differences between non-Western and Western lifestyles. We must realize that there are significant differences between faith and communities within the globalized world. Realization of diversity leads to focusing on those values people share regardless of their background: equality, freedom, justice and tolerance.[14]
Islam too has most answers to these challenges. It can revive its experience and offer solutions to the problems. Islamic philosophy, mysticism called Sufism, Islamic ethics, and Islamic political thought contains remedies to the existential maladies. Islam has ethics based on three values of certainty, equilibrium and righteousness which are technically called Imam, Islam, Ihsan. Certainty relates to God, the Absolute truth which is Imam. The equilibrium relates to law or shariah, which is Islam as taught by Prophet Mohammed. Ihsan is the code of code or righteousness which is the key factor for redemption. A Muslim is expected to perform certain duties to set up a social order of world brotherhood. Islam offers creed to believe, a code to follow and a cause to serve. It therefore has the potential to establish peace in the world. It ought to create fellowship and with stress on faith in the love of God purify the heart of men to live in peace. Its social ethics of equality and brotherhood could remove poverty, hunger and ignorance in the society. The teaching of its Sufis can resist the temptation to disturb peace.
The Church in Rome proposes blueprint composed of three interlocking parts- a democratic political community, a free economy and a robust public moral culture. While free politics and free economies let loose tremendous human energies, vibrant moral culture is necessary to discipline and direct those energies so that they serve the ends of genuine human flourishing.[15] The task of the moral-cultural sector is to form these habits of heart and mind in people. The church should continue in the business of forming the culture that can form the kind of people who can develop those solutions against a transcendent moral horizon.[16]
- Good Governance:
Politically, government needs to be alert to the conditions that can radicalize the youths and counter them through good governance. Terrorist elements are always quick to exploit youth grievances. In situations of poor governance and corruption, the youths are helpless instrument of destruction. Barrack Obama observes that the battle against extremism should not end in military projection but in understanding that addressing the problem of global poverty and failed states is vital to national security.[17]
- Moral High Ground:
Political double-standard of the West contradicts democratic values. The neo-imperialist institutions like United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, NATO, The Hague etc have always been seen as true manifestations of Western insincerity. Through these institutions, the World powers politically, economically, militarily, and otherwise manipulate international order to their favour. The West re-interprets old concerns as existential threats and lobbies institutions to support the campaign laden with national interests by creating panic. If evil regime in Iraq must be brought down, no look must be cast at the direction of their oil wells; if not, it makes no difference to call the invaders exploiters.
- Responsible Journalism
Responsible journalism is essentially marked by truthful information, carefulness in reporting, correction of false report, use of honest method in the procurement of news, safeguard of professional secret, protection of the private sphere.[18] The basic ingredient of information is fact. Fact is truth and truth is news if it is new. The right to information has to be reconciled with other existing rights. There is right of truth which guards the good name of both men and of the societies. There is right of privacy which protects the private life of families and individuals. There is right of secrecy which obtains if necessity or professional duty or the common good itself requires it. Indeed whenever public good is at stake, discretion and discrimination and careful judgment should be used in the preparation of news’[19]
In an environment where truth-telling may constitute harm, the truth of the facts cannot be the only criterion for journalists. “Time and again, Bible linked truth with other traits, like mercy, justice and peace (Ps 85, 10; Is 16, 5; Zech 8, 16). Beyond it, love is the last criterion also in this realm, if a feature does not contribute to justice and peace, e.g because it fuels enmity or would alert terrorists to the strategies of the police in prevention of their acts of violence, it must be omitted.”[20]
4.0 CONCLUSION:
Obviously only God can bring absolute peace. “Consider the treaties that were made by the League of Nations between 1920 and 1939, the years of the outbreak of World War II. In 19 years, 4, 568 treaties were signed! In the 11 months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed.”[21] Yet, the war has gone on. The Bible looks upon peace as a gift from God and fruit of Christ’s redemptive work (2 Cor 5: 18-21; Eph 2: 14- 16). All we can do is to create conditions in which human can experience genuine peace.
The ministry of Jesus was one of peace. Before and after his death, he bequeathed peace which the world cannot give and which is different from Pax Romana achieved through total war and slaughter, and maintained by sword and repression. (Jn. 14: 27). He laid down his life and pray for his killers (Lk. 23: 34; Jn. 15: 9-16). We must ‘seek peace and pursue it’ (1 Pet 3: 8-12). No price is too big for peace to reign.
The task before us all is threefold: sincerity in action, respect to our differences, and civility when we disagree in creed. We can contribute to world peace if we join up the dots in our creed and prejudice.
Delivered at Rotary Club Presidential Oath Taking, New Geneza Hotel, Abakaliki on 11th October 2015
[1] Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is worth Living (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999) p. 21.
[2] A. Bultmann, “Der Schleichende Tod lange nach dem Krieg” in Publik Forum, no. 2, 26 January.
[3] J. C. Swaim, War, Peace and the Bible, New York: Orbis, 1983, p. 75.
[4] Sheen, Opt. Cit p. 1.
[5] George Weigel, The Free and Virtuous Society, in Charles Moore, Gyles Brandreth, Cherie Booth and George Weigel (eds.) ‘First Things’, (New York: Burns & Oates, 2005) 84.
[6] Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (Francisco: Ignatius press, 2006) 17.
[7] Akbar Ahmed, Islam: Clash or Dialogue of Civilization?, in Michelle P. Brown & Richard J. Kelly (Ed.), You’re History, (New York: Continuum, 2005) 182-183.
[8] Ahmed, Islam: Clash or Dialogue of Civilization?
[9] B. S Butola, “Crisis of Hegemony and Counter-Hegemonic Insurgency in Northeast India”, in D. Pakem (ed.),. Insurgency in Northeast India. New Delhi: Viking Penguins Books, 1994, p. 27.
[10] Charles Moore, Witness to the Truth, in ‘First Things: The Moral, Social and Religious Challenges of the Day (New York: Burns & Oates, 2005) p. 14.
[11] Charles Moore, Witness to the Truth, in ‘First Things: The Moral, Social and Religious Challenges of the Day (New York: Burns & Oates, 2005) p. 15.
[12] John Simpson, Media’s Fault, in Brown and Kelly (ed.) You’re History, p.231.
[13] Ahmed, Islam: Clash or Dialogue of Civilization?, 181.
[14] Eliza Manningham-Buller, The International terrorist Threat to the United Kingdom, 72-73.
[15] John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 46.
[16] John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 44-52.
[17] Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 23.
[18] Karl Peschke, Opt Cit. P. 411.
[19] Inter Mirifica, Decree on the Means of Social Communication nr 42, in Austin Flannery’s Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post-conciliar Documents, Mumbai: St Pauls, 1975.
[20] Peschke, Opt Cit. p. 410.
[21] Opt. Cit p.21-22.
