Extremism is the work of shai'tan, said my friend who just returned from haj, using the Arabic word for "Satan". Ignore it if you can, he warned me, "or you'll fall into its trap".
Before you come at me with a hatchet in the comment section, my friend was referring to every form of extremism, whether religious, political or nationalistic. He's tired of condemning IS over and over ("godless madness"), and he's tired of hearing some people, foaming at the mouth, lashing out at the Rohingya.
Wait, my friend isn't even on Facebook! He didn't even see the hurricane of hate in the comment section under the Bangkok Post's reports on the brutal crackdown in Rakhine, or on the BBC and Al Jazeera websites, or -- this is my favourite -- the Federation of Thai Buddhists page, where Muslims are called rapists and the Rohingya filthy animals. Word-mincing is obsolete: the violent creativity of swear words is having a Golden Age online, on the internet of hate, the Facebook of fury, at the expense, at the moment, of the stateless Rohingya.
My friend, lulled by the heat of Mecca, believes it's best to let it go sometimes. "Ignore" may sound blissfully crude, but I think he actually means something in the line of "being patient". The trap of shai'tan he mentions means reciprocal anger and counter hatred, petrol on fire, the all-in bet that this is a war to be won once and for all. Extremism breeds extremism. The nuclear reaction of hate is the scariest of them all.
In the lexicon of the haters, my friend belongs to the loke suay camp -- the naive utopian who believes the world is beautiful. A lot of people, both Buddhist and Muslim, who try to inject sanity into the comment section of any Rohingya post, to warn of the dangers of racism and nationalism, to advise caution and patience, are also snubbed as naive dreamers who're too soft, too kind, too innocent. And that, to me, is the gist of the problem in our age of fury: The voice of the extremists is always louder than the moderates, whose sane whispers are drowned out by the racket and bloodlust. Though outnumbered (or so I hope), the extremists have always succeeded in setting the agenda of the world, in provoking responses and media coverage.
Islamic extremism has provided plenty of examples of that, from Bin Laden to IS. But that's not the case here: The case here concerns the innocent Rohingya, all 400,000 of them, who've been fleeing into Bangladesh and who're the victims of violence and extremism, no doubt about that, and cheerleaders of Aung San Suu Kyi are witnessing the twilight of their idol, as the Nobel Laureate denied even to use the term Rohingya in her weird speech, thus denying the identity and existence of the minority Muslims. And it's the little-known Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who actually says something constructive as she pleads to the UN to create safe zones for Rohingya refugees.
So this is the point where you come at me with a hatchet in the comment section, drowning out my whisper with more shouting and the false equivalence that dumps all the blame on the attacks of Rohingya fighters -- numbering in mere hundreds -- on the Myanmar army.
The safe zones look like an immediate solution. The harder part, the impossible part, is to plead for tolerance and moderation, for an acceptance of a humanitarian agenda and to do away with nationalist bombast and racial disenfranchisement. It's like asking for a new historical consciousness, and in all honesty I don't know if it'll ever be possible.
No, we don't have to believe that the world is beautiful and everyone can live happily together forever, because we cannot. And yet to support the brutal treatment of another human being and dismiss "fake news" when evidence to the contrary is abundant? Bathe me in rose water and give me the "beautiful world" sticker any day of the week.
Look what happened in Syria, for instance, and see how a local conflict between peoples, tribes or sects can spawn endless international horrors. My friend the haji is only half right. We can't just ignore the extremists; we have to keep whispering in their ears. While the Thai government still tiptoes, a group called Friends for Humanity, comprised of monks, academics, writers and activists, have banded together to call for aid for the Rohingya and empathy in the face of creeping Islamophobia. Respected monk Phra Paisal Visalo sums up the essence of the message when he asks us to see beyond nationality and faith, and to appreciate the humanity of everyone on the face of the Earth. As diplomatic moves stall, words of wisdom are what we need to avert the tempting trap of shai'tan.
Kong Rithdee is Life Editor, Bangkok Post.