Saturday, Dec. 04, 2004 - 2:53 p.m.
You thought I was going to talk about my holiday?
This entry all swirled together in my head in transit at Kota Kinabalu airport yesterday, so bear with me while it comes together here and now. Also bear in mind that I'm very disorientated and have been travelling for over a day.Malaysia is a multi-racial Islamic country and while I was there I was impressed by how genuinely smiley and friendly and gentle people are. Just hanging about, ladies will come and chat to you about what you are doing there, in an interested way that carries none of the worry of hidden agendas that you get in most other countries. I'm sure that as English is taught so comprehensively in schools and that people born there up until 1964 were British citizens has given Malaysians a confidence in the language and don't feel they've had to just learn it for the tourists (see eg Thailand) where you sense they feel resentful and you feel guilty.
In Sarawak, where I was, the mix of Muslim Malays, Buddhist Chinese and (mostly) Christian native Borneans seem, at least superficially, to all co-exist happily and the Muslim Malays actually form a minority. Everywhere people seemed content and calm and pleased to see you there.
So when I was killing time in Kota Kinabalu airport idly looking in a bookshop, I admit I was pretty shocked to find a shelf, amongst the books on Borneo plants and wildlife, containing books such as Henry Ford's Complete 'The Internation@l Jew'; a book on why Darwin, whose evolutionary theory apparently necessarily denounces religion, is responsible for the evils of the twentieth century including Hitler and Pol Pot*; 'Cr!mes of the Jews'; an Islamic scholar's interpretation of the Bible and Christianity.
I had only been looking for something to kill the transit hours, and there I found myself chewing my nails, my heart racing and actually gasping for breath. This shelf was in an area marked 'Tourism'. I had heard about Henry Ford's book in the way I guess most of us have: as an outdated embarassment of the past that only conspiracy theorists might still value. I couldn't believe there was such a mainstream market for it.
In my head I realised how limited a world experience I actually had - of course I know a lot of this stuff and know a whole lot more ... from watching the news and reading the papers. So it was striking me how removed that lets you be. I was also worrying about the potential racial giveaway of my surname.
Then I thought - god I have had such a lovely time in this country that seems to be filled with such warm people, and now in my last hours here I feel marginalised and worried.
One of the guides we had had was ethnically from a native Bornean tribe and he had a particularly charming attitude. He said about how we, as Brits, shouldn't be too embarassed about our colonial past because we had brought Christianity and order to the island and stopped the practice of headhunting there. Just as we were all audibly gulping down our guilt regardless (Christianity?! I'm so sorry!) he said that he wasn't religious but that he thought a smile went a long way. I think that's about the best thing I can think to live by. I might not smile much at home but a fortnight spent smiling at strangers is good for the soul.
So back at the airport I had this in mind. Then I thought about things from the other side, for the first time. The Muslim scholar of the Bible's prime argument for the Qu'ran's supremacy over the Bible was that the Qu'ran is the direct word of the prophet Mohammed, whereas the Bible is the work of numerous historians, written many years after Christ was alive.
I have to admit that I had just read The Da V**** C*** (well - I was 10000s of miles away on holiday) so I was all the more inclined to agree.
And I realise that this sort of thing is just a brief glimpse at how imperial the Western, market-led, globalist, capitalist 'religion' must appear.
But why does one belief have to be superior to another? I know that even if you try to be as open-minded as you can be you will always find it difficult to accept someone else's way of life if it flies against your own morals.
I am really trying not to just slip into cliche here (I know I'm failing) but I'm afraid I'm going to have to mention the children. I was watching the children at the airport having fun and I thought, they're all having the same fun as any child in the world would want to have fun and why can't a smile be enough? Trying to distil my own thinking down to its purest and least culturally-entwined, I still think the world would be better if a smile could just be enough.
But then I guess some people don't like niceness.
Anyway - if anyone is still reading this far down, I know this sounds really very trite, but it does have a point, bigger than the one I have clumsily been trying to make.
When I came back from the bookshop and sat down to read The Cl0sed Circle I found that on the page I was on, the character Philip was having exactly the same mental musings I had been having and I again found myself gasping, but this time with relief that I was not the only person utterly confused by the world.
How much do I sound like a teenager now?
Well, here it is, that passage, written by a much more articulate person, an actual author. Hope he doesn't mind my typing it out. (Philip has just been researching the resurgence of the National Front in the UK)
Philip found the logic of these conspiracy theories was deeply treacherous and disorientating. He kept finding himself arriving at conclusions he agreed with (that Western society was decadent and valueless, for instance) and then having to retrace his steps and anchor himself in simple facts, concrete objects eliciting a gut response in which he could trust: the foul, racist language used in the anonymous letters to Steve, or the hate-filled lyrics on the Auschwitz Carnival CD. In the absolute incompatibility between these things and the mystical, almost poetical outpourings of the more articulate neo-Nazis, with their talk of Folk Culture, Soil and Honour, Philip struggled to find a moral position of his own. His overriding sense was that every system of values seemed to be in a state of flux, of meltdown, and that somehow New Labour itself was symptomatic of this, constantly talking a language of beliefs and idealism but in fact behaving with as much ruthless pragmatism as anybody else, and as deeply in thrall to its own God (the free market economy) as any Muslim fanatic.
* At university I did a course on 'D@rwinian Legacies' so I know a fair bit on this ... it's a whole other conversation in itself and one I'll gladly have