Being proportionate in the face of wrongdoing means having:
In other words, always choosing the right-sized outfit for each person—so it is neither too tight nor too loose. It also means applying this golden rule to all grievances, not to some yes and others no, avoiding double standards. All of the above also applies to the media, political, and social spotlight.
Read LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us be impartial and not apply double standards
To better understand this topic, I will provide 2 examples of disproportion.
CONDEMNING MUSLIMS AND EXCUSING CHRISTIANS
In the West, there are Christians who are deeply anti-Muslim and who like to share messages on social media against this type of immigrant. In their worldview, Christians are the good ones and their religion is civilized and peaceful, while Muslims are the bad ones and their culture is barbaric.
As a result, they react strongly whenever a Muslim commits an abuse, which can range from a terrorist attack to stealing a wallet. Or even when they do harmless things such as demonstrating in the street. These anti-Islamic reactions are sometimes proportionate, but other times exaggerated or entirely out of place. But the most glaring issue is that when Christians commit the abuses, their responses are blatantly toned down or even nonexistent. In other words, they grow in the first case until they become giants, and shrink in the second until they are little dwarfs.
They are very critical of the most harmful and medieval passages of the Qur’an, but when I send them the many Bible verses that command crimes against innocents, do you know what their reaction is? They fall silent or dodge the issue.
And when I provide them with objective data about Christians who in the past and present have caused much suffering to innocents by following the precepts of the Bible, their response is the same. One example is Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who supports the war in Ukraine, with all the crimes and harm it entails. He claims it is good for fighting LGBT ideology. Moreover, this idea of a bloody crusade against Western liberalism is shared by most popes (Orthodox priests) and Russian Christians.
Read “HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT HARM? Let us reform the harmful part of Christianity”
I also explain to them the crimes committed against innocent members of the LGBT community in African countries with a traditionalist Christian majority, such as Uganda. There, they are kidnapped and taken to prisons, where they are fairly often mistreated, or even killed. And who is behind these human rights violations? In this order: evangelical pastors, Muslim imams, and Catholic priests. Once again, the reaction to these demonstrable and verifiable facts is to look the other way.
It is of little use for me to explain to them that oppressive, repressive Christians are just as bad as harmful, intolerant Muslims—more or less the same daggers, just with handles in different colors. Or that benign, tolerant Muslims are as good as respectful, liberal Christians—made of similar stuff, with the same underlying substance but different forms. Jesus Christ himself would agree with me, since he said: “by their fruits you shall know them.” Because in the end what matters is objective actions—what each person does or fails to do, or what they think or refrain from thinking—and not a mere label.
Why do almost no Islamophobes share posts about wrongs committed by Christians, but they do share those perpetrated by Muslims? There is nothing like good indoctrination to make someone lose their sense of proportion and justice.
Read “FOR A WORLD WITHOUT HARM: Let us think for ourselves and say no to toxic indoctrination
Read “THE ART OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us be just”
THE RUBIALES CASE
This is a textbook example that happened in the country where I live. The former president of the Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, at a medal ceremony for his women’s team, kissed his captain on the lips with his mouth closed, and she did not reject it.
Rubiales took a liberty he should not have taken with someone who was not his partner, so he deserves disapproval and, if he caused the captain moral harm, reparation would also be appropriate. But what was not proportionate was the way he was crucified.
Read “THE REVOLUTION OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us repair the damage caused”
Because, despite having apologized and despite the fact that no judge had yet ruled that the kiss was not consensual, he was the victim of a genuine political, social, and media lynching. It was promoted by far-left pseudo-feminist extremists, who used their position of power in the coalition government to make the media accomplices in their coven.
LET US LIVE WITHOUT HARM! Let us oppose social lynchings of scapegoats
Arbitrarily, they issued a major “fatwa” against the closed-mouth kiss, without it warranting it, yet they remained silent when, on a highly rated program, a woman did the same to the famous chef Jordi Cruz, with the aggravating factor that he did reject the kiss.
Luis Rubiales was the perfect scapegoat for the far-left women: a man, European, and with high status. Because if the same or worse (or even much worse) is done by a woman or a man of non-European origin—especially if he is Muslim—instead of starting to scream, they keep their mouths shut, pressing their lips together as tightly as the Federation president did in his kiss. This is what happens with gang rapes, honor crimes, forced marriages of girls, or the confinement of women in their homes, reduced to a kind of slavery.
But their double standard—disproportionately wide for themselves, their voters, or whoever suits them, and narrow for everyone else—does not end there. They have also not condemned the tyranny of the Iranian government against women who do not wear the veil as they believe they should, or against demonstrators in favor of women’s rights. These participants in demonstrations are imprisoned, tortured, raped, and shot in the streets in their genitals.
In fact, Amnesty International and Iranian demonstrators in Madrid asked the Spanish Minister for Equality—the same one who castigated Rubiales—to meet with them, and she refused. When an Iranian woman has died at a police station for not wearing the veil “correctly,” those who condemned Rubiales have said nothing. And what is worse, the media did report on the murder of the first of them, Mahsa Amini, but almost all have silenced or glossed over the second. Perhaps the millions of euros that the Iranian theocracy—one that violates women’s rights—has given to the far-left party of the Minister for Equality had something to do with it.
Let us reject all those arbitrarinesses, sectarianism, shady dealings, hypocrisies, cynicisms, and the lack of even the slightest sense of justice. Let us throw all that filth into the garbage container.
Let us speak loudly, clearly, and without mincing words in the face of major and moderate injustices, reforming whatever needs to be changed, and let us be proportionate with minor grievances.
Read “LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us reform society to improve it”
Thank you for sharing,
Xavier Paya
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