Climate of Fear by Wole Soyinka

incorrect discourse to politically correct incineration or other forms of complicity in our premature demise, this question must be given voice: just what is it that turns the mantra of a beatific chant of faith, such as
Allah akbar,
into a summons to an orgy of death? Why did Martin Scorsese’s
The Last Temptation of Christ
arouse violent reactions, condemnations, and exhortations to boycotts, as has more recently Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of
the Christ,
but not a universal outcry for the murder of the cinéastes, or of those who dared participate in these interpretative exercises?
    The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times. Even after half a century, films that touch upon the era of Nazi glorification, with their orchestrated chant of
Sieg heil,
continue to send a chill of apprehension down the spines of all with a historical memory. Scenes of mass religious frenzy increasingly resurrect these nightmares, and if Khatami’s inspired Dialogue of Civilizations leads, eventually, to the dissociation of the chant of millions to the greatness of God from the gross ultranationalist politics lodged in the chant of
Sieg heil,
we will have lifted one corner, a not inconsiderable one, of the shroud of fear that now envelops life, and humanity.

Four
    The Quest for Dignity
    The Times
newspaper of London, on Saturday, February 21 of this year, carried the story of the suicide of a teenager in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Apparently, it should have been a double suicide, but that youth, after yet another bout of humiliation from his tormentors, decided that he simply could not wait. He was one of a close-knit group of seven, the report continues, who had attended school together and continued to spend all their spare time together. Of the seven, only two still survive. The motor accident that earlier took the lives of three of them may not have been deliberate, but it is on record that one of those three had also once attempted suicide. All lived in fear of some degrading punishment by the local vigilantes known as the INLA. In one case, a fourteen-year-old boy suspected of being a police informer was tarred and feathered, dragged through the streets, then “kneecapped”—that is, shot through the back of the knee, crippling the youth for life. Here is what a consulting psychiatrist in north Belfast had to say:
    In a culture where it is acceptable for a young man to be dragged down an alleyway and shot, children grow up believing there is no such thing as respect for human dignity. They . . . often develop anxiety and a fatalistic approach to their own lives.
    Now, why did the psychiatrist settle on that word “dignity” over others in his clinical notebook? Why had this youth—as had others—chosen to embrace death rather than live but be publicly tarred and feathered and/or kneecapped, subjected thereafter to cruel taunts by his own-age mates—we learn—who called out to the fourteen-year-old, knowing he had been crippled, “Come out, Barney, come out and play”?
    We are trying to come to grips with the concept of “dignity,” and why it appears to mean so much to the sentient human, almost right from childhood. Why has it been entrenched in so many social documents across cultures, civilizations, and political upheavals? Why was it given such prominence in the charter that resulted from one of the bloodiest revolutions in human history—the French—and was further enshrined in the document for the enthronement of peace after the Second World War, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? In one form or another, the quest for human dignity has proved to be one of the most propulsive elements for wars, civil strife, and willing