A REFLECTION

 

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games draw to a close tonight. Inasmuch as the games celebrated humanity, with nations cheering on the ‘record-breaking’ and other athletic feats, fresh reports of massacres and the humanitarian toll in Gaza, dramatically exposes a collective dissonance that calls to question our claims of “one humanity.”

 

The Games which officially opened on 26 July spanned a period that includes the 300th day of non-stop mass deaths, injury, destruction and mayhem. The martyred number in the upwards of 40,000, with well over a hundred thousand more maimed and injured. Without discrimination, women, children and even the bed-ridden continue to be shunted from camp to camp, under illegal evacuation orders, as Zionists wage a genocidal war against Palestinians.

 

The official opening ceremony of the Games on 26 July, caused some disquiet over the airwaves, on social media and at many a gathering. Central to the debate was what was judged to have been a parody of The Last Supper, a 15th century iconic painting of Leonardo da Vinci, that is generally embraced as a depiction of a key moment in the history of Christian belief, when Jesus (Nabī Īsa alayhis salaam), sat with his disciples for a repast.

 

During the same inaugural proceedings, the celebration of self-indulgence was cemented by the portrayal of Dionysus, the Greek god of “wine and ecstasy,” a stark reminder to viewers of the pagan origins of the Olympic Games.

 

As the Games come to a close, the Jamiatul Ulama South Africa (JUSA) would like to place a on record its rejection of this sacrilegious portrayal of one of the revered Messengers of Allah, in a display featuring characters representing hedonistic perversions, in a show of a total disregard for the feelings of millions of people of faith, across the world. Furthermore, an invocation of pagan foundations of the Games, alienated certain audiences, instead of being inclusive, as claimed to have been the intention of the artistic director of the opening ceremony. Idol-worship is a grave abomination that is contrary to the spirit of tauhīd, the central pillar of Islam.

 

Assertions of secular humanism, have become a zero-sum game, paving ways towards human indignity. JUSA therefore welcomes the voices, and supports the position of faith leaders who are coming to the realisation that freedom of expression through art, speech and writing, has gone too far, and should have limits so as not to hurt religious sensibilities of others, which form part of their inviolable dignity.

 

The removal of such sacrilegious displays from the official social media platforms of the Games should be upheld as a precedent and affirmation that an insistence to cause offence, cannot pass under the guise of freedom of artistic expression. It should be a takeaway from the Games that extremism has gripped secular humanism so much that the its pursuit of inclusivity and diversity, ironically marginalises others, through the caricaturing of their symbols of identity, decency, belief and faith.

 

We pray to Allah to grant us sincerity and not let our hearts die while we are still living, benumbed by the subliminal messages of unbelief, unbridled consumerism and mindlessness of our responsibilities. (Āmīn).

 

6 Safar 1446 / 11 August 2024