April 06, 2015

Arson Attack on Asylum Home

editor:	Gurmeet Singh

Easter, for many, is a secular holiday. Egg-hunts and chocolate exchanges figure prominently, and people are happy for the extra time off work. However, there’s no point in walking on egg-shells: Easter remains a religious event. Unlike Christmas, which has been thoroughly capitalised, there is still a religious undercurrent to Easter which you’re only one annoyingly inquisitive child away from revealing:

- Why do we have eggs at Easter?

- To symbolise birth.

- Why do we want to symbolise birth?

- To celebrate Spring and its associations, as well as the death and re-birth of Jesus Christ.

Well, that’s the short version of that conversation. But let’s take a look at the religious side of Easter for a moment, invoking the spirit of the season and look at what Jesus purportedly died for:

Love thy neighbour

So it’s a shame that a holiday celebrating this belief (which even secular people can consider and benefit from) has been marked by an event that encapsulates its antithesis. Al-Jazeera has reported that a house built for asylum-seekers in the town of Troeglitz (Sachsen-Anhalt) has been burnt down before opening. So, let’s not ask whether the arsonist (and the police do believe it’s a case of arson) was without sin, let’s ask why this is happening.

Pegida has emboldened reactionaries all across Germany, but particularly in the Sachsen heartland. Not only will the arsonist have derived confidence from Pegida, seeing that is gaining mainstream attention, it may be that the actions of the arsonist will be seen as a victory for the movement by its supporters; after all, it’s a movement predicated on the belief that German citizens are being displaced by non-Germans (particularly Muslims), so any visible accommodation of non-Germans (particularly non-white people) will be seen as a threat by Pegida. What’s more, the attack echoes a recent attack on an art installation in support of refugees in Berlin.

We risk becoming a continent of narrow-minded people, unable to perceive one another’s basic humanity and human rights when we see others as threats, or ‘foreigners’, somehow essentially and irrevocably different from us. Needless, to say, Jesus wouldn’t think we were doing a good job of showing love to our neighbours.

But if we shut people out of debate and prolong conflict, we risk acting in a way totally contrary to humanitarianism. So what do we do? Well, in the spirit of the season:

Love thine enemy.

Image: picture-alliance/dpa/