The risk of consensus

It's a strange thing to complain about, because it's certainly hard to achieve. But I'm a bit wary of a neat consensus. After all, even when it appears to have been achieved - as in certain kinds of church meetings - the appearance is often quite superficial ... it's amazing what people agree to, or acquiesce to, for a quiet life. I'm much more interested in solidarity than consensus, because while consensus presumes agreement, a nice and tidy point of completion, solidarity allows for differences - we can be in solidarity with people we disagree with. So with the recent terror stories. Thankfully, most people resist the simplistic consensus which places "us" against "the Muslim other", because most people seem to recognise that extremists are quite different from moderate majorities. But there is the danger of another consensus, which could form if we allow ourselves to be pressurised into believing there is only one way of defeating terrorism, and which relies on a certain kind of confident assumption: that the suspects are evil, while our ground is unmovable. Hopefully, most can understand that this anxiety is not about justifying or even explaining terrorism - there must be a consensus against it - but how it is tackled must remain subject to criticism. How we handle these delicate balances certainly isn't easy, which is perhaps why I remain worried about any hasty consensus. Having said that, it is helpful to think of such destructive ideologies as 'fascistic', because it points to the human contexts out of which such deformed world-views emerge - angry young men who see simply in black and white - and yet there is always more to it ... and many people suffer under such threats all of the time, reminding us to be in solidarity with sisters and brothers of many creeds in all parts of the world. So, no easy solutions, which may itself be part of the method for addressing the conflict.