Re: Interesting analysis
Excellent piece from Dyer.
Also a good editorial in today's
EYE about religious extremism...
In whose name?
As tolerance grows thin, rational believers should be casting the first stones.
Let's have a look at the public profile of two faiths. In the name of Christianity ("there's a higher father that I appeal to," he's said), George W. Bush has led his country into a war that has killed more than 40,000 soldiers and civilians. As governor of Texas, this follower of Jesus (a man who died in a state-sponsored execution) presided over 149 executions of criminals. He has engineered a set of tax cuts and program modifications that benefits the wealthiest of American citizens and condemns the poorest to ever-increasing squalor. And, because he has accepted Jesus as his personal saviour, Bush is against stem-cell research that would take human embryos that are slated for the trash bin and potentially use them to save lives and cure horrible diseases.
In the name of Islam, an estimated 5,000 women per year are murdered by members of their own families because they have committed an "honour crime" such as marrying a man of their own choosing or becoming the victim of rape. Followers of the Prophet Muhammad, invoking his name, slaughtered more than 3,000 innocent civilians and destroyed downtown Manhattan in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In 1989, secular writer Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the prominent Islamic leader Ayatollah Khomeini for putting forward a heretical view of the faith in a novel.
Taken on the evidence most easily available, it is neither bigoted nor unreasonable for a non-believer to conclude that Jesus Christ was a greedhead and a warmonger, and that Islam is a faith of murderous intolerance. But others who claim to be Christians say that Jesus believed violence is wrong, even in self-defence ("turn the other cheek," he said) and that the rich are damned while the poor are blessed. And many Muslims assert that theirs is a faith of peace and love, and that the Prophet would be horrified at the acts committed in his name.
Unfortunately, these sentiments are often relegated to the footnotes and sidebars that accompany much larger and more prominent news stories detailing the latest faith-inspired atrocity (such as the planned suicide attacks, narrowly avoided last week, by Muslims on 10 UK passenger jets). All of which would suggest a greater need for more moderate voices spoken at immoderate volumes. A suggestion to our rational religious readers: if religious tolerance is to have any further life in the Western world, you need to make it clear that these fringe elements do not speak for or represent your faith, because they are implicating you by invoking the name of your belief system.
Worse still, the fact that the radicals can portray themselves not only as members of your faith, but as the most dedicated and devoted members of your faith -- they claim that yours is a watered-down, imperfect variation -- means that, as recent cases in Toronto and London have shown, they can lure your children to be better disciples of God by abandoning your casual adherence and embracing their lunacy. "Moderate" and "fanatical" are problematic terms here (imagine the distinction between a "moderate" believer in mathematics and a "fanatical" one and you'll see the problem). The distinctions we really need are "true believer" and "hell-bound lunatic blasphemer." And it's you true believers who need to say it, because the secular humanist mainstream exists in a logical world that cannot penetrate the shell of blind faith.
No one's talking about restricting religious freedom here. Just as people are free to be racist, or to become alcoholics, or to believe that the Earth revolves around the sun, they may also believe that their god thinks every spermatozoa is sacred and that women exist for and at the pleasure of men. But we're under no obligation to embrace or encourage these beliefs, and we -- believers and non-believers alike -- should do our best to condemn and marginalize such belief systems and the actions that spring from them. And such condemnation should not only follow some atrocity or attack, but should be an everyday expression of your faith. The wisest scholars and leaders of your religion need to make it clear: literal interpretations of archaic religious law cannot be allowed to be seen as legitimate expressions of faith. You may not kill and enslave people, you must say. Not in our name.
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