First, number 5 translates (I am told) to the Je Suis ... everyone has seen and number 6 - rough and obvious as it may be - is endorsed by J.K. Rowling. There was another with the caption Qui a dit quon navait de humour - or something to that affect: Jean-Paul Manuel-Heller, Isabelle Potts or Sam Winebaum can correct me on the idiom - roughly translating to Who says we dont have (a sense of ) humor showing a man in a turban holding a bullet riddled copy of Charlie Hebdo. But this all got me thinking about the base issue in this. The depiction of Mohammed is being held as the underlying germ in all this. Fine ... to this extent I am feeling both mad and terribly disappointed with this reading of Islam. I quickly referred to the Christian Ten commandments, and there it was in the second thou shalt .. position: Thou shalt not make Idols. Definitions of what idols are varies, but the companion of graven images (mentioned in Exodus) highlights and illustrates what it means. There is a prohibition on whatever these may be in Christian and Judaic texts. And yet in our 3000 to 2000 year, we have been able to massage this commandment and accept that religion is a human institution with no particular or exclusive claim to divinity greater than any others. Some may look in the mirror and believe they see the face of God: back in the mid 70s the Yale Precision Marching Band proved otherwise when they sent the drum major out stag in a game against Princeton, I believe. (Yalies, help me !!!) Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu et. al. have all taken it on the nose from whomever and whenever. I am not familiar with any parallel prohibitions in the non - Abrahamic faiths: being non- theistic, that makes sense. But I am troubled about how Judaism and Christianity have survived, built great economies and governments despite the best efforts of cartoonists and marching bands, where a minor sector of Islam sees itself under continued threat. I am not even comfortable with that: I am sure that many Muslims have had a good yuk yuk at Charlie Hebdos lampoons. In fact this morning on BBC World, Muslim clerics in France and England said as much. I am coming around to believe that a contributing factor is the relative youth of Islam: it dates to 610 CE or so. By that time, Christianity were yet to go on any Crusades making itself obnoxious to many, sowing seeds whose fruits we are still seeing. But what Christianity did was Reform. All that has followed in the arc of history is a huge evolution of science, economy, social development, art, etc. propelling humanity to levels of achievement, enlightenment and insight utterly unpredictable at that time by those left behind by the reformation. Id like to think that Judaism smiled quietly, saying to itself about its grandchild, What a precocious young bunch they are, but I am sure that I have over simplified things. What remains clear is that the post - Reformation world is that we make our greatest strides when we dont allow dogma to hamstring the human imagination - our most valuable tool - and the human condition. As I said, many - indeed the overwhelming number - Islamic clerics know that this sort of Reformation is necessary if Islamic societies dont want to be an impediment to their own advancement. Having this sub literate counter current working among a sub- stratum (I am in danger now !!!) of their society, able to use the tools of violence in the hands of a nanoscopic group, to stop progress needs to be addressed by Islam. But Jews and Christians alike need to heed one thing: its Islams thing to address, but we should help - when asked - since the success of Islamic societies and Muslims enriches us all. There is more to say and there will be I am sure. Yesterday was as black a day as I can remember: September 11th attacked one country ... January 7th attacked world history and all of civilization. But after every dark time should come the light. We need - all of us - to actively engage those who want to drag us into a pit of stupidity and self righteousness and tell them how wrong they are and show them the way forward. We can make it if we try .... hmmmmm, sounds like an awful pop song title: maybe thats the Yale PMBs next one ... nahhhh, they can do better than that !!!!!
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 22:26:37 +0000
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