The outrage that greeted Rev. Terry Jones' burning of the qu-ran is perhaps not surprising, coming as it does from liberals and the "interfaith" community. But there is something more worrisome at work here, an inference arising from a fundamentalist religious sensibility that has spread to secular and civil society. (Little can or should be done about the Muslim reaction, and spare us from the liberals' plea for more "respectful" language).
This is the inculcation of higher powers and meaning into documents that themselves are merely symbolic artifacts created by printing presses and factories. These artifacts - printed qurans, bibles, American flags - have been invested with mysterious powers and innate inviolability even though they are nothing more than paper and cloth. (What happens to ripped, moth-eaten, dog-eared bibles and qurans by the way?)
The reaction to the destruction of symbols by individuals is completely irrational, yet multitudes of people, including secularists, share this antipathy. One might well ask if all human morality would go out the window if all of these documents in the world were burnt forever. After all, we don't have the "original" quran or bible but later copies embellished and expanded by later generations. What is considered "authentic"? Are people suggesting that copies of copies of copies are sacred books? What about religious kindles? What about a braille copy of the bible?What about a sound recording of the bible? Is a holy book and its print surrogates all that stand between human beings and unbridled violence? Will the burning of an American flag signal the onset of the collapse of our civil society? Would Muslims become heathens if they lost all their copies of the quran in a flood? Should the consumption of Catholic communion wafers (representing Christ's body) be banned?
And with regard to Christianity, why aren't depictions of religious figures such as Christ, saints, popes and martyrs considered sacred? Paintings and sculptures of saints, crucifixions and the virgin Mary are found in chapels and altars all over Rome and Italy. People pray to them, make offerings and ask for help. Does this mean that it is a sacrilege to destroy one of these? (It may be an artistic sacrilege of course but that's another story.)
Similar questions about the connection of morality to religion have been asked about atheism of course, by those who think that only a belief in a higher being confers the ability to make moral judgements. This is of course complete nonsense. In fact it is easily demonstrated that believers in a god commit far more acts of aggression and violence than atheists. Probably more people have died in religious wars than in any other kind, as a study of the Crusades and the Ottoman empire invasion demonstrates. And they are still dying; just look at Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The resurgence of irrationality, long submerged under the influence of the Enlightenment, education and secular democracy, has pushed to the surface in many areas such as the backlash against modern medicine and the proliferation of conspiracy theories. Human irrationality persists as the default condition of the human mind, as witness the opposition to vaccines in Africa and some parts of Asia, but only recently has it burst into the open and manifested itself in western secular society.
The shudders of fear and anger over destruction of a copy of a religious document are therefore not just a reaction to a rude and uncivil act of defiance by a Christian against Islam but a subconscious irrational belief that this collection of papers possesses some kind of mysterious innate value and power that must be respected by everyone, even those who do not follow its edicts. It is truly stupefying to realize that an exhibit of bad manners can cause riots halfway across the world. The grip of religious irrationality is proving hard to shake off.
This species of moral outrage is frightening in its implication: that humans believe that protection of "holy" books is a moral duty and a command from on high, one that supersedes human-made laws. One could hardly find a better starting point to bridge the gap between religion and state.
No comments:
Post a Comment