“I find it interesting that people will, with some regularity, kill in honor of their religion, but never, to my knowledge, has a group of people decided to kill in honor of their favorite artist or movement.”
It has occurred to me that, given the current fog of war and the most recent version of “Code Phrases for Bigots: A Compendium,” this statement could be misconstrued as some sort of slander against Islam in particular and all people of a religious bent in general. That was not my intent.
First, let us consider Islam. I make no claims to expertise when it comes to Islam. Ignorance of Islam is more my claim to fame, and it is an ignorance I hope to one day remedy. However, that day will come when I have a proper amount of time on my hands to delve into it. I’ve read some about the various (or should I say “numerous”) interpretations of the text in the Quran concerning the number of virgins that a martyr is supposed to come into possession of in Paradise, most of which dispense with the entire notion of virgins, and have come to realize that this is not a pursuit to be undertaken lightly.
Of course, that could apply to any sacred text. None are what they seem. I’m sorry, my fundamentalist friends, but I think it is a mistake to read any sacred text in the same way that one would read a profane one, such as Time Magazine or a newspaper. Since they are intended to get at ideas that are beyond ordinary comprehension, they must be written in a way that is poetic. And it is my belief that if God can make the heavens and the earth, then he can also make a metaphor. Or five.
Second, the correlation between religious belief and violence is an ancient one and is hardly limited to any particular sect or group. I keep thinking of a line from “The Simpsons” in which Roger Meyers, Jr., the producer of the “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoons defends cartoon violence. He says (and I’m paraphrasing here), “I’ve been doing some research and it turns out that there’s always been violence. Take the Crusades, for example. Darn thing went on for 20 years. Extremely violent. Many people dead.” I think that one man’s jihad is another man’s crusade, just as one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. What doesn’t change is the killing.
Of course, the jihadists and the crusaders are always members of a fringe and should not be taken as representatives of the main body of believers. And yet, we do, attaching labels and stereotypes to Christians, Muslims, Jews, and anybody else we can in an attempt to make this ever more complicated world somehow understandable.
As for me, I was raised Catholic but ascribe to no particular religion. I tried the Catholic thing again a few years ago and had to spend a great deal of time deconstructing the teachings and reinterpreting every utterance in the light of mythology. It was a great deal of work to go through in order to be surrounded mostly by hypocrites and sleepwalkers. And so I have come back toward my father’s main religious tenet, which went thusly: “If God is everywhere, then he’s on this couch.”
Whatever anybody else wants to do, however, is their business, and I wish them well.
6 comments:
I know that the article that I read about this alleged verse from The Qur'an indicated that the most sober scholars of it were leaning toward translating a particular word as "grapes" and not "virgins." In fact, they found the choice of the word "virgins" quite puzzling.
And this goes to the heart of my questions. Once I get past "There is one God and Mohammed is his prophet," I'm walking in a sea of rumor, mis- and disinformation.
"Women don't have souls." I might have gotten that out of a Harold Robbins novel I was skimming for naughty bits when I was about 19. I don't know exactly what Islam's approach to women is, although I suspect that it's not quite as monolithic as we're led to believe.
I really need to start with a primer. I know little of its history--Mohammed in a cave--comes out with sacred text--Islam expands rapidly in both political and religious terms--Muslim invents the zero--enlightened Islamic scholars preserve and pass on ancient Greek texts.
These days, as we sit on the cusp of a new holy war between fundamentalist camps, Muslims are routinely presented to us in hordes under the total dominance of a few Imams. What I get from the standard sources (TV news and newspapers) is a stereotypical joke.
Before September 11, 2001, my ignorance was of the blissful sort. I was happy reading my Tao Teh Ching and my Chuang Tse and happy to let the rest of the world go its own spiritual way. I was ignorant of Islam because I hadn't really thought about it.
Since then, there has been a tendancy to present Muslims as either zombies or zealots, and my instincts tell me that can't be true. The great variety of humanity must be as present in Bagdhad as it is in Atlanta, and the religion in question, Islam, must be understood in as many varieties and subtleties as Christianity is here. Didn't Aristotle say that where there's two people, there's politics? Shouldn't that be as true in the Islamic world as it most certainly is in the Christian?
Damn...all my anticipated virgins are metaphors!
Hardy Lee Any
Or grapes!
Crushed in Vinland
In addendum, also, your pop's couch quote tickled my ribs.
Boney Marooney
All right. Moving today. No time. Will respond over weekend. In the meantime, just sign me--
The Cool Move
I guess that blaming Mohammed for all the things that are done in the name of the book he brought back with him from the cave would be just another case of blaming the Messenger. It's strange how people can come to think of the Creator of the universe as an object that they can possess and control, but people do that all the time.
The folks who cause most of the problems are the ones who look for passages in their favorite holy book (oftentimes no more than an unrestricted clause or a parenthetical phrase) that justify some action or hatred. To take disjointed phrases from a sacred text and to use those as evidence of "God's will" is like trying to describe someone using only a few random cells. What does it say in the Tao Te Ching? Something about "to cut up is to break"?
And, for the record, I understand the irony of using a quoted passage to discredit using quoted passages. But son't blame me, I'm only the messenger.
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