Every media outlet paid attention when Terry Jones (the nut in Florida) wanted to burn a Quran at his religious location. He eventually called it off. But just a few weeks ago, he suddenly decided to have a trial of the Quran, find it guilty, and burn it. This time, nobody paid any attention, and kudos to them for ignoring it. However, he uploaded the video to YouTube, and it got to the Middle East, where riots ensued killing as many as 30 people in Afghanistan. But in Pakistan, a man was so agitated that he tried to force his way into a Catholic church to burn a Bible to “avenge” what was done to the Quran. When he was stopped from entering, he proceeded to rip up the Bible outside and was promptly arrested for violating Pakistani law.
Pakistan’s Penal Code Section 295-A states: “Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the 'religious feelings of any class of the citizens of Pakistan, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations insults the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, or with fine, or with both.”
It’s interesting because they live in a society where no one is allowed to desecrate another religion, which is at least in this case being enforced against a Muslim on behalf of Christianity. But obviously, his behavior in America would be protected by the First Amendment. So, this is what happens without freedom of speech and religion. I wonder which is better?
Of course the most interesting part of all this is the idea that somehow his religion has been harmed by Terry Jones and must be “avenged” to make the world right. Now at first, I think we have trouble understanding this and just chalk it up to, “Well, he’s a loon.” But the real issue is what things we take as sacred. For us, things like the flag or children are sacred. So when people threaten or desecrate them, we become furious, but even here our reactions have lost some of their fury over the years. So, to get a sense of it, imagine someone kidnapping a school full of children and then killing them. Even mentioning it is so outrageous that it’s offensive, right? Well, they take the Quran to be that holy and sacred, and to see someone treat it so objectionably is to them what that would be to us. Now obviously, we and they have different ideas about what matters, but rather than simply disparage such devotion, it behooves us to at least understand it so that we wisely proceed in how to interact with people who do in fact hold such a view. Also, keep in mind that this view of the Scriptures wouldn’t be all that unusual to a Jew or even to a Christian until fairly recently, at least in terms of the seriousness of defiling or desecrating them.
See, what we want to say instinctively is, “How in the world can you compare human life to a book!” But think about it for a moment. The Quran isn’t just “a” holy book to them. It’s literally the verbatim (in Arabic) words of Allah. And so the Quran perfectly represents God for them. Thus burning it is blasphemy of the highest sort (much like any depiction of Mohammed, God’s one true prophet). But another way to say this is that they believe the Quran is written in God’s Image, much like we believe that people are made in God’s Image, which is the ultimate theological reason that we consider them sacred. So, yes, the two views wind up looking very different in practice, but that’s because of which things each of us takes to be holy. And it also explains why we react so differently to the opposite things. We look at this guy trying to “avenge” the Koran by defacing a Bible and just laugh at the foolishness of it. And they look at us trying to hard to avoid killing civilians and just laugh at the foolishness of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment