Inevitable lessons

About the time of the publication of the infamous Danish cartoon, a friend asked me about blasphemy. In my experience the Maltese are probably the foremost blasphemers on the planet. The question was a good one: What's the point?

If one believes how could one blaspheme? If one does not believe, why bother? It occurred to me that blasphemy requires a context of belief, the blasphemer must be familiar with the faith and requires a believing target. The target is never God but a human adversary.

The message always is: "I am not afraid of your God, why should I be afraid of you or of anyone? I have shed the bonds of reason, the fear of God and all inhibitions and I am about to become utterly unpredictable, perhaps violent". Scary stuff. It is a very human transaction, uncivilised, uncouth, offensive and objectionable. The remedy is not belief but civilisation, mutual respect.

The recipient is human too. The offence aimed at him and his God is simply a part of his identity under assault. The provocation and the response take very little account of true respect for the sacred or the prescriptions of the decalogue. Both disrespect the deity when they come to blows. Ironically, unbelievers are more likely to respond violently than those who truly believe.

The truly devout would pray for the blasphemer, atone for his offence in his stead and plead insanity in his defence. Their horror would be far stronger than their urge to avenge God which might seem as absurd to them as it is to offend Him in the first place.

The Danish cartoon and the reported reactions to it do not speak of profound faith nor of deep devotion. It smacks of politics and a vague amalgam of religion and nationalism; worse, it sounds like the prostitution of religion for political purposes and the exploitation of zealots in reaction to crass insensitivity.

A Danish newspaper was irreverent in its portrayal of Mohammed, The Prophet to all who follow him in Islam. It was not irreverent to God. Not this time. It was not blasphemy but offensive irreverence. The ultimate stupidity perhaps, but not blasphemy. To count it such would be blasphemy. Mohammed is not God and all who submit to Islam would be the first to tell you so.

The riots in response to this misguided publication seem to be as wrong as the cartoon. Do the rioters not know that vast portions of the world do not accept Mohammed as the Prophet of God?

The Prophet himself was able to live with unbelievers. His mightiest followers ruled over millions of them from Spain to Indonesia. What has changed? Christians and Jews populated the domains of Islam in Europe and the Maghreb. The Ottoman Empire ruled over the most ancient sects of Judaism and Christianity. The Moghuls ruled over the Indian sub-continent, a tiny minority presiding over an ocean of people in a different faith and for centuries.

Evidently, going to church, to the synagogue or to the temple could be read as an offence against Islam, a declaration of unbelief in the Prophet's teachings, but only by fundamentalists more fundamentalist than the Prophet. The era of greatest extension of Islam is coterminous with its greatest exercise of tolerance.

Perhaps not of published irreverent cartoons. Such direct provocations were tolerated nowhere. In Christendom people were burnt at the stake for much less. The scimitar would have flashed elsewhere. Tolerated minorities were just that. There were pogroms and purges and expulsions also, explosions of intolerance which were horrific exceptions to the general rule.

There are very good grounds to assert that tolerance was practised to a far greater extent in the Moslem world than it was in Europe.

Politics without religion (perhaps as opposed to against religion) is a European invention, a child of necessity. It may be the version of politics most respectful of religion. It is of necessity the most tolerant also of agnosticism and atheism. It is without question a pinnacle of civilisation achieved after centuries of bloodshed. We agree to disagree and to hold the structure of the state as a common good. Non-denominational politics are a lingua franca in a Babel of creeds.

We lose our grip on this at our peril. Our challenge today is to persist on this path in a world no longer segregating the intolerant but bringing them into direct and instant contact through the media.

It is a two-way street. If Muslim fundamentalists expect and demand Muslim levels of respect for their faith all over the world, they may be in for some nasty shocks. They could be asked to reciprocate. Are they prepared to say their prayers in a politically correct manner? How can they ever repay in the same coin? If one miserable cartoon can set the Middle East in flames, they can expect a translation of some of the prayers told in Mecca and televised around the globe to burn the world to a crisp. Are they willing to change them or would they prefer to have them ignored by the non-Muslim world? As they must ignore the prayers and rituals of other religions which are contrary to their own beliefs.

Europe can live with mosques and minarets, not because it must but because it is Europe. Europe draws Moslems from every corner of the world also because it is tolerant, highly evolved. Its acquisition of a Moslem minority is a gain just as it is a loss to the Moslem world where Christian and Jewish populations pine and die away. Europe is learning to be even more tolerant, its core political and philosophical tenets are being put to rigorous test. It will pass this test also. It has the advantage of being possessed of the world's most advanced political philosophy without making a very big deal of it. The Moslem world seems to be forgetting what it had learned, what it once knew better. European Moslems will teach it once more.

The world is on a new learning curve. The pain of the new levels of exposure to one another is real and dangerous. There are those who seek to exploit it. I wonder why. Whom do they serve best?

What is most blasphemous, the unbelief expressed in a cartoon or the indiscriminate murder of believers and unbelievers in terror strikes? Al Qaeda has no embassies but if it had one on a high street in Damascus, would we witness the same expressions of outrage when Moslems and others are killed in the London underground, on Madrid trains or in Bali, Manhattan, Haifa or Tel Aviv? If not, then what weight and value should we give the recent protests? What meaning? Is murder not a worse blasphemy than any cartoon? Or are the protests to be compared to the reaction of an unbeliever to the blasphemy of another: irrational and themselves offensive to religion? Is it not more than faintly blasphemous to imply by one's actions that God needs protests? It is complete nonsense to hold a state or a whole population responsible for tolerating the publication of an idiocy it cannot possibly prevent.

Fundamentalism of all kinds produces its opposite which is not a contrary fundamentalism but a powerful vindication of tolerance, usually after all the horrors of mutual intolerance have become too much to bear. We will all learn in the end to be tolerant and respectful of one another's beliefs and of the lack of them. There is no acceptable alternative. May Allah, Yahweh, God, our very own Alla, and the very same, vouchsafe that the cost will not be too great this time.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt