American Views Abroad

 
In light of the harsh reaction to the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed --- the lines seem to be drawn in black and white --- it might be a good idea to read how it all actually came to this. Who's Afraid of Mohammed? by Joerg Lau at www.signandsight.com/features/588.html gives the complete story. Take a pebble, throw it into a pool and watch the ripples it creates.

Is there another way of dealing with this issue other than the political? By coincidence, I have just finished reading Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase this week. Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who has written many books on the world's religions, on her own path of believing/not believing, and on the essence of religion and God. Her ideas need to be read and discussed. For example, on page 328 she writes on if we could think what we liked about God and states: 'Here again, the religious traditions were in unanimous agreement. The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao tzu, the Buddha or the sages of the Upanishads.'

A few pages back on 305-6 she comes to the following, rather inspiring conclusion:
'All the world faiths put suffering at the top of their agenda, because it is an inescapable fact of human life, and unless you see things as they really are, you cannot live correctly. But even more important, if we deny our own pain, it is all too easy to dismiss the suffering of others. Every single one of the major traditions --- Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as the monotheisms --- teaches a spirituality of empathy, by means of which you relate your own suffering to that of others. Hyam had quoted Hillel's Golden Rule, which tells you to look into your own heart, find out what distresses you, and then refrain from inflicting similar pain on other people. That, Hillel had insisted, was the Torah, and everything else was commentary. This, I was to discover, was the essence of the religious life.'

Having compassion, and not only for those who consider themselves religious, is as important to a civilized society as freedom of expression.

The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong was published by HarperCollins in 2004.

In the Saturday-Sunday edition of the International Herald Tribune, Zsofia Szilagyi writes on media responsibility in Publishing Those Cartoons was a Mistake. She writes: 'There is no doubt that freedom of speech is an essential foundation of any democracy. But when newspapers insist on this right, they have to understand that they do not -- alone --- create the context and lifespan of their messages.' Further she addes: '.....once messages are out in public, they develop a life of their own and become subject to multiple interpretations, and often manipulation that serves political agendas.' www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/03/opinion/edsofia.php.
- posted by Gloria @ 6:04 PM