Mocking Religion

One of the biggest news stories of this month was the furor over a low budget anti-Muslim film, portions of which were posted on YouTube where they attracted the attention of radical Islamists who took to the streets in protest in countries throughout the Middle East and Asia. Though the film itself is not worth commenting on (I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to), the subsequent debates about the conflict between religious sensibilities and freedom of expression is a more important issue, as some conservative Muslims have called for the enactment of international laws against insulting religion. While this proposal has little support in the West (and as the misuse of blasphemy laws in places like Pakistan shows, it’s a very bad idea), some Western leaders have said that while freedom of expression takes precedence, they personally oppose saying anything that insults others’ religious beliefs. But is this really wrong? After all, any sort of mockery or lampooning of a religion will be bound to be considered insulting or blasphemous by overly sensitive believers.

In medieval Europe, anything considered blasphemous by the religious authorities was punishable by death, as it still is in a few of the most conservative Muslim countries. But lampooning religion has a long and indeed artistically respectable history in the West, including brilliant works of art from Candide to The Life of Brian. While I myself have mostly refrained from mocking religious beliefs in this blog, except for my criticism of the practice of burning ghost money in Taiwan and the Catholic stance on contraception, I wouldn’t rule it out in the future (I can even think of tempting satirical targets in the beliefs or writings of every major religion). I don’t think religion should be any more inviolate than other belief systems, such as cultural traditions, superstitions, or nationalism. But I do think that any mockery of such things should be intelligent and based on actual elements of the religion (or whatever belief system is the target). Unintelligent name-calling and irrational insults make the one attacking look like more of a fool than their targets.

Offensively stupid attacks on Islam (and other religions and ethnic groups) are unfortunately not hard to find. Comment boards on news articles are littered with offensive Islamaphobic garbage from Internet trolls, including comments calling for all Muslims to be killed, comments comparing Muslims to pigs, and other blatant hate speech. That sort of thing is indefensible, and while I wouldn’t say the posters deserve to be stoned, some more mild form of punishment might well be in order. Aside from being violent and extremist, these comments are idiotic and ignorant. One I saw tried to rationalize his Islamaphobia by stating that all the violence and conflicts in the world involved Muslims (a laughably ignorant assertion, given that some of the world’s worst conflict zones – the Congo comes to mind – have no Muslims at all) and that Islam spread through forced conversions. The latter claim was only true at certain times and places – in most places Islam spread peacefully – and considering the history of forced conversions in Christianity from Charlemagne to the European colonial era, only an extremely biased or extremely ignorant person would condemn Islam for forced conversions without condemning Christianity as well.

For that matter, Christians are hardly in a position to accuse Muslims of violent overreaction to perceived slights to their religion (especially since the violent Islamists constitute a tiny minority of Muslims). While it’s true that now attacks on Christianity can be made with relative impunity in most places, only four and half decades ago John Lennon received death threats in the US just for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even though it was the truth, at least in the UK (which was what he was talking about). I am not saying that most of the Islamaphobes in the West are Christians, but some certainly are (the maker of the recent film and the Quran-burning pastor in Georgia are just two examples – and I also read some rather incendiary comments about Mohammed in a newsletter for a Christian organization once), and many of the blanket attacks on Islam apply equal to Christianity, and many other religions for that matter. But even anti-religious secularists who attack all religions equal shouldn’t engage in gratuitous insults. On the other hand, if they want to make fun of believers and even their holy books and holy figures, and they do so in an intelligent way, basing their mockery on the actual tenets of the faith or the way it is actually practiced (as opposed to just making things up), then I say more power to them. And as Salman Rushdie (and others before him) pointed out, if your belief system can’t handle a little lampooning, then it must not have been very strong to begin with.

I will also add that the violent reactions among the radical Islamic fringe to any depictions of Mohammed, let alone hostile or insulting ones, is an example of one of the worst tendencies among religions and other strongly-held belief systems, namely that of trying to impose your beliefs on others. I understand why Islam discourages depictions of people in general and Mohammed in particular – a similar feeling that such images may become objects of worship motivated the Christian Orthodox iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire and some Protestants – but that doesn’t mean non-Muslims should be bound by this. Similarly, if your religion forbids gay people from marrying, the eating of pork or beef, the consumption of alcohol or other drugs, abortion, extramarital sex, dancing, shaving, wearing hats, standing on your head, or whatever, then don’t do those things – but don’t try to tell non-believers they can’t do them, or advocate secular laws and other measures that make doing these things difficult (unless you have a completely non-religious reason for it, as might arguably be the case for a very few of the above things). For that matter, even believers cannot be punished for violating such rules except by expulsion from the religion – and if they choose to still consider themselves followers of your religion despite violating some of its rules, then there’s nothing you can reasonably do about it. In the final analysis, if a religious believer really wants to help spread their religion, the best way they can go about it is by being tolerant, pleasant, caring and positive in their speech and actions, not by responding to mockery with hostility or by telling others what they can’t do. As Rushdie said, argument is one of the characteristics of an open society, and people will always be saying things you don't like. As a Middle Eastern observer noted, this film and the response to it is an example of how the crazy people on both sides feed on each other. I would say the best response to the fringe elements on both sides (aside from taking whatever measures are appropriate against those who resort to violence), if we bother to pay any attention to them at all, is to laugh at them, and satire, whether targeted narrowly or broadly, is the best way to do that.