Transitions in Faith

Religious beliefs are complex, and organized religions (whatever that image may conjure up in your mind) develop, splinter, reform and change over time. The more commanding the interpretation of a deity, the stricter the rules and the more harsh the consequences for straying from the sanctioned path. The less centralized the notion of God, the less stringent the rules and the lower the consequences for deviance. Picture the difference between an Evangelical Christian and a Buddhist. Time also has an ameliorating effect, as centuries, millennia even, moderate some and polarize others.

Among the world’s oldest large-scale religions, Islam is the relative newcomer, and its spread of conversion spurted at the beginning, sputtered in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and exploded in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, bringing new fervor from the passion of new converts. What seems to have been Islam’s greatest pull is an explanation to impoverished masses why their time on earth is not their principal relevancy – thus their condition here and now is simply a necessary part of a process to perpetual grace later (martyrdom is the fast-track to heaven, circumventing waiting for Judgment Day). The material world is just a distraction from religious preparations for later. One heck of a message in an economically slammed world.

With two thirds of a millennium head start, Christianity (which followed Judaism by almost two millennia) has already experienced the kinds of harsh and extreme treatments that seem to be embracing large section of contemporary Islam. One can look at the Spanish Inquisition for examples of Christian harshness, remembering that Jews fled to the tolerant (and Muslim) Moors in Spain to escape the wrath of the Catholic executioner’s blade or the torture that preceded death. Our own country provides examples, from the Salem witch trials to the harshness with which Protestants in the new land defined their faith.

The recent obsession with imagery involving the Prophet Muhammad – igniting many in the Islamic world to riotous malevolence and hatred of the West – had its chapter in our own history as well. “The United States was settled, in part, by radical Protestant iconoclasts from Britain who considered the creation and use of sacred imagery to be a violation of the Second Commandment against graven images. The anti-Catholic colonists at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay refused to put images of Jesus in their churches and meetinghouses. They scratched out crosses in books. In the early 1740s, English officials even marched on an Indian community in western Connecticut, where they cross-examined Moravian missionaries who reportedly had a book with ‘the picture of our Saviour in it.’

“The colonists feared Catholic infiltration from British-controlled Canada. Shortly after the Boston Tea Party, a Connecticut pastor warned that if the British succeeded, the colonists would have their Bibles taken from them and be compelled to ‘pray to the Virgin Mary, worship images, believe the doctrine of Purgatory, and the Pope’s infallibility.’ .. It was not only Protestants who opposed sacred imagery. In the Southwest, Pueblo Indians who waged war against Spanish colonizers not only burned and dismembered some crucifixes, but even defecated on them.” Paul Harvey and Edward Blum writing in the New York Times, September 26^th. Think of American Marines urinating on Taliban corpses or the humiliations of Muslim detainees at Abu Graib prison during the Iraq War. We’re hardly above the fray, but we’ve lived through so much religious violence that we may have worn out from Christian religious wars… particularly within the faith itself. Remember, the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland – pitting Catholics against Protestants – is within the life memory of most of us. What will Islam be like with another two thirds of a millennium of history behind it?

As we sit in judgment of what we see as primitive actions of primitive people, perhaps we need to look at our own past to understand that religions often require centuries and millennia to mature and create a gentler tolerance… and tolerance is often sacrificed as new, more fundamental reactions to the world take giant steps backward. The fact that most people are born into their faiths and have little choice along the way, that believing in an interpretation of God that might not jibe with someone else’s vision is not a “fault” makes sitting in judgment, believing that “I’m right and you’re wrong” a surefire way to exacerbate hate, suborn war and conflict and increase intolerance in a world where we have enough violence to last many lifetimes.

Look at the Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi’s poignant speech at the United Nations telling the world that Islamaphobia must end and that while free speech is essential, speech that engenders hatred and religious intolerance is unacceptable. Sounds great when you hear it that way. The Islamic world cannot respond otherwise in his eyes and in the eyes of most of the governments in the Muslim world. They cannot understand how we can accept the blanket rules of our own First Amendment. They do not know why the perpetrator of the “Innocence of Muslims” film cannot be skewered and brought to justice. Yet our Bill of Rights is a reaction to the abuses in the name of religion our forefathers had witnessed. They simply didn’t want to give our government the ability to crush body and spirit in the name of God. Sounds great when you hear it that way.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am a believer in understanding before reacting.