Religious Mockery

In an editorial in Sunday's Dallas Morning News, William Salatin, a writer for Slate, asks why antisemitism is banned and pilloried while anti Islam and Christian hatred is allowed to flourish. That is a good question. Of course the history of antisemitism is a long and terrible one. Jews have suffered more for their religion than any other. That is why Western nations have become vigilant and striven to keep antisemitism on the margin. They have learned that when a religion becomes a target for scorn, the adherents of that religion become targets as well. So why is that lesson so quickly forgotten when it comes to Christians and Muslims?

When you mock or ridicule a religion the real target is not belief or faith. The real object is the adherents. You cannot lampoon prophets, saints, and texts without lampooning the people who believe in them. You cannot ridicule Judaism without ridiculing Jews. You cannot vilify Islam without vilifying Muslims. You cannot dedicate a web site to exposing the evil of the Catholic Church without condemning Catholics. You cannot make a buffoon out of Jesus without making buffoons of Christians. That is the real danger underlying religious mockery. By denigrating a religion you marginalize its believers. When you place a crucifix in a jar of urine you are symbolically putting all Christians in a jar of urine. That is why such offense is taken by the religious. If the Pope is a tyrant, then Catholics are sheep. If Mohamed was a lecher, what does that say about those who adhere to his teachings? If Mormonism is a cult, then Mormons are cultists.

There are any number of laws protecting people and groups from derision and hatred. Very rarely do those laws apply to people of faith. People are free to slather religion with hate. Because they do not apply to religions, they do not apply to believers. Religious people are frequently singled out as driven by ignorance and authoritarian zeal. They are suspect because their motivation comes from a source that has always been out of reach of the secular state. When their faith is in harmony with the sensibilities of society, they are welcomed. But the platitudes and vacuous calls for love and tolerance common at public and political events are little more than a neutered vestige of Christianity. Christ's charge to love your neighbor and his frequent calls for forgiveness are rallying cries for the religious left. His requirement that sin be recognized and admitted to and mercy must be asked for before it can be received is ignored. Christ's command that you live according to the word of God is shunned in favor of his admonition not to judge others.

The Islamic faith has become a target for hostility. Islam is perceived as a menace to the free world. Therefore Muslims are a menace. They are often portrayed as blood thirsty savages bent on death and destruction. They are frequently associated with terrorists and tyrants. They are lampooned and caricatured as ignorant, backward, dirty, and violent. Korans are burned. The long, crooked noses, hunched backs, scheming visages, and bony hands once reserved for Jews have become part of the common portrayal of the Islamic plotter. Certainly not all discussions of Islam are limited to its savageness. There is an effort by some to reveal the piety, humility, and compassion that runs throughout Islam. If one takes the time to look one can find the long tradition of tolerance and respect for other faiths. One will find calls for mercy and love. But just as a thousand acts of charity and love can be undone by one violent act, one thousand depictions of humble and peaceful Muslims can be undone by one hateful caricature or spiteful article.

It is not difficult to find images, anecdotes, and articles vilifying Islam. There are no doubt thousands of websites and publications dedicated to insulting and mocking Muslims. Just a few key strokes will take you right down into the sewer. Blogger Pamela Geller has gained a considerable following through her tirades against what she sees as the inherent wickedness of Islam. Many of those sites and publications style themselves as defenders of Christianity and Western values. They dedicate themselves to exposing the "evil" behind Islam: its goal to enslave the world and exterminate non believers. Such sites are little more than malicious rants. Most of them extend their vitriol beyond Islam to include all Muslims. They cherry pick their topics, combing the news for articles sympathetic to their point of view. Curiously, more than a few are willing to glide over the intolerant bile of Terry Jones and Jerry Falwell and treat it as simply a malignant growth on the Christian body. They turn a blind eye to the flagrant hatred and racism of Jewish Settlers. They ignore the Muslims bringing bread to their homeless neighbors in favor of the angry men burning flags and waving rifles.Their attention is tightly focused on Islamic extremism.

There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. They constitute 23% of the world's population. The vast majority of them are peaceful and modest in their faith. The number of Muslim extremists among them is minuscule. Nevertheless, the entire faith and its 1.6 billion adherents are frequently tarred with one brush. Just as Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King can be forgotten by the secular left in their zeal to expose the "truth" about Christians, the Islamic emphasis on charity and the commandment to tolerate people of "the Book", i.e. Christians and Jews, is ignored in the focus on Islamic extremists.

If people want to discuss the rising tide of extremism in Islam, they should be encouraged. It is a subject that needs understanding. If people want to decry the violence perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists, they should not be silenced. But if people want to condemn and mock the Islamic faith and imply that Muslims are all potential terrorists, they should be addressed as what they are: intolerant, ignorant, and hateful.

Hatred for the religious is one hatred progressives are willing to tolerate. Indeed, they will fight for the right to hate religion.