CARTOONING THE SACRED

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=85253

Posted By: oliverhaddo

Date: Friday, 10 February 2006, 2:56 p.m.

The tragic flaw of satire is that it usually goes over the heads of its targets.

And given the reactions in some Muslim nations to the Danish cartoons, we can add that the targets of satire often busy themselves with outrage instead of getting the point.

My own take on the cartoons is that they clearly do not satirize Islam, but terrorism committed in its name. How could we imagine otherwise? Any other intent renders the cartoons inane and their publication pointless. The fact that terrorism worldwide is now most often committed by Muslims--in the apparent belief that they are serving Allah--explains why it was Muhammad who was depicted instead of Jesus or Moses (though historically both the latter have been candidates).

Religious roots or not, terrorism is now a political force acting on the larger, secular world. As such it is fair game for criticism and satirical cartoonery. Muslims who object are welcome to fall into line behind those US Christian conservatives who, having injected doctrine-based ideas into the political arena, cry "religious persecution" when those ideas are criticized. Respect the beliefs of others, yes. But keep your religion out of my face.

And may no god reward you for exploding innocent humans in the name of Allah, for sending a bullet through the brain of an abortion doctor while believing you are doing god's will and somehow making this world we all share a better place. Perpetrators of such acts, those who condone them, and the twisted religious motivations behind the acts all deserve to be cartooned, satirized, pilloried, spat upon and worse, before the world audience that has to cart away the body parts while an anguished mother weeps.

Islam is not the only faith that forbids images of its deity. But the hidden secret behind the ban is not that such images offend the god--god is too big for such trivia. It is rather that any image of the Divine confines it to a fixed form in time and space, and that the image cripples man by limiting his conception of the vastness of the Eternal. Photograph a proton and you know only its position in space-time; once you have the photo you can never know the proton's velocity or direction. Jesus was a Jew. A Semite. Yet in my country Jesus is most often depicted with Anglo-Saxon features. Thus a probably innocent attempt to serve up a Jesus more palatable to American children devolves into a sort of tribal totem.

Maybe we should also forbid theologies, for much the same reasons. Who believes anyone ever got to heaven for knowing precisely how many angels could fit on the head of a pin? Furthermore, doctrines have always done their damnedest to separate us one from another into sanctimonious enclaves, each holier than its neighbors.

Our world is shrinking. You and I are closer. We have different names for God only because we speak different languages. You and I are children of the same God.

If you're a Muslim outraged by these cartoons, here's a question. Which is the greater insult to your faith: that some of your Islamic brothers violate the sanctity of all life by blowing people up in the name of Allah? Or that some ordinarily melancholy Danes satirized this terrorism via a few cartoons which, so far, haven't killed anybody?

Which of these is the more deserving of your outrage?

Despite its intrinsic flaws satire is vital to our sanity, a tonic for our spiritual health. Humor--even mockery--is a true litmus test for all things religious. After we have ridiculed all that we worship, we find that all the false idols have been melted away; the genuine God remains.

The Sufis know this.

Anything truly divine is by its nature impervious to the vilest mockery by man. This is a law older and more immutable than any of Newton's or Darwin's or Einstein's.

Satire is also the surest antidote for spiritual sham and hypocrisy. The strongest laxative for the inflated egos of clerics. When we suppress satire in order to make men holier, we only make them less holy.

oliverhaddo