Among the world’s five great religions, Islam is the youngest.  It shows.  Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Jews have generally matured enough to get beyond fanatical and savage protests in reaction to perceived insults to their religion and they punish those who participate in such protests—not so Muslims.  People in the other religions shrug off the intolerance, turn their backs on it, and go on with their lives—not so Muslims.  If Islamic believers who have matured beyond fanatical responses still can’t control their savage and fanatical brethren, something is wrong.

A Muslim quoted in the NY Times yesterday said something like, “I respect Moses, Jesus, and the other prophets.  Why can’t the U.S. respect the Prophet Mohammed.”  This is an example of the myopic thinking of many Muslims, not just fanatics.  How dare they presume to dictate to me or anyone else how I feel about the prophets or anything else?  This kind of ignorance and arrogance is precisely what stands in the way of any solution for Middle East peace.  It’s like trying to reason with your five-year-old about world-shaking issues after he’s caught raiding the cookie jar.  You can’t have a mature discussion with people who are driven to deadly tantrums by their emotions.

The events in Libya were telling.  Here a popular ambassador, a man who helped Libyans shake the yoke of a brutal dictator and his family, was murdered by a small group of fanatical savages.  His popularity and the fact that the U.S. saved the Libyan rebellion lulled the U.S. government into thinking that he and the American presence in Libya were safe.  A big mistake, considering the consequences.  But a reasonable mistake.  One assumes that a democracy, no matter how fledgling, would protect foreign diplomats.  In fact, that’s the responsibility of any country receiving foreign diplomats.  The Libyan people failed to fulfill that obligation.

If a bunch of fanatical savages in the U.S. threatened the Libyan embassy in Washington or the consulate in NYC, you can bet there would be SWATs there in full regalia ready to defend Libyan diplomats.  Those SWAT members wouldn’t care if the aggressors were from X religion or the Libyans were Muslims.  The Libyans failed to meet their obligation.  They failed their own religion.  Apathy and cultural immaturity made them turn their backs on a friend.

Let’s face it:  the founders of the five great religions lived in different times, a dark age in human history that preceded the Dark Ages.  It was an age of intolerance where you were either a believer or a heathen and a target.  We live in different times.  The world has shrunk through commerce and communications.  People once separated by culture and geography now have to live with each other and be tolerant.  Are the people of the world ready to step forward and live at peace?  Apparently not.  At least Muslims aren’t.

Religious intolerance is a sign of immaturity at the best and human savagery at the worst.  Sure, a Florida preacher burning a Koran is both stupid, disrespectful, and intolerant.  Sure, a cartoonist lampooning the Prophet Mohammed has poor taste and not much of a sense of humor.  Sure, a film against the Prophet is inappropriate if not sacrilegious.  These incidents are isolated events.  A mature religion shakes off such incidents, makes statements like I just made, and moves on.  This is a sign of wisdom and proof of a belief in the sanctity of life where all religions, or even the lack of one, are respected.  A mature religion doesn’t encourage murder and mayhem as a reaction—better said, a mature religion supports the punishment of those who react in that way.  One thing is disrespect—another is murder.  Islam is not such a religion.  It’s probably at least ten centuries from being one.

I was turned off by both Scorsese’s The Last Tempation of Christ and Gibson’s The Passion of Christ.  So were many others.  The two films represent two extremes that I found tasteless, artless, and basically worthless.  I shrugged them off, though.  I’m not particularly religious, but I could imagine what some true believers might feel about these films.  They shrugged them off too.  We recognize here in the U.S. that such distasteful movies represent the price we’re willing to pay for living in a free society.  And, if you have a different opinion, it’s your right to express it without my blowing you up with an RPG.

And here’s a twist for you:  I thought the film version of Jesus Christ, Superstar, which also portrayed Christ as having more than a platonic relationship with Mary Magdalene, was much better than either of the films named above, and more entertaining.  (I especially liked the singer who portrayed Judas.  The film spurred me on to check out the Gnostic gospels long before Dan Brown’s book made them popular.)  I’m sure Muslims would consider Mohammed, the rock star, or even Jesus, the rock star, as blasphemous, but don’t they want a Prophet who can relate to modern cultural values, including music?  Apparently not.  Too many (and one is too many) of them want to live as zombie slaves to Sharia law.

The Arab Spring is a myth.  It makes a good story, but democracy is not busting out all over in Muslim lands.  Muslims aren’t ready for democracy.  Just their record of women’s rights excludes them.  They can’t even get along with themselves (Sunnis versus Shi’ites, for example), let alone with others.  The most stable governments in the Middle East are theocracies—Iran and Israel—and they are at each other’s throats.  (Maybe it’s the geography.  Jews and Muslims don’t seem to have a problem in America with religious tolerance, although both are continuously picked on by Christians.)

We are lucky here in the U.S.  Sure, there is religious intolerance.  Some people are raising the same questions about whether Romney’s true allegiance will be to the country or his Mormon church in the same way Kennedy was attacked for being Catholic with an allegiance to the Pope.  For most people, a candidate’s religion is irrelevant (as long as he believes in God—I suppose the real test will be when an atheist runs for president).  There’s also LGBT intolerance, racial intolerance, intolerance of immigrants, and so forth.  Still, we generally frown on people killing other people as an expression of intolerance.

In particular, we are not a theocracy.  A democracy can’t be a theocracy.  There cannot be a state religion in a democracy.  And religious law—for example, Sharia—cannot be the law of the land.  Mohammed was a religious leader and prophet, not a statesman or dictator or liberator.  For his times, he was an all right guy.  There are good things in Islam.  Like the other great religions, though, there’s plenty of stuff that’s out-of-date and completely irrelevant for modern times.  We have to recognize the good stuff and apply it to our lives and simply smile at the parts that are irrelevant.  If we don’t, there is no future for peace on this planet.

Until Muslims can control and punish their fanatical brethren who commit atrocities, until they can get beyond the need of such a strong nexus between their religion and their government, and until they develop a thick enough skin to shake off insults to their beliefs, they are not mature enough for democracy.  Until that happens, they are little children who might as well believe in Peter Pan.  ‘Nough said.

And so it goes….

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012 at 4:00 am and is filed under Fundamentalism, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.