A recent news piece offers a very quick summary of how religious fundamentalists think:
''Eighteen years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill him, a government minister in Pakistan said yesterday that Sir Salman Rushdie’s recent knighthood justified suicide bombing.''
So, Justifiable= Murder.
Not justifiable= 'Blasphemy'.
Monday, June 18, 2007
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(Iran's Foreign Ministry Director for Europe, Ebrahim Rahimpour) ... added that Iran held the British government and Queen Elizabeth II "responsible for the circumstance of this provocation".
I think this is exactly what makes me angriest about this kind of thing. It's not that people are choosing to be religious. Although I don't "get" that, I can see that it's very popular, and people will certainly join a group just to be part of a group. What bothers me is this abdication of responsibility.
"It's YOUR FAULT if I release press statements designed to enrage my constituency." It's the author's fault, if a lot of Muslims are so unstable in their faith that his work of fiction enrages them. It's the fault of Christianity, that ... It's the fault of the West... it's Europe's fault...
Fuck you. It's your life. It's your religion. Take responsibility. Take ownership. If you're a leader, and you're encouraging unrest in your populace, that's YOUR decision.
The press often does the same thing- the novel 'provoked anger' and 'led to a fatwa'. There is often an abdication of responsibility in the case of Muslims that is more offensive than anything that is said against the faith. Especially because it suggests that those Muslims who accept the requirements of a pluralistic and open society, which includes every one of them that I know, have something wrong with them.
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