When friends asked what they could do to help, he pleaded, “Defend the text.” The attack was very specific, yet the defense was often a general one, resting on the mighty principle of freedom of speech. He hoped for, felt that he needed, a more particular defense, like those made in the case of other assaulted books, such as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Ulysses,” or “Lolita”—because this was a violent attack not on the novel in general, or on free speech per se, but on a particular accumulation of words, and on the intentions and integrity and ability of the writer who had put those words together.
“Blasphemy” is a broad category. It includes some things that, however much I might agree that they also deserve rights under “the mighty principle of freedom of speech,” I’d also find stupid and pointless, that I don’t think the world would miss if they should vanish, not because the government chose to suppress them, but because people stopped being silly enough to keep creating them. And it includes things like The Satanic Verses.
I bought and read The Satanic Verses at the time of the fatwa. I bought it because of the fatwa, but I’d have to say that if I’d read it with no knowledge of the fatwa, “insulting to Islam,” or, for that matter, “insulting” at all, isn’t what would have struck me about the book. Rather, it feels, to me, like a book I read more recently, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, in that both books have other, more dramatic elements (a certain magical realism in The Satanic Verses, the hermaphroditism in Middlesex, but wind up really mostly portraying the varieties of immigrant experience.
In the end, The Satanic Verses makes the short list of blasphemy I’d be sorry to have missed, alongside The Life of Brian, with its marvelous scenes like “What have the Romans done for us”, and the mishearing of the Sermon on the Mount, and the ungrateful ex-leper.
Blasphemy is a particularly religious construction. It seems by itself to be a logical fallacy – appeal to “the faith.”
I was for a long time a deliberate and wanton blasphemer.
I’ve said that I had my “faith” ripped from me at an early age, but that is not true. I surrendered it in the face of what at the time for me was an inexplicable monstrosity. Although it’s hard to make sense of a lot of things at 8 y/o, some things are more impactful than others.
At first, it felt as though I’d given up not just a childhood faith, but all hope, as well. On top of that was the feeling of being lied to and perhaps worse, the suspicion that everyone else was “in on that lie.”
Maybe having given that up at such a young age helped me understand both the problems with and the inherent need for “faith” among most people. When you surrender a faith in one thing (ie religion) you obviously have to question the other ancillary things that have come with or through that and been forged by it, such as the generally accepted moral and ethical codes. Beyond that, you also begin to feel a NEED to find another touchstone, or guiding principle, because the gaping abyss seems impossible to face without one.
Over an extended period, I came full circle to a return to some spiritual belief (the belief in an independent soul, for instance), while still rejecting religions as doctrines intended to simplify the incomprehensible. Interestingly enough, Francis Crick (who along with Watson had discovered DNA) came to a similar conclusion, as explained in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis (http://www.amazon.com/Astonishing-Hypothesis-Scientific-Search-Soul/dp/0684801582/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348161937&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=%22the+astounding+hypothesis%22).
At any rate, it’s interesting that today in the U.S. we seem to have two sides that make largely “faith-based” political arguments – the religious Right making overtly religious faith-based political arguments and the far-Left making entirely faith-based secular arguments. BOTH sides seem to see things in terms of “political blasphemies.
Of the two, I’ve said, I feel the Left is probably the more intractable and the least likely to surrender their faith, precisely because they erroneously believe their views are based in science and yet they eschew free inquiry at nearly every turn.
Those who question the extent of man’s role in global warming are called “skeptics”/heretics, by the faith-based Left that really cares little and understands less of the actual “science” involved.
The same can be shown with welfare reform. As you noted in another spot, welfare reform was a great success. Welfare roles were halved nationwide, from 12.6 million to 5.9 million! AND those who went back to work saw their incomes and standards of living increase.
However, there remain a number of faith-based Leftists who insist that despite all the hard evidence to the contrary, the welfare model of the 1960s works best. They see those who go where the actual evidence and facts leads them to be “blasphemers.”
In the end, they are no different, no less “close-minded” than those religious Rightists who see all abortion as murder, without any apparent concern over the fact that an unwilling parent is also an unfit one, at least at that point in time and that such decisions often spare all involved immeasurable misery.
The primary difference between our Western faith-based thinkers and the Islamic ones is that ours haven’t issued death sentences to their opponents. . .so far.
Well said.
Especially the ex-leper. Great skit. I think you could also include nearly all of the Holy Grail movie also. At least the part with the virgins, or the rabbit.
Steve
I enjoyed the Holy Grail much more than The Life of Brian. So many classic lines. “Bring out the dead.”
I picked The Life of Brian because I’ve read it actually did get banned in a couple of countries (though the blasphemy seems pretty mild to me), and I don’t think the Holy Grail did, but the “Bring out the dead” scene is indeed classic.