There is an interesting
op-ed this morning in the NY Times. I don't think it is behind the infamous firewall, but YMMV.
The piece is written by the Slovenian author Slavoj Zizek, and it emphasizes a very interesting point: that the best and most hopeful product of Europe's long history of religious back-and-forth is not Christianity, but atheism. He argues against Dostoyevsky's warning "against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, . . .that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted". His take, informed by bloody recent history, is the opposite: "the lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted -- at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations". He extends this notion beyond conventional religion to "the 'godless' Stalinist Communists, to whom everything was permitted since they perceived themselves as direct instruments of their divinity, the Historical Necessity of Progress Toward Communism". In spite of this unfortunate equivocation, what I see as his main point is valid: any ideology, including religion, that distracts people from taking responsibility for the fate of humanity, is harmful.
Zizek reasons further that the basic principle of being responsible underlies the often ignored difference between Christian fundamentalistic and atheistic morality: "fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do". He ties this fact to certain classical Christian tenets, such as Hume's point that "the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence". That is, the atheistic moral imperative, of doing the right thing without any concern for whether there even is a god, is the flowering of European Christian theology.
Finally, Zizek turns to the ongoing cartoon disturbances, and points out that European liberal/atheists have often supported minority religions (i.e., in their right to build new mosques/temples) against the protectors of Christian dominance, yet, in the cartoon disturbances, they supported re-publication of the cartoons in the name of free speech. And this takes us to Zizek's final point: that only atheists are likely to give minority (or majority) religions the respect they deserve. He closes by asking:
Respect for other's beliefs as the highest value can mean only one of two things: either we treat the other in a patronizing way and avoid hurting him in order not to ruin his illusions, or we adopt the relativist stance of multiple "regimes of truth," disqualifying as violent imposition any clear insistence on truth.
What, however, about submitting Islam -- together with all other religions -- to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis? This, and only this, is the way to show a true respect for Muslims: to treat them as serious adults responsible for their beliefs.
It seems to me that this point is all-too-often lost, probably even more often here in America than in Europe: it is respectful to subject a religion or any other ideology to "ruthless, critical analysis". Only in a society with true freedom of religion can a debate based on this even get started. Furthermore, I think that any civilization where such debates are stifled, or even worse, where their products are ignored, can make no real claim of religious freedom. Therefore, I believe that only in societies where "atheism is a fully legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post" (which is far from true in America) can make any meaningful claim to freedom of religion.
Greg Shenaut