After the terrible tragedy in France my mind wandered to the question that helped begin this series. How does one reconcile with people who chop off reporters heads, or murder cartoonists, or police officers?
I am hardly the expert so I’d love to hear from you, but hear are a few thoughts:
1. Don’t pin a label on, or stereotype, all Muslims, or police officers, or murderers of police officers. At the base of all faiths is love, respect for all humanity and life. Individual acts of violence or atrocity are just that individual acts.
2. We will never understand what motivates a human to take another life, but blasphemy has been used as an excuse throughout history by not just Muslims. There is a thin line between freedom of speech and expression and acting responsibly and with respect. Acting otherwise is not an excuse or reason for murder, but understanding goes a long way toward reconciliation.
3. My guess is that both God and the prophet Muhammed have tears in their eyes today. People have been killing humans in God’s name and the prophet’s name for a long time, I imagine the sadness in heaven is a significant as the sadness in France.
My good friend’s question haunts, but it also points out the importance of our duty to reconcile. Write in with your thoughts and ideas.
Webb,
I think your suggestions are of crucial importance. I’ve got a couple additional thoughts that may or may not be helpful.
First, I can’t help but think about some of the disagreeable cultural norms that I’ve watched fall away (at least to some extend) over the years. stereotyping Catholics, jews, Irish, Japanese and many others as “undesirables” in our culture. Violence and hatred expressed toward African Americans and gays, lesbians, and transgenders. What interests me about this admittedly partial list is that each of those sets of negative judgments touched my life in one way or another… mostly, I found myself joining in the negative judgments, I’m saddened and more than a little embarrassed to say.
So what changed? I believe that cultural advocacy and leadership helped many to begin to see the humanity in those we were judging. As judgments started to shift, human nature kicked in… i.e. most people don’t want to be viewed as bad or as different, and as the cultural norm shifted from judgment to openness to acceptance, to perhaps love, the familiar bell shaped curve manifested. Just look at how quickly perspectives on gay marriage shifted! And of course along the way, the law caught up with the cultural shift.
(not quite finished with my response… here’s the rest…)
So how does this apply to the terrible tragedy in Paris? I think (perhaps not entirely accurately) that there is a similarity between the assassinations (as that’s what they were) of cultural commentators by fundamentalist muslims bears a lot of similarity to the 1963 bombing of a church in Alabama that killed 4 African American girls. I may be wrong, but I am hopeful that most people with what are called fundamentalist beliefs also do not want to be regarded as bad, evil, or wrong, or even different. The loud expression of support for the victims and against the act that occurred in Paris is the beginning of what has to happen. One political cartoonist in the US stated after the murders that these acts were not only against Charlie Hebdo, but against all political cartoonists and commentators around the world, and so in that way were against all who value free speech. To me, that perspective is of critical importance and maybe a starting point in reconciling with at least a portion of those who might have viewed the act of murder as justifiable in this case.
tom