The Charlie Hebdo Murders
The atrocity perpetrated in Paris yesterday was a strange one as well as a tragic one. We have to ask ourselves what kind of religious view we’re dealing with when it has to be “protected” by armed murderers. Any deity that requires such support is surely a feeble one.
And yet this action is not that different from the sorts of massacres regularly committed by “believers” in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation and …. well, you can fill in that blank with whatever your favorite historical reference might be.
It would seem from this that we are dealing with individuals who see their world in a way that we would consider to be outmoded, as coming from another century. And yet we certainly have beliefs systems with us today in the US that claim they know the only true way to heaven and that everyone else is an infidel condemned to Hellfire. Try talking to those lovely people who stand on the doorstep and want to convert you to be a Mormon, next time they drop by, and once you scratch the surface you’ll see exactly the same thing. Ditto for Catholics, actually. And for many another belief.
The problem is not religious extremism. We’ve always had it. The problem is that within those webs of compelling beliefs sometimes individuals choose to enforce their views at gunpoint.
Since this is the case we need to think differently.
Rather than ridiculing another’s beliefs (no matter how bizarre we may think them) we may need to think about respecting any and all religions so we can open a dialog about what it means to be in a society where, inevitably, differences of opinion occur. The Jehovah’s Witnesses do not come to our doors with guns, and we are better off for it. In contrast to this in the Middle East all those subsets of belief – Shia, Sunni, Al Qaeda, Hamas, ISIS, and so many more, all inevitably linked with political creeds and regional alliances – regularly fight it out and cause only misery.
How to remedy this is problematic, yet it can be done, and the first step is respect. In the meantime we must contain those who would do harm, bring them to justice, and try to lead everyone back to peace.
