Posts Tagged ‘islam’
Cartoons
- A few thoughts on the Torah reaction to the events of the last few days around the publication of cartoon caricatures of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
- The concept that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me” is not in accordance with Torah thought. The rabbis have always taught us to be aware of the power, constructive and destructive, of words. A life can be ruined as effectively by a few words spoken at the right time and place as by a blow.
- The Torah has a concept of blasphemy that imposes obligations even on those who do not subscribe to our religion. One of the seven Noachide laws – incumbent in Torah thought on all humans – is a fairly extensive prohibition against idolatry. There is nothing ideologically tolerant about Judaism.
- In order to become liable for a penalty in respect of blasphemy, however, a person has to perform it, after clear warning, with clear knowledge and intent; not out of mere ignorance or even out of gross discourtesy. Although there is one notable instance of extra-judicial punishment of blasphemy – that of Pinchos (as to which see the 21st July 2005 Sceptic Tank) – as a general rule an infringement of the Noachide laws can be punished only through the usual judicial channels.
- Collective punishment is in theory contrary to Torah law. There are, however, some instances – whether general categories such as the city given over to idolatry or specific historical examples such as the punishment inflicted by Shimon and Levi in the matter of Dinah’s maltreatment – that illustrate that the concept is not unknown to Torah law, in particular circumstances.
- All of which puts us in perhaps a slightly ambivalent position in respect of the present crisis. We can certainly understand the strength of feeling that religious Muslims will feel upon seeing a disrespectful picture published in a form that contravenes their law. And we are not inclined to dismiss it as “mere words or pictures”, being well aware of the force that words and pictures can command. But we feel deep antipathy towards any scene of mass hysterical violence, of a kind which would not be justified in Torah thought by any breach of Torah law. We also feel, and are required to practice, an innate respect for the law of the land, even in some cases (but admittedly not all) where that law diverges from Torah law.
- It seems, unhappily, likely that we are all going to have to develop at greater speed than had previously been thought our ideas about ways to achieve balance between inherently incompatible ways of life. Not only will we find incompatibilities between cultures, but within our own we will find, as is shown above, principles which can be difficult to apply compatibly in a particular situation. As with most difficult projects, however, if it is undertaken by all those for whom it is necessary with a genuine wish to arrive at a solution which provides the greatest ease of mind to all, we can hope with God’s help to achieve a result which will certainly be better than mere reaction by instinct to each new class of culture.
Electronic goats and indoor succahs
- Today is Eid al-Adha, the Islamic day of sacrifice. One of the observances of the day is a requirement to have an animal slaughtered and to donate the meat to the poor. There will be many Muslims who are more than happy to make this financial sacrifice but who find it difficult or impossible to spend the necessary time purchasing and delivering an animal. So a scheme has been made available in Jakarta whereby customers of a local bank may use its automatic machines to buy an animal (at costs starting at about £40 for a goat) following which all the necessary arrangements are made electronically and the purchaser eventually receives photographs of the slaughtered animal and a letter of thanks from the community which receives the meat. The BBC asked a “senior Muslim leader” whether he thought the electronic purchase satisfied the requirements of Eid: his reported reply was that “it was in accordance with Islam, but … unless you witnessed the slaughter first-hand and donated the meat personally, the religious experience would never be the same”.
- This last sentiment appears to me to be both perfectly expressed and capable of application to a variety of observances in a variety of religions. Perhaps particularly for Jews because of the multitude or religious observances of various kinds required from us daily, there is always a temptation to look for ways of facilitating compliance with ritual laws. Nor is this necessarily to be criticised in itself: on the contrary, anything which enables or encourages more people to participate more fully in their religion is to be welcomed.
- But there is a price to pay, and it is important to be realistic. One can see how physically acquiring an animal, supervising its slaughter and actually handing it over to a soup kitchen to be cooked and distributed, for example, could be a spiritual experience of profound impact. It could make a person more appreciative of his or her blessings of wealth and more sensitive to the needs of others; and different people would doubtless be affected in different ways. It would be much more difficult to draw the same kind of spiritual inspiration from the action of pausing for a few seconds to purchase an electronic goat: not necessarily impossible, but inevitably more difficult. Of course, a person who could not or would not fulfil this requirement any other way, is gaining by the electronic method more than he or she is losing: and a person who by the electronic method is able to give more than he or she could or would be able to give actually may be gaining spiritually by that consideration more than is lost by the unreality of the electronic method. But there is a balance to be struck, and the important thing is to be honest with oneself in striking it.
- A good example of the application of this issue in Judaism would be the indoor succoh. Once, the standard practice in this country was to construct something more or less rickety in the garden. Nowadays, more and more people have extensions or other parts of their house with removable roof panels, enabling succos to be experienced without sacrificing carpeting, furniture, space, comfort or even, to a degree, heating. Again, it is indisputable that this fulfils the halachic requirements. But what about the religious experience? This is an intensely personal matter, a balance which each Jew must strike for himself or herself. Some will conclude that the difficulty of keeping succos in any other way means that the spiritual gains clearly outweigh the losses. The elderly and infirm, for example, may be enabled through the use of an indoor succoh to keep a mitzvoh from which they would otherwise be exempt, shut out from a spiritual experience which they have perhaps found particularly uplifting in other years. But for others, the annual experience of building a personal commemoration of the exodus from Egypt (not forgetting the fact that there is one Talmudic opinion that the process of building the succoh deserves its own brochoh) is an integral part of the process and one which can be either a moving experience or an ineffable nuisance, depending at least in part on how one perceives it.
- We must avoid becoming so habituated to the use of technological and other advances to facilitate religious observance that we come routinely to adopt the least burdensome route, without making a personal calculation on each occasion whether the facility dilutes the religious experience unnecessarily and undesirably.
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