Defenders of the
Faith
By SLAVOJ ZIZEK,
Op-Ed Contributor NYTimes on the Web, March 12, 2006
London -- FOR centuries, we
have been told that without religion we are no more than egotistic animals
fighting for our share, our only morality that of a pack of wolves; only
religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today,
when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the
world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only
abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring
increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of
Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?
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Michael
Bierut |
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More than a century ago, in "The
Brothers Karamazov" and other works, Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of
godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then
everything is permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even
applied Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his
book, "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan," suggests.
This argument couldn't have been more wrong: 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. In short,
fundamentalists have become no different than 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.
During the Seventh Crusade, led by St. Louis, Yves le Breton reported how he
once encountered an old woman who wandered down the street with a dish full of
fire in her right hand and a bowl full of water in her left hand. Asked
why she carried the two bowls, she answered that with the fire she would burn up
Paradise until nothing remained of it, and with the water she would put out the
fires of Hell until nothing remained of them: "Because I want no one to do
good in order to receive the reward of Paradise, or from fear of Hell; but
solely out of love for God." Today, this properly Christian ethical stance
survives mostly in atheism.
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. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality?
When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do
it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral
deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this
point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true
respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence.
Two years ago, Europeans were debating whether the preamble of the European
Constitution should mention Christianity as a key component of the European
legacy. As usual, a compromise was worked out, a reference in general
terms to the "religious inheritance" of Europe. But where was modern
Europe's most precious legacy, that of atheism? What makes modern Europe
unique is that it is the first and only civilization in which atheism is a fully
legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post.
Atheism is a European legacy worth fighting for, not least because it creates a
safe public space for believers. Consider the debate that raged in
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, my home country, as the constitutional
controversy simmered: should Muslims (mostly immigrant workers from the
old Yugoslav republics) be allowed to build a mosque? While conservatives
opposed the mosque for cultural, political and even architectural reasons, the
liberal weekly journal Mladina was consistently outspoken in its support for the
mosque, in keeping with its concern for the rights of those from other former
Yugoslav republics.
Not surprisingly, given its liberal attitudes, Mladina was also one of the few
Slovenian publications to reprint the infamous caricatures of Muhammad.
And, conversely, those who displayed the greatest "understanding" for the
violent Muslim protests those cartoons caused were also the ones who regularly
expressed their concern for the fate of Christianity in Europe.
These weird alliances confront Europe's Muslims with a difficult choice:
the only political force that does not reduce them to second-class citizens and
allows them the space to express their religious identity are the "godless"
atheist liberals, while those closest to their religious social practice, their
Christian mirror-image, are their greatest political enemies. The paradox
is that Muslims' only real allies are not those who first published the
caricatures for shock value, but those who, in support of the ideal of freedom
of expression, reprinted them.
While a true atheist has no need to boost his own stance by provoking believers
with blasphemy, he also refuses to reduce the problem of the Muhammad
caricatures to one of respect for other's beliefs. 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.
Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck
Institute for the Humanities, is the author, most recently, of "The Parallax
View."
(Emphasis Added)
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