[Assam] Defenders of the Faith -NYT Op ed

[Chan Mahanta]

Thanks for sharing it Ram.One of the finest 
pieces I have read on the subject with reference 
to current events. Brilliant!

c-da










At 12:28 PM -0600 3/16/06, Ram Sarangapani wrote:
>This is an interesting article and advances the 
>importance of Atheism in the world religious 
>order. I think, many of us (even though we claim 
>to belong to some religion or the other) will 
>find the benefits of Atheism.
>
>______________________________
>
>Defenders of the Faith
>By SLAVOJ ZIZEK
>
>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?
>
>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."
>
>
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