Mohammed Wept – Little Wonder

 

     

                by Kenneth Bagnell

 

       The entire civilized world should be grateful for the cartoon that occupied the recent cover of a Paris tabloid called Charlie Hebdo.  It was the creative response of Renald Luzier, a cartoonist member of the paper’s staff who survived the early January terrorist assault on the publication. It killed 12 innocent journalists and illustrators; then four Jewish shoppers were killed in a kosher market. The Luzier cartoon depicts the Prophet Mohammed weeping over the dreadful tragedy. Above him a three word line reads simply what cartoonist Luzier put there: “All is forgiven.” Instead of even the slightest grasp of the art’s pacifistic wisdom, the militant and warped (if not fascistic) elements of a segment of Islamic culture deliberately twisted it to be blasphemous. This is misreading, indeed it’s outrageous.

        The depiction by Luzier and its message are in accordance with the heart and soul of Islam if properly understood. Moreover it is in accordance with other Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Christianity. You want backup? Then turn to the New Testament, the book of John. In Chapter 11, the narrative reports and reflects on the death of a man named Lazarus, whom Jesus admired as did Mary and her sister Martha. In the passage, Martha advises Jesus as to the place where his body rested. Let the Revised Standard Version text tell the rest: “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. He said, where have you laid him? They said to him: Lord, come and see. Jesus wept.” What’s the point of this reference? Simply this: Jesus wept. And if Jesus weeps at the news of one man’s death so does Prophet Mohammed, when not one but a dozen are slaughtered in the grossest and most thuggish of ways.  Luzier’s insightful cartoon, drawn in his heartbreaking hours with deadline ever growing nearer, is not just a testament to his gifts. The words are a message to history: Mohammed wept.

        Moreover, that truth has persisted down the ages among believing people of all the major faiths. From Allah to Jesus, to Jehovah and to those whose faith may be into Progressive Humanism, Progressive Secularism or whatever new faddish metaphysical concept emerged yesterday. God — I’m thinking now of those who believe in God — does not envision , execute or oversee disaster for one person or a million of them. The will of God is — depending on private perspective — a highly complex theological issue. But for now we can say God’s will is, above all, not with ISIS or Islamic fundamentalism.  The current horrible direction some of Islam’s adherents take awaits the insight and correction of its own best social scientists and therapists. It will take generations to change it. (Authoritarianism does not readily welcome reason, especially regarding religion, and especially in Middle Eastern countries which are distinctly non-pluralistic.)

      For now, all we hear is lamentation, we hope sincere, from some Muslim clerics and some secular leaders. Many of them, offer a predictable complaining response that leaves me uncertain as to its efficacy. Egypt’s President, for example. Adbel Fattah el-Sisi, speaking about a week ago, to a conference of clerics, called for what he defined as a needed religious revolution. “It is unbelievable,” he told them, “that the thought we hold holy pushes the Muslim community to be the source of worry, fear danger, murder and destruction to all the world.” A more progressive thought came later from a cabinet minister, Gaber Asfour, appointed not long ago to the cultural portfolio. A respected literary figure, and former editor of a scholarly journal, he called attention to Egypt’s broad intellectual standard. “Religious thought, or religious discourse,” he pointed out candidly, “is afflicted with backwardness.” He deserves gratitude for his candor and probably his courage.

      The hope, even if cautious, is that out of the dreadful and myopic strain of Islam now pitching at liberal democracies, we’ll be guided by this reliable faith: that, in and of itself, God’s will is goodwill. There is no accommodation for fascistic thoughts or strategies in a world where the vast community of faiths regards the creation and the divinity as our guide not our adversary.    

     One window on what I mean will suffice. Some years ago, a young American named Alex Coffin lost his life, in January 1983, when his car crashed through a wooden bridge into the water. His father, a minister — a former chaplain at Yale University and at the time minister of the familiar Riverside Church, New York -– was heartbroken. In the days following the death, a well-intentioned woman came up to him and, trying to be sympathetic said, this: “Sometimes I don’t understand the will of God.” Coffin almost lost his temper. For after all, as he put it days later on, if the incident was “the will of God,” God had to make sure that as his son drove to the bridge,  its railing was weak, his car’s headlight was not working and so on. As he later wrote: “My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first heart to break.”  God’s will, revealed in Christ’s life, is that we live a full and fulfilling life. But thousands of issues intervene, some personal and increasingly many political and, for now, beyond clear and explicit explaining. We must deal with them. Yes, one is the dreadfully misguided, indeed corruptions, of Islam and the birth and growth of ISIS.

 

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