No, I'm not about to do it, but nor am I adamantly opposed to it either ...
No, I'm not against other religions or any religion in particular.
Knowing how throughout history and modern times, religious extremists have been using the scriptures to enslave, to kill, to steal, to teat families apart, I can well empathise with the strong emotions that drove people to publicly burn scriptures, be it the Quran, or the Bible, or something else.
Even in Singapore, such extremism or misled passions caused a family to alienate my friend for her sexual orientation. On a national level, it led a group of females to attempt a takeover of a secular social organisation for women.
I don't think of it as declaring war against the religion as much as the abuse of the religion at the hands of these extremists.
The *real* essence of the religious scriptures is not in the physical books but in their message. So to me, burning the physical copies of the scriptures do not inflict any damage against the scriptures nor their message, but it is a strike against the extremists who are unable to make such distinctions - the people who see the written words but not the message which they distort and use to justify acting cruelly against other human beings.
It is one of the ironies to me that in USA what is happening now.
One can burn the national flag to protest against the excesses or abuses of the government without being held as a traitor or the intent being misread.
One can burn the bible to make similar protest.
But when it comes to the Quran, the uproar smacks of nothing less than double standards.
The message from the uproar is that sensibilities of those who hold the national flag sacred and the sensibilities of those who hold the Bible sacred can be trampled upon - their tolerance taken for granted, but not those of the Muslims.
I'd still defend the scriptures I believe in, despite its abuse by others. I believe that a spring does not provide fresh water and salt water at the same time. So the misuse does not detract from the worth and value of the scriptures. Neither does burning of its physical copies lessen the message in any way.
So, by all means burn the books if you want to make a protest against how the scripture has been used, or rather, misused or abused.
As long as you're not calling to burn people.
The moment an ideology, a religious belief or scripture is made public, you got to be prepared for it to be scrutinised, questioned, criticised, challenged and even to be re-interpreted or distorted from what you thought it should mean.
The human mind is not a computer to receive unquestioningly programming by scriptures, though some people do act like that.
But in Singapore, it'd never be allowed.
Religious Harmony Act is here, not just to prevent unwanted proselytising, but also the egos and sensibilities of many religious people are too fragile to withstand frank criticisms of their scriptures or questioning of how the scriptures are interpreted.
Recently, the government asked the local Malays to be accepting of the non-Malay Muslim foreign arrivals.
When will there be the courage to ask them to be accepting of non-Muslim Malays ...
I don't image that Terry Jones quite share my perspective on scripture burning, but I don't see any arguments presented against him by public figures as being really valid either.
Maybe it's true that it'd endanger American troops and citizens world-wide. But if that is so, then not going ahead is a tacit admission that the Muslims got to be molly-coddled.
Malay-Muslims in Singapore are molly-coddled. Have a look at our constitution.
ReplyDeleteThere's some arguments to be said for indigenous rights, but that's based on ethnicity rather than religion ...
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, Singapore is hardly alone in having some form of state support of a traditional religion.
Separation of Church and State is still not quite as clean in UK and US, and some European countries where the Roman Catholic church or other churches like the Lutheran is the "official religion" of the royal family.
Read from the papers today that some Muslims like Afghans in Afghanistan are still unaware, due to lack of modern communication and media, that Terry Jones supposedly cancelled, and they continued to protest and burn tyres.
ReplyDeleteSome might point to the nigh-impossibility of taking back such "bad news", rumours etc., to justify that provocation shouldn't have been made in the first place.
Seems a valid until one notice that even in media-saturated USA, some folks still thought Barack Obama is a Muslim, even today.
Ensuring good communication is important.
What is more important is ensuring that the individual person must develop the capacity and willingness to exercise judgment, restraint, rationality, patience and "credulousness" in the face of accurate and inaccurate claims, so as not to be easily misled by bad info, whether in Afghanistan or in the USA.