Not the boss of us
The BBC’s Frank Gardner on That Book:
The furore that followed the publication of his book, considered blasphemous by many Muslims, had far-reaching consequences. It sparked a deadly riot in Mumbai, the burning of both his effigy and his books in Britain, and attacks on translators and his Norwegian publisher.
It’s all nonsense. The whole idea of “blasphemy” is nonsense. The god is supposed to be omni-everything – all powerful, all knowing, all goodness and mercy, all perfection, all justice – peak excellence in all things. Why would such a god care about “blasphemy”? Do we care if ants think we’re stupid? No. We have better things to do than trying to make ants respect us or love us or say prayers at us five times a day. We know we know more than ants do, and that trying to force them to worship us would be pointless as well as futile.
It’s all nonsense. It’s human stuff – bossiness, meddling, dominance, loyalty-enforcing – superimposed on a pretend Perfect God Daddy in the Sky.
And for this bilge they slaughter the entire editorial board of a magazine, they pick off atheist after atheist in Bangladesh, they spark communal wars between India and Pakistan, and they stab a brilliant novelist in the neck.
A key clue that religion is made up is the ease with which god(s) are offended, how needy they are for affirmation and how jealous they are of their reputations, and how they thirst for the blood of heretics, atheists, and those who just don’t care.
It’s almost like they reflect the savage nature of humans at our worst.
Exactly. Humans project their horrible bullying rages onto their “god.” Stupid bossy apes.
Such utter bullshit. In nature, creatures grow beyond the need for fathers and mothers, and go on to be fully mature adults. Only humans (and faulty ones IMO) have the need for some big daddy to look up to their whole lives. What’s wrong with that is that a lot of daddys are stupid assholes, I know mine was. I couldn’t wait to be free of my parent’s rule and rule my own life. The trouble is what kind of idolatry they choose, and there are no good choices. They are children, dependent on the patriarchy. Better yet, sheep in need of a shepherd (in their own metaphors). It’s truly disgusting.
So “the furore” acted all by itself? What does a furore look like when it’s at home? Way to drain the human agency, decision-making, and action out of the violence that people chose to unleash for their own reasons. It’s not like all those events followed naturally, like the release of an object results in its hitting the ground. The book did not “spark” anything. On its own, it did nothing and could do nothing. Humans chose to blame the inert book for what they themselves did, as if they were compelled, or as if what they did was some impersonal, unstoppable, gravitational or meteorological inevitability, and other humans went along with this story. And so it continues here.
A well placed bolt of lightning along with a booming voice from the sky would work wonders on unbelievers. But when has this ever happened? It’s as if believers know that if they do not punish these alleged insults to the god they believe in, the god they believe in will not. They can’t see that this makes their god look weak and powerless. The violently devout act as if they don’t believe their god is big enough to do his own smiting; they have to be his “agent” or “instrument.” But who needs a machete when, theoretically, you are supposedly able to wield the elements themselves? Remember, lightning?
And a god like the one they believe in would surely smite the holy killers themselves for short-circuiting the proper channels of divine retribution. As it stands, it’s all too clear that the bloody murder of blasphemers and apostates is quite prosaically human. This muddies the picture, because it all ends up looking like a merely mortal protection racket rather than a godly one. A don doesn’t want those he is “protecting” to fear and respect his underlings instead of him, does he? He wouldn’t want his marks believing he doesn’t really exist? He wouldn’t want his underlings to go freelance either. It’s not as pretty or succinct an argument as the Babel fish* one, but I think these are pretty good points against the existence of the kind of god or gods who would work in this manner.
*A refresher on this argument can be found here: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Babel_Fish
This is all so much like trans. “If you say/do this, you challenge my existence!”
I suspect a lot of that is what goes through the heads of religious believers when they punish others for blasphemy (a victimless crime). They wrap their own existence around that of this god, but others not believing and leading good lives is a challenge to them, to their very reason for being.
I don’t know how many religious believers have asked me “If you don’t believe, how do you get up in the morning? You have no meaning, how can you even get out of bed?” My answer is easy. “Since my life has no external meaning, I have to get out of bed and give it meaning by the things I do.” That sort of answer is anathema to believers, because it disputes the idea that without god, we are nothing. So they have to get rid of us, or at least make sure we suffer, to make their predictions true.
YNnB @#4:
Except that books are containers for ideas, and ideas can be dangerous, because some of them can destroy the faith that binds communities together. Hence the expression ‘the family that prays together, stays together,’ where ‘family’ can be a generic term wider than ‘Mum, Dad and the kids,’ and can be the local village, town and even city.
The livelihoods and privileges of priesthoods depend on maintenance of paramount idea sets, so book-burnings become a faith-affirming and communal-affirming ritual in their own right. Less so in polytheistic countries like India than in monotheisms like so much of the Islamic world; but particularly Pakistan.
Why yes, yes it is.
We’ve seen what happens when people demand external validation, and how far many will go to enforce this, even for others, not for themselves.
Without validation, they are not what they claim to be. If making others mouth your mantra for you is what makes it (and you) real, what happens when people stop doing that? What happens to Tinkerbell if nobody claps? COVID lockdowns played havoc with narcissistic supply; did all those TiMs vanish?
They sure make “misgendering” and failure to use preferred pronouns sound like blasphemy. Fortunately we have not yet entered the bombing and beheading part of TiM outrage, though if Twitter and Manhunt are any indication, the urge is there. I wonder if, as more institutions are slowly pried from their grasp, and they feel their entitlement being rolled back, TiMs might be more likely to act out on these urges, as they feel their putative “rights” slip away from them?
An addition to those who have been slaughtered: Igarashi Hitoshi, the Japanese translator of ‘The Satanic Verses’, stabbed to death at the University of Tsukuba in 1991. His murderer has never been found. Or murderers.
I think it was 1990 when I went to a technical conference in the Netherlands. The nastiness about The Satanic Verses was going on, so I purchased a copy of the book, and for some perverse reason decided to take it with me as reading material on this international trip. I read in the airports in both directions, doing what I could to keep the cover hidden, at least some of the time. Nothing happened to me, fortunately. I hated that I should feel so concerned about reading a work of fiction.
There was some pre-publication concern about Does God Hate Women?, too. Considerable concern really.
Ophelia – were those concerns for your safety precautionary from the publisher? Had there been any threats directed towards either you or Jeremy? There was so much gnashing of teeth and wailing then of “hurting religious feelings” used to justify violence and threats.
This incident with Rushdie goads me towards hurting religious feelings even more. I’m largely apathetic about religion, except for where it’s used to harm, threaten, legally used as a cudgel against individual rights, or lead to murder attempts. This does not make me step back and say “Well, maybe they’re right about this being a religion of peace.” Not by any means.
I think it wasn’t concern about us so much as about the publisher, or about everyone involved. I got very annoyed about it but in the event nothing happened, publication proceeded, no threats occurred.
Ok so I found the posts about it –
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2009/book-what-book-was-there-a-book/
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2009/thoughts-without-a-thinker/
I think I’ll do a Looking Back post on them, in light of recent events.
The publisher consulted someone called “an ecumenicist.”