Democracy, freedom of religion and speech are gifts that help define what it means to be fully human. But within any democracy there must exist a level of respectful restraint when challenging or debating treasured religious values of the “other.”
The Islamic admonition of not depicting the Prophet Mohammed in any human image is a sacred element of Islam. For anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim to do so is to disrespect and demean a basic tenant of the faith.
What has happened tragically in France has provided other terrorists — using religion as their selfish and feckless calling card — with a motive to kill in the name of God. The end result of this latest slaughter is the construction of a global arena pitting freedom of speech against a time honored understanding of how to acknowledge the presence of the Prophet Mohammed in the world.
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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote; “I believe that we are being summoned by God to see in the human ‘other’ a face of the divine ‘other.’ The test so lamentably failed by the great powers of the 20th century is to see the Divine presence in the face of the stranger. To heed the cry of those who are disempowered in the age of unprecedented powers; who are hungry and poor and ignorant and uneducated, whose human potential is being denied the chance to be expressed. That is the faith of Abraham and Sarah who, with the great faiths Judaism, Christianity and Islam, trace their spiritual or actual ancestry.”
War, sectarian violence and terrorism are definitions of human failure. For all who follow the teachings of the Prophets, Jesus and Mohammed, who will now stand firm and commit themselves to end all acts of violence and extremism done in the name of God? If not us, then who?
