Dear Editor,
The awful assassinations of the French Charlie Hebdo journalists have shown us, once again, that sacredness means something profound – and something very different – to just about everyone. Most people, this latest attack proves, hold certain beliefs, concepts and ideas sacred.
The terrorists – foolish, murderous, deranged and now dead – obviously believed the French cartoonists had challenged and blasphemed their most sacred beliefs by portraying the prophet Muhammad, and by extension all Muslims, in disrespectful and even obscene ways.
The Western public – saddened, outraged and defiant – obviously believes, as the massive outpourings of public support amply demonstrate, in the sacredness of free speech, free expression and freedom of the press. They believe the violent deaths of journalists and others blasphemes all freedom.
That collision with sacredness holds us all hostage, making the world a much more dangerous place.
We all personally hold freedom of expression as a sacred value. As a human being I see the prophets of God as sacred. To me, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons about Muhammad seemed crass, profane, offensive and juvenile – but I didn’t question the right of the cartoonists to draw them.
Both the eminent French sociologist Émile Durkheim and the pioneering Romanian philosopher and religious historian Mircea Eliade considered the human experience of reality a balance between the sacred and the profane.
Durkheim said: “Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things…” Eliade said: “The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred.”
Durkheim said the sacred represents the overall interests of the group, with the goal of unity, while the profane represents only mundane individual concerns. Eliade’s interpretation of religious experience also focused on sacred and profane space and time, which he defined by saying, “The manifestation of the sacred ontologically found the world.”
People who consider their faith sacred – which would include the billions of followers of many of the world’s major religions – obviously object to those who slander and defame their most cherished and deeply-held beliefs. And those who hold sacred the Western principles of democracy and free expression believe that assaults on those principles strike at the very foundations of their being and their culture.
Some people call this conflict “the clash of civilizations.” When you think about it, though, that simplistic description doesn’t make sense. The real world has much more variety, variation and nuance than any simplistic East v West dichotomy could contain.
Many Muslims believe in and fight for freedom of expression, and many Westerners, including Christians, Jews and Muslims, take deep offence when others insult their religions.
Yours faithfully,
Rooplall Dudhnath