Isaac Hayes, famous way back for singing the praises of 'Shaft', and more recently, by lending his baritone to a cartoon character on the scathingly irreverent 'south park', apparently has been caught in a hypocritical conundrum. He was laughing all the way to the bank by gleefully participating in south park's vicious and unrelenting mockery of....uh, well, anything, including religion in general, but Jews or Christians in particular. Mr. Hayes' tone changed when south park's flame throw roasting turned on his religion, scientology. He quit the show in protest and, well, protested. I guess the mud slinging is different when it hits your house. But Mr. Hayes and the church of scientology will get a pass on all this because everybody knows it's only the Christians that don't practice what they preach.
Despite all this, there won't be enraged mobs in the streets of America burning foreign embassies or demanding the death of south park's producers. It seems that in the West, being ridiculed on the editorial pages, taunted by late night show hosts or socially exiled to the margins of society is sufficiently effective at motivating most people, who aren't criminals or bigots, to clean up their act.
On the other side of this planet, it is a little more brutal and unforgiving for those who are different. Some societies impose a sentence of death on individuals who don't accept the mandated national religion. Islamic law, or sharia, is often at odds with modern constitutional law. Afghanistan's apostasy case reveals these constitutional contradictions in an Islamic nation seeking to will itself into the twenty first century.
In the West, it was long ago decided that politics and religion do not mix very well in a compulsory, dogmatic union. The architects of the constitution of the United States sought mightily to avoid the religious disasters of old Europe. The wisdom of the establishment clause with its brilliant 'free exercise thereof' laid the ground work for a populace free from religious oppression at the hand of government. Unfortunately, too many leftist utopians in this nation tend to spout off about 'separation of church and state' and all too easily forget 'the free exercise thereof' part.
I wrote, sometime ago, of Islam being in desperate need of a reformation, much like that of Europe in Martin Luther's day. There are some glimmers of hope in that respect, but there is a deep rift between the Western philosophy of free societies under constitutional rule and that of ancient Muslim cultures guided by vengeance, revenge and intolerance. The worldwide anti-terrorism battle cannot be won until the vast majority of peaceful Muslims initiate reformation and demand that the violence and bloody fatwas of enraged clerics be refuted and the enlightenment of Suleiman the Magnificent be embraced.
"Faith has the power to heal people and societies. But religion can also be abused -- its unique power to motivate turned against its nobler aims."
