The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

THEY say even Jesus was accused of blasphemy, particularly noted in several places in the gospels of the New Testament.

Making an accusation of blasphemy is a very easy and persuasive way to ensure religious doctrine, whatever its origin, whatever its intent, is never, ever opposed.

If blasphemy is viewed as ‘evil’ or ‘illegal’ and punishable by law, in its most extreme, it creates an example of the person identified as a blasphemer by showing to the world what will happen to you if you go against a certain religion.

Blasphemy, as defined, is irreverence for what is deemed sacred.

I have a particular reader - well, only one who has made himself known to me, though I am sure there are many others who share his view - who thinks that when I call ‘Jesus’ or ‘God’ in exclamation in my column, that I am blaspheming. There are many assumptions here.

First, there is the assumption that I share the same faith as him and/or that I believe Jesus and God are the same entity.

Second, there is the assumption that blasphemy is observed in the Bahamas at all, let alone as a punishable crime.

Third, there is an assumption that what you view as sacred and what I view as sacred are the same thing; why should my lack of observance of what is sacred to you or your lack of observance of what is sacred to me, intentional or not, be deemed blasphemy? Why can’t they just be different and respected?

Finally, there is the assumption that I’m saying what I’m saying in this column for saying its sake, that there is not a large swathe, if not bordering on a good half or more of the Bahamian religious population, even including Christians, who use the names of Jesus or God in exclamation. Like them, on occasion, I might use a colloquialised exasperation which is commonplace in our culture when we feel there is an overwhelming helplessness. This being the case, many Bahamians would understand my use of the words/names within a certain context, which is why I would use them ... to reach those readers more easily in a way they can understand or relate to; this is a fact of Bahamian dialogue and culture which, admittedly, non-Bahamians might be challenged to understand.

That said, as I tolerate your right to hold any religion near and dear to you, you ought to tolerate my right to disagree with your belief system. Tolerance includes respect and not judging other people’s humanity or integrity by your own personal - or national - religious beliefs. And it’s a two-way street.

The divisiveness of religion and religious faiths is the source of many of our world’s worst problems, from a small-scale Bahamas to a large-scale Middle East. Humans, once brainwashed in tradition and culture, do not understand how to separate themselves from it and expect that everyone else should live according to their rules of religion, even to the point of superimposing their cults/traditions on every other soul in the world whom they have never before met.

Think about it. If you worship a god who is meant to be god of all people of the earth, how are you going to tell any religion of the earth other than yours, including those that are ancient in comparison to Christianity, that they are wrong for what they believe? How are you going to tell someone with no religion or religious faith that they are wrong for what they believe when they have never been indoctrinated in or exposed to a religion?

And with respect to meting out judgment and punishment, if a god is all-powerful, who are you, man, mere mortal, to seek to dole out judgment and punishment of others for not believing as you do?

Moreover, your antagonism does not serve to engender faith, trust, or respect, only more opposition. If you sincerely wanted to get others to understand what you believe or why you believe it, the best way to do that is to demonstrate in your comprehensive life and your daily living the purpose and application of your faith or belief. It may not change their minds (or win their tithes) but it is not for you to change minds of people who have their own. They will, though, be more likely to respect you and your faith and seek to learn whatever they can from you that works toward the greater good.

But what is wrong with humanity? We seek instead to make people become religious followers like us or change them into who we want them to be, instead of fostering a peace through understanding and appreciating the differences among us. So we argue, taunt, brainwash and try to convert, when we are not created to be homogenous. It is a recipe for continued social and cultural failure and so we continue to fail.

There’s a Trinidadian puppet show on YouTube with a very foul-mouthed pastor living a very foul life. Pastor Stewart is his name. It’s performed by Roger Alexis of LEXO TV. Don’t go looking for it or watching it, if culturally-determined obscene language offends you and you can’t see beyond it to get a louder message, because there are many such ‘obscenities’. And while many may just laugh and be entertained by Pastor Stewart, or others choose to be offended by the thought of him, it drives home the point of the duplicity of religious practice, especially in a country like the Bahamas. Though, with Pastor Stewart being a ‘Trini’, he is obviously a phenomenon found elsewhere in the Caribbean and the wider world.

The Pastor Stewarts of the world are the people who sit so comfortably in judgment of others on the topic of religion, pious men and women who get up in public before a congregation, or a viewing or listening audience, professing their (often meant to be Christian) faith but carrying on in the pulpit like the Trinidadian puppet show cast led by Pastor Stewart.

As for me, I grew up in five Anglican churches, almost one for every stage of my life you could say: as an infant, a child, a pre-teen, a teenager and an adult. I was baptised, confirmed and served on the altar as an acolyte in the Anglican church. It would be a mistake to assume that you have more knowledge about the Christian faith/church than I do.

My maternal relatives are historically full-time Anglicans and my paternal relatives are historically full-time Catholics. I couldn’t have avoided religious immersion if I had tried. I had a beloved Anglican priest for an uncle, until his untimely death 21 years ago.

In fact, I wish he was still around so I could share this column with him and engage him in deeper conversation about the subject.

The way I see it, as long as no one is diminishing, injuring or killing anyone else in the process of expressing differences, it is quite all right to have them.

And if you want to live somewhere where it is punishable by law to blaspheme, per your interpretation or religion, there are many such places in the world to live, though the Bahamas is not one of them. In fact, it is likely you would not want to live in those places either, because they tend to also be places where you could get killed just for having a different religion, be it a minority or a majority, Christian or Muslim ... or any other.

To drive home my point, consider something a bit more international and horrific. If you have listened to or read any news in the last six years, you have heard of the war in Syria. The war in Syria really started when the Syrian government sought to suppress political objection by its citizens.

There were underlying, unspoken reasons for that. There’s always tension in that land, and there always will be tension there, because at the heart of those wars in the Middle East, more specifically the area referred to in history as the Levant, are factions that hate one another and punish, torture and kill each other on the basis of religious beliefs.

Sunnis in Syria are a majority. Shia-Alawites in Syria are a minority (of which Syria’s leader Bashar al-Assad is one). Sunnis, Shias/Shiites and Shia Alawites all follow Islam. Sunnis don’t believe their Prophet Muhammad appointed a successor but that his adviser, Abu Bakr, was chosen otherwise as caliph and took the role. Shias believe Muhammad did appoint a successor through family lineage, Ali, who was both his cousin and his son-in-law. And therefore, those who follow Ali are Alawites, or Shias who have branched off into another sect of belief in the Muslim faith. And from then to now, all of them are at odds with one another because each group sees itself as being more morally and spiritually excellent than the other.

When the so-called ISIS/ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) arose, they took their so-called predominantly Sunni Muslim faith to a militant level. At the centre of their belief system is that Shia Muslims are not pure Muslims and they must be killed in order for Islam to be pure again.

And all of this is why no amount of political intervention can ever resolve the problems of certain Middle East nations. I remember, even as a girl and as a teenager, the battles, the holy wars, between Sunnis and Shias reported in world news. And still it continues.

Everyone who has joined the war in Syria, which is more or less a free-for-all at this time, with the exception of foreign militia, is fighting on the principle of religious intolerance rooted in who you are, based on where you are from, and which tribe, faith or grouping you identify with, which ultimately (in their eyes) determines the correctness and sacredness of your religious beliefs and forms the basis of decision-making on whether you should live or die.

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