Honor and Insult
The conflagration over offensive cartoons can teach us about Christ's work on the cross.by Barbara Hampton
All of your Muslim friends are upset, and many of your Christian and secular friends are angry and baffled. How do you respond? The on-going unrest that stretches from one
end of the Muslim world to the other in wake of the Danish political cartoons
picturing Muhammad as a terrorist has provided you an opportunity for interaction
with both that can either heal rifts or exacerbate them.
The facts of the matter almost don’t matter any longer. That the small Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten wanted to test whether today’s global realities demanded that the media censor itself about Islamic issues and that no one reacted to the cartoons for several months until some Danish imams brought them to the attention of their counterparts in the Middle East and that offensive cartoons simultaneously were reprinted across Europe in act of solidarity with the Danish press, these have been swallowed up in the ensuing worldwide protests. Now the language surrounding the incident has inflated as well to call for death to the infidels and to point to Western hypocrisy and to the inevitable clash of civilizations. Our TV screens are filled with burning flags, angry mobs, and Danish diplomats making their exits from their posts. William Kristol, writing in the Weekly Standard, claims that “this is a moment of truth in the global struggle against Islamic extremism.”
What can you do? You can do two things, both small but hopefully significant. The first is to listen, especially to our Muslim friends. What exactly upsets them so much? Do they believe that the Qur’an forbids making images of Muhammad? (It does not, but many—not all—interpret the hadith, a collection of narratives by and about Muhammad, to do so.) Does their respect for their religious leader imply that others must respect him too? Does the manner of respect vary from culture to culture? Do they feel disrespected themselves, especially in the West or by Westerners? How has the war in Iraq factored into their feelings? As for your non-Muslim friends, does the secular environment that we take for granted mean the freedom to be disrespectful of religion (the notion that the larger group of media is now flaunting)? What does it mean to be disrespectful of another person’s faith? If you ask, they may give us answers to these questions or others even more pressing to them.
Secondly, we can speak the truth in love. In all the commentary I have read and heard about these last sad days, two stand out in their wisdom. If we can echo these, we may gain a hearing ourselves. The first comes from Paul Marshall, who is the senior fellow at Center for Religious Freedom. He carefully makes the distinction between religious toleration and religious freedom. “Religious toleration means not insulting somebody else’s religion, and it is a good thing,” he writes in another issue of the Weekly Standard. “But religious freedom means being free to reject somebody else’s religion and even to insult it. Government should want and encourage its citizens to be tolerant of one another, but its primary responsibility is to protect its citizens’ rights and freedoms. The fact that some people are insulted is one cost of freedom.”
Freedom, to mean anything, negatively means the opportunity to be wrong. Religious conviction cannot be coerced. Not just Muhammad in his famous surah, “There is no compulsion in religion,” but Jesus also taught this. When he sadly watched the rich young ruler walk away from him, he showed that a free response to truth cannot be compelled even by God himself. A love compelled is not truly love.
However, in the same breath, we should affirm to all our friends that freedom, to mean something, positively means an opportunity to act responsibly. Sure, in the West, we have the freedom to say what we want, however insulting. But in God’s Kingdom, “’Everything is permissible’—but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others” I Cor. 10: 23-24. This goes for inflammatory words as well as inflammatory deeds. (Not that many of your Muslim friends will be supporting violent protests no matter how hurt they are.)
John Piper points out an even deeper reality that you may get an opportunity to share. This missiologist focuses on one of the most telling differences between the leaders of the two world religions, not that one promoted violence and the other decried it. Rather, that the “world of Muhammad is based on being honored and the world of Christ is based on being insulted.” (desiringGod.org February 8, 2006). Muslims’ understanding of honor, which of course takes such offense at insult, extends even to their understanding of Jesus. They cannot accept the crucifixion, believing that the Qur’an teaches God rescued Jesus from the cross, because they cannot fathom that God would allow his Son to be so insulted and dishonored. Opening himself to insults and mockery was at the heart of Jesus’ mission to save us that took him into and through the deepest suffering. Piper goes on to explain that “…a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that this religion is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that possible.”
Jesus’ followers ought to expect scorn; we should not stand with the scoffers. Rather, if you have the opportunity to listen and to speak the truth in love, perhaps you will have the opportunity to stand with the scorned and thereby share Jesus’ sufferings with him (Phil. 3:10). The InterVarsity chapter at the University of West Virginia had this opportunity recently when their friends in the Muslim Student Association, with whom they have built relationships through social activities and interfaith dialogue, asked them to co-sign a letter to the student newspaper explaining why the issue is so sensitive to Muslims around the world and to condemn violence enacted in the name of religion.
Insults and scorn hurt; sharing that hurt with the scorned can be Jesus’ medicine to heal that hurt.
Barbara J. Hampton is adjunct instructor at The College of Wooster, in Wooster, Ohio. Ms. Hampton attended Trinity Christian College and Calvin College, completed her B. A. at the University of Michigan, and completed her M. A. at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her current research involves field-testing with Christian and Muslim students a Bible/Qur'an study she has written.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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