[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: Sacred Cruelties

[jetkoti at hotmail.com]

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by jetkoti at hotmail.com.


/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\


Enjoy new investment freedom!

Get the tools you need to successfully manage your portfolio
from CSFBdirect.  Start with award-winning research.  Then
add access to round-the-clock customer service from
Series-7 trained representatives.  Open an account today and
receive a $100 credit!

http://www.csfbdirect.com/b4.htm

\----------------------------------------------------------/


Sacred Cruelties

April 7, 2002 

By MAUREEN DOWD


 

WASHINGTON — Not long after Sept. 11, somebody scribbled
these chillingly profound words on a wall in Washington:
"Dear God, save us from the people who believe in you." 

The atrocities and brutalities and repressions committed in
the name of God fill us with a greater need for God, or
some spiritual solace. 

Dark days - in New York, Washington, Central Asia, the
Middle East, the Archdiocese of Boston - make us look
inward and affirm the power of faith to make the unbearable
slightly more bearable. Beyond Prozac and Paxil, religion
should be able to step into the breach. 

But there's the rub. At precisely the moment when religion
should have a calming influence, it has a dispiriting
influence. Just when people need religion to bring them
peace, it brings them war or crisis or abuse or just plain
pain. 

As the need for spirituality is growing, the credibility of
various faiths is waning. Instead of addressing itself to
the angels in our nature, religion seems to be inspiring
the demons in our nature. 

Asked by a British interviewer on Thursday how he coped
with pressure, President Bush replied: "I believe in
prayer. I believe in exercise." Stepping into the Middle
East morass, the Believer in Chief intoned, "The United
States will work for all the children of Abraham to know
the benefits of peace." 

Abraham was the patriarch of three great monotheisms:
Islam, Christianity and Judaism. But now all of Abraham's
faiths and Abraham's children are roiling. 

The most grotesque example is the politicization of
religion in Islam. Among the Palestinians, Egyptians,
Saudis and Afghans, and elsewhere, the Koran is read as a
political program, an incitement to holy violence, a
charter for sacred cruelties. 

Islam seems to be appropriated and eaten away by parasites:
the terrorists, who cite Islamic teachings that violence is
obligatory in the defense of the faith, and the Muslim
clerics who preach a radical purity, an intolerant,
messianic vision of a jihad to destroy the infidels. 

In the Holy Land, radical Islamists are blowing themselves
and other people to bits to get a foothold on the stairway
to heaven. And some Jews are also displaying the deranging
effects of extreme religion. The Israeli settlers' movement
and many people on the Israeli right are prepared to go to
terrible lengths in the name of God's promise of the land
to the chosen people. They, too, treat scripture as a
warrant for political aggression and outright militancy. 

What more blasphemous spectacle could there be than
Palestinian gunmen hiding in the Church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, and Israeli
tanks laying siege to the manger? 

Closer to home and much less apocalyptically, the Catholic
Church also provides evidence of the damage that dogmatic
faith can do. The pedophilia scandal engulfing a shameful
number of parishes throughout the Roman Catholic world is
sickening for anybody who believes that religion makes us
better. 

And beyond the sins of the priests, there is the truly
godless cover-up by church officials. A little like some of
the institutions of Islam, Rome is in a defensive crouch,
protecting criminals in its midst instead of telling the
truth and searching its soul. 

Even the pope seems more concerned about damage to the
church than damage to the individuals who were abused and
wounded. 

Evangelical Christians have also had a brush with the dark
side of their shepherds. We now know that the Rev. Billy
Graham - America's pastor, the preacher whom President Bush
credits with putting him on the right path - is a man of
prejudice. Recently released Nixon tapes give
incontrovertible evidence of Reverend Graham's
anti-Semitism. 

Forgive me, but something is badly awry. I was taught that
religion should inculcate sympathy, patience, compassion,
understanding, forgiveness, a love of peace. Instead, the
name of God is used to justify vices that are the opposite
of these virtues. 

It is not news that religion has its ugly, tribalist and
bellicose sides. What is news is that those sides are
having a field day. Just when we wish to flee to religion
for sanctuary, we find ourselves fleeing from religion for
sanctuary. 

As my friend Leon Wieseltier once wrote: "Metaphysician,
heal thyself."   



http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/opinion/07DOWD.html?ex=1019222111&ei=1&en=d2976bdd944e34e1



HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales at nytimes.com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to 
help at nytimes.com.  

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company