Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Can't top this!

I was going to blog on the Newsweek-Koran debacle (perhaps with a not-quite-gratuitous reference to the Spokesman-Review thrown in), but Patrick has said it all much better than I could.

To be honest, I don't see anything sinister behind the Newsweek story; just old-fashioned cluelessness. America is basically a Protestant, iconoclastic society. We tend not to attach much importance to physical symbols. Even American Catholics, who use visual art in worship, are much less attached to sacramentals and icons than Christians in other cultures. So although we would consider it insulting to desecrate a Bible, and would be very upset by the destruction of an altar, we wouldn't see it as all-out blasphemy. And because Americans are, frankly, used to blasphemy in our diverse religious landscape, we don't get as angry over it as Muslims in Muslim countries do. We tend to mind our own business and let God take His own vengeance on blasphemers.

Newsweek was writing for Americans, who are difficult to shock. Heck, in a country where borderline porn like Cosmo is usually on display in the checkout line, a flushed scripture is small potatoes. What the reporters at Newsweek fail to grasp is that not everybody is American. For all their talk abouut "diversity" and "respect," they're woefully ignorant of their own ignorance.

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