I note that an Israeli fundamentalist rabbi has found himself in hot water over his religious intolerance - or should I say fanaticism?
Israeli police briefly detained a rabbi on Sunday over his endorsement of a controversial book that justifies the killing of non-Jews in certain circumstances, a police spokesman said on Sunday.
News of the brief detention and questioning of rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of one of Israel's leading religious leaders, prompted his supporters to take to the streets in parts of Jerusalem, burning tyres and blocking the city's light railway.
. . .
Yosef is the second high-profile rabbi to be questioned over the book, after police last week briefly detained rabbi Dov Lior, a key member of the settler movement. His detention also prompted protests by his students and supporters.
. . .
Rabbi Lior's detention last week prompted rare criticism from Israel's two chief rabbis, who described it as a "grave offence against the honour of one of the most important rabbis and leaders of religious opinion."
But speaking at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be no special treatment for rabbis.
"Israel is a nation of laws, as I said a few days ago. Nobody is above the law -- and I demand that every Israeli citizen respect the law," he said.
"The King's Torah" has stirred up controversy since its publication. Last August, its co-author, settler rabbi Yosef Elitzur was arrested on suspicion of incitement to violence.
But he was freed without charge days later after a court found police had not followed proper procedure.
The book reportedly says babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed in certain circumstances since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us."
It also says non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and that attacks on them "curb their evil inclination."
"Anywhere where the influence of gentiles constitutes a threat to the life of Israel, it is permissible to kill them," the rabbis wrote.
The book, published earlier this year, has drawn sharp criticism from many rabbis who say it contradicts the teachings of Judaism.
There's more at the link.
*Sigh*
This is just the latest in a long, long line of such acts and expressions of religious intolerance. Fundamentalists of every sect, creed and faith have been guilty of the same mistake. Christians, Jews, Muslims . . . all have been persecuted by others, and all have persecuted others in their turn. For that matter, members of a given faith have all too often persecuted members of a different persuasion of that same faith. Witness the Troubles in Northern Ireland, or the Albigensian Crusade in France (during which the Cistercian monk and Papal legate Arnaud Amalric famously instructed the Catholic Crusaders to "Kill them all - God will know his own"). The (frequently murderous) conflict between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq and other parts of the Muslim world is another example.
I can hardly blame those who maintain that religion has caused far more harm than good to the human race, and therefore believe it should be abolished. As a religious person myself, I don't agree with them . . . but blind, bigoted zealotry such as that displayed by Rabbi Yaakov Yosef and his followers makes it much more difficult for people like me to defend our position.
I used to say of racist hatemongers in South Africa, both Black and White, that they should be allocated exclusive homelands adjacent to each other. The homelands should be triple-fenced and guarded by minefields and gun-towers on their external borders, to prevent any of their residents getting out: but the border between them should be just a line on the ground. Racist extremists could be abandoned there to kill each other to their hearts' content, until such time as the survivors decided to get along, and jointly petitioned the rest of us to let them out. I wonder if a similar 'remedy' could be applied to all intolerant religious fanatics, of any and every sect? It'd make the world a much better place for the rest of us . . .
Peter
6 comments:
I do find it interesting that you assert the harm that religious persecution provides, and then all of your examples are examples of non-religious campaigns of conquest that at most use religion as political cover. The Troubles are the Anglo-Saxon descendants of invaders and the Celtic descendants of the invaded arguing over the sins of the past (with religion providing the uniforms). The Cathar suppression was a land bribe; the suppression only succeeded when the French crown got involved in the land grabs (religion providing the cover to prevent the intervention of the German states, which had interests in the area).
Yes, even Iraq is primarily about how much influence the Persians (who happen to be Shia) will have over a mostly-Arab, mostly Sunni, country whose other non-Arab minorities also dislike the Persians.
The "kill the infidels" martyrs, people who are only out to purify the world and not get rich in the process, are famously rather few, and far between. Even Mohammed's conquests can't be isolated into this class; most of Arabia was in it for the money.
Most pure religious nutcases can only manage small one-time events. Bin Laden is one of the few really successful in making a splash of the field, and taken by percentages of available population, that's not saying a lot.
Even the "Spanish Inquisition" fails the smell test: the court had money targets (i.e. collect X amount of money this year) and targeted rich people. Even so, the execution and general punishment rates for the Inquisition was significantly lower than the king's justice system in Spain, to the point where defendants usually begged to face the Inquisitions instead of the king's justice.
IMHO, the true "rabid believer killing machine" award goes to Pol Pot. He managed to kill a sixth of the entire population available to him, to move towards his vision of the world. Mao comes second, at somewhere between 5 to 10 percent of the population available.
There is no "religious" conflict in history within even several orders of magnitude of brutality of the 20th century atheists.
Go read The Militant Atheist for this one. Vox Day has done a lot of work to document how the "obvious" religious conflicts are really non-religious conflicts given political cover.
I agree that secular forces (politics, money, etc.) often piggybacked onto religious quarrels for their own purposes. The Thirty Years War is perhaps the best-known example, where the German princes used Luther's rebellion against Rome to gather the accumulated wealth of the Catholic Church into their greedy hands.
Nevertheless, those secular forces wouldn't have had anything to piggyback onto if it weren't for religious intolerance. I think it's a chicken-and-egg situation. I think religious fanaticism has been the casus belli on far too many occasions, irrespective of whether or not it's been solely at fault.
Good post Peter, MANY of the world's various wars have been religious in nature...
Way back, on the Onion.com, they had a "news story" (as they often do) about resolving all of the world's conflicts by moving all of the world's conflicts to one area, and surround the entire area with UN troops. They made sure that each area was next to another area where they were sure to encounter their enemy.
I searched for it, but I can't find it. Anyway, it was all very funny, but the more I think about the idea, I think it has some merit.
Your idea kind of reminded me of that thought. Put them together and let the survivors figure it out.
The question Rabbi Shapira is addressing: How many of your own soldiers do you sacrifice to save the lives of your enemy's women and children?
Iran is going nuclear and its proxy, Hizbollah has tens of thousands of rockets in bunkers under homes, schools and hospitals, and has and will launch them at Israel from all of the above.
In other words, what we have here is a legal scholar addressing a terrible real world dilemma.
Take him out of the picture completely. What criteria do you bring to the decision making? When your enemy hides behind women and children, what do you do? Even if it weren't deliberate policy on the part of Iran and Hizbollah (remember Khomeini saying that it's OK if Iran is destroyed so long as Israel is obliterated?) how far do you go in a war?
Peter, you brought up the Albigensians. Using your analogy, Rabbi Shapira is more like an Albigensian theologian trying to figure out what's permissible than like Amalric.
Also, remember in Judaism it is not merely an ethical question, it is a legal question and it is the legal question Shapira is addressing.
I don't agree with everything I've seen Shapira quoted as saying, but there is a context, part of which is that the article is from Agence France Presse which is, shall we say, less than objective in almost anything dealing with Israel.
You may be right. He may be a racist. But even if he's the wrong man to do it, the questions he is addressing don't go away.
It is what we are. The ists and isms aren't the cause, they're merely the expression: we're a tribal species, sometimes a very violently tribal one. The only way we get anywhere is through a wide variety of means to transcend the strictest definition of tribe.
Ironically, religion has been a way to do THAT on several occasions too. It's not a force for good or a force for evil, it's entirely what we choose to do with it.
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