This cartoon, called “Blame,” appeared in the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times Free Press. At first you might think that it’s trying to exculpate faith, but I doubt it. See the artist’s biography, and then some of his cartoons. If I’m right, and this is a criticism of both faiths, then it’s amazing it got published—especially in the American South.
h/t: Mark
… and no less.
Nice stealthy slam of biblical reverence. It’s so great when you can clearly make a point that no one can prove you were trying to make. Bravo!
Yes, he does some good stuff.
I think this is a variation on this xkcd comic we all know and love.
The cartoon itself is actually fairly ambiguous in intent like one of those Gestalt drawings that can be either a duck or a rabbit depending on how you adjust your eyes.
I can imagine that liberal mainliners might interpret this all kumbaya-y; but I’d think it might rile fundies to have any equivalence suggested between the two “holy” books.
I suspect you’d be wrong. I have debated such things with fundies, and they almost invariably come down on the Islam-is-peace-and-love-its-about-god side. Most fundies buy the “there’s no such thing as hate in monotheism” line. One guy flatly denied that Islam treated women as inferiors! I was casting nasty slurs on a great religion! Only the really hardcore Terry Jones types disagree. Gotta give those folks a little credit for honesty and consistency at least.
I don’t think you can draw broad conclusions based on a small, personal sampling of fundamentalists.
Craw & I might have different definitions of “fundy,” too. I’m thinking of the “the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it!” crowd.
OTOH, I once had a friend who identified as Evangelical who always seemed to think the best of all religions. While I generally tend to conflate fundies & evangelicals, I’d posit that there’s a hard-core fundamentalism that doesn’t seem at all, uh, catholic. 😉
“who identified as Evangelical who always seemed to think the best of all religions.”
Any good and decent person really doesn’t want to believe that the majority of the world is going to spend eternity in hell, so I can understand the motivation to see what you want to see in other religions.
Very true.
Although there’s extensive comity between the two, the distinction (as I understand it) between “fundamentalists” and “evangelicals” is this: fundamentalism has to do with the strict interpretation of religious doctrine (usually centering on a literalist interpretation of scripture), and evangelicalism concerns the calling to carry one’s religious message to others (i.e., “to evangelize”).
They are, of course, clearly overlapping non-magisteria.
Yes of course. And according to Wikipedia, fundamentalism is an offshoot of evangelicalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism#Fundamentalism
It was the overlap that I was clumsily referring to, meaning to suggest that the fundies Craw was debating may have leant more to the evangelical side. But that was presumptuous of me I realize.
Yeah, that was pretty much a dictionary definition. Should’ve known you weren’t looking for that. Sorry.
I probably would’ve realized it once I started writing it. But then, “overlapping non-magisteria” came to me, so I couldn’t quit; would have been like putting aside a simple arithmetic problem without writing down the answer after you’ve already derived the sum in your head. 🙂
😀
And a salute to the sultan of simile.
Nicely put.
In a way, the cartoonist’s intent doesn’t matter, the message is what you read into it.
I tend to read the innocuous meaning, then about a half second later the back-handed alternate hits me.
Like Schrodinger’s cat, both possibilities are there.
If it said its message explicitly, it would probably have less effect – it would be either accepted or angrily dismissed by readers who would then go on to the next item. As it is, one ponders it.
cr
I don’t think Erwin Schroedinger believed there were two possibilities for his hypothetical cat. It was his way of debunking the Copenhagen interpretation which he did not accept.
Umm, okay. My apologies to Schrodinger and his problematic cat if I mischaracterised it. 😉
cr
Yes, Clay cleverly camouflaged his content here: a gestalt-shifting pox on both their houses.
He could have telegraphed his punch by adding a tag line like “and no less,” but opted instead to retain the ambiguity.
Clay Bennett is a brilliant cartoonist, winner of a Pulitzer and one of my favorites. And yes, amazing that he gets published in Tennessee, but Chattanooga is a progressive outpost in the South.
I was a little concerned when I first saw this one, I think it should have been worded “This is as much to blame … as this …” But I trust his intent.
Chattanooga is no true southern city huh?
Dayton, where the Scopes Trial was held, is just a hop, skip and jump away.
Big cities tend to be liberal. Rural areas conservative.
Example: Utah is Mormon but big Salt Lake City has a lesbian Mayor.
That’s largely true in Tennessee, where Nashville and Memphis have democratic representatives and mayors, but not Knoxville. It also correlates to minority percent of population, particularly of blacks, who vote overwhelmingly democratic.
Chattanooga is a bit unusual as it’s a small city, 174,000, but it does have a high percentage of blacks, 35%. Being small, it’s stuck with a hard right republican representative, Chuck Fleischmann.
It needs another panel showing people reading them and saying something about deluded readers of them are to blame.
I think his intent is to say that neither holy book is a factor in terrorism. If that is the case, this cartoon is a complete miss…
My first impression was criticism of both. If this is some kind of Gestalt, it is lost on my. It’s meant to blame both (with permission as it is deemed worthy satire).
blame is the person’s
responsibility is the religion
worse, they are the same books
I’m surprised people read this as anything other than a straight up apologetic. Changing the subject to Christianity (or “all religions”)is an extremely common tactic to divert criticism form Islam, second only to accusations of bigotry in frequency. Christianity and Islam have markedly different histories and relationships to their central text. Obviously the Bible is extremely prejudiced and violent in parts, quite clearly more egregiously so than the Qur’an at their worst. The rare Christians and Jews who actually try to implement all its rules demonstrably fail. Contrast that with the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. who are to a substantial degree ‘living the Sharia dream’ on a large scale. Partly it is that the Qur’an is relatively simple and does not contradict itself so fundamentally. I could go on, but the point remains that complex phenomenon should be analysed chiefly in and of themselves rather than resorting to politically-motivated equivalencies.
In fact the koran does contradict itself but islam has a principle, that bible religions could use, of “abrogation” whereby if doG said something that mohammad later found inconvenient doG sent mo a new revelation that abrogated the old inconvenient one. One can’t say that mo wasn’t a sly old self-seeking person.
Mormon elders still get new revelations, right?
Yes – as needed to allow them to avoid embarassments. Just like mo. The christians especially RCC Inc could use the principle to advantage but they’re too stubborn.
In evolutionary science it’s called adaptation.
Indeed. Survival of the glibbest.
My interpretation was that he’s saying neither are to blame. I suspect nearly all of his southern readers will read it that way, since they will assume the bible can’t possibly be to blame (“No REAL Christian…”)
That’s my interpretation too.
I was quite annoyed by the news coverage on the day the media outlets did a tour of the San Bernardino killers home. They had constant pictures (especially Fox) of the couple’s Qur’an and a tapestry with Arabic writing (which remained untranslated but was likely a common inspirational verse from the Qur’an).
My opinion is that if the media had gotten pictures inside the home of the Planned Parenthood killer, we wouldn’t have seen constant pictures of his Bible and (if he had one) tapestry of Biblical verses.
Being a Muslim does not make you a terrorist, and the implication that it does by the media is a disgrace. A DAESH flag on the fall would have been significant – the fact they own a Qur’an is not.
My immediate thought wass that the media should be making as big an issue over the Colorado killer’s religion as they are over the San Bernardino killers’ religion. I don’t think Bennett is trying to exculpate religion as a motivating factor in these events, rather just the opposite–religion motivated both.
I’m ready to see debates between Islamists and Christians of various stripes (as opposed to atheist v. Christian and atheist v. Islamists which have so far obtained over the last not-a-few years).
I agree with those who think that the cartoon is apologetic. Actually, after the Planned Parenthood murders I read an article by some leftist Islamophile essentially asking Christian readers, “Do you see now how unjust it is to blame Muslims as a whole for Islamist terror?”.
In the context of his other cartoons, I think it is more likely that it has a subversive message, drawing an equivalency between the two religions that will be a bit of a burr under the ass of the fundies.
One thing to understand about editorial cartoonists is that they don’t necessarily have complete autonomy. They are usually part of the newspaper’s editorial board, and their ideas must get approval from the senior editors, the same as any other content in the paper. It’s possible he pitched a more direct concept but was forced to make it more conciliatory. They don’t want to offend their readership.
In light of that, it’s remarkable what they have allowed him to publish in the past.
That may be true of staff cartoonists generally. It is less so for syndicated cartoonists (and syndicated columnists) — especially those, like Bennett, syndicated worldwide by the Washington Post Writers Group. That, and his Pulitzer Prize, likely afford Bennett broad autonomy to call his own shots.
He is on the Chattanooga Free Press staff, and is also syndicated. You’ll notice that all his cartoons are labeled with the newspaper name, so they have to go through the paper’s editorial board.
Yes, I understand that, which is why I said that the paper had less control over him and he had broader autonomy. If Bennett were solely a syndicated cartoonist whose work was carried by the Chattanooga Free Press, he’d have absolute autonomy from it, and its authority over him would be nil. The paper’s discretion then would be limited to whether to run his cartoon or to spike it.
Why does the front of the Quaran seem to be the back? Is Arabic read from “back” to “front”?
It seems to me that even without knowing anything about the cartoonist the cartoon will work, after a little contemplation, by people whose knee-jerk reaction will be to reject the idea that the Bible could be to blame for anything bad … and then realize that their reaction is identical to that of those who defend the Quaran.
‘Is Arabic read from “back” to “front”?’
It is; Arabic text is written right-to-left, so the pages are in the opposite order from ours. I have a couple of Arabic Bible translations, leftovers from an era when I was both an Arabic student and Christian, and they are bound the same way.
Yes, Arabic is read from right to left.
Hard to be sure the intent of the cartoon, but I interpret it as saying both religions are responsible for violence.
So, what kind of a person is Bennett? He’s described as a liberal who was fired for being too far left:
Wikipedia:
“He worked as editorial cartoonist at the St. Petersburg Times for 13 years (1981–1994) but was fired in 1994… Bennett said “Many saw the termination as political because I was out there on the far left. Obviously expressing your point of view can cost you your job.”
I keep hearing rightwing blowhards calling San Bernardino “an attack by ISIS.” ISIS, however, bears roughly the same causal relationship to the Berdoo killers that Taxi Driver did to John Hinckley and Catcher in the Rye did to Mark David Chapman — although ISIS, nonetheless, bears moral culpability since it sought to inspire such attacks generally (while Scorsese and Salinger, safe to say, did not).
Wish they wouldn’t say ‘an attack by ISIS’ (assuming that, in fact, ISIS had no part in it).
It gives ISIS too much credit. Makes them seem more powerful than they are.
cr
They do it solely as a prelude to panning Obama and riling opposition to the Syrian refugee program.
I think objectively, the cartoon is wrong.
There is nothing in the bible about abortion, let along killing people who get/perform them.
There is much in the Quran which is explicit instruction to kill apostates, unbelievers, homosexuals. The Quran is a relative short, direct, instruction manual for Muslims.
https://goo.gl/E1lgzC
The structure & wording of the bible makes it much easier to dismiss the “bad” bits, to “cherry pick” what fits a modern humanist morality.
While God commanded the Israelites to engage in specific atrocities here and there. There is no general command wage violent war on non-Israelites/non-believers/etc.
Words attributed to Jesus overwhelmingly emphasize peace/love/forgiveness. Words attributed to Mo’ overwhelmingly emphasise war, conquest, violent jihad.
Yes, but it’s a simple matter to cherry-pick the bible in the opposite direction, finding repugnant passages that are the match of those in the Qur’an.
And the anti-abortion zealots unquestionably cite scripture, and their religious beliefs more generally, as the driving force behind their activism. For them, those seeking or providing abortions are quintessentially Jonathan Edwards’ “sinners in the hands of an angry God.”
So while the distinction you cite exists, it is more ephemeral than real in practice.
And it took until the Enlightenment for the humanist part of the Bible to be the dominant, mainstream, most common reading. Christians claim modern morality comes from the Bible, but it is society that changes, then the Church finds a way to include what most people believe in their teaching.
The latest example is the acceptance by many churches that homosexuality is “normal” long after a majority of the population sees it that way. And there are mosques that accept LGBT people too, although they are, of course, rare, and are often not accepted by other mosques.
Yeah, and it doesn’t take Muslims or fundamentalists to have such a dispute. Not long ago, US Episcopalians (the epitome of a mainstream, pacified religious sect) had a major to-do over a gay priest being elected bishop to the Anglican Communion.
Exactly! It’s humanism that drags religious morals forward, kicking and screaming at every step.
“the Church finds a way to include what most people believe”
That is certainly the way it happens. Yet the religious can’t see that. They insist they knew it all along. Someone ought to compile a chronological list of moral advances and use it to educate the low information people.
I (stupidly) got into an argument with someone on a Catholic website who insisted that atheists got their morals from Christianity and it was because of 2,000 years of Christian morals that atheists were good. In her mind, it was Christianity that caused the Enlightenment. She couldn’t be argued with – I gave up.
Rather than “I gave up”, how about “I had to move on.” 😉
Good call! 🙂
That’s a tenuous position she has when arguing from the perspective of Christianity? But arguing from the perspective of Catholicism? Give me a break. The Protestant Reformationade it okay (for varying degrees of “okay”) for there to be dissent against the Pope. But, the Catholic Church made the Librorum Prohibitorum and littered it with scientific books, both about hard science and the philosophy of science. I would bet she’s one of those people who defends the Church’s treatment of Galileo because it was based on disrespecting the Church rather than a basic difference in opinion on heliocentrism. These people never seem to be able to explain away this statement though which has nothing at all to do with anything but the scientific claims Galileo was making:
“…[T]he Assessor Theologians assessed the two propositions of the sun’s stability and the earth’s motions as follows:
That the sun is the center of the world and motionless is a proposition which is philosophically absurd and false, and formally heretical, for being explicitly contrary to Holy Scripture;
That the earth is neither the center of the world nor motionless but moves even with diurnal motion is philosophically equally absurd and false, and theologically at least erroneous in the Faith.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20070930013053/http://astro.wcupa.edu/mgagne/ess362/resources/finocchiaro.html
Of course the anti-abortion zealots are religiously motivated and cite scripture. But there really are zero biblical passages about unborn fetuses, etc. Instead they must stretch some points about “spilt seed”, etc., to ex post facto justify what was ultimately a emotional feeling that those are sweet little babies being murdered.
The Quran is a *short* and *direct* instruction manual.
The difference is not ephemeral. It is tangible, and we see it’s effects in the world.
Beliefs matter.
Here is a thought experiment: brainwash two people from birth, one that the bible is literal word of god, the other the quran is literal word of god. For first 15 years of life, they only get taught a few select, relatively benign passages at Church or Mosque respectively. Then at age 16, they each read their respective book, cover to cover.
I submit to you that the “Quran” subject is significantly more likely to subsequently choose a life of violent jihad, willing to support and use violence to defend and spread their religion. This person may well be willing to “martyr” themself by suicide bombing.
The “Bible” subject might take a violent approach to defending their religion, but not so likely to *spreading* it. Somewhat more likely is you end up with a “peace and love” missionary type, maybe a pacifist. This person might be willing to martyr themself for their religion also, but it would much more likely take the form of allowing themselves to be “killed by the natives” so to speak.
As an alternative starting point, the two subjects are not very religious growing up, but have nature & life experience such that they are the types who seek out & join a cult — they need that sense of family or community or belonging or whatever it is. Once joins a christian group, the other a a muslim group — becuase those happen to be where they ended up feeling “accepted” or whatever. Now each of them starts taking their particular scripture seriously, reading the Bible or Quran thoroughly… who is more likely to “self-radicalize”?
I take it to mean that religion has a degree of influence in both cases. I got into a FB argument this week with Trump supporters who think we should ban all Muslims. Aside frim the practical issues about how we’d determine who is Muslim, I pointed out that you can’t oppress 1.6 billion people based on the fundamentalist reading of their holy book, an interpretation which harms Muslims more than any other group.
One guy listed a bunch of violent Koran verses and said this justifies the stance to ban Muslims. In turn, I listed vile Biblical passages and said that we wouldn’t ban all Christians based on these commands to kill blasphemers, adulterers and witches. He responded that Christians don’t kill based on these passages and I gave him a lesson on Hitler and the Third Reich as well as the Rwandan genocide.
I’m pretty sure my implied point that we can’t exculpate religion in any of these cases while at the same time not assuming that one’s religious identity tells us anything about them was missed; this, despite the fact that I drew a direct comparison between Christians and Muslims and the followers of each religion who don’t take these violent mandates seriously.
And sub
I also have a problem with the glib equating those two events. It’s tempting to pair the two, but as people devoted to rational thought, it’s not valid, and trying to throw the Bible into this PARTICULAR case is a bit smug.
The San Bernadino event was the result of planned behavior by sentient people who were following a clear ideological path, and knew exactly what they were doing.
The Colorado Springs incident involved an apparently completely uhninged individual who according to neighbors before the incident and other accounts afterward, was unable to put together a coherent statement.
It’s really a contrast between religiously/politically motivated extremists and a person who is seriously mentally ill who got hung up on something he hears.
Robert Dear may have been unhinged (clinically ill) or not. We don’t yet know. But it is important to realize his actions came about within a very toxic environment of violent and provocative rhetoric from the Christian right and mainline Republicans which has in the past generated many violent acts and murders at Planned Parenthood sites. All, I’m sure can be seen as the actions of Christian extremists who were not unhinged.