Religious Tolerance
I just read a post on the NYT site that I felt I had to comment a bit on. Basically a palestinian contemporary art museum in Tehran opened a “holocust” (their pun not mine) exhibit, lampooning the holocaust (and most western culture too.) The basic premise behind the exhibit is the intent to expose western hypocrisy for invoking freedom of religious expression about the cartoons of muhammad while they condemmed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying the holocaust was a myth (Interestingly enough in some parts of europe that is highly illegal, but that’s beside the point.) The general feel I get reading the article and looking around on the net is that the curators feel that they are going to get some massive reaction to this, much like happened in the muslim world when the cartoons of the prophet came out.
Probally not.
Let me give you an example… You could make an animated movie of all the major religious figures from history (Jesus, Muhammad, God, Buddah, Kali, etc…) involved in one big ass orgy and 90% of the world would go “mm…kay, that’s tasteless and whoever thought that gem up is a sick bastage.” and in the “western world” at least you’d largely see nothing at all happen… a few of the big religious organisations would make a stink in the news, you’d get a few people walking around the creators house protesting for a few weeks, and the polticans of course would eat it up like candy and try to make some pr spin out of it to benefit their campaign for the next election. In a few days/weeks/months, it’d be history and no one would much think anything of it anymore. Even in the far east you wouldn’t see a tremendous response from the opinions of the few japanese and korean people i’ve mentioned it to. In the middle east I’d be willing to wager the response would be far worse than the Muhammad cartoons.
Why? I really just don’t get it. Blood begats more blood, this is a lesson burnt into history and fueled by the blood of hundreds of millions.
This kinda crap just annoys me… it doesn’t matter if you’re christian, pagan, jewish, amish, islamic, buddhist, or a member of the church of the sub-genius… if you are truely strong in your faith, why try to force it on the rest of the world? Live your life as your beliefs (be they personal or religious) dictate and if they’re of high quality people will recognise that and become greater for it.
Maybe I’m just intolerant of people who are intolerant of others religious/personal/political/etc beliefs. Oh the irony.