Graven Images

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

So, what's all the fuss about, then? Westerners, even devout ones, have been making sacred heart in violation of the 2nd Commandment for centuries.

Ever see this picture:



Ever stop to think about who the dude with the beard on the right is? That's right, it's none other than the Supreme Being Himself, whose image should never, and i repeat never, be graven. On anything. At least, according to the Bible.

And yet, Michelangelo's work hangs in some of the holiest place in the west.

Ever stop to think about who the dude with the beard on the right is? That's right, it's none other than the Supreme Being Himself, whose image should never, and i repeat never, be graven. On anything. At least, according to the Bible.

And yet, Michelangelo's work hangs in some of the holiest places in the west.

I'm not impressed with a philosophy of stagnant holiness that says i have to live, breathe, think, and worship the way that you do. In fact, i pretty much despise it, whether it's pronounced by people i share a country with, or people on the other side of the world. The difference, of course, is that in a democracy, i have some interactions with the fundamentalists of my own country, and we have to work out some means of co-existing.

George Bush, on the other hand, has decided that it's his calling to convince people all over the world that our special form of democracy is what God wants them to have, too. Which is why the publication of a series of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed, and the subsequent violence in much of the Islamic world represents a special dilemma for our fearless leader.

This violent response to the publication of a bunch of stick figures, however offensive, directly contravenes the most fundamental principles of liberal democracy - freedom of speech and freedom of the press. When Voltaire wrote to le Riche "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write," he encapsulated the distilled essence of the Enlightenment, and in one sentence gave us everything we needed to understand the nature of liberty.

In the project of bringing democracy to the Islamic world, to which George Bush and his neo-conservative advisors have so forcefully committed the power and prestige of the United States, we have just driven off the cliff. The citizens of the Islamic world will have to decide for themselves whether these principles of free speech, free expression, free publication, and free thought are worth incorporating into their culture. But that's not George Bush's dilemma. His problem is how to continue selling to the American people that what he is engaged in is in fact the establishment of democracy.

If he stands up for the democratic principles of the Enlightenment, as expressed by Voltaire and codified in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, he runs the risk of alienating much of the Islamic world, and, as Steve Gilliard noted, painting even bigger bright red bullseyes on the backs of the nearly 200,000 US troops currently deployed in the Islamic world.

But when has George Bush ever stood up for democratic principles?

Never. And his administration saw no reason to do so now.

According to the Voice of America:

The United States has also denounced the cartoons as an unacceptable incitement to religious or ethnic hatred. State Department spokesman Justin Higgins said the "cartoons are indeed offensive to the beliefs of Muslims."

So the larger question now becomes, will this act of appeasement sit well with Bush's right-wing base, which generally views all Arabs and Muslims as "rag-heads"? Will the natural inclination of the right-wing to distrust the press outweigh the prejudicial elements of the Christian fundmentalist movement which distrust and despise Islam? Can Bush pull off the essential double-think necessary to get Americans to believe that the only way to bring to democracy to the Islamic world is by abandoning the very principles of democracy here at home? How many more parents of dead soldiers can he parade at his State of the Union addresses, and tell them, in front of the world, that their children died for the noble cause of freedom and democracy, when his own State Department has announced that the democratic foundations of the US are no longer in effect?