After Charlie Hebdo: Why the Efforts of Extreme Fundamentalists Are Futile

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http://www.alternet.org/culture/after-charlie-hebdo-why-efforts-extreme-fundamentalists-are-futile

The fatal shootings at the headquarters of the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, make one thing very clear: Extreme fundamentalists are desperate to control our information environment. In today’s digital world, these efforts will only prove to be futile.

For individuals who adhere strictly to the literal scripture of a faith, be it Islam, Judaism, Christianity or Bokononism, the separation of the secular (worldly) from the divine (God) is central. For such individuals, debasing or trivializing the sacred through irony or art is unnatural and immoral. Through the act of play – or even through mere representation of the divine – we, mortals, impose our own meaning on an idea or concept. And in so doing, we reduce the distance, bringing ourselves closer to God, or bringing God down closer to us, depending upon how you view it.

Interestingly, the main religious texts of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity (whose combined followers constitute about half of the world’s population) seem to share this concern, as all discourage the representation of the divine in the secular world. And we’re not even talking about trivializing the divine through humor or play. We’re talking about a prohibition of any worldly reconstruction of the sacred.

Like most religious texts, the Qu’ran warns against idolatry, or the worship of false prophets. But, among Sunni Muslims, whose faith centers around not only the Qu’ran, but also the spiritual readings of the hadiths, the rules surrounding symbolic representation through visual imagery are even broader and the warnings are even more dire. “Verily the most grievously tormented people amongst the denizens of Hell on the Day of Resurrection would be the painters of pictures.”