Blogger News Network

As of late, those extremists of the Islamic faith have indeed been linked quite frequently to images of effigy or flag burning but throughout history various groups in society have been involved in the art in one form or another and one of the oldest traditions of effigy burning in the UK is of Guy Fawkes.

Many effigies of Guy Fawkes are usually burnt by Christian children around 5^th November as part of the celebration of the failure of the Gun Power plot of 1605, and these celebrations usually include Catholic children, who often unbeknown to them, are in fact celebrating the failure by Catholics to overthrow a rather repressive Protestant king that was very much anti-Catholic.

The reason why we celebrate this effigy burning 400 years after the event was originally the result of an anti-Catholic tradition to keep the memory alive in the minds of the Protestants, in the same way that the 9/11 WTC event will be remembered to keep alive an act carried out by Muslims. Initially of course, it will be remembered for those who died, but ultimately, it will be remembered in anti-Islamic circles as an act of murder by terrorists.

In more recent times we have seen frequent news shots of effigy burning, usually of George W Bush or Tony Blair, or following the Danish cartoons incident, the burning of European Christian flags. They are attacked of course because they are symbols of who some Muslims consider responsible for insulting Islam in general or Prophet Mohammad in particular.

This opens up a variety of questions. What is being attacked or so insulted that results in such angry and violent retaliations? From the non-Islamic perspective, people see this as an overreaction and reasonably conclude that the violent actions either show passionate hatred against non-Muslims (particularly against Jews or Christian supporters of Jews), or are politically motivated acts.

From my limited knowledge of Islam, some of the protests seen recently have been because of perceived insults directed at Prophet Mohammad, and, particularly with the Danish cartoons, have been made worse by the symbolisation of the Prophet which I understand is forbidden by the Koran. Yet it appears to me, that Muslims themselves are the ones that are symbolising the Prophet by their frequent protests every time someone appears to offend Him.

Most religions and this probably includes Islam, teach ‘turning the other cheek’ (accepted that if someone is so seriously offended that is something that is very hard to do), and to illustrate this point, I recall an interesting Chinese(?) quotation:

“If someone offers you a gift but that gift is refused, who does the gift belong to?

The person who offered it of course.

So, if someone insults you, but those insults are not accepted by you, then who do the insults belong to?”

People, countries, institutions, Gods, their Prophets, religious and political leaders are insulted everyday but do we see the same reactions that we see when Islamic icons are insulted? Thankfully not, so why do some Muslims feel the need to overreact in comparison with non-Muslims? Excluding politically motivated reactions and looking instead at genuine anger, obviously such Muslims feel the need to defend what has been insulted.

But what exactly has been insulted? Taking Prophet Mohammad for example, in the human form (which, being a non-believer is the only one that I know of), Prophet Mohammad, like Jesus, is dead and totally beyond being insulted. In the spiritual form (since I do recognise that there are people who believe in such possibilities), surely Prophet Mohammad is equally beyond being insulted, and once those who claim that it is in defence of His memory or what He stood or stands for that is being insulted, doesn’t that make what has actually been insulted the symbol of what He stood for or what He was or what He achieved rather than the Prophet Himself?

On the balance of probabilities I do not accept that there is a God or a Heaven, but I do recognise that there is a remote possibility that He could or does exist, and I certainly recognise that there are many people of all faiths that do believe that there is a God or Heaven. Given the perceived power of such a Divine Being assuming there is one, how is it remotely possible for a mere human, perhaps an unintelligent human not of the same or any faith, to insult such a God? Assuming that there is a God, how can it be that a God can be so Great and so powerful (and incidentally, so merciful), yet is dependent upon mere humans to defend Him against otherwise worthless insults by equally worthless infidels?

It is almost incomprehensible to Western and atheist thinking as to why Muslims should react so passionately to perceived insults against symbols of Islam and particularly against symbols of the Prophet Mohammad, particularly when both the religion and the Prophet are supposed to be so great that mere insults can not in anyway harm them.

So what arouses such passion? Excluding political rabble rousing and concluding that neither the religion nor the Prophet can be literally damaged or offended by such insults, it only leaves perceived degradation of a sacred icon or symbol that represents Islam or the Prophet.

In Islam is the prohibition against depictions of God or the Prophet Muhammad tradition or written law?

The Prophet Muhammad himself had told his followers to refrain from making images, and he himself ordered the destruction of graven images of idols that were used during his time. Following that, the consensus generally among Muslims was that it was forbidden not only to make images of the divine but also of the Prophet Muhammad, although there have been fairly widespread exceptions to that particularly in the eastern Muslim world.

Source: Ingrid Mattson

The same group of people that reject the symbolisation of Islam or The Prophet, react strongly to perceived insults made against such icons by attacking or burning icons that represent the perceived ‘enemies’ of Islam or The Prophet. To such people, these icons are of great value; both the icons that they consider sacred, and the icons they consider their enemy.

It is so infantile to believe that burning an effigy of George W Bush in anyway it actually harms George W Bush personally or the US in general and probably doesn’t even insult anyone. Yet people who participate in burning such effigies, the belief is that they are delivering a great insult to the person or government that the effigy represents and believe that by burning the effigy, that the person or government represented by the icon, will in someway be damaged or fall.

This would explain why they take it so personally when they perceive that their icons have been insulted.