Musings on Pussy Riot , "Sam Bacile" and modern "blasphemers"

Having forced myself to watch the full "performance" of Pussy Riot's "punk prayer" and "Sam Bacile"'s short movie "Innocence of Muslims" I want to share with you some thoughts I had on issue of blasphemy.

Wikipedia defines blasphemy as "the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for a religious deity or the irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things". Dictionary.com offers this definition: "impious utterance or action concerning God or sacred things". Merriam-Webster online offers this definition: "the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God". To be honest, I find all three of these definition very unsatisfactory.

Think of it: did the Rioting Pussies or Mr "Bacile" really intend to "insult God" or show irreverence or contempt for something holy?  I submit that this was not at all their intention.  First, for all their denials about that, there is no doubt in my mind that the Rioting Pussies are not religious at all.  And since they are clearly not really religious, they can hardly have wanted to insult a God they don't even believe in.  As for Mr Bacile, he was not trying to produce a critique, however harsh, of the Prophet Mohamed or Islam. 

Frankly, if we just look at the form of the message of the "punk prayer" and the movie "Innocence of Muslims" it is absolutely clear that to the extend there is a message conveyed by these performances, it is the form of the message itself.    And since it is rather obvious that the "message" is not addressed to any God or Prophet, whom is it addressed to?

Here, again, we need to look at the message conveyed, in this case, by the form and ask ourselves a simple question: what type of person would be most impacted by it?  Put differently, not only is the real message of these performances to be found in the form, the real "addressee" of this message is also to be found in the form.  It is rather obvious to me that the form of these performances was chosen to primarily to elicit a reaction from Orthodox Christians in the first instance and Muslims in the second one.  A secondary audience to whom the message might have been targeted was what I would describe as "agnostics/atheists with a poor sense of music, movies or humor".  I will immediately set aside this latter group because as far as I am concerned there is no issue here at all: if they like it, let them enjoy it.  I personally don't care about it, nor do I think that anybody else does.

So now we can turn to the core of it all.  We have a message whose contents are conveyed by the form which is aimed at religious people.  The purpose of the message is hardly to convince these religious people of anything, if only because of the lack of objective content of the form chosen here: all that matters is the form.

Now, by definition, the interpretation of a message contained in the form of a performance is a rather subjective thing and not something which can be logically demonstrated.  Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is any message who is not expressed in words but in the form of a message to be interpreted.  There could therefore be many possible interpretations of these messages, but I think that it would be really fair and very appropriate to summarize the message conveyed by the Rioting Pussies and Mr Bacile in the following short phrase: "Fuck you Christians!" and "Fuck you Muslims!".

I did not choose "fuck you" for the profanity or because it is so common, but because it is really very similar to the "messages" conveyed by the Rioting Pussies and Mr. "Bacile".  When somebody says "fuck you" he/she does not really suggest an attempt at having sexual intercourse with oneself any more than "motherfucker" suggests that the target of the expression has been observed having sexual intercourse with his/her mother.  Here again, the message is in the form and, as is the case with any insult, the real message is very simple "I hate you".

So this is the real and true core of the Rioting Pussies' "punk prayer" and Mr "Bacile"'s short movie: its a message of pure seething hatred of, and contempt for, Orthodox Christians in the first instance, and Muslims in the second one.

Now let's look at the reaction.  In the first case, Russian prosecutors charged the Rioting Pussies for "hate-motivated hooliganism".   I cannot imagine a more appropriate designation.

In the second instance, Muslim crowds assaulted US diplomatic facilities.  In the first case we have a state acting, the in the second case we have a spontaneous act of violence of a crowd.  Superficially, one could argue that the Russian response was much more sophisticated and "proper", but that would overlook some fundamental differences: the Russians had the guilty party rapidly arrested whereas in the second case even the identity the guilty party was not established.  Furthermore, in the first case the committed action was a criminal offense committed inside the jurisdiction of Russian courts whereas in the second instance, the action was committed in the virtual world of the Internet, far away from any legal context.

I am not defending the Muslim rioters who ended up killing a number of people which had nothing to do with the production of this movie - what they did was stupid and immoral - but I do want to point out that the Russians had a good way of responding whereas these rioting Muslims did not.  Besides, crowds cannot be held to the same standards as states anyway.  While the latter is ruled by laws and policies, the former acts spontaneously and, usually, without much discernment.  This does, however, raise a fascinating question: how should states and individuals respond when subjected to type of psychological/spiritual assault we have witnessed in the "punk prayer" and "Innocence of Muslims"?

I think that first and foremost a very simple and undeniable fact needs to be established here: modern "blasphemies" which are clearly not aimed at deities or sacred figures, are in reality aimed at specific social groups  and they therefore constitute the quintessential psychological hate crime.

And "psychological" does not mean unreal or somehow easily dismissible.  Not at all. A psychological hate crime is to a physical hate crime what psychological torture is to physical torture: definitely not a lesser form of assault and arguably a worse one.

Furthermore, a psychological hate crime differs from a regular insult in that it is aimed at a specific social group of people and not at an individual.  And since this hate crime is clearly aimed at inflicting the maximal possible psychological or spiritual distress upon its victim, it is a hate crime of the highest order of magnitude.

Finally,  and this is absolutely essential to understand, that none of the above is in any way related to a free speech issue. 

Let's take Christianity and Islam for example. Educated Christians and educated Muslims are perfectly aware of the undeniable fact that these two religions have highly critical views of each other.  The main and irreconcilable difference between the two faiths is their mutually exclusive view of Christ: according to Christians, Christ was a God-Man (theantropos) whereas Islam sees Him as (only) a (revered but still human) Prophet (even the Prophet Mohamed is considered by Islam as human and fallible!).

That is usually the "nice" way of putting things.  The "not so nice" way would be to say that Christians consider Muslims to be heretics while Muslims consider Christians to be idolaters.  Now, while concepts such as "heretic" and "idolater" can be hurled at a person as an insult, they are primarily perfectly proper terms terms which convey a specific religious category.  So in a theological discussion between educated Christians and educated Muslims such terms could be used without conveying any sense of insult at all simply because they are faithful renditions of a religious belief, not in any way an expression of personal hostility, dislike or, much less so, hatred.

The reality is that the vast majority of Christians and the vast majority of Muslims are aware, to some degree or another, that their respective religions have deep disagreements.  Likewise educated Muslims and educated Christians are fully aware of the fact that their religions have many fundamental and irreconcilable differences.  And yet, the history of the Middle-East clearly proves that these two religions can, and have, lived in peace as neighbors.  Yes, at times, both religions have committed appalling acts of violence against each other, but these were the exception, not the rule, and such actions where typically the actions of rather vicious rulers inclined to violence against any opponents, not just one religious group (Ivan the Terrible and his massacre of Muslims in Kazan is a good example of that).  What is certain is that the reality of the fundamental differences between Islam and Christianity did not result in an endless cycle of war, hatred, violence or even outrage.  If Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive - they are - this does not mean that Christians and Muslims cannot live together - they can and the have.

This just proves that if Christians and Muslims can accept even intense polemical challenges from each other, they sure can accept any kind of rational polemical challenge from atheists, agnostics or any other group or persons.  If the Rioting Pussies really wanted to convey some kind of message to the Russian Orthodox Church about Putin or if Mr Bacile really wanted to convey some kind of message to Muslims about his negative view of the Prophet's personality or life, they could have done so without triggering much of a reaction, if only because the vast majority of Orthodox Christians and Muslim don't care one bit about what the Pussies or Mr Bacile think.

But that is the problem, is it not?

These modern blasphemers wanted the maximum of attention, the maximal "shock effect", the maximum of visibility.  And their way to get it was to deliberately aim at designing and executing the maximal possible insult conceivable.  This is exactly why their actions were, by design, the quintessential hate crime.  Causing offense, expressing hatred, is not the means here, it is sole and only end sought.

Now, as a Orthodox Christian I don't believe in a religious codification of punishment for blasphemers.  I know that Christ, when He was alive, was spat on, insulted, derided and tortured to death.  There is no need for me, as a Christian, to "defend" Him from anything, including insults.  Furthermore, my religion tells me that not only does a blasphemy fail to ever reach its intended target, it spiritually "boomerangs" right back upon the person who uttered it.  So as far as I am concerned, to protect social groups from hate crimes is Cesar's business, not the Church's (whose business it should be to educate Christians about the type of spiritual pathology which breeds hate in all its forms).   I am quite happy that the Russian state stuck the Rioting Pussies in jail, but I am equally happy that the Orthodox Church, as such, had no role in this process.

Islam takes a different view on this matter and its not my business at this point to express a value judgment on the Islamic position on blasphemy.  What I will say is that Mr Bacile, Mr Rushdie and all the other folks who put all their skills and energy in a deliberate and determined attempt to maximally insult Muslims were perfectly aware of the fact that the people whom they were insulting would be absolutely incensed by these actions and that their religion prescribed specific penalties (including death) for such actions.  I therefore feel just as sorry for them and their predicament as I would for somebody setting up a tent on rail tracks: yes, I am "sorta kinda" feel sorry for them but, frankly, not much, simply because they did it to themselves.  If somebody inadvertently insulted Islam or the Prophet Mohamed and then suffered the consequences of doing so, I would really feel sorry for that person.  But when somebody deliberately insults Islam or the Prophet Mohamed to express his/her hatred of Muslims as a group, I cannot feel very sorry for that person at all.  I would feel the same way if somebody expressed hatred for any other social group either.  Fundamentally, I simply don't find hatred a legitimate form of speech which would need to be protected.

And before we get sidetracked into a sterile discussion "what is hate speech what is opinion" let me say this: while some opinions can offend, it is not their main purpose; while polemics can be very virulent, they are aimed at ideas, not people. So to say that "your hate speech is my opinion" is totally dishonest.  Any person with a minimum of intelligence and honesty will immediately concede that telling the two apart is really easy.

As a Christian, it would never occur to me to censor any opinion (as, I hope, this blog and my comments moderation prove).  And I would vehemently oppose any attempt by any group or individuals, including Muslims, to censor my own free speech.  But I do not claim the right to deliberately spew hatred against any other group or person, nor do I support anybody else's right to do so.

I hope that I have convincingly deconstructed the canard about Pussy Riot's "punk prayer" or Sam "Bacile"'s "Innocence of Muslims" being expressions of free speech.  Likewise, I hope that I have shown that those who are now repackaging the authors of these "performances" as heroic martyrs for free speech are, in reality, themselves guilty of apology of hate crimes.  Frankly, this is exactly what I would expect from the plutocracy ruling the West and its prostitute corporate media.  However, I do want to believe that most people in the West can be convinced of the fact that this is not a religious issue, nor a free speech issue, and that the only really evil party to be condemned in these cases is one spewing its hatred.

The Saker