Danger, Beauty, and Belief
  by Dr. David Eller

Sometimes people forget just how dangerous true belief can be. A good reminder occurred recently when more than 200 people were killed in Nigeria in clashes between Christians and Muslims over the Miss World pageant, scheduled to be held in that country.

Traditionally Islam has a different and more restrictive attitude toward displaying the female body. That is why many Islamic societies still make women wear veils, often covering their entire bodies, when they are in public. The Miss World competition, on the other hand, is a very Western phenomenon, with women parading in public in tight and skimpy costumes to be judged on their appearance. Even many people in our own society find these pageants demeaning, but they do say something about our more relaxed attitudes about the body.

Naturally, some Nigerian Muslims complained about the immodest nature of the pageant. A local journalist, Isioma Daniel, wrote an article on the question of what Muhammad would think about it. "In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them," she suggested. Now, in many Muslim countries, saying anything unflattering about Muhammad is serious business, as the affair over Salman Rushdie should remind us. Nigerian Muslims stormed the office of the newspaper that printed the article, and riots followed. In the process, inter-religious differences were enflamed, with Christian mobs attacking Muslim neighborhoods for what they viewed as a "Muslim victory" when the pageant was canceled and moved to London. So far, 215 are dead and more than 500 wounded.

Modern Americans may look aghast at this behavior and see it as the worst kind of backward traditionalism. They are probably right. But the question remains, why don't modern American Christians engage in this kind of behavior? After all, the Christian Bible says clearly that blasphemy is a capital offense. People who ask "what would Jesus drive?" are as guilty of blasphemy as poor Ms. Daniel. The Bible also orders death for homosexuals and workers on the sabbath. Why don't they obey their own religion?

Modern Americans are more "tolerant" about these things, but this is a fairly recent development. In colonial America, different religions were not tolerated, and Jews, Quakers, and Unitarians were routinely persecuted and occasionally killed. Blasphemy was still a criminal offense until very recently, as were homosexuality and atheism. Still today, homosexuals and atheists often live in fear of discovery and the disapproval of society. But we do not ordinarily kill people for these "crimes."

That is not to say that no Americans feel more "traditionally" about the subject. The so-called "Christian Reconstruction" movement aims to "restore" America to biblical law and to enforce capital punishment on blasphemers, non-believers, homosexuals, adulterers, and, no doubt, people who work on the Sabbath. While they are a small group-so far-they represent only the extreme version of a religious tendency to take itself literally and to exclude every one else from liberty or even life.

We are more tolerant today, but that tolerance does not come from religion. Christian scriptures have not changed, any more than Muslim ones have. What has changed is the dilution of religious fervor by other values of liberalism, individualism, diversity, inclusion, and democracy. None of these values is religious, but all of them prevent us from killing each other over things like beauty pageants.

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