Burning religious books

Over in Sweden, a storm has been brewing over the public burnings of the Koran and the Torah.

Sweden is once again caught in the political crosshairs over its decision to greenlight burnings of the Quran and Torah in Stockholm. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said this week that far-right figures have filed more requests for Quran-burning protests with the police, and he is “extremely worried” about what could happen as a result.

Sweden, as well as neighboring Denmark, have allowed the protests to take place in recent months, sparking criticism, counterprotests, and diplomatic blowback from several majority-Muslim nations. We’ve curated reporting and insights about the latest developments.

The reason the protests have been allowed to proceed: Sweden “has one of the world’s strongest legal protections for freedom of expression” and cannot ban protests unless they are a threat to public safety, Marten Schultz, law professor at Stockholm University, told the BBC. Experts determined that the burnings targeted a text instead of individuals. The freedom of speech right dates back to 1766 and is seen as a “fundamental value” in Swedish culture, Schultz said.

Swedish officials have condemned the Quran burnings, and said this week that the country is the target of a disinformation campaign led by “Russia-backed actors” trying to imply that Sweden is behind the protests. Sweden’s national security service said the incidents have changed the world’s view of Sweden, “from a tolerant country to a country hostile to Islam and Muslims.” — The Guardian
Sweden also recently approved a request for a 50-year-old woman to burn a copy of the Torah, the sacred Jewish text, outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said he warned his Swedish counterpart that the demonstration could worsen the two countries’ relationship. Jewish community leaders in Israel said the burning shouldn’t qualify for freedom of expression protections. — The Times of Israel

One wonders if there is going to be an escalation of this, with the sacred texts of many religions going up in smoke as each side retaliates..

I am not a fan of burning any book, religious or otherwise, but would not be up in arms over it. since such gestures are usually futile and have only a transient effect. But for some religious people, defense of their texts is seen as a duty that can only be satisfied with violence.

I always wonder why such people do not leave it up to their gods to take appropriate retaliatory action. If the gods are deeply offended by the burning of the books they supposedly gave to their followers, surely they would not just stand by hoping that some of their worshippers would rise up on their behalf. The fact that they never do anything seems to me that they do not care either.

Or maybe they do not exist.

Religious people can be so touchy

Some Hindu groups in India are up in arms about a scene in the new film Oppenheimer, a biopic about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan project that developed the first atomic bomb in the top secret laboratory created just for that purpose in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Oppenheimer was a very cerebral person who taught himself Sanskrit and was fond of the classic work the Bhagavad Gita that is considered one of the holy scriptures of Hinduism. He said in a later interview that when he witnessed the first explosion of the bomb at the Trinity test site in the New Mexico desert and saw its explosive power, these words from the book “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” came to his mind. Here is a more complete quote from the interview of the reactions of the observers as they witnessed the mushroom cloud:
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Cell phone data as investigative tool

The ubiquity of mobile phones has led to all manner of novel uses. The fact that each phone transmits data as to where it is enables others to use it to pinpoint their location at any time. This was one source of data that was used to identify a suspect in the notorious Gilgo murders, even though burner phones were used.

Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

Kevin Drum describes another less dramatic use and links to a study that uses cell phone data to study weekly church attendance. It turns out that the number they find is far less that what surveys that ask people to self-report attendance get.

I guess that we should not be surprised that in a country where there is such a high level of public piety and where being religious is seen as being essential to being a moral person, people will fib about how faithfully they practice their faith.

When victims of bigotry are bigoted towards others

While I am generally optimistic about humanity’s capacity to do the right thing in general and over long time scales, one thing that I have been disillusioned by over shorter time scales is how people who have been subjected to discrimination and persecution when they are are in the minority, discriminate against other minorities when they gain political power. You would think that their own experience of being treated badly would make them feel empathy for other discriminated minority groups. But not so. One sees this switching from being the victim of discrimination to the perpetrators in many different contexts, be it religion, ethnicity, or nationality.

One recent example is that of the city of Hamtramck, Michigan where Muslims, who are often discriminated against in the US, became the dominant group in the city council. Now they have turned against the LGBTQ+ community, banning the pride flag on city properties.
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A hateful voice is no more

Televangelist Pat Robertson has died at the age of 93. He was a malign influence on US politics, creating a toxic mix of religious bigotry and rightwing politics.

Robertson’s enterprises also included Regent University, an evangelical Christian school in Virginia Beach; the American Center for Law and Justice, which defends the first amendment rights of religious people; and Operation Blessing, an international humanitarian organization.

But for more than half a century, Robertson was a familiar presence in American living rooms, known for his 700 Club television show, and in later years, his televised pronouncements of God’s judgment on America for everything from homosexuality to the teaching of evolution.
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Robertson started the Christian Coalition in Chesapeake in 1989, saying it would further his campaign’s ideals. The coalition became a major force in Republican politics in the 1990s, mobilizing conservative voters through grassroots activities.

The venom of his message was masked by his genial, avuncular manner and the occasional goofy pronouncements where he would blame all manner of human-caused and natural disasters on the LGBTQ+ community and other perceived enemies of his version of Christianity.
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The Satanic Temple holds a convention

I have been aware of the Satanic Temple as largely a group that seeks to dethrone religion’s dominance in US culture by demanding that the same privileges that are given to traditional religions, such as monuments in public lands, also be allowed to them. I knew that they use Satanic rituals and regalia even though they do not believe in Satan or the afterlife. It is political activism mixed in with cosplaying and performance art. They are in fact secular and supporters of a science-based worldview and fight racism and homophobia.

However they seem to be much larger than I had thought as evidenced by their convention currently underway at a Marriott hotel in Boston.

The Satanic Temple is recognised as a religion by the US government, and has ministers and congregations in America, Europe and Australia.

More than 830 people snapped up tickets for its late April convention, dubbed SatanCon.

Members say they don’t actually believe in a literal Lucifer or Hell. Instead, they say Satan is a metaphor for questioning authority, and grounding your beliefs in science. The sense of community around these shared values makes it a religion, they say.

They do use the symbols of Satan for rituals – for example when celebrating a wedding or adopting a new name. That might include having an upside-down neon cross on your altar while shouting: “Hail Satan!”

For many Christians, this is serious blasphemy.

“That’s not wrong,” agrees Dex Desjardins, a spokesperson for The Satanic Temple. “A lot of our imagery is inherently blasphemous.
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The event takes up the whole fourth floor of the hotel. The Satanists fill it with androgynous goth chic, flamboyant robes, hand-painted horns, diabolical tattoos, and high-maintenance moustache choices. Most people here are old enough to be parents, and several are. I spot at least one pushchair.

Presentations are given, including one called “Hellbillies: Visible Satanism in Rural America”, and a seminar on Satanism and self-pleasure.

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Sex and seances

The 1920s were a high point in people believing that they could communicate with the dead. This may well have been due to two major events: the First World War of 1914-1918 and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Both of them resulted in many millions of deaths, many of them sudden and of young people, causing deep grief among the survivors. One can well understand the yearning of people to somehow connect with the ones they had lost.

Naturally this created a market for those who could claim to channel the spirits of the dead and as a result there was a cottage industry of people conducting seances, where you go to talk with a loved one through an intermediary. Belief in this was widespread and indeed this form of ‘spiritism’, the belief in the existence of an afterlife where the deceased lived and could be communicated with, was viewed as a kind of religion that was independent of other religions and devoid of beliefs in any particular god. Belief in communicable spirits was supported by many eminent people of that time, including scientists such as Sir Oliver Lodge, whose son had died. Another notable believer was Arthur Conan Doyle whose son Kingsley had died during the war and Doyle believed that through a medium, he had been able to talk with him. His wife Jean also claimed to have the ability to communicate with the dead using the mode of spirit writing, where her hand would be guided over paper by the spirit.
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Jewish extremist attacks on Christians in Israel

Right wing evangelical Christians in the US have at least two agendas. One is to portray themselves as a persecuted minority both at home and abroad. In the US, this ‘persecution’ takes the form of whining about not having a privileged place in the public sphere, even though as a majority they have so many advantages. They are also quick to seize upon attacks on Christians who are a minority in other countries as further evidence of this global persecution of their faith.

The other agenda of right wing evangelical Christians is to be strong supporters of the right wing of the Israeli political spectrum. This results in them not being critical about the harsh treatment of Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories that has resulted in what is effectively apartheid-like conditions imposed on them. The reason for this may be because Christians and Jews share the Old Testament of the Bible and that forms a bond. Another is the shared antipathy to Muslims who are deemed to be not worthy of consideration of the same rights as anyone else. Yet another may be that evangelical Christians eagerly await the second coming of Jesus and seek signs of his imminent arrival. These End-Timers view strife in the Middle East as a key indicator of Armageddon’s onset and thus view any escalation of violence there as a good thing.
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Evangelicals put the Republican party in a bind

I wrote recently about how Republicans have dug a hole for themselves because their voting base, especially evangelical Christians, has taken the abortion issue to far greater extremes than the party establishment would like, in the process alienating many people who, while they may be uneasy about abortion, are even more disturbed about making it so hard to get that it becomes almost impossible for women to get one even in cases of rape or incest or the health of the woman.

Then there is the other problem that evangelical Christians present to Republicans in that while Republican candidates seek their support, evangelicals are not the majority of the voting population and getting their vote is not sufficient to put them over the top.

We see this dynamic play out in the first state to vote in the Republican nomination contest, which is Iowa. This has the format of caucuses where people gather together on one evening in winter to discuss and vote for candidates at public meetings. Such formats are favorable to those who are very committed and in the case of the Iowa caucuses, that consists of people like evangelicals. Already we are seeing a steady stream of Republican hopefuls going, or planning to go, to Iowa to pander to that group. Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott have already made their pilgrimage.
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