紐約時報：回歸早期伊斯蘭教的寬容

Islam’s Problem With Blasphemy

回歸早期伊斯蘭教的寬容

WILL “moderate Muslims” finally “speak up” against their militant coreligionists? People around the world have asked (but, as in the past, have not all seriously examined) this question since last week’s horrific attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket in Paris.

“溫和派穆斯林”最終會“發(fā)聲”反對他們那些激進的教友嗎?自從法國諷刺報紙《查理周報》(Charlie Hebdo)和巴黎的一家猶太潔食超市上周遭受殘暴的襲擊以來，全世界的人都在問這個問題。不過像過去一樣，并不是所有人都嚴肅地審視過這個問題。

In fact, Muslim statesmen, clerics and intellectuals have added their voices to condemnations of terror by leaders around the world. But they must undertake another essential task: Address and reinterpret Islam’s traditional take on “blasphemy,” or insult to the sacred.

事實上，穆斯林政治人物、神職人員以及知識分子，已經(jīng)在和世界各國領(lǐng)導人一道譴責恐怖行徑了。但他們必須承擔起另外一項重要的任務(wù)：用自己的聲音，重新闡釋伊斯蘭教對于“褻瀆”或者說侮辱神圣的傳統(tǒng)立場。

The Paris terrorists were apparently fueled by the zeal to punish blasphemy, and fervor for the same cause has bred militancy in the name of Islam in various other incidents, ranging from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the writer Salman Rushdie in 1989 to the threats and protests against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten for publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

顯然，巴黎的那些恐怖分子滿懷狂熱情緒，想要懲罰褻瀆者。對同一使命的狂熱，也催生了其他許多事件中，以伊斯蘭教的名義做出的激進行為——從阿亞圖拉魯霍拉·霍梅尼(Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini)在1989年對作家薩爾曼·拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)發(fā)出追殺令，到丹麥報紙《日德蘭郵報》(Jyllands-Posten)因為刊發(fā)諷刺先知穆罕默德(Prophet Muhammad)的漫畫，而在2005年受到威脅和抗議。

Mockery of Muhammad, actual or perceived, has been at the heart of nearly all of these controversies over blasphemy.

所有這些因褻瀆而起的爭端，核心問題都是嘲弄穆罕默德——無論這種嘲弄確有其事還是主觀感受。

This might seem unremarkable at first, but there is something curious about it, for the Prophet Muhammad is not the only sacred figure in Islam. The Quran praises other prophets — such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus — and even tells Muslims to “make no distinction” between these messengers of God. Yet for some reason, Islamist extremists seem to obsess only about the Prophet Muhammad.

乍看上去或許無關(guān)緊要，但這事兒真的有些奇怪，因為先知穆罕默德并非伊斯蘭教唯一的圣人?！豆盘m經(jīng)》也頌揚了其他先知——比如亞伯拉罕(易卜拉欣)、摩西(穆薩)和耶穌(爾薩)——甚至告訴穆斯林，要把神的這些使者“一視同仁”。但出于某種原因，讓伊斯蘭極端主義者念念不忘的似乎只有穆罕默德。

Even more curiously, mockery of God — what one would expect to see as the most outrageous blasphemy — seems to have escaped their attention as well. Satirical magazines such as Charlie Hebdo have run cartoons ridiculing God (in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim contexts), but they were targeted with violence only when they ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.

更為奇怪的是，人們可能會以為嘲弄神是最惡劣的褻瀆，然而這似乎并不在他們的關(guān)注范圍之內(nèi)。《查理周報》之類的諷刺性報刊都用漫畫揶揄過神(猶太教和基督教語境的上帝，穆斯林語境的真主都揶揄過)，但唯有在揶揄先知穆罕默德時才會成為暴力襲擊的目標。

Of course, this is not to say extremists should threaten and harm cartoonists for more diverse theological reasons; obviously, they should not target them at all. But the exclusive focus on the Prophet Muhammad is worth pondering. One obvious explanation is that while God and the other prophets are also sacred for Judaism and Christianity, the Prophet Muhammad is sacred only for Muslims. In other words, the zeal comes not from merely respect for the sacred, but from militancy for what’s sacred to us — us being the community of Muslims. So the unique sensitivity around Muhammad seems to be a case of religious nationalism, with its focus on the earthly community — rather than of true faith, whose main focus should be the divine.

當然了，這并不是說極端主義者應該出于更多樣化的神學理由對漫畫家做出威脅和傷害;顯然他們完全不應該把矛頭對準漫畫家。但只有先知穆罕默德受到關(guān)注的現(xiàn)象，是值得思考的。一個顯而易見的解釋是，盡管神和其他先知在猶太教和基督教也是神圣的，但先知穆罕默德卻只對穆斯林有神圣的意義。換句話說，這種狂熱不單源自對神的尊敬，還源自對于我們(即穆斯林社群)視為神圣的東西，懷有的激進傾向。因此，對穆罕默德格外敏感，似乎有宗教民族主義之嫌，因為注意力被放在了俗世的社群，而非真正的信仰之上——而信仰的關(guān)注點本該是神。

Still, this religious nationalism is guided by religious law — Shariah — that includes clauses about punishing blasphemy as a deadly sin. It is thus of vital importance that Muslim scholars courageously, even audaciously, address this issue today. They can begin by acknowledging that, while Shariah is rooted in the divine, the overwhelming majority of its injunctions are man-made, partly reflecting the values and needs of the seventh to 12th centuries — when no part of the world was liberal, and other religions, such as Christianity, also considered blasphemy a capital crime.

不過，這種宗教民族主義是以伊斯蘭教法(Shariah)為指引的——根據(jù)其中一些法條，要把褻瀆當成死罪加以懲罰。因此，至關(guān)重要的是，今天的穆斯林學者要鼓起勇氣，甚至以大無畏的精神來解決這一問題。他們可以首先承認，伊斯蘭教法的根基盡管是神圣的，但大部分禁令都是人為制定的，在某種程度上反映了從7世紀到12世紀的價值觀和需求——當時，全世界都無自由可言;在基督教等其他宗教中，褻瀆也被視為死罪。

The only source in Islamic law that all Muslims accept indisputably is the Quran. And, conspicuously, the Quran decrees no earthly punishment for blasphemy — or for apostasy (abandonment or renunciation of the faith), a related concept. Nor, for that matter, does the Quran command stoning, female circumcision or a ban on fine arts. All these doctrinal innovations, as it were, were brought into the literature of Islam as medieval scholars interpreted it, according to the norms of their time and milieu.

《古蘭經(jīng)》是唯一一個無可爭議地由全體穆斯林接受的伊斯蘭教法的來源。然而值得注意的是，《古蘭經(jīng)》并未規(guī)定，要針對褻瀆或與之相關(guān)的叛教(背棄信仰)舉動，施加俗世的懲罰。它也沒有規(guī)定可以對人施以石刑、沒有要求對女性實行割禮、沒有作出關(guān)于藝術(shù)的禁令。所有這些教義上的創(chuàng)新之所以被納入伊斯蘭文獻，是因為中世紀的學者根據(jù)他們那個時代的規(guī)范和社會環(huán)境，對《古蘭經(jīng)》進行了闡釋。

Tellingly, severe punishments for blasphemy and apostasy appeared when increasingly despotic Muslim empires needed to find a religious justification to eliminate political opponents.

針對褻瀆和叛教的嚴厲懲罰，是在越來越專制的穆斯林帝國需要為鏟除政敵尋找宗教正當性時出現(xiàn)的，這很說明問題。

One of the earliest “blasphemers” in Islam was the pious scholar Ghaylan al-Dimashqi, who was executed in the 8th century by the Umayyad Empire. His main “heresy” was to insist that rulers did not have the right to regard their power as “a gift of God,” and that they had to be aware of their responsibility to the people.

在伊斯蘭世界里，最先被貼上“褻瀆者”標簽的人之一，是公元8世紀被倭馬亞帝國(Umayyad Empire)處決的虔誠學者蓋蘭·迪馬士基(Ghaylan al-Dimashqi)。他所秉承的“異端邪說”是，統(tǒng)治者無權(quán)把自己的權(quán)力視為“神的恩賜”，他們必須意識到自己對人民負有責任。

Before all that politically motivated expansion and toughening of Shariah, though, the Quran told early Muslims, who routinely faced the mockery of their faith by pagans: “God has told you in the Book that when you hear God’s revelations disbelieved in and mocked at, do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse; surely then you would be like them.”

但在所有這些政治動機讓伊斯蘭教法變得更加繁復和嚴厲之前，《古蘭經(jīng)》曾告訴早期的穆斯林：“神確已在這經(jīng)典中啟示你們說：當你們聽見真主的跡象被人否認而加以嘲笑的時候，你們不要與他們同座，直到他們談?wù)搫e的話;否則，你們必與他們同罪。”當時的穆斯林常常因為信仰，而被異教徒嘲弄。