纽约时报：回归早期伊斯兰教的宽容

Islam’s Problem With Blasphemy

回归早期伊斯兰教的宽容

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.

“温和派穆斯林”最终会“发声”反对他们那些激进的教友吗?自从法国讽刺报纸《查理周报》(Charlie Hebdo)和巴黎的一家犹太洁食超市上周遭受残暴的袭击以来，全世界的人都在问这个问题。不过像过去一样，并不是所有人都严肃地审视过这个问题。

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.

事实上，穆斯林政治人物、神职人员以及知识分子，已经在和世界各国领导人一道谴责恐怖行径了。但他们必须承担起另外一项重要的任务：用自己的声音，重新阐释伊斯兰教对于“亵渎”或者说侮辱神圣的传统立场。

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.

显然，巴黎的那些恐怖分子满怀狂热情绪，想要惩罚亵渎者。对同一使命的狂热，也催生了其他许多事件中，以伊斯兰教的名义做出的激进行为——从阿亚图拉鲁霍拉·霍梅尼(Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini)在1989年对作家萨尔曼·拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)发出追杀令，到丹麦报纸《日德兰邮报》(Jyllands-Posten)因为刊发讽刺先知穆罕默德(Prophet Muhammad)的漫画，而在2005年受到威胁和抗议。

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

所有这些因亵渎而起的争端，核心问题都是嘲弄穆罕默德——无论这种嘲弄确有其事还是主观感受。

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.

乍看上去或许无关紧要，但这事儿真的有些奇怪，因为先知穆罕默德并非伊斯兰教唯一的圣人。《古兰经》也颂扬了其他先知——比如亚伯拉罕(易卜拉欣)、摩西(穆萨)和耶稣(尔萨)——甚至告诉穆斯林，要把神的这些使者“一视同仁”。但出于某种原因，让伊斯兰极端主义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.

更为奇怪的是，人们可能会以为嘲弄神是最恶劣的亵渎，然而这似乎并不在他们的关注范围之内。《查理周报》之类的讽刺性报刊都用漫画揶揄过神(犹太教和基督教语境的上帝，穆斯林语境的真主都揶揄过)，但唯有在揶揄先知穆罕默德时才会成为暴力袭击的目标。

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.

当然了，这并不是说极端主义者应该出于更多样化的神学理由对漫画家做出威胁和伤害;显然他们完全不应该把矛头对准漫画家。但只有先知穆罕默德受到关注的现象，是值得思考的。一个显而易见的解释是，尽管神和其他先知在犹太教和基督教也是神圣的，但先知穆罕默德却只对穆斯林有神圣的意义。换句话说，这种狂热不单源自对神的尊敬，还源自对于我们(即穆斯林社群)视为神圣的东西，怀有的激进倾向。因此，对穆罕默德格外敏感，似乎有宗教民族主义之嫌，因为注意力被放在了俗世的社群，而非真正的信仰之上——而信仰的关注点本该是神。

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.

不过，这种宗教民族主义是以伊斯兰教法(Shariah)为指引的——根据其中一些法条，要把亵渎当成死罪加以惩罚。因此，至关重要的是，今天的穆斯林学者要鼓起勇气，甚至以大无畏的精神来解决这一问题。他们可以首先承认，伊斯兰教法的根基尽管是神圣的，但大部分禁令都是人为制定的，在某种程度上反映了从7世纪到12世纪的价值观和需求——当时，全世界都无自由可言;在基督教等其他宗教中，亵渎也被视为死罪。

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.

《古兰经》是唯一一个无可争议地由全体穆斯林接受的伊斯兰教法的来源。然而值得注意的是，《古兰经》并未规定，要针对亵渎或与之相关的叛教(背弃信仰)举动，施加俗世的惩罚。它也没有规定可以对人施以石刑、没有要求对女性实行割礼、没有作出关于艺术的禁令。所有这些教义上的创新之所以被纳入伊斯兰文献，是因为中世纪的学者根据他们那个时代的规范和社会环境，对《古兰经》进行了阐释。

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

针对亵渎和叛教的严厉惩罚，是在越来越专制的穆斯林帝国需要为铲除政敌寻找宗教正当性时出现的，这很说明问题。

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.

在伊斯兰世界里，最先被贴上“亵渎者”标签的人之一，是公元8世纪被倭马亚帝国(Umayyad Empire)处决的虔诚学者盖兰·迪马士基(Ghaylan al-Dimashqi)。他所秉承的“异端邪说”是，统治者无权把自己的权力视为“神的恩赐”，他们必须意识到自己对人民负有责任。

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.”

但在所有这些政治动机让伊斯兰教法变得更加繁复和严厉之前，《古兰经》曾告诉早期的穆斯林：“神确已在这经典中启示你们说：当你们听见真主的迹象被人否认而加以嘲笑的时候，你们不要与他们同座，直到他们谈论别的话;否则，你们必与他们同罪。”当时的穆斯林常常因为信仰，而被异教徒嘲弄。