Whitehead's Sandbur

THE SANDBUR #2
by Dr. Fred Whitehead

This is the second issue of a free online newsletter written by Fred Whitehead. If you wish to receive it, go to the end of the text below for instructions.

A quick search of the Internet reveals that the common Sandbur is a native of America, with some 20-25 species, the most prevalent in Kansas being Cenchrus longispinus. Its blade "tapers from the base to the tip and is scabrous." Each bur "encloses two to three spikelets within a round, hard, pubescent covering that is armed with 30 to 65 stout spines."

All the State agricultural extension services provide directions for killing this hardy plant. "Sandbur," we read, "is a plant that no one loves."

WHY WE NEED
“OFFENSIVE” ART AND LITERATURE

For the last several years, perhaps a decade or two, the general concept of “offensiveness” in literature and art has been seeing a real vogue, and entirely in a negative aspect. “That’s offensive to me,” or “we should not offend people’s sensitivities” and similar expressions have become common, even in halfway sophisticated newspapers and magazines. I have to admit right out that trying to minimize or even outlaw “offensive” cultural expression irritates me no end. Now with the mayhem attending the circulation of a few cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed in an obscure Danish newspaper, we see this bedeviling word everywhere. Muslims say they are offended, and western editors and even politicians apologize and say “we mean no offense,” etc.

While one or two commentators have referenced historic controversies, mentioning the disputes about iconoclasm in medieval Byzantium or the desecration of churches during the Civil War period in England between 1640-1660, most intellectuals seem oblivious to this context. So a short review is now called for.

THE ORIGINS OF SATIRE

Most educated people will at least be aware that satire as a literary form originated in classical antiquity, with poets like Horace and Juvenal. Robert C. Elliott, in a notable scholarly study entitled The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art (1960), explored the earliest evidence for satirical poetry and utterance, and found that those who composed it were often considered to have deadly powers. That is to say, such a poem or chant could make its target sick, or even kill him. Elliott produces a remarkable amount of evidence drawn from different early societies: Ireland, especially, but also, quite interestingly, Arabia.

It turns out that the ancient Arabs valued and feared satire. “In early times,” writes Elliott, “the Arabian tribesmen periodically held formal contests of honor in which individuals, or sometimes entire tribes, competed in boasting and ridiculing each other. These were ritual occasions, and again the satires of the poets were probably thought to exert magical influence. In any event, the slanging matches often ended in murder and sometimes in tribal war.”

Elliott cites two cases of female satirists whom the Prophet Muhammed himself ordered slain. In his authoritative biography of Muhammed, Maxime Rodinson cites one of these, a woman named Asma bint Marwan, who was run through by the sword of a loyal follower, while she was sleeping with her children. A centenarian man, the poet Abu Afak, was killed similarly, in his sleep.

On another occasion, a group of Christians debated the divine nature of Jesus with Muhammed, but he soon grew weary of it, and “proposed that they should settle the matter by the old Arab method of reciprocal curses. Each side was to curse the other and they would see whose divinity would fulfil the curse. After consulting among themselves, the Christians withdrew.”

I cannot help but notice remarkable similarities between these ancient stories and folkways, and what is happening right now across the Muslim world. To be sure, not every Muslim attacks and burns embassies, but there are obviously enough “believers” to be effective.

This may explain why many Muslims demand that western governments “apologize.” That would constitute a formal admission of error and injustice. They literally do not comprehend that under conditions of freedom of speech and press in the west, governments do not have the authority or ability to control editors or publishers. [I speak descriptively here, and not pejoratively: my objective is first of all understanding, rather than condemnation per se.]

If the basic meaning of the word Islam is Submission, then apologizing for a wrong seems the natural and appropriate thing to do.

I will leave to those more knowledgeable than myself, the exploration of the entire question of Humor in Islamic cultures. But I do feel obliged to report two verses from the skeptical Syrian poet Abu Ala Al Ma’ari, of the 11th century: “The world is composed of those with brains and no religion, and those with religion but no brains.” Somehow he escaped torture or assassination, and even his texts have survived intact.

SATIRE IN THE 18TH CENTURY

Many decades ago, as a result of several years of studying English literature of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, I recognized that satire “comes with the territory.” The great writers of the period such as Swift and Pope were regarded by all as central, important, and world-class. Their idea, one learned quickly, was to impugn and attack political, economic and religious fanaticism and corruption. John Dryden, for instance, penned unforgettable lines about the evangelists of his own day:

A numerous Host of dreaming Saints succeed;
Of the true old Enthusiastick Breed:
‘Gainst Form and Order they their Pow’r imploy;
Nothing to Build, and all things to Destroy.
But far more numerous was the Herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much.

Note that the target here is the sects of Christians, who applauded the execution of King Charles in 1649, and otherwise turned over all institutions of established order.

Or consider this fierce denunciation which concludes Swift’s “Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General”:

Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride by taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing’s a duke;
From all his ill-got honors flung,
Turn’d to the dirt from which he sprung.


Bear in mind that Swift’s target was no less than Winston Churchill’s notorious ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. No wonder Swift had placed on his own tomb a Latin inscription which translates thus: “He has gone where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no longer.”

This is not the place to expound at length on the rich and various traditions of satire in English literature. It is remarkable, and includes such diverse figures as Fielding, Blake, Byron, Dickens, and Shaw. More recently, the irascible Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid.

In American literature, Mark Twain is our most famous satirist, though even in his case, he suppressed some of his most bitter writing about religion so as not to upset his wife or children. In the 20th century, we had Mencken, Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Dorothy Parker, among many others. One critic hailed the poet Tom McGrath, like MacDiarmid a proud Celt, for his invective.

My point here is that satire in one form or another is essential to modern British and American literature. It might be suppressed by Puritans here or there, but no educated person can imagine our culture without these landmarks.

OUR HERITAGE OF BLASPHEMY

The standard study of this subject is Leonard W. Levy’s massive book Blasphemy: Verbal Offense against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie. Defining blasphemy as “abusive speech against religion,” Levy covers hundreds of years of cultural and especially legal history, from the denunciation of Jesus by the Pharisees to the present. Most people nowadays are probably wholly ignorant of this record, but it is also likely that our reluctance to prosecute the crime of blasphemy even when it might in one or another society remain on the law books, is based on some residual memory of its horrors.

I will give details of just one such case. In late October, 1656, with some followers, the Quaker James Naylor entered Bristol thus: “Nayler sat on his horse as if in a trance, while the others, bareheaded, surrounded him and led him through the mud, singing ‘Holy, holy, holy, Hosannah, Lord God of Israel.’ They spread their sodden cloaks for his horse to walk upon as he passed through the city streets.” The group was quickly arrested. At his interrogation, Nayler was asked: “Art thou the only Son of God?” and he replied: “I am the Son of God, but I have many brethren.” Levy observes that “the answers were pure Quakerism.”

Nayler was convicted, and narrowly avoided being sentenced to death. One who observed his punishment recorded it thus: “[I] went to see Nayler’s tongue bored through, and him marked in the forehead. He put out his tongue very willingly, but shrinked a little when the iron came upon his forehead. He was pale when he came out of the pillory, but highcoloured after tongue-boring.” He had previously received 310 lashes, and “there was no skin left between his shoulders and his hips.” As Levy notes, “a week later, Nayler still could not speak.”

For the whole sorry record of torture, mutilation and execution, see Levy, who also details the hundreds of cases where the result was merely imprisonment, fine, or exile. These cases occurred throughout Europe, in Britain, and in America.

The result was, over this long period, to emphasize the right to freedom of speech and press, over and against laws prohibiting blasphemy. Juries and even judges began to rule in favor of the defendants, eventually, overwhelmingly so.

Hence, in the west, we have literally hundreds of years of experience, much of it contentious and bitter, through which we have de facto if not formally decriminalized Blasphemy altogether.

This is, then, why we are not horrified or shocked at anti-religious expression, whether in speech or press, or in works of art. Let alone in cartoons. Of course, there are many among us—evangelical Christians, but also editors of “reputable” newspapers—who are uneasy about it. They might even repress it in their own publications. But a full-scale governmental repression of such criticisms is no longer legally tenable in western societies.



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