[Buddha-l] Subject: the poignancy of Donald Lopez

[Curt Steinmetz]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> The fact of the matter is, despite Faure's reassurances, Buddhist violence 
> in East and South-east Asia has not been exceptional. 

Historians have long understood that the violent intolerance of 
Christianity and Islam is, fortunately, an aberration, when compared to 
other religions. In particular, the seamless wedding of conversion and 
coercion that is at the core of those two religions is unlike anything 
found in the vast majority of other religions, including Buddhism, 
Hinduism, Taoism and Confucianism.

First lets take the easy case: Islam. As soon as they had completed 
their conquest of what is today Saudi Arabia, Muhammad and his 
Companions decreed that all other religions were completely forbidden: 
Jews, Christians, Pagans, and anyone else who refused to convert to 
Islam must leave or die. That is still the case today, 13 centuries 
later. Can we all agree that the situation that pertains in the land of 
Islam's founding, a situation that accurately reflects the explicit 
wishes of the founder of that religion, is not the way that all 
religions conduct themselves? And can we all agree that this is a good 
thing?

For anyone to whom these basic facts about Islam come as a shock, I 
recommend the book "Tolerance and Coercion in Islam" by Israeli scholar 
Yohanan Friedman, especially chapter 3:
http://books.google.com/books?id=a0nToibj6K4C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yohanan_Friedmann

But Muhammad was merely following a pattern already established by 
Constantine, of whom J.B. Bury wrote:
"Persecution was an unavoidable consequence of Constantine's act in 
adopting Christianity. Two of the chief points in which this faith 
differed from the Roman State religion were its exclusiveness and the 
vital importance which it assigned to dogma. The first logically led to 
intolerance of pagan religions, the second to intolerance of heresies, 
and these consequences could not be averted when Christianity became the 
religion of the State."
[J.B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire]

Bury's assessment was essentially the same as Edward Gibbon's had been a 
century before him, and it is essentially the same as that of 
contemporary scholars such as Ramsay MacMullen, Jan Assmann, Perez 
Zagorin, Charles Freeman, etc. In all cases these historians explicitly 
contrast the violent intolerance of Christians with that of the 
"religious harmony of the ancient world" (as Edward Gibbon put it) that 
preceded the Triumph of Christianity.

We can say with complete certainty that what was true for the 
polytheistic religious traditions of the Greco-Roman world has also been 
the case for Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism. This is 
because the ancient religious traditions of India, China, Tibet, Japan 
and Korea (for examples) all continue to exist. In fact there are 
probably more Shinto Temples actively operating in Japan as there are 
Buddhist Temples. And in Korea the ancient "shamanistic" polytheistic 
religious traditions are alive and well. Etc. The equivalent would be 
getting on a bus in Athens and taking a short drive to go and be 
initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Or visiting the Temple of Isis 
in Rome to ask one of the Priests or Priestesses there some urgent 
question (as Plotinus did long ago). But of course you can't do either 
of those things because, well, Christianity and Islam leave a trail of 
dead religions wherever they go, and other religions don't.

People should realize that it is actually a good thing that Islam and 
Christianity are the exception, not the rule. Well, OK, it's not exactly 
welcome news to Muslims and Christians, but I mean, you know, for 
everyone else.

For anyone who really wants to get up to speed on this in a hurry I 
highly recommend Jan Assmann's most recent book, "The Price of Monotheism":
http://books.google.com/books?id=zPYHu8kAACQC

"For these religions, and for these religions alone, the truth to be 
proclaimed comes with an enemy to be fought." [Jan Assmann on 
monotheistic religions.]

Curt