[Buddha-l] Return of blasphemy?

[Joy Vriens]

Le 04/11/2011 13:58, Curt Steinmetz a écrit :
> All that being said, I don't pretend to know what His Holiness should do
> and shouldn't do. An essential part of his message as a teacher is the
> promotion of religious tolerance. Unfortunately the idea of religious
> tolerance has been badly mangled to the point that unless one is willing
> to break bread with the Tariq Ramadan's of the world then one is labeled
> an "Islamophobe". Nor is His Holiness in a position to dictate to
> Muslims who should or should not represent them at such gatherings.

Hi Curt,
Tariq Ramadan is an excellent debater ...and a smooth talker. Trials by 
prejudice aside, bridge builders never have an easy task. Especially if 
the gap that needs to be covered extends from stoning for adultery to 
women's rights. So how do you simultaneously sell women's rights to 
followers of the Sharia and the Sharia to secularists? It seems to me 
like an impossible task, at least if this is indeed the task he has set 
for himself. But unlike Fourest I can't read his intentions.

After the initial success of het book, Caroline Fourest has received 
quite a lot of criticism this year. She is part of a group of French 
intellectuals that one could compare a bit with those intellectuals who 
went under the name neocons in the US. They are very present in the 
media and have a rather militant way of defending their secularist 
"republican" (républicain) conception of the nation. Their secularism 
(laïcité) is allergic to any religious presence in the public space, 
with a particular attention to anything related to Islam. There is a bit 
of Joan of Arc in her and she has been called Sainte Caroline Fourest by 
her critics. If one criticises the Tariq Ramadan's of the world , one 
may be labeled an "Islamophobe", but on the other hand if one criticises 
the Caroline Fourest's in France, one seems to be quickly labeled an 
"anti-semitic".

I don't know the hidden agenda of Tariq Ramadan and like you, I don't 
pretend to know what His Holiness should do and shouldn't do, because I 
don't know his intentions either :-) But if  the promotion of religious 
tolerance is an important part of his message, then I have serious 
doubts about the possibility to achieve it through some of the 
resolutions taken during the conference. The ones I pointed out in my 
first posting.

Joy

Some links in French about Caroline Fourest

http://www.marianne2.fr/Sainte-tres-sainte-Caroline-Fourest_a206871.html
http://www.lepost.fr/article/2011/06/29/2536615_sainte-caroline-fourest-veut-sauver-la-france-de-la-mechante-marine-le-pen.html
http://fr-fr.facebook.com/pages/Sainte-Caroline-contre-Tariq-Ramadan/133940143330210
http://www.communautarisme.net/Reponse-de-Pascal-Boniface-a-Caroline-Fourest_a867.html