‘Only you can let go of holiness’

When the devil plays his music, is it normal for you to dance to it? If a good friend curses your mother, is it normal to punch him as Pope Francis animatedly rationalized? It is normal for provocation and intolerance to dance wildly together. Many say Charlie Hebdo is guilty of “unjustified provocation,” and the Pope stressed that you cannot provoke, insult or make fun of the faith of others.

I am Catholic, I am Muslim, and I am Charlie simply because I am as much an idiot as everybody who believes that their understanding of God (or His nonexistence) is superior to others. So here’s my protean take.

Charlie doesn’t provoke, it repudiates. It doesn’t insult, it impugns. Charlie’s point isn’t to offend but to defend secular society from the spread and encroachment of blind, irrational, dogmatic faith. Ridicule is its potent way of rejecting and invalidating what is being sold as holy and unquestionable. Charlie gallantly commits itself to the freedom and (as Pope Francis emphasized) “obligation to say what they believe is for the common good.” Just down the road from Charlie Hebdo, a

Muslim police officer “was killed by people who pretend to be Muslims.”

Charlie’s attackers couldn’t go to Islam’s heaven. They didn’t shoot down the magazine into oblivion, they made it shoot up to global fame from 30,000 copies to three million. Those terrorists magnified the magazine like no cartoonist can.

Which is a greater sin—provocation or intolerance? The greater power over conflict and peace is never held by provocateurs, it rests with the provoked. If someone draws a turban and a beard on a wart and says it’s your prophet, do you believe the wart is your prophet? Do your mind and spirit have to be so weak and gullible? A true Muslim knows that a wart can never be the Prophet. Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammad is NOT Islam’s Mohammad. Muslims can reclaim their minds from the great provocateur and behold Charlie’s satire prophet and confidently say, “That is not our Prophet, you cannot depict our Prophet, no matter how you try.” When that happens, then I shall exclaim, “Allahu Akbar!”

Here’s a parable needing a solution: A man enters a Catholic church and queues for Holy Communion. He receives the consecrated bread, holds it up to the entire congregation and loudly curses, “This damn stupid bread is not holy, you fools!” He throws it down to the ground, spits on it, and kicks it away.

Do you punch and beat him to a pulp in defense of your Messiah? Or do you pick up the rejected bread, wipe it, raise it again to the Lord in thanks and praise, and eat it in memory of Him who was given up for you, and tell the offender to go in peace?

Evil leaves when you don’t feed it. It cannot take the holiness away from what you hold holy. Only you can let go of holiness. Perhaps the solution to our conflict is in realizing there can be no solution while we keep dancing with the devil.

—ERNIE LAPUZ,

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