Beating Children: A Christian Practice
Beating children can thus be described as a Christian practice, and will continue to be so until Christians stop practicing it, preachers stop using the bible to justify it and its practitioners stop citing the Christian religion as a motivating factor.
What's that you say? People from other traditions also beat their children? 'What is important is how a person justifies their actions - is it because “thats just how we do things round here” (ie. a cultural practice, like shaking hands in the West or rubbing noses amongst the Eskimos), or is it because the practice is made compulsory or recommended by their religious belief system?'
etc, etc.
Next week: Male Genital Mutilation: an
Labels: Islamic essentialism, Popovich
posted by Ian Appleby at 12:43 PM
2 Comments:
Justifying violence, mutilation or other "social" practices indicates a sense of cognitive dissonance, in that you are holding two mental beliefs that come into conflict.
Rationalising the action on the grounds of culture, religion, or law is easy in terms of externalising the cause and relieving the dissonance.
Stopping the behaviour means questionning deeply held beliefs - which is harder to do.
Such is the power that can make humans do awful things but make them accept their behaviour.
Heather, thanks for the comment, I tend to agree. This post was trying to satirise the argument made at Tao of Defiance that female genital mutilation is an Islamic practice. Yes, some Muslims sadly practice it, and justify it in terms of their religious belief, yet other Muslims abhor it, while, equally sadly, some non-Muslims practice it. I have difficulties with any argument that does not see at least the possibility of internal heterogeneity within any given group.
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