In an earlier blog I spoke about the lack of flourishing and the darkness of ISIS and how its view of the world is dogmatic: black and white without even a hint of a shade of grey. And if you don’t agree with their dogmatic view of the world, even if you’re Muslim, you are a kaffar who must be destroyed. They want to destroy all idols that stand in the way of the ‘true path’including ancient monuments and statues of other civilizations and religions. They are iconoclasts, much like Oliver Cromwell, who in his day was an iconoclast hell-bent on destroying Catholic religious buildings and imagery in the name of his god.
Fundamentalisms in all their guises are death cults and their dogmatic views of the world hinder the flourishing of multiple views and perspectives; the flourishing of different individuals in all their multi-colored splendor. They would destroy freedom of speech and would reinterpret history from their rigid, unforgiving, moral standpoint, existing independently outside of time and history, which they insist is the one and only true view of the world.
ISIS aren’t the only ones who do this. Another form of fundamentalism is the fundamentalism of political correctness which silences dissenting voices and proposes to speak on behalf of righteousness and destroy those who disagree. They would destroy the hard-won freedom of speech
In particular, I’m struck by the Rhodes Must Fall group, led by Ntokozo Aabe, a Rhodes Scholar from South Africa, who wants to do awayw with the statue of Cecil Rhodes in front of Oriel College in Oxford. Cecil Rhodes, a Victorian magnate, bequeathed part of his estate to Oriel college, where he was a student, and gave money and his name to the prestigious Rhodes scholarship programme. The reason for removing the statue is due to accusations that according to today’s standards, Rhodes was a racist. The Group says that the statue represents the uncritical celebration of the worst excesses of colonialism. Indeed, Rhodes is an ambiguous historical figure, a wealthy man who founded the De Beers diamond company and created Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe. However, that does not negate the positive contributions he made. He was a flawed human being as is all heroes in history. Martin Luther King, a man synonymous with the American civil rights campaign and nonviolent resistance, was a philanderer chronically unfaithful to his wife. Does that negate his contribution to the civil rights movement? It shouldn’t. Similarly George Washington owned slaves, does that negate his contribution to the founding of the United States? No., it shouldn’t.
Similarly campaign is being waged in the United States by Princeton students against Woodrow Wilson, one of the great progressive presidents of the United States, who before he entered politics was the President of Princeton University. Many of Princeton’s buildings and memorials are named after him including the esteemed Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.. It is true that Wilson had little inclination for pursuing the civil rights of African Americans and he tolerated and acquiesced to segregation . The civil rights cause was not embraced until much later.
Fundamentalists are iconoclasts of the worst sort: people who tear down idols in history only to establish new ones created in their own image. They would destroy freedom of speech and tolerance for different view points only to crown their viewpoints as the ultimate arbiter of truth and justice.
There are injustices in the world and reasons to become morally outraged. And iconoclasm, the destruction of idols, the sacred ideological or theological cows that elevate one group of society whilst subjugating or destroying another, is much needed in order to free those who are currently oppressed. For example the Civil Rights Movement, was iconoclastic—it resulted in discrediting ideologies that upheld segregation and that designated one race of human beings as being superior to another. However moral outrage that is based on silencing and destroying dissenters only substitutes one tyrant for another. It’s only a matter of time then before the victims of history become the perpetrators and the cycle goes on and endlessly on. But it doesn’t need to be like this.
The kind of iconoclasm that is needed is a flourishing one that respects and nurtures different view points, one that allows for freedom of speech no matter how distasteful some speech can be and one that allows for different and conflicting interpretations of history. It is one in which time, present, past and future, are fluid. One in what meaning one gives to a hero or a period in history is constantly up for reinterpretation in the light of new information. It is an iconoclasm that insists on different and multiple nuanced interpretations of history, interpretations from the less powerful, the ones who were previously vanquished, but it doesn’t constitute a denial or erasure of history that one doesn’t like. It is a based on love and respect for the well being and flourishing of human beings over ideologies.
It has often been said that history is written by the losers and remembered by it’s victims. Indeed, there is a need for different histories to be told and celebrated, by those who were subjects of colonialism and those subject to the rigid Victorian codes of morality and power that defined whose lives counted and silenced those whose who didn’t. For example an iconoclasm which promotes flourishing would seek to expand the curriculum at Oxford to include histories of nonwhite, non western peoples, histories of women of all ethnicities and colors, those who have been previously silenced. It would do it in a way that doesn’t erase history or perpetuate the original crime of silencing. History often repeats itself, victims become perpetrators. But it doesn’t need to be like this as long as the angels wings of history keep moving and are not frozen in time and space.