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The Rev. Christopher Brdlik
July 8, 2007 --- Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

“First, do no harm.” Most of us recognize that phrase as the opening line of the Hippocratic Oath, the ethical statement that physicians vow to uphold when they go through the ceremony granting them the authority to practice medicine. “First, do no harm.” Even if we don’t know anything more about the Hippocratic Oath (and most of us don’t), that initial statement is enough to give us confidence when we place our lives, literally, into the hands of medical practitioners — confidence we will be treated well. Such confidence, shared by the public, gives the medical profession high standing in our society, a recognized reputation for intelligence, educational achievement, and humanitarian dedication. 

So how many of us were shocked this week by news from Great Britain that the most recent terrorist acts there were attempted by physicians. By doctors? By M.D.’s? How can that be? How can trained medical professionals become terrorists, even suicide bombers? And it wasn’t just one crazy M.D. among a group of conspirators, but eight doctors, techs, and students forming their own terrorist cell. Then immediately, we jump to wondering what kind of loony religion would lead medical doctors to act in such a way. Is there something cancerous or poisonous in Islam that produces such shocking behavior among members of an established profession? 

Well, let me point out the phenomenon of terrorism is much greater than one profession or one religion. Its complex causes are political, historical, social, even personal, far too complex for one sermon to analyze. However, there are certain aspects of the religious causes of Islamist extremism that I’d like to address today. In some regards they are comments about religions in general. For Islamic extremism is Islamic fundamentalism, and all religions, it would seem, have their fundamentalist side. 

Commentators interpreting the holy scriptures of religious traditions are in two camps today. The modernists strive to relate traditional truth and wisdom with the emerging values of modern civilization and society. Mostly those are the values of Western society, so people living in other, non-Western cultures already have to start with some catching-up to do. Modernists are capable of merging religious traditions with new insights. They are not threatened by science, for example, believing that scientific discovery is one more way of learning how God created the universe. On the other hand modernists remain comfortable with myth and mystery, believing that not everything can be known or explained, even as progress rolls on. They have a sense that ambiguity is okay, and relativism is a part of the way the world really is. Truth is found in tension between black and white, the grey areas being where we live. 

Fundamentalism is a reaction to modernist relativism. It wants to reassert definitive, unchangeable norms and values as intrinsic to truth and certainty to religion. Truth, therefore, must be black and white, and true religion must be painted then same way. Fundamentalism, however, because it is a reaction to modernism, is therefore two steps removed, philosophically speaking, from the traditional roots of its religion. And fundamentalists, in trying to discredit modernism, sometimes place themselves and their thought at a significant distance from traditional thinking and practice. In their drive to be concrete, their black and white thinking fails to recognize all religious traditions at their root, from their start, have had to live in shades of grey. Truth has always been mediated and interpreted.  

Now what I’ve said so far may be applied equally to Christianity as well as Islam, and we know for a fact many Christians are proud to declare they are fundamentalists. But there are some things particular to Islam that drive it, perhaps, further. For example, one message of the Koran is sirat, translated as “straight path.” Sirat is prominent in the opening chapter of the Koran, which many Muslims can recite in Arabic by memory, and is repeated in later chapters. Muslims believe “straight path,” sirat, describes the essence of their religion. The word “sirat” derives from the Latin word “strata,” the paved highways built by the Romans that were so much a feature of the prosperity of their empire. Arabic got sirat, and English got street, and both mean pretty much the same thing.

But Arabic, curiously enough, has no plural for sirat. This is an oddity of the language, not the religion, but it has a religious effect. When a believer thinks religiously of the Koranic concept sirat, straight path, the mental image is singular: “The Straight Path,” not “A Straight Path,” much less “One of Many Straight Paths.” The result is a claim for religious exclusivity. An extremist would believe “The Straight Path” that he or she is on is the only one that can be traveled. This would explain why, in many cases, they battle each other, not just other religions.  

A modernist commentator on the Koran has pointed out, by the way, that no matter the lack of plural in Arabic, when sirat is used in the Koran, there is no definite article The. This commentator maintains it should be interpreted always as A straight path, implying one of many. 

The case of the word sirat points out another characteristic of fundamentalism: a tendency to “proof-text,” to use one verse of scripture out of context, without regard for its original meaning and setting. A better way of interpreting religious traditions is a regard for “the whole sense of scripture.” Bits and pieces of the Bible or the Koran cannot be interpreted in isolation without regard for the major message. Therefore, we might say the major message, the whole sense, the basic teaching of the Bible is God’s love; and the whole sense of the Koran, God’s peace. (The very word “Islam” is related to the word for peace.) Both scriptures record unfortunate incidents of smiting and slaying with the sword. But teaching those passages out of context, trying to apply them to the twenty-first century without regard for God’s love or God’s peace, results in misinterpretation. Proof-texting doesn’t bring truth. It does bring religious extremists to the point of extreme behavior. Even medical doctors, educated in the humane arts, can be diverted from truth and persuaded toward terrorism. Such is the force of fundamentalism. 

In today’s lesson St. Paul, writing to the Galatians (6:7-10), reminded them of wisdom that could be shared by all religions: “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For you reap what you sow.” Misguided attempts to please God by acts of vengeance and violence fall far from the loving, peaceful kingdom God wants us to share with those on other paths around the world. But Paul remained optimistic, and I want to leave you with his words, which I find inspiring:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, [in God’s own time,] if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith. 

And first, do no harm.

© copyright 2007, Christopher Brdlik

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