Opera Lights Aren’t the Only Form of Illumination Currently Going Out All Over Europe

Civitas, 28 September 2006

Today’s Times reports senior members of the German government to be critical of the decision by the German national opera to cancel its planned run of a Mozart opera for fear that a recently added coda in which the hero appears brandishing the severed heads of several religious leaders, among whose is that of Mohammed’s, and then announces the gods are dead, might so offend Muslims that they decide to bring the house down in an altogether novel way of registering audience disapproval of a show.
Of course, this kind of self-censorship is deeply regrettable. But under present circumstances, it is hardly unwarranted. Even if the opera went ahead with ‘Caveat Emptor’ warnings stuck on all billboards and tickets, it would still risk exacting reprisals that a theatre company is perfectly entitled to think are not worth taking, even for artistic reasons.
That is just a sign of how badly under threat Europe is now.

Having said all that in defence of the company for deciding not to stage the opera, there are aspects of its decision I find highly peculiar. As many have pointed out including an astute letter-writer in today’s Times, the opera is set in Crete at the end of the Trojan War. So, to include in it something intended to represent the severed head of Mohammed is anachronistic to say the least.
Not only that. The potentially offending coda in which the potentially offending severed head makes its brief appearance on-stage was not originally part of the opera. So, it hardly needs to be included for the opera to be able to be staged with full integrity.
True, to drop the coda would amount to a regrettable form of self-censorship. But many opera buffs are these days unhappy, and not without reason, at the way in which, of late, many classic operas have been augmented to no good effect by such post-modern add-ons. So, dropping the coda might not be such a bad thing after all. But even if it were, surely 100% of the opera is better than 0%, even if — as is not altogether certain — 105% would be better still.
However, the German government and the German national opera company are not the only ones to come out badly from this sorry saga. We all do, and by ‘we’ here I mean every single one of us who, over the years, has not stood up to protest publicly and loudly against all who have used intimidation here in the West to suppress freedom of expression. All appeasement did in 1989 towards those who at that time called for the head of Salman Rushdie was to embolden them and their like to make ever more oppressive demands from which, like the German national opera, we are now all justifiably running scared.
The sad truth is that the West now finds itself caught up in a religious war not of its own making, being waged on it by those who believe themselves entitled in the name of their religion to use violence and its threat howsoever they may choose, provided they think its use or threat can advance its ever wider acceptance.
Making westerners kow-tow before their ostensibly religiously motivated demands is but one of the ways in which they have decided that they can advance their religion. Exacting such kow-towing boosts their morale, as well as intimidates and rallies the support of nominal adherents of that faith who might otherwise be tempted quietly to shed even that nominal adherence to it and either convert to some other or else, as is more likely, to fall away from all faiths into an a-religious agnosticism that is the outlook of so many Westerners today.
All this is why what Pope Benedict said in his Regensburg lecture earlier this month about faith, reason and violence was so apposite and timely, despite his saying it having possibly been not altogether well-judged, given the predictably violent reaction it has had. In saying what he did, the Pope was not intending to offend Muslims or insult their religion. What he was intending to do, and why what he said has called down the wrath of so many of them, was to draw to the attention of one and all a vital truth concerning religion and violence that no amount of protests and violence can disguise. This truth is that use of force to impose or suppress religious faith of any form can never, under any circumstances, be justified, even when, in support of its use, appeal is made to some supposed religious ‘revelation’.
Although moderate Muslims rightly point to verses in the Koran that say the same thing, the same text contains other verses, supposedly revealed later in time and hence that abrogate what is said in the earlier pacific verses, that say something entirely different and far less pacific. These later verses call on Muslims to embark on a form of jihad or holy war against unbelievers who are first to be invited to accept Islam, and then, should they decline, are to be fought against until they either submit to the faith or accept rule by Muslims as second-class citizens or dhimmis.
Doubtless, the manner was extreme by which the passage quoted by the Pope alludes to these verses from the Koran that call on Muslims to engage in war against non-Muslims. It may even have been exaggerated to the point of being wholly misleading about the true nature and value of that religion. Doubtless, there may well be many other teachings in the Koran that are both novel and edificatory. Precisely what they are is for Muslims to point out calmly, if they don’t agree with the passage quoted by the Pope, rather than go about issuing death threats against him for having done so.
That there are or may well be is precisely why, in saying that he regretted that his lecture had offended some Muslims, the Pope went out of his way to say he had only quoted the passage in question and that he had not endorsed it, and that it did not reflect his own opinions about Islam which were positive.
But, given the rest of his lecture, there can be no mistake that it was precisely because of its allusion to the doctrine of jihad that the Pope included the passage about Islam that he did in his lecture. For an absolutely masterful and fully comprehending exegesis of that lecture, see an article from this coming Monday’s edition of the Weekly Standard by Lee Harris entitled ‘Socrates or Muhammed?: Joseph Ratzinger on the destiny of reason’.