Krauthammer Gets Something Right???
And: What Are Our Obligations to the Superstitions of Others?

Usually the following is a fairly safe epistemic strategy: find out what Charles Krauthammer thinks, then think the opposite. But in this op-ed, I think he gets something substantially right. (The NYT link generator is down, so I don't know how long that link will work.)

Well, first I should note that Krauthammer dismisses most of the charges of abuse at Guantanamo Bay with a wave of his hand. That's irrational, and we don't want to follow him there. Many of the reports are probably false, but we don't know which ones yet. Krauthammer and his ilk can't be trusted on such topics as they are far too willing to exonerate the U.S. These are the same folks who compared the sexual abuse at Abu Graib to fraternity pranks...

But as for the more-or-less confirmed abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Krauthammer is right. Minor abuses of the Koran simply aren't a big deal. As Krauthammer points out, in the cosmic scheme of war crimes, this ranks just above jaywalking.

Of course one might argue that only those who revere the Koran can determine how severe is the crime of mishandling it, but this raises serious philosophical problems. Offense isn't something that can only be judged by the reactions of the offended. Even these reactions must be subject to criticism by reason. At some point, such reactions become irrational. If, for example, I am extraordinarily offended by other people touching the tops of their heads, I'm just going to have to learn to live with it. You might choose to humor me, but you are under no obligation to do so.

Questions about how to treat religious paraphernalia are weird and difficult. Some of my acquaintances are Christian, and some of them think that the Bible is the infallible word of God, and that it must always be spoken of with respect. I think it's an old book, one of many old books, more interesting than some but less interesting than others, and that it deserves only the respect deserved by any book. From my perspective, the person who thinks that the Bible deserves special respect is no more rational than the person who thinks that The Amazing Spider Man #1 deserves special respect. In fact, I own a copy of the Koran, and I can guarantee you I've mishandled it. Like most of my other books, it has sometimes ended up on the floor, and it's definitely been carried around in one hand, and handled ungloved. And I don't feel the least bit bad about this.

Now, because I'm a weenie liberal in many ways, I tend to show non-Christian religions more deference than Christianity. That ain't rational, but it's true. Other religions haven't bugged the crap out of me and thrust their most irrational doctrines in my face ever since I was born. Consequently, other religions don't trigger the same ire in my that Christianity does. But it's important to try to control these differential reactions, and be equally tough on Christianity and Islam.

I ask myself: what if some sect of Christians made these demands on us about the handling of the Bible? How seriously would I take these requests and violations thereof?

Not very, I'm afraid. If someone has a superstitious view about the status of an ancient book, that puts no special obligation on me. Under some conditions I might choose to humor them, but I have no obligation to do so. In this case we might have some prudential interest in handling the Koran in a traditionally acceptable way--we might, for example, hope to avoid making the Islamic world hate us even more. But that doesn't mean that we would be doing something moral wrong by "mis"handling it.

But these issues are hard, and there's no way to deal with them effectively in a blog post. The source to go to on such points is Joel Feinberg's Offense to Others. But it's going to take a lot to convince me that we're committing crimes by handling the Koran in non-traditional ways.