VREDESDAG/PEACE DAY KU LEUVEN 2016 24 FEBRUARI/FEBRUARY 24 PROMOTIEZAAL/PROMOTION HALL, KU LEUVEN
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE MARTYRDOM: SAINTLY OR BLASPHEMOUS? IN HEMELSNAAM MARTELAARSCHAP: HEILIG OF GODSLASTEREND? CENTRUM VOOR VREDESETHIEK/CENTER FOR PEACE ETHICS, KU LEUVEN & PAX CHRISTI VLAANDEREN ‘Martelaren voor de vrijheid van meningsuiting’ - zo werden na de aanslag in Parijs op 7 januari 2015 de vermoorde medewerkers van het satirische tijdschrift Charlie Hebdo betiteld. De koelbloedige moord op de bijna voltallige redactie vanwege eerder gepubliceerde spotprenten over de profeet Mohammed veroorzaakte een storm van verontwaardiging. Het idee dat een van de belangrijkste kernwaarden van de westerse cultuur, de vrijheid van meningsuiting, in het hart was geraakt, vond enorme weerklank (‘Je suis Charlie’). In dit colloquium ter gelegenheid van de Vredesdag 2016 staan twee begrippen centraal: blasfemie of godslastering en martelaarschap. Enerzijds gaat het over de rol van blasfemie-beschuldigingen als aanjager van hedendaagse religieus geladen conflicten, en anderzijds over de eigentijdse bewondering voor ‘martelaars’, individuen die hun leven wagen of verliezen omwille van hoog aangeschreven waarden of (religieuze) idealen. Deze twee termen, van oorsprong religieuze begrippen, lijken op nieuwe manieren gebruikt te worden. Sinds de fatwa op Rushdies Duivelsverzen in 1989 heeft de beschuldiging van blasfemie een nieuwe en soms heftige resonantie gekregen, zowel in de strijd voor erkenning van religieuze identiteit als in het debat over de vrijheid van meningsvorming. Tegelijk is ook het martelaarschap prominenter en meer controversieel geworden door het optreden van zelfmoordterroristen in zowel politieke als religieuze conflicten die de westerse economische en culturele hegemonie tot inzet hebben of als radicaal politiek protest bij jonge Tibetaanse monniken bijvoorbeeld.
De radicaliteit van deze religieus-politieke ultieme gebaren maakt duidelijk dat hier veel op het spel staat. Zowel ‘ongepast’ religieus gedrag als ‘ongepast’ vrijmoedig spreken bedreigen de gevestigde religieus-politieke ordes en belichten op fragiele wijze wat van hoogste waarde is (AnneMarie Korte & Johan De Tavernier, Tijdschrift voor Theologie 55 (2015) 2).
PROGRAMMA (DE LEZINGEN WORDEN IN HET ENGELS GEGEVEN) 9.20-9.30 INLEIDING/INTRODUCTION 1. 9.30-10.20 Theo de Wit (Political Philosophy, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Tilbrug University) PRO PATRIA MORI: SACRIFICING LIFE FOR YOUR COUNTRY/STERVEN VOOR HET VADERLAND? 2. 10.20-11.10 Nadia Fadil (Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven) RECALLING THE ‘ISLAM OF THE PARENTS’ LIBERAL AND SECULAR MUSLIMS REDEFINING THE CONTOURS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHENTICITY/HOE LIBERALE EN SECULIERE MOSLIMS RELIGIEUZE AUTHENTICITEIT HERDEFINIËREN IN HERINNERING AAN DE ISLAM VAN HUN OUDERS
PAUZE 11.10-11.30 3. 11.30-12.20 Mehdi Azaiez (Islamic Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven) MARTYRDOM AND JIHAD IN THE QUR'ÂN AND EARLY ISLAM/MARTELAARSCHAP EN JIHAD IN DE KORAN EN DE VROEGE ISLAMd Early Islam/Ma
LUNCH BREAK 12.20-14.00
4. 14.00-14.50 Anthony Dupont & Johan Leemans (History of Church and Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven) EXEMPLARY MARTYRDOM: CULTIVATION OF A CHRISTIAN ‘IDENTITY MARKER’ IN LATE ANTIQUITY/ DE VOORBEELDIGHEID VAN HET MARTELAARSCHAP: LAAT-ANTIEKE CULTIVERING VAN EEN CHRISTELIJKE ‘IDENTITY MARKER’
PAUZE 14.50-15.10
5. 15.10-16.00 Anne-Marie Korte (Religion, Gender and Modernity, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University)
THE POLITICAL-BODILY GESTURE OF ‘BLASPHEMOUS’ ART – PUSSY RIOT’S PUNK PRAYER FROM A GENDER-CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE/ HET POLITIEK-LICHAMELIJKE GEBAAR VAN ‘BLASFEMISCHE KUNST’ – PUSSY RIOTS PUNKGEBED IN GENDERKRITISCH PERSPECTIEF
6. 16.00u.-16.40 Debat 16.40-17.20u. EVOCATIE EN SYMBOLISCHE ACTIE MGR. O.A. ROMERO/EVOCATION AND SYMBOLIC ACTION MGR. O.A. ROMERO (Jacques Haers- KU Leuven & Omer D’Hoe) 17.20-17.30u. SLOTBESCHOUWINGEN/CONCLUDING REMARKS AANSLUITEND AVONDFILM I.S.M. KATECHETIKA EN SAINTS: DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX
De deelnameprijs bedraagt 15 euro incl. koffiepauzes (10 euro voor leden van Theologisch Forum – gratis voor studenten KU Leuven). Inschrijven via http://www.kuleuven.be/vsc (code CA44). De inschrijving is pas definitief na overschrijving van het bedrag op BE60 7340 0666 0370 op naam van KU Leuven. Gelieve bij betaling IN HET VRIJE MEDEDELINGSVAK duidelijk de naam van de deelnemer(s) te vermelden alsook het nummer 400/0012/12943. WEBSITE : http://theo.kuleuven.be/en/research/centres/centr_peace Organisatie: J. De Tavernier, D. Pollefeyt, M. De Samblanx, A. Dillen, J. Haers, J. Hanssens en J. Verstraeten (contact:
[email protected] of
[email protected]) INHOUD LEZINGEN 1.
9.30-10.20 Prof. dr. Theo de Wit: PRO PATRIA MORI: SACRIFICING LIFE FOR YOUR COUNTRY
In a famous article ‘Pro patria mori’ (1951) the great authority on medieval Political Theology Ernst Kantorowicz concludes that this whole idea of the sacrifice of your own life for the sake of the Fatherland is discredited in the first half of the twentieth century, because of its instrumentalizing by the totalitarian political movements in this era. He focuses on a remarkable debate between two Roman Catholic Cardinals at the beginning of World War I: Mercier (who defends the theological surplus value of pro patria mori) and Billot (who disagrees with a link between God and Fatherland). Not long after the First World War the German jurist Carl Schmitt once again – and not by accident in a polemical style – promotes the idea of the sacrifice of one’s own life for the sake of the state (and the willingness to kill the enemy) as the core of political existence and of the sovereignty of the state. But he also recognizes the ‘emancipation’ or exodus of this idea of sacrifice from its orientation on the state and on ‘Staatlichkeit’ – in the direction of civil wars, guerrilla, ‘partisans’, ‘terrorists’, et cetera. The actual discussion about sense and nonsense of pro patria mori can still be framed as a continuation of the debate between Schmitt, Mercier, Billot and Hobbes. Recently, the American philosopher of law, Paul Kahn, took the side of Schmitt, while theologian Stanley Hauerwas follows the line of Billot. And a lot of liberal thinkers – like Hobbes – still have severe reservations regarding the idea of sacrifice for the state. The first standpoint tries to find existential meaning in war (‘War is a force that gives us meaning’), the second one inclines towards ‘better a martyr than a murderer’ (Socrates, Jesus Christ), while the liberal viewpoint reverses this: better a ‘sniper’ than a martyr. (Tijdschrift voor Theologie 55 (2015) 2: 146).
2. 10.20-11.10 Prof. dr. Nadia Fadil : RECALLING THE ‘ISLAM OF THE PARENTS’ LIBERAL AND SECULAR MUSLIMS REDEFINING THE CONTOURS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHENTICITY Scholarship on Islam in Europe has largely invested in examining the generational dynamics in the lived religious experiences of Muslims. Within this perspective, the idea of a generation gap, which revolves around a distinction between ‘tradition‘ and ‘religion‘, has figured as an important account in assessing some of these religious transformations. Drawing on fieldwork with Belgian Muslims of Moroccan origin, the author seeks to nuance this perspective by exploring accounts wherein this ‘traditional‘ Islam of the parents is actively reclaimed. This was especially the case for respondents who were quite critical of Islamic revivialist trends. In many of those stories, the parents‘ Islam was understood as tolerant and open, in a way that was consonant with ‘tradition‘. By focusing on these narratives, a first aim is to understand how genealogy and ancestry figure as distinct criteria in determining the ‘real Islam‘. A second aim is to complicate the understanding of the liberal and modern self, and its relationship to the past. (Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power -2015) 3. 11.30-12.20 Prof. dr. Mehdi Azaiez: MARTYRDOM AND JIHAD IN THE QUR‘ÂN AND EARLY ISLAM The Qurʾān occupies a central place in the Islamic intellectual and faith tradition. Revered by more than one billion people, it is considered by muslims as the unmitigated utterance of God, revealed to the prophet Muhammad. Since the mid-nineteenth century, instigated by developments in biblical criticism, the academy has turned its attention to this elusive text, raising new questions about its provenance, its history, its language and its structure. The present century has seen a renewal in Quranic studies to the point of becoming one of the major fields of contemporary studies on Islam. This vigorous study of the Qurʾān has led to a hermeneutic debate on the understanding of notions like ‘jihad’ and ‘martyrdom’. In popular literature jihad is predominantly assumed to refer to armed combat, and martyrdom in the Islamic context is understood to be invariably of the military kind, according to Asma Afsaruddin. This perspective presents jihad and martyrdom as concepts with a fixed meaning and divorces the texts from the socio-political context in which they have been written. The recognition of a range of significations that can be ascribed to the term jihad historically includes that many assumptions about the military jihad and martyrdom in Islam are thereby challenged and deconstructed. Retrieval of these multiple perspectives has important implications for our world today in which the concepts of jihad and martyrdom are still being fiercely debated. 4. 14.00-14.50 Prof. dr. Anthony Dupont & Prof. dr. Johan Leemans: EXEMPLARY MARTYRDOM: CULTIVATION OF A CHRISTIAN ‘IDENTITY MARKER’ IN LATE ANTIQUITY The history of Christianity shows that time and again people have to die for their beliefs. In the present paper we examine how, despite this horrible reality, Christians always have been (and still are) fascinated by martyrdom. In images and rituals, theological reflection and literature, historical research and popular cult, the role and the significance of the martyr and martyrdom in Christianity were re-membered/-thought in each historical era and in all regions. This recontextualisation through remembrance and reflection focuses, on the one hand, on the heroic suffering and sacrificial death of the martyrs, but at the same time also on their previous virtuous life as an exemplary inspiration for Christians of all times. This dual approach will guide us in the present essay to outline some of the crucial characteristics of the Christian understanding of martyrdom. Examples from Late Antiquity, like the martyrs Stephen and Julitta and theologians such as Basil the Great and Augustine of Hippo who gave shape to an early discourse on martyrdom, will function as our points of
departure. These examples illustrate the powerful and lasting effect the figure of the martyr and the theme of martyrdom had throughout the history of Christian theology, culture and lived faith. (Tijdschrift voor Theologie 55 (2015) 2: 122). 5. 15.10-16.00 Prof. dr. Annemarie Korte: THE POLITICAL-BODILY GESTURE OF ‘BLASPHEMOUS’ ART – PUSSY RIOT’S PUNK PRAYER FROM A GENDER-CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE ‘Mother of God, Drive Putin Out!’ The Punk Prayer of the political art collective Pussy Riot, performed in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow on 21 February 2012, openly defied the tightening bonds between the Putin-government and the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, and was met by extremely critical and unprecedented repressive reactions by the leading figures of both instances. Three female members of the group were arrested and charged with ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’ as stated in the Russian Criminal Code. The prosecutors officially accused them of maliciously humiliating the feelings and beliefs of the Orthodox Christians and ‘disparaging the spiritual foundation of the state’. On 17 August 2012, the three women were found guilty and were sentenced to two years imprisonment. Within a year after the conviction of the Pussy Riot members a bill explicitly prohibiting religious insult – which did not exist before in postcommunist Russia – was adopted by the Federation Council (Russia’s Upper Chamber of Parliament), with reference to the Pussy Riot case. In this contribution I raise the question why at present the use of religious scenes, imagery, or ritual by feminist artists like Madonna, Lady Gaga and Pussy Riot seems particularly prone to provoke accusations of blasphemy or sacrilege. Following Brent Plate’s analysis of the contingent and composite character of blasphemy accusations, refuse to reduce such accusations to mere category mistakes or to the authoritarian abuse of political power. Moving beyond Plate, however, I investigate why it is specifically gendered corporeality and nonheteronormative sexuality that so easily become targeted in contemporary accusations of blasphemy and sacrilege. The controversy generated by such deliberate interplays of corporeal/sexual and religious themes, I argue, is suggestive of the interrelation of religious, sexual, and ethnic identities and of the public fights over them in modern (post)secular societies. (Tijdschrift voor Theologie 55 (2015) 2: 190-191).
