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Bad Christians. Bad Muslims. Bad Jews?

This story at Jewschool (God, how I love Jewschool!) seems not unrelated to what I was blathering on about yesterday.

We think the Catholics are honoring/respecting a bad guy and want them to stop (Pius). But then some Muslims think that we’re honoring/respecting a bad Jewish guy (Prager).

The question is…. How much power should one group have over another, particularly in the incredibly subjective world of faith? Is it our place to tell other people when they’re being wrong/politically incorrect? Should we threaten each other with bad PR? Repercussions?

There are many many important differences between the two situations (namely that the US Holocaust Memorial Council is not a religious agency like the Catholic Church) but there’s something funny about reading the stories side by side.

Jews want to affect the way Catholics decide their own leadership/hierarchy/ agenda… and then are bothered by the idea that Muslims would feel the right to affect the process by which Jews determine their own leadership/hierarchy/agenda (assuming one can call the Holocaust Memorial Council a bunch of “Jews”. And one can argue that it’s not, but we certainly claim it most of the time.)

I’m still not sure that I have a “position” of any kind on this, but I’m trying to think about both situations and sort them out. I feel like we can pick at the differences in the situations, but in the end… it seems hypocritical to view them too differently.

Not that culture and faith don’t turn everyone into hypocrites, but in this case… both sides are trying to apply logic… and it isn’t quite working.

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