Religion & Law

Pastor Terry Jones' as yet unfulfilled proposal to burn the Koran (here) continues to ripple through the culture.  Earlier this week there was Justice Breyer's comments that acts like Pastor Jones' burning of the Koran might not be constitutionally protected (see here) -- remarks which he subsequently amended (see here).

Then there is Brad Schaeffer's suggestion over at Big Hollywood (here) that all Pastor Jones need have done to guarantee his speech both constitutional protection and cultural acceptance (at least among certain elites) was to propose that his burning of the Koran was a work of art.  After all, Andres Serrano's work "Piss Christ," the photograph of a crucifix submerged in a vat of urine, earned accolades from the artistic community and a showing at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Plainly the reaction that Serrano's work received (as well as that given to Chris Olifi's work of the Virgin Mary surrounded by female genitalia and elephant dung, displayed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art) was very different from the reaction that Pastor Jones received.  But what does this show?  That speech in the form of artistic expression enjoys a higher degree of constitutional protection and cultural acceptance than speech in the form of a religious act directed at a competing faith? That it is culturally acceptable to engage in acts that offend Christians but unacceptable to engage in similar acts when Muslims are the target?  Or does it reflect a prudential judgment by some not to tempt fate, not to stir the honets' nest in the post-9/11 world in which armies from the United States and other traditionally non-Muslim countries occupy or have a substantial presence in a host of Muslim countries?  Is it then that the restrained reaction of Christians in the United States makes them ripe targets for the crudest form of ridicule by their own countrymen while the relatively intemperate response of some followers of Islam make speech that insults Islam out of bounds?

Mind you, I am in no way endorsing Pastor Jones' proposal.  Far from it.  I simply wish to explore the reasons behind these different reactons.