Daily Zizek: on the sacredness of questioning

“What is perceived here as the problem is precisely the Christian universalism: what this all-inclusive attitude (recall St. Paul’s famous “There are no men or women, no Jews and Greeks”) involves is a thorough exclusion of those who do not accept inclusion into the Christian community. In other “particularistic” religions (and even in Islam, in spite of its global expansionism), there is a place for others, they are tolerated, even if they are condescendingly looked upon. The Christian motto “All men are brothers,” however, means ALSO that “Those who are not my brothers ARE NOT MEN.” Christians usually praise themselves for overcoming the Jewish exclusivist notion of the Chosen People and encompassing all of humanity – the catch here is that, in their very insistence that they are the Chosen People with the privileged direct link to God, Jews accept the humanity of the other people who celebrate their false gods, while Christian universalism tendenti[ous]ly excludes non-believers from the very universality of humankind.”

(Slavoj Žižek, On Belief. Routledge, 2001: 143-144)

HT: Deane Galbraith

ZIZEK!

"Are the so-called terrorist-fundamentalists, be it Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in an authentic sense of the term. Do they really believe? What they lack, I think, is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish here in the U.S. The absence of resentment and envy; the deep indifference to the non-believers' way of life.... In contrast to a true fundamentalist, the terrorist-pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated, by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation. So I think that a so-called Christian or Muslim fundamentalist is a disgrace to true fundamentalism."

HT: swords to plowshares: Zizek and Belief: A Lecture, A Documentary:

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