Again, this article is part of a series. There are three so far and a fourth one is coming. The other two focus on Judaism and Christianity to the exclusion of Islam, so I wrote this one to focus on Islam. (Links below to the other two.)
The point is I'm not just picking on Islam. I apply my hypothesis in some detail to Christianity, pointing out how Christianity inherited the implicit satirical perspective on theocracy from Judaism, and how this got muddled because Christians also inherited the Roman Empire. Roman state religion was known for being stale and humourless because it was politicized: Romans had an empire to run so they tried to please everyone with their pantheon. Ditto for Islam (minus the polytheism). But Jews were nomadic moralists, not empowered theocrats. Ever hear of the class clown who sits in the back row making fun of everyone? That was Judaism. But Christianity was a mixed bag in this respect.
Now I'm not saying humour trumps all other considerations. Of course organized religions get political. So Christians "took their religion seriously" when they were in a theocratic position. Now Christians have less excuse for being so sanctimonious and super-serious fundamentalists because they lost most of their political power in the modern period.
Yes, I'm speaking in generalities. If you're opposed to generalizations, and you mean to defend a consistent nominalist position, I take it you should stop using words and concepts since every single one of them (apart from proper names) simplifies and generalizes.
Let's cut to the chase, then. Do you deny that Muslim culture has been harsher towards blasphemers than has the Jewish one? Do you deny that Muslim culture is more opposed to satirical criticism of itself than is Jewish culture?
See the first article below on the obscurity and ambivalence of Jewish blasphemy laws: "To be sure, the Jewish tradition obviously holds that it is a severe offense to revile God and the medieval courts placed a ban on anyone guilty of this, but so far as the full offense of blasphemy is concerned it all remained purely theoretical."
I'd say Jews were ambivalent on this point because their emerging jadedness and secular humanism conflicted with the desert-cultural basis of their simplistic monotheism.
All I'm trying to explain here is the apparent cultural difference between Jews' self-deprecations and Muslims' self-assertiveness. The fact that Jews didn't try to convert the world to their way of thinking is itself indicative of this cultural divide.
It's fine if you want to say it's more complicated than my generalities suggest. But let's not pretend that the complexities and exceptions automatically undermine my thesis. Again, every single concept or mental model has exceptions. Does that mean we should stop thinking by using concepts?
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/blasphemy-in-judaism/
