宗教沉默的困境 Un silence religieux by Jean Birnbaum Seuil
Last year, the French sociologist Emmanuel Todd caused controversy with his book Qui est Charlie? Todd argued that France had succumbed to collective hysteria after the murder in January 2015, by homegrown jihadi terrorists, of members of the editorial team of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and customers at a kosher supermarket in Paris.
去年，法國社會學家埃馬努埃爾•託德(Emmanuel Todd)的著作《誰是查理？》(Qui est Charlie?)引起了爭議。託德辯稱，在2015年1月土生土長的聖戰恐怖分子殺害了諷刺雜誌《查理週刊》(Charlie Hebdo)的部分編輯團隊成員和巴黎一家猶太超市的顧客之後，法國人已屈服於集體歇斯底里情緒。
The enormous government-sanctioned popular mobilisation that followed the attacks was little more than an orgy of national self-congratulation, he said. And there was a darker side to the “virtuous ignorance” of those who marched in towns and cities across the country declaring that they too were “Charlie”. “The obsession with Islam was everywhere”, Todd observed, and French Muslims found themselves subjected to impromptu citizenship tests that required them to accept that ridicule of religion was not just a right but a duty. And in calling for mass demonstrations in the wake of the attacks, President François Hollande ran the risk of glorifying the perpetrators and giving “ideological meaning” to acts better understood as products of individual pathology.
託德表示，恐怖襲擊之後經政府批准的大規模民衆動員，不過是一場舉國的自我誇耀狂歡。在全法國各城鎮遊行、宣稱自己也是“查理”的那些人，他們那種“自鳴得意的無知”還有更陰暗的一面。“在各個地方，人們都對伊斯蘭教感到困擾，”託德評述稱，法國穆斯林發現自己必須接受臨時的公民測驗，該測驗要求他們接受一個觀點：調侃宗教不僅僅只一種權利，也是一種義務。恐怖襲擊之後，法國總統號召進行大規模示威遊行，他這麼做造成了一種風險，即美化行兇者，並賦予那些最好被理解爲源於個體變態的行爲以“意識形態含義”。
Jean Birnbaum, a journalist for Le Monde, offers a very different account of the reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in his new book, which, like Todd’s, was written before the slaughter in Paris on November 13. Indeed, you could say that Todd’s analysis is in fact an example of what Birnbaum calls “religious silence” — the failure of French politicians and intellectuals, especially on the left, to acknowledge or understand the religious dimension of Islamist terrorism.
法國《世界報》(Le Monde)記者讓•伯恩鮑姆(Jean Birnbaum)在他的新書裏，對《查理週刊》人員遭屠殺事件後法國的反應做出了非常不同的描述。跟託德的書一樣，他的這本書也寫於去年11月3日的巴黎屠殺之前。實際上，你可以說，託德的分析其實就是伯恩鮑姆所稱的“宗教的沉默”的一個例子。宗教的沉默是指，法國政客和知識分子（尤其是從屬左翼陣營的）未能承認或理解伊斯蘭恐怖分子的宗教特徵。
There are, of course, good reasons for not wishing to “faire l’amalgame”, as the French put it — for avoiding the conflation of Islam in general with sanguinary jihadism in particular. For one thing, social peace depends on it. This is why Mr Hollande said, at the huge Paris demonstration on January 11 last year, that the Charlie Hebdo attacks had “nothing to do with Islam”. This was echoed by the president’s colleagues and also by commentators like Todd.
當然，我們有充分理由不希望“搞混淆”，避免把作爲整體的伊斯蘭教和血腥聖戰運動這一特殊現象劃上等號。首先，社會安定依賴於此。正因如此，奧朗德在去年1月11日的巴黎大規模遊行中說，《查理週刊》遇襲“與伊斯蘭教無關”。他的政府同僚和託德等評論人士也表達了同樣的觀點。
The problem with this position is, as Birnbaum points out, that those responsible for the attacks saw themselves as “soldiers of God”. Yet it was if the words of the Kouachi brothers and their accomplice, Amedy Coulibaly, could not be heard. Few seemed capable, Birnbaum observes, of performing the elementary intellectual manoeuvre of resisting the identification of Islam with terrorism, on the one hand, while on the other acknowledging the religious dimension of jihadist violence.
正如伯恩鮑姆所指出，這一立場的問題在於，那些對恐怖襲擊負責的人把自己視爲“真主的戰士”。然而，人們好像沒法聽到庫阿奇(Kouachi)兄弟和他們的同謀阿米迪•庫利巴利(Amedy Coulibaly)的話一樣。伯恩鮑姆評述稱，似乎很少有人能做到一方面用基本的理智拒絕把伊斯蘭教和恐怖主義劃上等號，另一方面又承認聖戰主義暴力活動的宗教特徵。
There is an abundant literature on the question of just how Islamic Islamist terrorism is. But although he devotes a few pages to the theological “civil war” within Islam, Birnbaum’s main interest lies elsewhere — in the difficulty that many western, secular intellectuals have in accepting that religion itself is sometimes a motive for action, rather than being, say, the misplaced expression of legitimate rage at geopolitical or socio-economic conditions.
有大量的文獻討論伊斯蘭恐怖主義在多大程度上與伊斯蘭主義有關的問題。雖然用了幾頁描寫伊斯蘭教內部的神學“內戰”，但伯恩鮑姆的主要興趣在其他地方——許多西方世俗知識分子很難接受宗教本身有時就是行爲的動機，並非（比方說）以錯誤的方式表達對地緣政治或社會經濟狀況的合理憤怒。
The rise of political Islam over the past 40 years has been discombobulating for anyone who might have assumed that religion had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Birnbaum argues that the intellectual disarray was particularly acute in France, where the anticlerical tradition is very strong. The French left has traditionally treated religion either as an historical relic or a purely private affair that could not have anything to do with politics.
過去40年，政治伊斯蘭(political Islam)的興起使所有可能本以爲宗教已被扔進歷史垃圾箱的人士驚慌失措。伯恩鮑姆認爲，在反教權傳統非常強大的法國，這種思想上的擾亂尤爲嚴重。法國左翼傳統上一直將宗教視爲歷史遺物或純粹的私人事務——不可能與政治有任何關係。
This inability to grasp the political salience of religion goes back a long way. Birnbaum shows, for instance, how French supporters of the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria in the 1950s simply denied, in the teeth of abundant evidence to the contrary, that Islam played any role in the Algerian uprising. And he examines sympathetically the account of the Iranian revolution offered by the philosopher Michel Foucault, who was denounced by some compatriots as an apologist for theocracy for suggesting that an entirely novel fusion of politics and religion was fomenting on the streets of Tehran.
這種對宗教的政治重要性的理解無能可以追溯到很久以前。例如，伯恩鮑姆在書中描述了上世紀50年代阿爾及利亞反殖民鬥爭的法國支持者就是不承認（雖然有大量相反證據）伊斯蘭教在阿爾及利亞起義中發揮了任何作用。他滿懷同情地審視了哲學家米歇爾•福柯(Michel Foucault)對伊朗伊斯蘭革命的論斷——福柯因爲認爲一種全新的政治與宗教的融合正在德黑蘭街頭興起，被當時一些法國同胞譴責爲神權政治的辯護者。
Birnbaum’s excellent book contains lessons for secular liberals and leftists elsewhere. They should be wary of assuming that history is on their side.
伯恩鮑姆的精彩著作包含了其他地區的世俗自由主義者和左翼人士可以吸取的教訓。他們應該警惕假設歷史站在自己一邊的幻想。
