South African Archbishop • Nobel Peace Price Winner • 73
Year Old Desmond Tutu • Speaks With Newsweek's Arlene
Getz • On Religion • And The State Of Today's Extreme
World
"Q: You said George Bush should admit that he made a
mistake. Were you surprised at his re-election?
A: [Laughs] I still can't believe that it really could have
happened. Just look at the facts on the table: He’d gone into a
war having misled people—whether deliberately or
not—about why he went to war. You would think that would
have knocked him out [of the race.] It didn’t. Look at the
number of American soldiers who have died since he claimed
that the war had ended. And yet it seems this doesn't make
most Americans worry too much. I was teaching in
Jacksonville, Fla., [during the election campaign] and I was
shocked, because I had naively believed all these many years
that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But
I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was
remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then
they attacked you. For a South African the déjà vu was
frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to
happen here [during apartheid]—vilifying those who are
putting forward a slightly different view.
Q: Do you see any other parallels with white-ruled South
Africa?
A: Look at the [detentions in] Guantanamo Bay. You say,
why do you detain people without trial in the fashion that
you have done? And when they give the answer security, you
say no, no, no, this can't be America. This is what we used to
hear in South Africa. It's unbelievable that a country that
many of us have looked to as the bastion of true freedom
could now have eroded so many of the liberties we believed
were upheld almost religiously. [But] feeling as devastated in
many ways as I am, it is wonderful to find that there are
[also] Americans who have felt very strongly [about
administration policies]—the people who turned out for
rallies against the war. One always has to be very careful not
to do what we used to do here, where you generalize very
facilely, and one has to remember that there are very many
Americans who are feeling deeply distressed about what has
taken place in their country. We take our hats off to them.
Q: Talking about religion, much has been said about the role
it played in the White House race. What do you say to those
who believe that Bush was chosen by God?
A: [Laughs] I keep having to remind people that religion in
and of itself is morally neutral. Religion is like a knife. When
you use a knife for cutting up bread to prepare sandwiches, a
knife is good. If you use the same knife to stick into
somebody’s guts, a knife is bad. Religion in and of itself is not
good or bad—it is what it makes you do… Frequently,
fundamentalists will say this person is the anointed of God if
the particular person is supporting their own positions on for
instance, homosexuality, or abortion. [I] feel so deeply
saddened [about it]. Do you really believe that the Jesus who
was depicted in the Scriptures as being on the side of those
who were vilified, those who were marginalized, that this
Jesus would actually be supporting groups that clobber a
group that is already persecuted? That’s a Christ I would not
worship. I'm glad that I believe very fervently that Jesus
would not be on the side of gay bashers. To think that people
say, as they used to say, that AIDS was God’s punishment for
homosexuality. Abominable. Abominable.
Q: Do your comments about fundamentalism extend to
fundamentalist Islam as well?
A: It's true of every faith, that there are those people who
frequently are able to provide people with simplistic answers.
Life is far more complicated than we would like it to be, but
we actually don’t like having to work through its ambiguities.
We wish we could have straightforward answers. It's not just
in terms of religion—you see it in things like ethnic cleansing.
Part of the reason for ethnic cleansing is that one group says
we don't like people who are different from us. We want
people who think like us, people who look like us, and we
want to eradicate any of the diversities. We find it far easier
to be in the “against” mode than in the “for” mode."
LINK: Nobel Peace Prize Winner Desmond Tutu •• Is
Astonished •• At USA GWB Apparent Election
2:53:33 AM
