‘Passion’ in Context

In his 25 years as the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, consistently demonstrated support for violence against his country’s Shiite population. However, Hussein’s support for the violence was conditional: he had to be the one perpetrating it. So it was not a conventional expression of religious freedom when, last week, thousands of Shiite men took to the streets of Karbala, Iraq, to do something that the Baathi leader had made illegal for over two decades—beat, whip and knife themselves until their faces and clothing were drenched in blood.

Iraqis weren’t alone in the bloodletting, which takes place annually in Lebanon, Iran, and other parts of the Shiite world as part of Ashura, the holiday which commemorates the martyrdom of the Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed who Shiites believe should have been recognized as the spiritual leader of Islam at the end of the seventh century.

As they have done in the past, western media outlets covered the event with equal parts fascination and horror. Graphic images of the Ashura procession were the most popular photographs on Yahoo! early last week, and virtually all the major newspapers and television networks eagerly reported on the self-mutilation ritual before it was overshadowed by terror attacks in Karbala and Baghdad later that day. Though the coverage varied in style and tone, the skewed focus on Ashura’s violent rather than religious aspects seemed to reflect the media’s prejudices as much more than the holiday itself. “Look at these people,” the news reports seemed to say. “look at this evidence of their fanaticism, their love of violence, at just how unlike us they really are.”

All of this happened, of course, the same week that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was sweeping its way towards a 10-day, $200 million gross at the U.S. box office.

For the few cultural ascetics who haven’t yet seen it, Gibson’s film deals in images that find striking parallels in the standard news coverage of Ashura. Not one bloody detail escapes the attention of Gibson, who, like the BBC, seems to love nothing more than shredded flesh and the sight of fresh blood streaming down the forehead of a young Middle Eastern man. Based on The Gospel of Mel, Jesus’ torture seems to have been far more important than his actual teachings or moral legacy, two subjects which are hardly treated at all.

The problem with both The Passion and with news reports about Ashura is their shared failure to provide even minimal context. Gibson’s film fails because it barely touches on what Jesus did or why he mattered. In assuming that viewers already know the smaller details of Jesus’ life and martyrdom, The Passion preaches only to the choir, whose members may wonder why the sermon is so light on content and so fixated on glass-studded whips.

News coverage of Ashura was similarly superficial, almost entirely ignoring the holiday’s religious significance and, in the case of Karbala, the one million other worshipers who weren’t contributing to the self-inflicted blood loss. Like Gibson, many of the Karbala arguably focused too much on violence and not enough on the non-physical elements of their faith. Nevertheless, the media’s one-dimensional portrait of the holiday mostly served to betray its own unhealthy fixations.

Lost in much of the reporting was the widespread disapproval that exists in the Muslim world over the bloodier rituals of some Shiites. In an era of regime change and growing cultural hostilities, it might have done some westerners good to know that the fundamentalist Iranian government has banned self-mutilation rituals on religious grounds, and that even its terrorist client in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, reportedly ran a blood drive this year as an alternative for worshipers whose holiday just wouldn’t be complete without a little bloodletting.

Of course, the release of The Passion and the sometimes barbaric worship of Ashura are not the same thing. Onscreen violence is never the same as real-life violence, no matter how graphic. Non-Muslims certainly have a right to ask why some Shiites choose to observe Ashura as they do; violence, even violence done by individuals against themselves, is something people instinctively fear, and such questions are entirely justified.

But just as Mel Gibson shouldn’t have expected to release his gory interpretation of Jesus’ life without confronting questions about the intentions behind his film, so too does the media have a duty to seek answers before making a judgment.