![]() ![]() The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by al-Qaeda were largely secularly motivated. There is a clear distinction between an act of war or of terrorism that is motivated by secular or by religious breaches of the contract. Tragically, too often the media's attention means the social contract has already long been and repeatedly violated, and then reports focus only on the violent release of tensions, not the ongoing repressions that built up to tip an individual or a group to the decline at which things explode. More often we know when the contract between religious and seculars is not working the moments when the media reports a surge in violent attacks or vandalism against or by religious. We know the social contract is working when we barely notice the secular-religious divide, if at all, though even then it is a matter of reportage on the side controlling the media. ![]() Whether it is the secular or the religious that predominates in a society, or even a true balancing of the two, the social contract maintaining that balance assures the protection of each, their properties and communal doctrines, rituals and codes of morality, visions of transcendence - all to be spared the defilement and persecution of former authoritarian and suppressive rule either of the religious or seculars. And that the secular must refrain from infringing on the right to worship the faith of choice. That the religious must recognize and respect the autonomy of the individual. Yet in essence only two primary principles have to be agreed to. In many senses this quid pro quo, as variable, even erratic, as it may prove to be with the passage of new laws and the election of new representatives, is as important to the climate of peace and prosperity of the society as the national constitution and laws guaranteeing religious freedom in modern democratic states. The social contract keeping the peace between us proves only as tolerant as the quid pro quo that guarantees its citizens' mutual survival. When we stop trying to define the truth for others we can begin to appreciate to what extent the society we inhabit is an ongoing negotiation between the secular and the religious. A Chemical Christmas to All! seems to be the message of Shahzia Sikander's scathing Oil and GasPipeline Christmas Tree and Jim Shaw's Angel of the Chemical Plant. ![]()
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