In the 11th
century, Christians were not welcome in Persia, so in the film, The Physician (2013), Rob
Cole, a Christian, pretends to be Jewish in order to travel from Western Europe
to study at the medical school of Ibn Sina, a famous physician in Isfahan. He
eventually reveals his religion as that of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” when
he is on trial before the local imam. The Jews there doubtlessly feel used and
betrayed. As interesting as interreligious controversy can be, I contend that
the nature of Cole’s crime is more significant from the standpoint of religion
itself. In short, the film illustrates what bad effects are likely to come from
committing a category mistake with respect to religion and another domain.
Whether conflating distinct domains or erasing the boundary between them,
category mistakes had diminished the credibility of religion as being
over-reaching by the time that the film was made. As for the matter of interreligious
differences, the sheer pettiness by which the three Abrahamic religions that
share the same deity have made mole hills into untraversable mountains is
hardly worthy of attention, whereas that which makes religion as a domain of phenomena
unique and thus distinct from other, even related domains, is in need of
further work. The film could have done more in this regard.
Rob Cole’s crime is the
desecration of a human corpse by dissecting it. It may be that dissection does
not count as desecration because the study is done systematically and for the
beneficial outcome of progress in medical science, but this argument is not even
presented to the imam in the film. Even though the old man agreed to the
procedure just before he died in Ibn Sina’s hospital (and medical school), and Cole’s
purpose was to save lives by discovering human organs, the imam sentences not
only Rob, but also Ibn Sina to be executed for having “violated Allah.” Presumably
the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish deity is against progress in the science of
medicine such that sickness is not so often a death-sentence. Holding to a
dogma nonetheless demonstrates one of the fallibilities of the human mind when
it enters the domain of religion. It is not as if Cole’s dissection and study
would cause death and destruction—two things that are typically associated with
evil. In fact, Rob, with Ibn’s assistance, which alone is an interesting role
reversal, successfully operates on Shah Ala ad Daula, the king of Isfahan,
using the knowledge obtained during the dissection of the corpse. That
operation in turn enables the Shah to survive the next day, when his presence
is needed as his army sets out to fight a radical Islam-only invading force to
which the local imam is allied. That force is against the presence of the Jews
in the city, and would certainly against the Shah pardoning Cole and Sina. In
short, the Shah was too secular and tolerant for the imam and the related
invading king.
The “religious” rationale for
finding Cole in violation of Allah’s law should be treated as more problematic
in the film. Cole, Sina, or even the Shah could engage with the imam during or
after the “trial” on the validity in religious terms of the injunction
against medical science advancing by study of human internal-organs, for
what is scientific—and thus of that domain—is being claimed by the
domain of religion. Hence it is assumed by everyone in the film except for the medical
student and his teacher that religion can legitimately override medicine even in
the domain of medicine. I contend that
this overreaching is invalid—it is akin to an invading army taking over a city—because
religion’s coverage should fit within its borders. In other words, religion has
primary jurisdiction over that which is distinctly religious. The overall
domain of a religious deity holds sway within the religious domain, just like a
king’s authority only extends throughout his kingdom even if he claims to be
ruler of the world. Kings of other kingdoms could rightly object to the latter
claim by insisting that another king’s authority extends only to the borders of
that king’s realm. This does not invalidate the meaning of “ruler of the world”
within that realm, just as “God is omnipresent and omnipotent” has meaning in
the religious domain even though science and other domains, including
metaphysics, psychology, and history, do not yield to the authority that is in
the religious realm. Paradoxically, by overreaching, the credibility of that
authority is diminished even within the religious domain. In the film, the
validity of Cole’s dissection of a willing corpse is stronger than that of the
religious decree against “desecrating” human corpses regardless of any benefits
from it in other domains. The egocentric over-reaching of religion can be
likened to a bully, who, once made transparent, is typically viewed as less
than credible.
The gap between whether Cole
(and Sina) should be applauded or punished is so large that they can be said to
manifest from different social realities. Cole and Sina heal the Shah as a
result of Cole’s dissection and his teaching thereof to a very enthusiastic
Sina, yet the local imam ignores or dismisses the value of this progress and
its benefit—perhaps not just for religious reasons as he is politically against
the ruling Shah. Cole utterly dismisses the validity of the Imam’s ruling and
sentencing on the basis of Cole and Sina having offended or violated Allah.
Whereas Cole and Sina may have been religious, the narrow, and one-sided ruling
makes sure that even if the two men survive, they would never be fully
religious again. Running a hospital as a physician back in London at the end of
the film, Rob Cole surely looks at religion itself more skeptically than he did
before hearing the imam’s narrow ruling.
The upshot is that confining
the authority and validity of religion to its own domain so it does not
over-reach with the presumption of legitimately being able to overrule the
innate authorities in other domains in those domains is a good thing. This
does not mean that the distinctly religious belief that a deity is
sovereign without limitation is rendered invalid in the religious domain.
Likewise, claims that everything is political and religion is really just
psychology (e.g., Freud) or a function of means of production (e.g., Marx) are
valid only in the domains of psychology and economic philosophy, respectively.
Religionists are not the only guilty party in terms of over-extending the
authority of their domain onto others even over the authorities in those
domains. Within a given domain, I contend that the substance and criteria of
the domain is worthy of respect in itself rather than as a subsidiary of
another domain’s substance and criteria. Disrespect in this respect may even contribute
towards a mental habit that thwarts interreligious dialogue and peace. Even
respect between people may be diminished.
In the film, Hope Gap
(2019), Grace attempts to use the Roman Catholic Church’s religious injunction
of legal divorce to undercut the validity of her separated husband’s
request for a divorce. Edward’s request is unhinged from any reality, Grace
insists (as if by even her faith she is omniscient with respect to realities). That
she has been contemplating suicide suggests that she may be the person untethered
from a viable reality. From the standpoint of a legal system of a country, the
religious dictate of one party of a marital separation should not be allowed to
overrule a law that permits divorce even if the counterparty (Edward) is
religious. In the office of a lawyer, the substance and criteria of the law
should prevail, just as the substance and criteria of distinctly religious
meaning should prevail in the office of a priest, imam, minister, or rabbi. Those
four functionaries have much more in common, being in and of the same domain,
than they may realize. In fact, they could help each other to resist the power-aggrandizing
temptation to overreach their religious authority in usurping the authority of
authorities in other domains. Then the substance and unique criteria of the religious
domain of human experience would be more respected. At the very least, humility
and self-discipline—“coloring within the lines”—naturally earns respect.
Lest this critique be misconstrued as secular in nature, the upshot is that the stuff “within the lines” of the religious domain (i.e., distinctly religious phenomena, such as religious meaning that does not depend on history or science, as is not reducible to ethics or psychology) deserves to be uncovered from underneath the weeds that have hitherto been allowed to grow and even thrive from seeds that have drifted over from other gardens. In the film, the imam may not even understand what desecration means in a religious sense, and yet he is quick to interlard a religious belief as if it deserved to be decisive and thus hegemonic in the political and (related) jurisprudential domains. Similarly, I wonder whether people who deem themselves capable of accusing others of committing abominations as if the word itself warrants death know that the word only means “disliked by God.” This is distinct from “hated by God,” of which evil unequivocally qualifies. To be sure, in the religious domain, such activities that are disliked by the deity are not recommended, for the actual point is likely to obey God, but the commonly held dire connotations of the word as if dislike were equivalent to hate misses the mark and yet precisely such “making mole hills into mountains” has given rise to much suffering and harm historically. The sheer presumptuous of ignorance and what it feels entitled to, is, I suppose, hated rather than merely disliked from the perspective of the very condition of existence, or Creation, even when that condition or ultimacy is personified as a deity with divine attributes even if they anthropomorphic in appearance. Film has amazing potential as a medium through which such thoughts can be projected and put in dialogue with some depth and extent beyond what is typically done by filmmakers who want to hurry a plot as if skipping a stone quickly on the surface of a lake.
