Have we definitively entered the age of prohibitions? This question certainly has its basis. A problem arises? Solving it would take too much time. Considering a consultation would require too much energy. Probably too many uncertainties. Too much “human” involvement as well. Caught in the spiral of reactive immediacy, illusorily interpreted as a sign of power, the absolute weapon of prohibitive measures is brandished.
The latest example: spanking! Twenty out of forty-seven member countries of the Council of Europe have already banned it. Besides Sweden thirty years ago, others like Greece, Spain, and Romania have done so more recently. France is preparing for it ever since a proposal in this regard by UMP deputy Edwige Antier, who considers corporal punishment as “an affront to the dignity of the child.” There’s no need to question the vast array of gestures and signs dogmatically perceived as repressive before being considered educational, nor to study the individual and emotional development of the little one or the specific conditions of parental authority: no longer distinguishing between the brutal slap that should indeed be condemned and the mild tap whose stunning effect – and certainly not traumatic – could still serve the child in building themselves. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The universal proscription, for which the legislator makes themselves a timid accomplice, inhibits the potential interventions of domestic authority: subsequently, we will painfully lament over the resignation of parents!
Ultimately, it is with this spanking as it is with the prohibition of alcohol for Muslims. A Grand Mufti from a Middle Eastern country once confided to the author of these lines the story – undoubtedly a parable – of the Surah in the Quran whose interpretation prohibits alcohol consumption: “O believers! Do not approach prayer while you are intoxicated, until you understand what you say…” (Surah 4, Verse 43). Initially, this high-ranking Islamic dignitary explained to me, the faithful were supposed to judge for themselves when to stop drinking to avoid the risk of blaspheming during their prayer. Alas! Man rarely knows his own limits, and the disastrous results of this free will led, according to him, to the lowest common denominator: universal prohibition. In this field, as in others, we know what became of it.
