I'm afraid the Obama administration embarrassed itself recently. How? By siding with Egypt in an attempt to limit criticism of religion. At the UN, the US actually joined with a ragged band of Muslim dictatorships to pass a resolution which condemns "attacks on religion". And it's not violent attacks they are worried about. They are talking about the kind of "attacks" I serve up here in my Sunday School:
In the resolution, the administration aligned itself with Egypt, which has long been criticized for prosecuting artists, activists and journalists for insulting Islam. For example, Egypt recently banned a journal that published respected poet Helmi Salem merely because one of his poems compared God to a villager who feeds ducks and milks cows. The Egyptian ambassador to the U.N., Hisham Badr, wasted no time in heralding the new consensus with the U.S. that "freedom of expression has been sometimes misused" and showing that the "true nature of this right" must yield government limitations.
His U.S. counterpart, Douglas Griffiths, heralded "this joint project with Egypt" and supported the resolution to achieve "tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." While not expressly endorsing blasphemy prosecutions, the administration departed from other Western allies in supporting efforts to balance free speech against the protecting of religious groups.
This is the latest push in an effort to immunize religious extremists from criticism that has been noted before by British columnist Johann Hari:
Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community".
In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.
Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN's Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech – including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets". The council agreed – so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.
Anything which can be deemed "religious" is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN – and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah "will not happen" and "Islam will not be crucified in this council" – and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.
Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest – but the Shariah police declared it was "un-Islamic" and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country's most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.
To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women's, those children's, this blogger's – or their oppressors'?
Consider just a few such Western "blasphemy" cases in the past two years:
• In Holland, Dutch prosecutors arrested cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot for insulting Christians and Muslims with cartoons, including one that caricatured a Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist as zombies who want to marry and attend gay rallies.
• In Canada, the Alberta human rights commission punished the Rev. Stephen Boission and the Concerned Christian Coalition for anti-gay speech, not only awarding damages but also censuring future speech that the commission deems inappropriate.
• In Italy, comedian Sabina Guzzanti was put under criminal investigation for joking at a rally that "in 20 years, the pope will be where he ought to be — in hell, tormented by great big poofter (gay) devils, and very active ones."
• In London, an aide to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was arrested for "inciting religious hatred" at his gym by shouting obscenities about Jews while watching news reports of Israel's bombardment of Gaza.Also, Dutch politician Geert Wilders was barred from entering Britain as a "threat to public policy, public security or public health" because he made a movie describing the Quran as a "fascist" book and Islam as a violent religion.
• In Poland, Catholic magazine Gosc Niedzielny was fined $11,000 for inciting "contempt, hostility and malice"by comparing the abortion of a woman to the medical experiments at Auschwitz.
The "blasphemy" cases include the prosecution of writers for calling Mohammed a "pedophile" because of his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha (which was consummated when she was 9). A far-right legislator in Austria, a publisher in India and a city councilman in Finland have been prosecuted for repeating this view of the historical record.
In the flipside of the cartoon controversy, Dutch prosecutors this year have brought charges against the Arab European League for a cartoon questioning the Holocaust.
What's next?Private companies and institutions are following suit in what could be seen as responding to the Egyptian-U.S. call for greater "responsibility" in controlling speech. For example, in an act of unprecedented cowardice and self-censorship, Yale University Press published The Cartoons That Shook the World, a book by Jytte Klausen on the original Mohammed cartoons. Yale, however, (over Klausen's objections) cut the actual pictures of the cartoons. It was akin to publishing a book on the Sistine Chapel while barring any images of the paintings.
Well, I call bullshit. Free speech is already limited. We have libel laws, which prevent you from spreading harmful lies. We have confidentiality clauses which keep information about your private affairs out of public view. And we have laws that prohibit you from inciting others to commit criminal acts. We do not need any restrictions on blasphemy. It is simply ludicrous hypocrisy to say that you want free speech - but not for people who say things you find disgusting. It is not illegal to be an asshole, nor should it be. The whole point of free speech is to protect those who voice opinions that are unpopular.
Johann Hari puts it rather well:
All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.
I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of "prejudice" or "ignorance", but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.
When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.
But why are religious sensitivities so much more likely to provoke demands for censorship than, say, political sensitivities? The answer lies in the nature of faith. If my views are challenged I can, in the end, check them against reality. If you deregulate markets, will they collapse? If you increase carbon dioxide emissions, does the climate become destabilised? If my views are wrong, I can correct them; if they are right, I am soothed.
But when the religious are challenged, there is no evidence for them to consult. By definition, if you have faith, you are choosing to believe in the absence of evidence. Nobody has "faith" that fire hurts, or Australia exists; they know it, based on proof. But it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason. It's easier to demand the source of the pesky doubt be silenced.
But a free society cannot be structured to soothe the hardcore faithful. It is based on a deal. You have an absolute right to voice your beliefs – but the price is that I too have a right to respond as I wish. Neither of us can set aside the rules and demand to be protected from offence.
You have no inalienable right to go through life without being offended. If you can't stand the fact that others don't respect your religion, you can crawl back to the middle ages where you belong.
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Comments
Well, I guess I means (as in the internet free-for-all) we just have to put up with the horrible comments so we can make our own...
We don't need to shut them up. It's easy to refute such opinions with reasoned arguments. And remember that people who argued that gays and Jews should have equal rights were themselves victims of censorship in earlier times. Many found those opinions disgusting as well, but it's a good thing that they were expressed. Tolerance is not a one-way street.
I haven't looked deeply but it might just be an accident (one that I am happy for) that prevents the U.S. from enacting a blasphemy law.
The Bill of Rights was put into our Constitution to protect the states from Federal interference. So the first amendment reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
It doesn't say that the states can't regulate speech, just that the Federal government can't do so. Later the bill of rights was found to apply against the states, not just the Feds by way of the VIVth Amendment--a state was prohibited from violating free speech.
And there I note the difference with Europe. Germany, for example, declares that every person has the right to express themselves freely:
"Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate their opinions in speech, writing, and pictures and to inform themself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honor."
In Europe, a personal right is granted by the constitution, which is then limited as needed.
By accident (or brilliance) our law doesn't grant us any right. The right is a given. It prohibits the government from infringing, carte blanche (subject to very few exceptions).
Thanks for the post. I hadn't heard about these blasphemy laws or considered why they are unconstitutional in the US but not the EU--I think it's because the original colonies wanted the power to regulate speech, e.g. the Puritans wanted to regulate everything.
Now there's an irony I can live with.