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Freedom of Speech
Mar. 6th, 2009 03:48 pmhttp://www.thenation.com/doc/20090309/pollitt
Happy Twentieth Anniversary, Salman Rushdie fatwa! ... Many book burnings, riots, firebombings and deaths later ... it would be nice to say that the world has learned what happens when freedom of speech and thought is subordinated to religious authority.
In fact, the lesson seems to be the opposite: careful, you might hurt the feelings of the faithful. Oh, and they might kill you.
... left-wing British journalist Johann Hari ... provoked the wrath of the believers when a column he wrote for the Independent, "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?" was reprinted in the Indian newspaper the Statesman on February 5. Hari chronicled the decade-long campaign of Islamist theocrats (with the support of the Vatican and Christian fundamentalists) to insulate religion from criticism at the United Nations. This campaign has borne fruit: the UN Council on Human Rights has directed its rapporteur to busy himself not with attacks on freedom of speech but with "abuses of free expression," including "defamation of religions and prophets." Hari pulled no punches: "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." Hari's column caused--surprise!--violent riots; what is more shocking, and more unusual, is that Indian authorities arrested the editor and the publisher of the paper for "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims.
Appeals to the hurt feelings of religious people are just a dodge to protect the antidemocratic and retrograde policies of religious states and organizations. We're all adults; we have to live with unwelcome expression every day. What's so special about religion that it should be uniquely cocooned? After all, nobody at the UN is suggesting that atheists should be protected from offense--let alone women, gays, leftists or other targets popular with the faithful. What about our feelings? How can it be logical to say that women can't point out sexism in the Bible or the Koran but clerics can use those texts to declare women inferior, unclean and in need of male control? And what about all the abuses religions heap on one another as an integral part of their "faith"?
The clerics fight so hard to control speech because they know they are losing minds and hearts. Twenty years after the Satanic Verses fatwa, it's more than ever Rushdie's world--globalized, fluid, culturally impure. The fanatics just live there.
Happy Twentieth Anniversary, Salman Rushdie fatwa! ... Many book burnings, riots, firebombings and deaths later ... it would be nice to say that the world has learned what happens when freedom of speech and thought is subordinated to religious authority.
In fact, the lesson seems to be the opposite: careful, you might hurt the feelings of the faithful. Oh, and they might kill you.
... left-wing British journalist Johann Hari ... provoked the wrath of the believers when a column he wrote for the Independent, "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?" was reprinted in the Indian newspaper the Statesman on February 5. Hari chronicled the decade-long campaign of Islamist theocrats (with the support of the Vatican and Christian fundamentalists) to insulate religion from criticism at the United Nations. This campaign has borne fruit: the UN Council on Human Rights has directed its rapporteur to busy himself not with attacks on freedom of speech but with "abuses of free expression," including "defamation of religions and prophets." Hari pulled no punches: "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." Hari's column caused--surprise!--violent riots; what is more shocking, and more unusual, is that Indian authorities arrested the editor and the publisher of the paper for "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims.
Appeals to the hurt feelings of religious people are just a dodge to protect the antidemocratic and retrograde policies of religious states and organizations. We're all adults; we have to live with unwelcome expression every day. What's so special about religion that it should be uniquely cocooned? After all, nobody at the UN is suggesting that atheists should be protected from offense--let alone women, gays, leftists or other targets popular with the faithful. What about our feelings? How can it be logical to say that women can't point out sexism in the Bible or the Koran but clerics can use those texts to declare women inferior, unclean and in need of male control? And what about all the abuses religions heap on one another as an integral part of their "faith"?
The clerics fight so hard to control speech because they know they are losing minds and hearts. Twenty years after the Satanic Verses fatwa, it's more than ever Rushdie's world--globalized, fluid, culturally impure. The fanatics just live there.
