December 03, 2008
On Secularism and Freedom of the Press: The Jyllands-Posten Cartoons Revisited
Webb Keane in the Immanent Frame:
By focusing on freedom of the press rather than social relations, the defenders of the newspaper could count on a family of common sense views of what pictures and words are, and how they function in the world. They tapped into a widespread and habitual way of thinking that treats representational acts as referential and communicative in function. In this view, pictures and words are vehicles (and in the case of words, arbitrary social conventions) for information, itself a distinct entity that stands apart from persons and their actions.
This view is not the only one found in the Euro-American world, nor should we imagine that the sense of offence some Muslims expressed is fundamentally alien to “the West,” as American reactions to the “Piss Christ” artwork make clear. We should also not assume it arises from some sensitivity peculiar to religious faith, as American responses to flag-burning and Spanish laws against lèse majesté show. But it does have a privileged relationship to the moral narrative of modernity, in particular to those strands associated with liberal thought and the concepts of freedom associated with them. It is implicit in John Stuart Mill’s classic defense of press freedom, according to which the reader should evaluate the message and ask how well it fares in competition with the alternatives, which determines whether we should accept it as true.
Matthew Noah Smith and Bruce Robbins respond in the comments section. Smith:
No one reasonably can deny that speaking and publishing are actions. Uttering sentences and printing text (or images) are actions par excellence. They are subject to all the normal practical considerations to which other actions are subject. For, as a formal matter (i.e., abstracting from the particulars), whether I ought to say something (or print something) or do something else is no different a question than whether I ought to run to catch the bus or just walk and wait for the next bus. In all cases, what is at issue is intentional behavior.
So, Keane surely cannot mean that defenders of the printing and publication of the Danish cartoons (or utterers of offensive speech) believe that printing and speaking are not actions in this sense. If he does mean this, then the target of his objections above is a particularly dimwitted crew.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 03:18 PM | Permalink
Comments
"...[N]or should we imagine that the sense of offence some Muslims expressed is fundamentally alien to 'the West,' as American reactions to the “Piss Christ” artwork make clear."
Well hardly: the comparison is invidious. The reaction to "Piss Christ" was largely "how stupid" and those who were offended didn't storm through the streets. That being said, the reaction among cosmopolitan Muslims to the Danish cartoons was much the same, as indeed it was to Rushdie's "Satanic Verses."
(It somewhat surprised me that Pakistani friends even found "The Satanic Verses" offensive; they did, but only mildly so; their reaction was discomfort, not outrage. I had to respect their view, lacking their acuity as to the relevant parts of the novel. You will recall that the book burnings that generally publicised the matter were in Bradford and the British Asian Savonarolas were hardly likely to have read the book.)
That being said, many Muslims obviously were grievously offended. And as with the concept of the "thin skull" in criminal law -- one is as culpable for a trivial act which uninentionally results in gross injury in the susceptible as for a more drastic act which results in such consequence for a hardier victim -- everyone ought to be aware these days that it is folly to exercise one's freedom of speech to blaspheme Islam. (The very concept of blasphemy seems quaint in a western context; I was recently asked to explain just what it is. My questioner being an observant Muslim, I took care that my examples were in reference to Jesus and Mary but then ventured also to refer very delicately to the unfortunate Pakistani medical professor on death row in Rawalpindi for adverting to the Prophet's likely circumcision status prior to age 40).
This is the reality; trivial comparisons to situations in the West which may be similar in principle are not useful other than to highlight the practical difference. A more useful comparison might be an Orange Day parade through Catholic parts of Belfast in the 1970s. What's the harm in a non-violent demonstration? Or in some silly editorial cartoons? Well, in context, they're thuggish and they might well give deep offence and even provoke violence: that's the harm.
Posted by: Mac | Dec 3, 2008 5:51:16 PM
Mac, if you are suggesting that people ought to take into account Islam's special skill set for affecting disproportionate grievance and think twice before giving a valid opinion or pun, you have it EXACTLY backwards.
If Islam wishes to exist on a modern globe it needs to nullify that portion of its ranks that believes words are inherently dangerous, just as other religions have done in whole or part. Freedom of speech is the backbone of a free society.
As the saying goes, "blaspheming - it's a victimless crime". The sooner they learn the truth of this the sooner we can all move forward to a more enlightened and peaceful era, if that's not too idealistic.
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 3, 2008 7:07:11 PM
From the time of the fatwa against Rushdie, I've been trying to arrive at a coherent position on this topic. Can those of us -- me included -- who get seriously wrought up over censorship, who make a big issue of it whenever freedom of speech is chipped away at, really attempt no understanding of what it is to be hideously offended when something crucial to a different kind of person's sense of justice and rightness is trashed?
I see freedom of speech as a paramount good, even when use of that freedom offends me, as did the the Barry Blitt New Yorker cover of a few months back, showing the Obamas as armed and Muslim. I am wondering what response would be assertive enough if the Christianists, or the fundamentalist Muslims, tried to take that freedom from me. Would they see me as "affecting disproportionate grievance" over something they think is important only to me and my kind? Does my right to a different world view cut any ice with them? Or, do I just need to get with the program -- get with the pogrom, a friend calls it -- grow up culturally, and assent to fewer freedoms in the name of a greater good which I do not recognize? After all, if this could happen, it would mean "my" culture, the culture I understand to be true and just, was no longer the regnant culture. And that would be my big chance to find out what a Westernized, educated woman in Iran feels like when she is forced to wear the veil. I would be offended and enraged to my core, and no action I could take to make the world right again would seem too extreme.
But, do people on the precise opposite side from me have no right to strong feelings, even extreme reactions, because they are merely superstitious, miseducated, and entirely retardataire? Perhaps they're even "tribal" -- as who is not. I am sure it must have occurred to many outraged demonstrators among the fundamentalist Muslims who live in Western Europe that the law of the land that gave them the right to vent their outrage over the cartoons in public and call for any measures they saw fit likewise gave the cartoonists the right to think and draw and publish. Has it occurred to them, however, to be grateful that no one seeks to take their outrage from them, declaring it both trifling and illegal? Has it occurred to them that only in a free society may they be heard and not punished, and -- it is hoped -- understood?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 3, 2008 10:06:52 PM
Maybe I'm looking at this too simply, but you would hope that newspapers speak truth to power. Instead they speak smack to the oppressed.
Posted by: pebird | Dec 3, 2008 10:11:12 PM
Hello,
A humble request...
Do you, by any chance, happen to know who Secret Dubai (the blogger: secretdubai.blogspot.com) is?
http://whoissecretdubai.blogspot.com/
Posted by: whoissecretdubai | Dec 3, 2008 10:15:14 PM
Elatia,
Good thinking. All you need now is data to verify.
Just walk into a few Mosques and ask. Look at some Muslim thinkers like Tariq Ramadan etc.
It's not freedom of expression that offends us. It's the lack of sincerity, wrong information, double standard, and prejudices (actively encouraged for political considerations) that offends us.
I can elaborate if you think that'll help.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 3, 2008 10:51:02 PM
Something wrong. My comment disappeared!
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 3, 2008 11:00:47 PM
Elatia,
I have to agree with Manas. The problem is not freedom of expression per se, but the perceived hypocrisy that attends it. The impregnable sanctity of that particular freedom in the Western world view, the way it has defined itself as above the fray of content, is felt as just one more condescension, and a refusal to engage on a level playing field. I say this not as a Muslim (which I'm not) but as a writer much attached to my own freedom of expression and a Westernized, educated Iranian woman who feels only mild discomfort, not offended rage, when obliged to wear hejab. Yes, it really is about growing up culturally, swallowing a healthy dose of relativism, and *then* finding a moral compass that doesn't rely on any one definition of "true and just" but works wherever you happen to be on this globe.
Posted by: Zara | Dec 4, 2008 12:21:46 AM
Elatia, well put. That is obviously the way one should first weigh up issues like this - by an honest striving to stand in the other's shoes as it were.
But that said, your last paragraph sums it up nicely. They are using the very freedom they condemn to achieve their condemnation. Not to mention that (in the cartoon case) it came carefully crafted months after the initial publication, as I understand it. I think what it boils down to is that if real people are being harmed or endangered in some way by the 'speaker', there may be grounds for curbing that freedom somewhat. However, it could not be clearer in the cartoon issue that no one is harmed that does not choose thus to be.
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 4, 2008 12:50:19 AM
Manas Shaikh,
Write in in again, please! It will help if you elaborate, and I'm sorry the software gobbled up your full comment. I'll work with what's there, however.
It's not as if I lack for Muslims in my life, trust me. So I was writing from a point of view that is not entirely parochial. (I do lack for friends and colleagues who are Muslim fundamentalists, though.) I read, too -- Tariq Ramadan, among others. My opinion may be based on information you would find fault with, but it is not based on ignorance -- or cussedness.
You write: "It's not freedom of expression that offends us. It's the lack of sincerity, wrong information, double standard, and prejudices (actively encouraged for political considerations) that offends us."
So Western editorial cartoonists would be welcome to treat their subjects in a non-ironic, non-sarcastic, truthful, brotherly way, a way that scored points respectfully while refraining from political agitation? I'm sorry, we're talking about editorial cartooning, not Christian Rock. The test of whether there is freedom of expression is whether someone is free to express what offends you and me, not what we find accurate and appropriate. I personally find the cartoons in question repulsive in motivation and effect. But people going too far is one of the hazards of living in a free society. When all is said and done, it compares favorably with the Thought Police. I choose the abuses of freedom over the abuses of repression, that's all. And I would not want to live in a society that tried to repress outrage at the content of free speech, either. Muslims and others -- including rather often me -- who are offended by the offensive are welcome to their outrage.
Do you think the protests are mainly about the cartoonists and their newspapers being legally permitted such liberties as to offend against any religion? Or are the protests strictly confined to showing how very offensive the perfectly legal content was to Muslims? What I gathered, perhaps mistakenly, is that the protesters were seeking exceptional redress as Muslims who deeply felt a sacrilege had taken place, a sacrilege as bad as if a Muslim had drawn something mocking and filthy. I can see that if Muslim law were enforceable in Europe, the cartoonists would have done a very bad thing, with penalties. But that isn't the law, so the cartoonists are "merely" horribly offensive.
If you want to protest a failure of empathy, brotherhood and common decency, if you want to ask why hatred fomented by derision is tolerable even if it is legal, then those questions have wide and serious applications for a pluralistic, free society. In my view, they go deeper than offendedness on religious grounds, and would apply to outrages against minorities that are not Muslim, too.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 4, 2008 12:55:22 AM
Elatia rocks!
Posted by: Namit | Dec 4, 2008 1:27:22 AM
Zara,
Thanks, that's helpful. Denmark being a more free society in the special way we're talking about than the US, I don't think there has to be anything monolithic -- "impregnable sanctity," as you put it -- about the freedoms enjoyed in the West. But this hateful situation occurred in Denmark, and was ornamented at the time by a lot of morally blind commentary from Danes who simply couldn't imagine what the problem was, even, so far "above the fray of content" were they.
You write, "Yes, it really is about growing up culturally, swallowing a healthy dose of relativism, and *then* finding a moral compass that doesn't rely on any one definition of "true and just" but works wherever you happen to be on this globe." That would be a good thing for Westerners, though few of us without a cultural conversion experience would leave our shibboleths utterly behind. Would you say it was the protesters here who were relying on one definition of true and just? The Danish newspapermen? I think the point is by now made that the cartoons are off-the-charts offensive to Muslims, whether or not the Danes want to see it that way. Maybe the condescension comes in because Denmark belongs to the Danes, and being under no pressure to adapt, they won't readily feel another's pain. But I would have appreciated some cultural relativism from Muslims, too -- the kind that would have allowed them to perceive that the Danes did not have the right bearings to see how execrable the cartoons were, and did not intend an execration.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 4, 2008 1:31:15 AM
As an aside, I'll respect the right to be outrageously and disproportionately offended by some pencil doodlings, just as soon as the Islamic community passes a modicum of respect down the line to its VERY OWN WOMEN. The day they are allowed to pursue their dreams as individuals, become educated to the same standard as their Western counterparts, learn science, wear what they like, see who they please, marry who they want, vote in all state matters and disagree freely with the male members of their family without fear of real or tacit intimidation - that's the day we can talk meaningfully about respect. Until then, I'll politely decline the offer to have our hard-won freedom of speech held hostage to the intimidatory tactics of a bullying and backward few.
Incidently, where the hell are all their feminist sisters on these issues? Seems there might be something to this intimidation thing...
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 4, 2008 2:07:53 AM
Elatia,
The first comment disappeared for some spooky reason. It reappeared moment I published the second. Nothing is lost.
To the issue.
In hindsight, I can understand why you were offended. I did not mean that you know no Muslim or their opinions. What I was trying to say is that even conservative cirles among Muslims are happy about the freedom they have. And they wholeheartedly say that they regret the lack of freedom of speech in many Muslim countries. Some even go as far as saying that many Western countries are more Islamic than many "Islamic" countries. Those who want to stop Westerners from speaking in their own country are nuts and very rare. Unfortunately, the news media focuses on these people because they make good stories.
(That's another interesting matter. For example, most parents worry their children being kidnapped. They don't worry so much about them swimming or driving. Turns out, they face more danger from their swimming pools than strangers. "Boy drowns" does not make a good headline. "Girl rescued three states away" does. "Girl kept in basement for five years" is an even "better" story. All this creates an impression in the listener's subconscious.)
However racism/Islamophobia is being safeguarded under the pretext of safeguarding freedom of speech and Muslim voices are systematically being censored. I shall explain later.
Let me first clarify that I am offended/disturbed does not mean I am supporting any calls of global terrorism. I am not. In fact I find it rather offending that we need to clarify that so many times, even though it should be common knowledge.
Many of those who were offended by the cartoons/Satanic Verses or whatever were not actually coming out in outrage until quite some time after their publication. That is especially true for the cartoons. Here's why.
In the cartoon issue, Muslims just ignored the cartoons at first. However, some racist elements found them very entertaining, and kept harping them on and on.
Muslims responded by writing, and trying to reach out. It was ignored by most of the media. People tend to filter out what they do not agree with or do not find interesting. (Did you know that "Piss Christ" deeply offended Muslims too?)
It adds to the frustration that Muslims do not control most of the media. Therefore the point of view of the Media is at least a non-Muslim point of view and sometimes anti-Muslim. (Same is true for many other groups. The Chinese for example.)
So those who were merely disturbed by the cartoons now were angered as they felt this was being used to fan hatred against Muslims. The tales of Muhammad they wanted to tell the public like the incident when he forgives a woman who threw dirt on his way every day- were not published.
Unable to vent their point of view through media, they took to the streets. They were joined by the few vandals, who, were outraged.
Predictably the vandals made good news story. What happened, and this is what really angers us, is that people like Elatia Harris did not hear us because the microphone was given to the hardliners to generate exactly the same kind of response that it has.
In the case of Piss Christ, those who were disturbed expressed their disturbance at first. In contrast with the cartoon case, that news found it's way to the news outlets. Therefore there was no 2nd. Note, that this time too, Muslims said that they did not like the paintings. (Muslims hold Christ in high regard too.) And they were duly ignored.
Recall that the grandson of Gandhi lost his job for criticizing Israel, and was branded anti-Semitic.
It is not that Muslims want special treatment. They are already "special." All that they want is being unlisted from the list of "specials."
I am not blaming you. We need people like you with us to solve this problem.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 4, 2008 2:11:11 AM
I wrote about the Danish cartoons soon after they were published. If you want to see that essay, it is here.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Dec 4, 2008 2:14:15 AM
As an aside- I am a believing, practicing Muslim.
Why, then, do I hang around 3QD?
Well, the problem is in the question itself. Many believing practicing Muslims are very open to listen, and are willing to share.
Simply put, I hang around here because here is an environment where discussion is free and fair. In short- here is freedom of speech.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 4, 2008 2:18:36 AM
Ah, but MattInOz (do I assume that your name indicates that you are in Australia?) you obviously don't have much contact with our American friends in places like Oklahoma and Missouri, where many votes are. Australians and all other westerners need to acquaint themselves with the minutiae of the American set-up. As should have Mr Howard. The doctrine of the Separation of Powers vastly exercised the High Court of Australia in its first few decades; they never did quite figure it out.
Posted by: Mac | Dec 4, 2008 2:23:44 AM
(Cf James Bartleman's memoirs -- he the aboriginal foreign affairs advisor to Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien -- in which he wryly recalls his boss having explained the doctrine of the Separation of Powers to his European counterparts, with its implications as to an
American president's limitations. Mr Clinton's underlings promptly phoned Mr Bartleman and tore strips off him ("How dare you disclose...?") Well...at least they were tearing strips off a Canadian, who knew what they were talking about. An Australian would have been entirely baffled.
Posted by: Mac | Dec 4, 2008 2:33:18 AM
Abbas,
You said it very well. That was very closely what I was trying to say.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 4, 2008 2:45:31 AM
"If Islam wishes to exist on a modern globe...."
Ah, but it clearly does. (Where has Mattinoz been for the last decade?) It is obviously up to the rest of us to try and figure out where it's coming from and what its agenda might be, since Islam so obviously does exist on a modern globe.
Posted by: Mac | Dec 4, 2008 8:52:15 AM
I find myself sufficiently exasperated to just take my veneration of the Millian account of free speech - the idea that we have something approaching a duty to engage/consider speech that offends us, and that no third party may condescend to decide for me what I cannot be trusted to think about - call it a sacred value of my own and be done with it.
Indeed, they are for me as close to non-negotiable any political values can be. The secret ballot I can reconsider, also one man one vote, and varying conceptions of rights and obligations across national borders certainly, but this I probably am stuck with. I certainly won't reconsider in the interest of understanding and empathizing with people who threaten to blow up in my face if I won't, particularly since I don't think that highly of the beliefs in question to begin with.
So there it is; they have sacred values. Well, so do I. They have cultural perspectives? Wonderful, now we have something in common. Let them take on some of this tortured hand-wringing about how evil it is to offend people and their cherished beliefs, and how grotesque it is to blaspheme the blessed name of St. Mill.
It'd be wonderful of course if we could do all this debate and criticism and self-criticism freely, openly and fearlessly. Hmm, I wonder who that sounds like...
Posted by: D | Dec 4, 2008 9:26:31 AM
"I certainly won't reconsider in the interest of understanding and empathizing with people who threaten to blow up in my face if I won't"
What about those who don't threaten but gently tells you that the ideas conveyed by the cartoons are wrong, D?
Nobody is arguing the idea of free speech here. Nobody is talking about blowing up in your face here.
People, note how the microphone was handed to the hardliners with that statement of D? Even if D did not do that intentionally.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 4, 2008 10:11:17 AM
Manas Shaikh,
The "hardlining" effect you noticed was in fact quite consciously and deliberately sought. To paint with an even broader brush than I've already deployed: yes it is important to understand other perspectives. It is also important to know what you yourself stand for, and damn it, stand up for it.
A background assumption of the Immanent Frame debate is that the liberal American response to these flare-ups possessed too much chest-thumping and too little hand-wringing. I don't think this begins to be a sensible characterization of that response. I'd have given a lot for just one Times editorial in those days to've said "There are ideals we won't compromise on, in particular that the beliefs of Islam are as subject to caricature, satire and outright ridicule as those of any other belief of any sort. If the protesters have a problem with that, they can go boil their heads off." Well, more diplomatically than that, but just that. No bending-over-backwards stuff.
Then, that established, they could have had editorials side-by-side (though then consistency might require similar tut-tutting editorials whenever Christian evangelicals, creationists, Scientologists, alien abductees, PETA supporters, capitalists, anti-circumcision advocates and socialists were mocked) explaining how, say, the terrorist Muhammad cartoon was wrong. I saw the second editorial done over and over in different ways. The first became a right-wing talking point, of all things.
Obviously I am more hardline than you. I don't regard that as a defect of my position. I'm not so enamored of nuance as to regard every us-vs-them response as unequivocally bad/stupid. You, who celebrate free speech and open discourse (you didn't have to tell me that everyone here believes in free speech; I think that's clearly true) are an "us" for my purposes, while Islamic Rage Boy is a "them". That you may think (often rightly IMO) he's unfairly portrayed and that his grievances are misunderstood is, in the context of such blow-ups as Danish Cartoon or Satanic Verses fatwa, simply a matter of indifference to me.
Posted by: D | Dec 4, 2008 11:37:12 AM
Abbas, THANKS for linking to that post. I hope anyone who missed it will click back to it. It was the right stuff then and it is now.
Manas, I've reread this thread to try to discover how I, personally, gave you grounds for writing the following sentence. "What happened, and this is what really angers us, is that people like Elatia Harris did not hear us because the microphone was given to the hardliners to generate exactly the same kind of response that it has." I think that by not remarking at some point that I understood Muslims did not think and act "as one," I truly created room for your interpretation of my words -- that there might be a single Muslim point of view, with the demonstrators its proponents, their reactions necessarily typical. I thought it was implicit that I knew better than that, but if you wrote to assure readers you were a Muslim who felt no solidarity with Islamist fanatics, then I probably should have been as clear that I make the crucial distinction between religious people of any faith, and violent people who use their faith as a vehicle of rage. I don't in the least believe the latter differ from the former only in being more upfront, and I agree with you about who gets the attention of the media. I am very disturbed that Christian fundamentalism and its legion failures of tolerance and intelligence are on the rise, that the armed religious right is growing even as our schoolchildren arrive at adulthood with lower critical thinking skills than children a generation ago possessed. This looks bad to me, but it doesn't befog the difference between a Christian and a Christianist, or that between a Christianist who's a harmless whack-job praying away snakes and one who's ready, able and eager to kill. If at some point, however, a majority of run-of-the-mill religious people in the US begin to skew Christianist, I will have to conclude that there is by definition a new run-of-the-mill forming up, if only because fanatics cease being fanatics once they achieve high enough numbers, becoming truly a mass movement. It is upon us all to determine if lethal variants of faith are on the rise -- birth rate could be a cue -- and standard-issue, peaceable mainstreams drying up. The difficulty of locating the "real" Christianity or the "real" Islam in such a dynamic context could be far from the worst difficulty that context presents us with.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 4, 2008 6:19:19 PM
Elatia,
Thank you. As for that line- I was not talking about this thread or you specifically- it was a general statement. Perhaps less true for you than others. Whenever Islam or any religion comes up, fanatics tend to be given the center stage. (Look at D's comment above.)
That makes it very difficult to have a fruitful conversation with those who actually agree with us in most matters because they keep harping "freedom of speech!" even though the moderates are not trying to argue against freedom of speech. They are trying to speak why those ideas conveyed (for example, in the cartoons) are wrong and offensive.
Conversations often become futile because people just refuse to come to the issue, they often take the following course:
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 4, 2008 9:38:50 PM
Manas, I think parties to an enormous disagreement tend to focus their energy on wherever they feel gravely threatened, when, as you point out dramatically, they would do better to focus on areas of easy agreement, leading only slowly to that territory where concessions are harder and harder to make. That would be productive.
It's only "about" freedom of speech if you are horrified at the very idea of losing the freedoms most dear to you -- starting with the enactment of special laws protecting special populations from those freedoms' nastiest reaches, and ending...where? In my view, the cartoonists did a wrong and bad thing, but not an illegal thing or a thing that should be illegal. Whether they actually understood that legality did not confer rightness on their actions cannot be known -- but they certainly knew how to dig in. By exactly the same token, the most vociferous Muslim protesters must have felt threatened to their very cores by unspeakable profanation -- never mind that it can't be profanation unless it happens from within -- and by the perfect appearance of legally protected bullying. Small wonder that not too many people dismounted their hobbyhorses that day. I can see how the answer to "Change your laws!" is "Stuff your religion!" I just don't see what good it does, when the very fellow feeling that would have disallowed the cartoonists to draw as they did for publication is lacking, and cannot really be legislated. Lacking, too, is the understanding among Muslim fundamentalists that outsiders cannot properly judge of their own offensiveness to Islam, and are bound to try to judge of such matters only from the kind of fellow feeling too few are capable of. Can any law compel such an understanding? Is it even a job for the law? I think it's a job for education, and an opportunity for everyone to learn that the exercise of restraint need jeopardize neither freedom nor righteousness.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 4, 2008 11:41:06 PM
Manas,
I mean this in an exceedingly open and fruitful kind of way: have you ever considered that whatever it is that is supposed to happen when a god is blasphemed is just a lie, passed down the generations as a (sometimes deliberate, sometimes not) vehicle for controlling people? ie have you tried to look at this from the perspective of people who don't grant credence to any of these superstitious customs and who would prefer people treated each other with respect for good humanistic reasons? Including and especially respect enough to disagree without needing to feel threatened....
I ask you, in other words, to consider the refreshing idea that there's no such thing as blaspheming - it is a human invention and our precious hours and days here on earth would be better given over to other pursuits, especially those that aid others.
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 4, 2008 11:50:23 PM
MattInOz
Yes, I did Matt. I came to the conclusion that that opinion is wrong.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 5, 2008 3:57:23 AM
Manas,
I consider it a good thing then, that you have at least bothered to try to wear the other's shoes - something that can hardly be said of the majority of Islam's adherents (at least the ones I speak to here in Australia).
One of my very close female friends struggled every step of the way against her Islamic family just to achieve her bachelor degree at university and then to marry the person she loves - two of what most civilised people would consider very basic human rights. When objecting strenuously to the insult you feel at the aforementioned blasphemy issue, what words would you have for the typical female Muslim, (in Saudi Arabia say), who expresses indignation at not being allowed her basic human rights? I take it you do agree with me that this is an area where your religion is simply wrong?
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 5, 2008 5:21:40 AM
Matt,
Actually it's not that I have "bothered to try" to be in others' shoes Matt. I converted from Atheism to Islam.
What you have seen about her education is a cultural phenomena. There's not much Islam in it. And these are problems we are trying to work on.
Even though nobody can force you to marry someone, there are guidelines as to who a Muslim can marry.
There is a right and there is a wrong. One's interpretation of religion may be wrong about something. That's very often what happens.
You could be wrong too. I could be wrong too.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 5, 2008 6:31:59 AM
I can't find my comment again!
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 5, 2008 6:40:12 AM
Manas, sometimes it takes a few minutes to show up. Just wait, and it will show up, just as it did last time.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Dec 5, 2008 7:16:27 AM
Thank you Abbas.
Matt,
I think it is important to add that while I shall try to reason with somebody who wants to violate these guidelines (if they do), I shall do not have the right to condemn him/her to hell.
With my limited judgment I can't decide with absolute certainty who's right and who's wrong in a particular matter. (Even though I might have an opinion about it.) The final judgment is to be made by somebody who is far wiser than I am- i.e. God.
In Islam, there is a group who think and you may find this amusing, we say there is a Truth, but we don't* know what it is.
*(In full and with 100% certainty- that is.)
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 5, 2008 7:58:22 AM
I'm sure this thread is not the place to elaborate, but I'm frankly baffled how someone could come from a position of true atheism (that is to say, a full and deep understanding of why religions are universally lacking in their explanatory power, as opposed to religious indifference or apathy) to suddenly declaring their allegiance to a specific set of tenets that demonstrably sprang into existence in the mind of one man less than 1.5 millenia ago out of a total of 4 600 000 millenia. That is a source of genuine bafflement to me.
You and I both agree that there is truth to be discovered, you can even give it a capital T if you like, but I'll bet my bottom dollar the only way a consensus on that truth will be reached will be through science.
At any rate, thanks for engaging my questions.
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 5, 2008 8:54:26 AM
Matt,
I don't think this is a good place to elaborate either. Let's put it this way in brief- the model proposed in Islam seems to fit reality really well.
I am not absolutely sure what true atheism is (just like I am not absolutely sure about what true Islam is), here is what my atheism was. I did not believe in God. I could find no reason why one should believe in God, and did not understand why people would fight for religious identities (which is something I still don't like even though I now understand why people do so.)
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 5, 2008 9:58:02 AM
Manas and Matt,
I don't think belief or non-belief need be a matter of staking out the truth, and planting your flag on that territory and none other. If that were the whole eminently logical idea, we would find lots of people cleaving unto econometrics while disdaining economics. What will never be demonstrable in just that way is how people find meaning and beauty and acceptance of life's blows, or how they find a way to live that answers the needs of their deepest nature. A human being is vaster than a system for taking note of probability and engaging only with the intellectually tidy. A human being is smaller than that, too. While I appreciate that atheism -- or, belief in non-belief -- is morally compelling and deeply stirring to many, its appeal is not purely logical but emotionally profound in terms of courage and clear-sightedness and living by those lights. What's illogical is suggesting the deep needs of believers for courage and wisdom be satisfied in a way that non-believers are comfortable with, when their comfort with that way is a matter of philosophy, and not verifiable. A strong preference for the scientifically factual -- as we understand it -- is a way station, and must be a way station if science is constantly pushing forward to new understandings.
In "Strangeness, Integration and Crisis", a 1975 essay by W.G. Sebald, the writer cites anthropological theory that "assumes that exposure in a treeless situation where all escape upwards was cut off led to the invention of myths." I can only think the same exposure led to science. Treeless, we are seeking grandeur, meaning and shelter, and will be seeking those things long after current understandings of many kinds have been overturned.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 5, 2008 10:42:30 AM
Elatia,
You are right. But seeking truth should be an important factor to consider.
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 5, 2008 5:40:05 PM
Elatia,
While I can fully understand where you are coming from in terms of the individuality of what gives meaning(s) to people's, you cannot always seek shelter in the comforting illusions provided by relativism. Some things either are, or are not true.
The prophet either flew upon the winged steed or he did not; wine either changes its chemical composition to become blood or it does not; people may re-animate post death or they may not...... nature provides these rules and they are demonstrable. It is the temporary suspension of credibility required to believe these things that has me honestly baffled, especially coming from someone claiming previous atheism. May I go so far as to suggest that your history of postings here allow one to make the presumption that you do not believe any of this hogwash either. Yet through your equivocation, you do not discourage its perpetuation in subsequent generations - another position I find baffling. Why is it good enough for you, but not good enough that it's worth engendering in those with less of an education?
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 5, 2008 9:20:08 PM
Matt,
Was the second para addressed to me?
Posted by: Manas Shaikh | Dec 6, 2008 1:02:59 AM
Matt,
Anyone kind enough to read what I write here for philosophical coherence is, well...very kind indeed. But you're quite correct -- I am not a religious person.
Neither do I equivocate about that, however. Not all religious people are purists and literalists, and not all irreligious people are card-carrying atheists in a cocoon of certainty of another stripe. If that makes me neither fish nor fowl, good enough. That which is neither fish nor fowl is a very roomy category, and one of these days you will see you have a foot in it, too. When that happens, I trust you won't cut off the foot.
Somewhere, Camus had a good answer to the question whether he believed in God: "Yes," he said. "Sometimes. Alone. At night." As William James (among other great minds) believed, to say it's an either/or thing is to set the understanding up in a false way. For me to appreciate mystery and think about things I consider holy in no way requires me to believe in winged horses or virgin births; for me to disbelieve in an anthropomorphic God and an individual afterlife in no way requires me to trivialize human endeavor by clownishly repudiating people who see the world differently than I. Religion isn't hogwash -- it's a perception of ultimate reality I don't share. In my view, reason does not provide the answer to every difficulty or the explanation for everything wondrous. Neither does revealed religion. To be human is to live in a discomfort zone, and to not overly mind not being clear-sighted.
Now, you talk as if I were over-educated myself but trying to arrange more MTV for the children, just to keep them down. Hardly! I want them to puzzle things out for themselves, arrive wherever they arrive, and be treated with dignity and perceived in brotherhood. What would you like them to do? Believe what you tell them to believe because it's rational so to do? That is a formidable brand of certainty, and while I don't repudiate it I also don't buy in.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 6, 2008 1:25:56 AM
Hi Manas,
No not at all, was just addressing that to Elatia. Sorry for any confusion.
Matt
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 6, 2008 3:10:53 AM
Elatia,
Of course I would not have them believe whatever I told them - that is what religions ask of the unprepared child mind. I would of course rather that they were taught to assess, on the merits of evidence, that which was put before them.
With an undeniably sound track record, this type of thinkng would much better arm them to live in the world as it really is. I sense you disagree very little with that line of thinking... yet hesitate to trod on too many toes or make too much of a stand for what you see as right. And yes, I would not hesitate to conclude that your education soars above that of the average individual and with it comes at least some responsibility to pass along that which you believe to be worthwhile and progressive.
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 6, 2008 6:49:58 PM
Matt, you're right again! I see no point in giving gratuitous offense over disagreements as to non-verifiable premises. Some of the smartest, best educated people I know are religious -- just not all of them, or even most of them. Preferring dialog with those whose points of view differ from mine is not the same as placating them socially for self-protection or appeasing their craziness while invisibly rolling my eyes. Believe me, I've been in that position, too -- but not since college "Meet the Fine Arts Faculty" events. As for ass-kissing and bending over via social media -- well, isn't it nice that stuff wouldn't count for much here? One reason to use my real name on this (or any) site is to encourage myself never to duck into dubious positions when, instead, I can be merely inconsistent.
I don't think religious faith is something you can be educated away from or dumbed down into. I am not talking about childish faith, which I consider to be perfectly natural to a child so I am not putting it down, but about the awareness of God's presence that some horribly intelligent people carry with them throughout their lives, or develop at some point in their adulthoods, and other horribly intelligent people don't. I make a distinction between the realness of God's presence -- not a thing I see for myself -- and the realness of another person's awareness of it, which I cannot but grant that person. That's not the same as saying to this other person, "Oh, have it your way..." or even making dreaded philosophical concessions. It is to say, "Be who you are."
Late one Christmas Eve long, long, long ago, I was playing in the triple-windowed bedroom of a friend whose house gave onto a lawn leading down to a bluff. The sky was wide and dark and starry. It occurred to me that it was not Santa who rode over it in a sleigh, bearing gifts for all children who had been good. The gifts arrived another way, a way which was suddenly apparent to me. If this is what God is to you, then you probably do get older and smarter, accumulating the kind of education that can only pull you away. For many people who believe in Him whether they want to or not, however, this is not what God is. And I have no grounds for correcting them or refuting them. What I have to pass on that I "believe to be worthwhile and progressive" is curiosity, uncertainty, attention, and respect.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 6, 2008 8:04:05 PM
Muslims just need to mellow out a bit.
Maybe a ride on Mohammed's Flying horse to get some much needed fresh air?
Just don't read any cartoons, or stone any women.
That really harshes my mellow.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Dec 6, 2008 8:33:20 PM
Hey Dave long time listener first time caller. Bill Maher isn't THAT good.
Posted by: Mailer | Dec 6, 2008 8:51:14 PM
(Clearing throat)... I tend to believe that conversations like these go off a bit when we fail to make a distinction between a vague or even lyrically ambiguous sense of a godly presence out there/in here... and *unquestioning faith* in the accuracy of some absurdly detailed cosmology spun, millennia ago, in touching ignorance, by guys (maybe gals, too) who didn't even understand the chemical composition of salt, or the size of the sun, or why the sky appears to be blue. I'd call the modern belief in bronze-age-cosmologies destructively (intelligence-diminishingly) irrational, but the in-built facility to "detect" an intelligence greater than human, I'd call, perhaps... pararational?
Supported by science or not, non-ideological sensation of a godness is probably more constructive (for our limited purposes here on this planet) than the absence of same. Given a *choice* between uninflected agnosticism (which is always being sucked at by The Void) and a gentler agnosticism, packaged as unknowingness without a void at its narrative center, why would I choose the one with the void?
But that's just it: it's not a choice. I seem to be born without the antenna (not that I don't feel that many who claim to've come with one included are fooling us/themselves and are merely too terrified of The Void to peek into it).
Anyway: If void-free (non-proselytic) grace is a delusion, is it more of a delusion, or a worse one, than all the little delusions that propel us through our perceptionally limited lives?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Dec 7, 2008 5:33:58 AM
Abbott's Flatland's a good one.
Posted by: Joe Meek | Dec 7, 2008 1:33:20 PM
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