I’m a professional psychic
The Economist takes a slightly skeptical look at inter-faith conferences. Then it gets to a real issue.
As well as repeating certain familiar commonplaces and negotiating certain familiar taboos, participants in inter-faith gatherings do sometimes run into real questions, that make a difference to the world at large. One such is how, if at all, freedom of speech can be reconciled with the Muslim demand for a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities. At this week’s meeting in Malaysia, that question was addressed in a way that frightened the relatively few participants whose understanding of civil rights was rooted in a Western, liberal world-view.
Don’t tell me, let me guess. The question was addressed by saying that a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities is desperately needed and freedom of speech is, quite frankly, a colonialist orientalist misbeliever piece of crap. Just a wild guess.
Speaker after speaker called for some formal, internationally agreed restriction on the defamation of religion. “I can never accept that freedom of speech is morally right when it offends my faith,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior Saudi official.
Oh gee, will you look at that, I guessed right. What do you know.
Adding further to the tension—and an element of this week’s debates in Kuala Lumpur—is the increasingly well-co-ordinated campaign by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to redefine human rights in a way that explicitly outlaws the defamation of religion.
Why yes, that does rather add to the tension. I know it makes me quite tense. I would really rather not see the OIC succeed in requiring the entire world to shut up about its particular religion.
The OIC’s attempt to silence criticism reminds me of Lincoln’s description of pro-slavery forces in his Cooper Union speech prior to his election:
“The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
“These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
“I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, ‘Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.’ But we do let them alone – have never disturbed them – so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.”
Wow. Stunningly relevant, and good in itself.
US history between the Missouri Compromise and the war is fascinating and disturbing.
I know, of course, that no religion can be treated as a monolithic entity. Regarding Islam, this point is often made by distinguishing Islam from Islamism. However, if the demand continues to be made by the OIC (and other Muslim agencies and states) that “human rights be redefined in a way that explicitly outlaws the defamation of religion,” will there any longer be a distinction here? Not only will this undermine attempts at reforming Islam from within, with the result that Islam will grow increasingly homogeneous; but also — and this is where the Lincoln quotation really comes into its own (it is, as you say, Ophelia, stunning) — the non-Muslim world will be required, not only to keep silence, but, eventually, in some measure, to agree. These are dangerous times.
Yeah…and actually, now that you mention it, the OIC demand is itself Islamist. Islamism means political Islam, or making Islam mandatory, or making Islam part of the state, or all those. The OIC’s campaign to write respectforIslam into international law is itself inherently Islamist. I think Roy Brown made that point somewhere in his article on the HRC fiasco the other day.
Then again one could say that the very existence of the OIC is Islamist. I keep pondering the fact that there is (thankyoujesus) no Xian equivalent. It’s depressing and alarming that there apparently are no majority Muslim countries (that is, governments of same) that think the whole enterprise is a crap idea.
Yeah, you’re right. But then, even if they thought it was a crap idea, would they dare say so? Would that not, in itself, defame Islam?
What next? A demand for a redefinition of human rights that explicitly recognizes women as the most valuable of domestic animals? There used to be a cult called Thuggee. It preached that killing unbelievers for profit was The Right Thing To Do. In the modern world, the Thugs (Yes, that’s where we got the word) would be whining for recognition as a Licensed Faith. Except that there haven’t been any Thugs in the world since Queen Victoria’s army got through with them. The civilized world needs to declare militant Islam (and a few equivalent strains of Christianity) a threat to the peace of the world and send them to join Thuggee and the Third Reich.