Saudi Arabia Still Pushing Oppression Under Guise of Freedom

It's easier to sell oppression when you can convince people that it's not really oppression, but rather a necessary measure for enhancing liberty. This is what Saudi Arabia is attempting to do because it's arguing that the world needs to make blasphemy a crime in order to protect and enhance religious liberty. Many traditionalist Muslims believe very strongly that blasphemous images, texts, and statues should be banned, but usually they don't try to do so by trying to pretend that their goal is religious liberty. They don't try to lie that their religious liberty is in any way infringed upon when others write or draw things that offend them; instead, they make it clear that it's the offense itself which should be criminal.

However, riots and unapologetic demands for oppression haven't gotten them anything but further derision and that seems to be why King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has launched on his dishonest crusade. Given how his political power relies on the support of authoritarian religious extremists, this isn't a surprise. What is more of a surprise — and very depressing — is the extent to which other leaders around the world appear to be buying into King Abdullah's scam. Who is going to speak out on behalf of the liberty of individuals to express their opinions, including opinions which dissent from, disagree with, or critique traditional religious beliefs?

The UN session is designed to endorse a meeting of religious leaders in Spain last summer that was the brainchild of King Abdullah and organized by the Muslim World League. That meeting resulted in a final statement counseling promotion of "respect for religions, their places of worship, and their symbols ... therefore preventing the derision of what people consider sacred."

The lofty-sounding principle is, in fact, a cleverly coded way of granting religious leaders the right to criminalize speech and activities that they deem to insult religion. Instead of promoting harmony, however, this effort will exacerbate divisions and intensify religious repression.

Such prohibitions have already been used in some countries to restrict discussion of individuals' freedom vis-à-vis the state, to prevent criticism of political figures or parties, to curb dissent from prevailing views and beliefs, and even to incite and to justify violence.

They undermine the standards codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the keystone of the United Nations, by granting greater rights to religions than to individuals, including those who choose to hold no faith – or who would seek to convert.

Source: Christian Science Monitor [emphasis added]

If King Abdullah really wants to promote respect for religion, he's going to have cease any and all efforts to also promote censorship and oppression in the name of religion. Faith-based censorship not only fails to encourage support for religion, it is actually a very good reason for disrespect, dissent, and derision to increase. No ideology, movement, or system which uses censorship or oppression to silence critics deserves any respect. Instead, it should be targeted by even more criticism, especially whatever criticism is treated the worst.

The use of anti-blasphemy laws for political reasons is something that has to be kept firmly in mind by everyone involved on both sides of the debate. Governments rarely if ever use anti-blasphemy laws against blasphemy that targets minority and relatively powerless religions; instead, these laws are typically used against the majority religion which is closely integrated with the political establishment. In such cases, the majority religion helps furnish legitimacy to the political, social, and economic order — either explicitly or implicitly.

Anti-blasphemy laws are therefore not just payback for this support, but also self-preservation by the political establishment. When respect for, belief in, and support for the majority religion and/or religious establishment is undermined, then that religion's ability to legitimize the political establishment is seriously damaged. Blasphemy against a majority religion in society thus becomes a form of political dissent, and so anti-blasphemy laws are also effectively a form of political censorship and oppression. This is most clear with theocratic states like Saudi Arabia, but is also arguably true in ostensibly secular societies like the United States.

Another stark irony hangs over the UN special session this week. Saudi Arabia is one of the world's worst abusers of religious freedom, a fact recognized by the Bush administration when it named it a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act in 2004. The king couldn't hold such a conference at home, where conservative clerics no doubt would purge the guest list of Jews from Israel, Baha'is, and Ahmadis.

The fact that Saudi Arabia is unwilling to defend any sort of real religious liberty at home is, in my opinion, convincing proof that King Abdullah doesn't really believe in religious liberty. Saudi Arabia's official policy basically comes down to religious oppression everywhere possible for the sake of preserving the power of a particular group of traditionalist, extremist Muslims. Both Muslims and non-Muslims suffer as a consequence of preserving the privileges and powers of these extremists.

I think that, in the long run, this is also the agenda behind King Abdullah's outreach program: oppress as many people as necessary and in any way necessary in order to preserve if not enhance the power of religious extremists — Muslim extremists first and foremost, but extremists of other religions as well if necessary. There was a time when religious and political oppression at home could continue with little or no impact from the liberties abroad, but that's getting harder and harder to do in the modern world. Religious extremists of all sorts need to promote oppression everywhere in order to effectively maintain their oppression at home.