More and more, India appears to be a country that is allowing itself to be ruled by the mob than by democratic principles. Anyone with a grievance can draw a crowd and, with enough inflamed passion, force publishers into retreat. The government not only won't defend publishers or private citizens from angry mobs, but they are actively aiding and abetting the entire project by having laws which make it possible to get someone arrested by complaining that one's religious feelings were deliberately "outraged."
Johann Hari wrote:
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.
Source: The Independent
That last sentence is key: denying people the right to voice "offensive" and unpopular opinions is first and foremost a weapon used at home against dissidents, outsiders, and those already oppressed in some fashion. It's not a conflict between "Islam" and "everyone else," but rather self-appointed, authoritarian leaders in Islam against everyone else — including many Muslims who don't agree with what these leaders say. Suppression of criticism and "offensive" speech doesn't protect ordinary Muslims, it protects authoritarian Muslim leaders.
While mass demonstrations against Western writers may get the most public attention, far greater oppression against Muslims at home goes by unnoticed. Even worse, some Westerners actually try to defend and justify such riots as if they were a reasonable response to a perceived offense. That's as moral and sensible as saying that it's reasonable when a woman is raped after walking around in public wearing a short skirt, as if she "deserved" the rape for being "provocative."
Apologists for the rioters aren't defending Islam, they are defending authoritarianism and oppression. Rioters trying to suppress criticism of Islam are equally engaged in violence to suppress women seeking equality, gays seeking the ability just to live, and so forth. Defenders of the riots may try to preach "tolerance" of Islam, but what they are doing is promoting "tolerance" of intolerant, oppressive, and even fascist systems. It's easy to defend rioters in a foreign country when one doesn't have to fear mob violence for saying the "wrong" thing.
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'?
As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: "The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom."
Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this.
Underpinning these "reforms" is a notion seeping even into democratic societies – that atheism and doubt are akin to racism. Today, whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents immediately claim they are the victims of "prejudice" – and their outrage is increasingly being backed by laws.
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.
So Johann Hari argues that he isn't obligated to respect every belief, lists some religious beliefs he doesn't respect, and further argues that suppressing speech that is insufficiently "respectful" is a tool of oppression against Muslims rather than a legitimate grievance of the oppressed against Western racists, imperialists, or anything like that.
This is a rather basic defense of liberal values of free speech, free expression, and free thought against the illiberal forces that seek to control what we may speak about. Authoritarians always try to control speech or expression because that's a vital aspect of controlling society generally. Suppressing criticism and dissent means inhibiting people's ability to imagine alternatives to the current system, like perhaps more democratic and liberal options.
Arrested Liberty
Hari's article barely caused a ripple in Britain, which is only to be expected because Britain is a society where liberal values are generally respected and honored. Things were very different in India when The Statesman reprinted it: not only were entire sections of Kolkata were shut down by protestors, but Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha, the editor and publisher of The Statesman, were arrested under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code. This wonderful law forbids "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings".
Peaceful protests were held outside The Statesman's offices at the weekend but by Monday, demonstrations had turned violent. Angry crowds began blocking roads, attacking police and calling for the arrest of the article's author and the newspaper's publisher and editor. On Monday and Tuesday police used baton charges to try to disperse crowds and more than 70 protesters were arrested.
Staff at The Statesman were forced to barricade the front entrance to their building and were escorted into their offices through a side door by police. The office is opposite the Tipu Sultan Masjid, Kolkata's largest mosque.
One journalist at The Statesman said: "The police have surrounded our building all this week but the protesters kept coming back. There was a small section who were absolutely hellbent on causing problems."
Source: The Independent
No country where personal liberty is genuinely respected would either have such a law or allow days of protests to intimidate publishers. It's the citizens of India who should be most outraged by this, but if they are troubled at all then what are they doing? Who confronted the mobs of thugs trying to use intimidation to silence a newspaper for merely printing the opinion that criticism of religion should not be suppressed? Where are the demonstrations calling for an end to this and similar laws?
The state has made it clear that it's not very interested in protecting people's individual rights. It's too easy for politicians to appeal to the same religious mobs they should be rounding up, but if people remain quiet while dissidents and critics are being rounded up they'll wake up one day and realize that they won't be allowed to speak out even if they want to. I have to wonder how many are staying quiet because they think they will benefit from their own religion being protected from criticism?
Giving Offense when Offense is Warranted
Hari's response to all this is worth reading several times over:
It's worth going through the arguments put forward by the rioting fundamentalists, because they will keep recurring in the twenty-first century as secularism is assaulted again and again. They said I had upset "the harmony" of India, and it could only be restored by my arrest. But this is a lop-sided vision of "harmony". It would mean that religious fundamentalists are free to say whatever they want – and the rest of us have to shut up and agree.
The protestors said I deliberately set out to "offend" them, and I am supposed to say that, no, no offence was intended. But the honest truth is more complicated. Offending fundamentalists isn't my goal – but if it is an inevitable side-effect of defending human rights, so be it. If fanatics who believe Muslim women should be imprisoned in their homes and gay people should be killed are insulted by my arguments, I don't resile from it. Nothing worth saying is inoffensive to everyone.
You do not have a right to be ring-fenced from offence. Every day, I am offended – not least by ancient religious texts filled with hate-speech. But I am glad, because I know that the price of taking offence is that I can give it too, if that is where the facts lead me. But again, the protestors propose a lop-sided world. They do not propose to stop voicing their own heinously offensive views about women's rights or homosexuality, but we have to shut up and take it – or we are the ones being "insulting".
Source: The Independent
A demand that people not upset social "harmony" sounds an awful lot like demands that atheists not "upset" theists with all their uncomfortable criticisms and challenges. In both cases, the necessary implication is that believers get to say whatever they want and demand whatever they want while the rest of us have to sit down and shut up, lest our objections disturb someone's delicate sensibilities. Is it just a coincidence that those ideas which are least capable of being defended by reason or evidence are those which people are most likely to insist shouldn't be criticized because it would "offend" them?
I'm not offended if someone mocks the idea that the planet is round, the use of antibiotics to treat infection, or the value of free speech. I can reasonably defend all of those positions and anyone who finds them ridiculous enough to mock merely expresses their own ignorance. How could I possibly be "offended" at the ignorant prattling of someone in denial of reality? I can argue against them if I'm in the mood or perhaps just laugh at them, but I wouldn't try to silence them because I'm offended.
Do I just have a lot thicker skin than the rioting Muslims described above? I doubt it, because I doubt they would riot over someone writing that the earth isn't round any more than I would. The difference must lie in the attitude towards the beliefs in question. What exactly is the difference, though? It's hard to say, but it's also hard to ignore the possibility that they are more insecure about the beliefs they are trying to defend. I'm not insecure when it comes to the idea that our planet is round and am not threatened either by people who disagree or even the possibility of being wrong.
It's fairly common for people to become quickly defensive and angry when it comes to topics they are insecure about — just take how some men react when thinning hair or short stature become topics of discussion, for example. People who are insecure about a belief fear the influence of those who disagree and/or fear the possibility of being wrong. So if has any validity, just how insecure are religious believers when it comes to their faith?
when i was 14 i was a friends house who was a muslim. at one point his mother began saying something to him that he didn’t like. he told her to shut the hell up. she did. this made me feel quite uncomfortable (my mother would have slapped me in the mouth). when i asked him about it, he explained that basically the chain of command in his muslim family was 1.his father 2.him 3.his mother 4.his sister even then this seemed quite out dated to me. he then went on to say that although he really didn’t believe in the Koran he would stay a muslim because of this position of male privilege. had Christianity not entered into modernity this is how it would be in many christian homes as well. the question of why the citizens don’t stand up to the mob can be answered (in part) by realizing that a lot of them simply can’t and the rest don’t want to.even hindus are taught that men hold a higher place than women. while insecurities about their beliefs are a fact, another part of the problem is insecurities about the modern world, entering it would cause men to lose many privileges they now enjoy, and not being able to criticise religion is a small price to pay to remain supreme leader of their house.
I’m not surprised at this. Several years ago the UN sponsored some kind of international religious conference. The Dalai Lama was not invited but an atheist Chinese official was. To his credit, South African bishop Tutu refused to attend the conference because of this.
Isn’t this the same sort of ploy that some creationists are using to get creationism taught in public schools? The idea that not teaching a religious idea in a science class is somehow a violation of free speech?
Religion certainly has no place in the UN, but i suppose it it would seem silly in a religious conference to exclude the leader of one of the largest religions, but then again, he is a pacifist so why should he care?
this part of the article is telling:
(the Indian)law forbids “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings”.
probably what it is intended to do is to prevent violent riots…it’s something akin to the way a woman who is living with an abusive and violent man will go out of her way to avoid confrontation, because, if he loses it and takes out his anger on her by beating her up, the venerable (male privileged) position on this would be to argue she had provoked him, as sometimes in our recent past courts of laws have ruled, absolving the violent male from his assault. So, abused women, out of fear, sometimes have to live by an internalized “law” that requires they live as if walking on eggs in order not to “provoke” the abusive male. I think this law in India was brought about from similar motives, that is, the governors know the extent of the irrationality of the religious “sentiment” and in order to avoid the inevitable outburst of violent abuse, have a “law” that will not provoke the immature ire of the religious…rather than state it is unnacceptable to take out one’s unresolved anger on others…well, the religious fundamentalists have come to be that way because they have capitulated to fear…by analogy, we ask ourselves how can someone like a “Hitler” come to have political power? Because we allow him to do so.