In Indonesia, Alexander Aan was jailed for two-and-a-half years for Facebook posts on atheism.
In Tunisia, two young atheists, Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji, were sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for Facebook postings that were judged blasphemous.
In Turkey, pianist and atheist Fazil Say faces jail for “blasphemous” tweets.
In Greece, Phillipos Loizos created a Facebook page that poked fun at Greeks’ belief in miracles and is now charged with insulting religion.
In Egypt, 17-year-old Gamal Abdou Massoud was sentenced to three years in jail, and Bishoy Kamel was imprisoned for six years, both for posting “blasphemous” cartoons on Facebook.
The founder of Egypt’s Facebook Atheists, Alber Saber, faces jail time (he will be sentenced on 12 December).
Headline points from The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) report Freedom of Thought 2012. The IHEU bringing together more than 100 Humanist, atheist, rationalist, secularist, and freethought organisations from forty different countries.
It is very easy to take for granted that this blogger can say there is no god, argue that religion poisons everything on this blog, and know there will be no knock on the door for stating that.
Humanism is a global idea. That empathy can transcend kin, culture, geography, creed. As such the cause of secularism to promote freedom of thought is not confined to the backyard.
Keep informed, tell people, and let those that would surpress free thought spoken in public know we will add our voice.
Jordan has asked Interpol to hand over the editors and cartoonists who in 2005 published illustrations of the Prophet Mohamed, including both the original publication and those that showed solidarity in re printing them during the mass hysteria. The request also includes Geert Wilders for his film “Fitna” on the link between the Koran and Islamic terrorism.
[WARNING A PHOTO OF A MODERN EROTIC SCULPUTURE BY TERENCE KOHL OF JESUS FOLLOWS IN THIS BLOG. IF PUBLICITY SEEKING ART OFFENDS YOU IGNORE.]
While the request will be denied there is a worrying trend in silencing those that would criticize religion. The United Nations passing a Resolution on Combating Defamation of Religion last December misses the point that the emphasis on rights is on people, not religions. Otherwise the right to have a dissenting opinion, or even change your mind about a belief comes into question if we place religion above the rights of people as individuals. That resolution only mentioned Islam by name.
Draft resolution VI on Combating defamation of religions (document A/C.3/62/L.35), approved as orally revised by a recorded vote of 95 in favour to 52 against, with 30 abstentions, on 20 November, would have the Assembly express deep concern about the negative stereotyping of religions and manifestations of intolerance and discrimination in matters of religion or belief, still in evidence in some regions of the world. The Assembly would emphasize that everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which should be exercised with responsibility and may therefore be subject to limitations, according to law and necessary for respect of the rights or reputations of others; protection of national security or of public order, public health or morals; and respect for religions and beliefs.
This was adopted by 108 with 51 opposed including EU countries and the USA. Though not legally binding on countries, this together with the latest attempts in Jordon for extraterritorial reach to suppress free speech suggests that the wind is moving against values we take for granted.
Often it is missed that the critics of religion are concerned for the rights of individuals themselves. Religion does not grant you the right to put adulteries to death. It does not grant you the right to kill apostates or blasphemers, whether within your shores or outside your boundaries. There is a natural right for people to believe what they will believe. As such both the religious and the infidel are protected as individuals – not on the basis of a religion. Criticism may cause offense, but to base law on offense rather than an objective measure of discrimination or incitement to violence is a trend that society had best avoid.
Not exactly a homage to Greek Sculpture
While the blasphemy law has been abolished in the UK, there was an attempt to ban an art exhibition which featured ET, Mickey Mouse and Jesus with their phallus fully erect. There were signs at the gallery about what the exhibition contained (police decided no case to answer), but a private prosecution is being brought supported by the Christian Legal Center. To be honest I find the sculpture rather pointless, and the fuss over the exhibit gives the artist Terence Koh free publicity.
The critics made the point that they would not dare do a sculpture of the Prophet Mohamed with his tackle out. Which does not appreciate that Jesus was the number two prophet in Islam, and that depictions of Jesus are offensive to Muslims. Indeed it is offensive to suggest that god would have children or that Jesus is God in the theology of Islam.
How do we deal with offense as a society? Well we say whether something is in good or bad taste. But subjective views of what makes art good, bad, inspired or shocking is not something left to the courts to enforce. Where exhibitions are of an adult nature, or likely to cause distress to certain sensibilities (like nudity), then a warning seems appropriate.
As I have mentioned in a previous blog we have a right to hear what other people want to say to us. We can decide if it is distasteful, wrong or false and should have the ability to criticize. Banning our right to hear or see a work of art is the wrong reaction – and using religion to make the case does not correct that.
Attempts to disrupt the Dawkins website and other atheist sites, and of course what happened on this day seven years ago in the 9/11 attacks are all a part of censoring and controlling how we react to religion. The only way civilisation can respond is to focus on people, and protecting their rights and freedoms. It may mean we give offense; but to live in a world where sensibilities rule out criticism or free debate is to export a different form of rules to which Western Society has developed.
Simon Singh expected to arouse controversy when he claimed that chiropracters knowingly promoted bogus treatments for illnesses including asthma and ear infections. The bestselling author and Bafta-winning broadcaster did not, however, expect to have a High Court writ issued against him.
The British Chiropractic Association is suing him for his comments. In his book Trick or Treat, written with Edzard Ernst, he proivdes a scientific anlayisis of alternative medicine.
Simon Singh
I wish Simon all the best in court. More on this story can be found here.
Sam Harris said of the Koran after quoting numerous passages:
But there is no substitute for confronting the text itself. I cannot judge the quality of the Arabic; perhaps it is sublime. But the book’s contents are not. On almost every page, the Koran instructs observant Muslims to despise nonbelievers. On almost every page, it prepares the ground for religious conflict. Anyone who can read passages like those quoted above and still not see a link between Muslim faith and Muslim violence should probably consult a neurologist.
With many quotes from the Koran in the link above that make you think that, should you wish to commit violence in the name of Allah, you will find references for such actions that you do so on behalf of god. While there are Muslims that do not believe in using violence and are secularist – not less the Bangladeshi community in my town who fled fundamentalism – the question of how we take away the oxygen that make people feel the Koran is a book that orders Jihad rather than one of metaphor, poetry and a history of a people living in a superstitious supernatural world is one that needs answering without fearing to ask the question.
I still remember when Ayaan Hirsi Ali was receiving death threats at a conference in Washington DC that they did think about cancelling her talk, but she went ahead. I am so glad that we got to hear what she had to say.
The treading on egg shells when a teacher allows her class to name a teddy bear Mohammad faces a murderous mob, a journalist student suffering imprisonment and the threat of the death penalty for starting a debate on feminism and the Prophet, the drawing of cartoons and over the top reaction to when people say that Islam is wrong need challenging.
This can be done without concern for sensitivities or treating people like they need wrapping up in cotton wool for fear that they cannot cope with rational debate without strapping explosives to themselves in response to have the last word. We do not help moderate Muslims that keep their faith in the private sphere if we fear making such criticism or scrutinizing what the text and belief are of Islam. That forgets how Christianity developed to where it is now in the UK.
To this end we need more articles like that of Johann Hari, from The Independent which I re post below:
Johann Hari: We need to stop being such cowards about Islam
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Johann Hari
This is a column condemning cowardice – including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did.
You cannot read this story today – except in the Koran and the Hadith. The man Mohamed ibn Abdallah became known to Muslims as “the Prophet Mohamed”, so our ability to explore this story is stunted. The Jewel of Medina was bought by Random House and primed to be a best-seller – before a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared it “a national security issue”. Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs. Sherry Jones’s publisher has pulped the book. It’s gone.
In Europe, we are finally abolishing the lingering blasphemy laws that hinder criticism of Christianity. But they are being succeeded by a new blasphemy law preventing criticism of Islam – enforced not by the state, but by jihadis. I seriously considered not writing this column, but the right to criticise religion is as precious – and hard-won – as the right to criticise government. We have to use it or lose it.
Some people will instantly ask: why bother criticising religion if it causes so much hassle? The answer is: look back at our history. How did Christianity lose its ability to terrorise people with phantasms of sin and Hell? How did it stop spreading shame about natural urges – pre-marital sex, masturbation or homosexuality? Because critics pored over the religion’s stories and found gaping holes of logic or morality in them. They asked questions. How could an angel inseminate a virgin? Why does the Old Testament God command his followers to commit genocide? How can a man survive inside a whale?
Reinterpretation and ridicule crow-barred Christianity open. Ask enough tough questions and faith is inevitably pushed farther and farther back into the misty realm of metaphor – where it is less likely to inspire people to kill and die for it. But doubtful Muslims, and the atheists who support them, are being prevented from following this path. They cannot ask: what does it reveal about Mohamed that he married a young girl, or that he massacred a village of Jews who refused to follow him? You don’t have to murder many Theo Van Goghs or pulp many Sherry Joneses to intimidate the rest. The greatest censorship is internal: it is in all the books that will never be written and all the films that will never be shot, because we are afraid.
We need to acknowledge the double-standard – and that it will cost Muslims in the end. Insulating a religion from criticism – surrounding it with an electric fence called “respect” – keeps it stunted at its most infantile and fundamentalist stage. The smart, questioning and instinctively moral Muslims – the majority – learn to be silent, or are shunned (at best). What would Christianity be like today if George Eliot, Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell had all been pulped? Take the most revolting rural Alabama church, and metastasise it.
Since Jones has brought it up, let us look at Mohamed’s marriage to Aisha as a model for how we can conduct this conversation. It is true those were different times, and it may have been normal for grown men to have sex with prepubescent girls. The sources are not clear on this point. But whatever culture you live in, having sex when your body is not physically developed can be an excruciatingly painful experience. Among Vikings, it was more normal than today to have your arm chopped off, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t agony. If anything, Jones’s book whitewashes this, suggesting that Mohamed’s “gentleness” meant Aisha enjoyed it.
The story of Aisha also prompts another fundamentalist-busting discussion. You cannot say that Mohamed’s decision to marry a young girl has to be judged by the standards of his time, and then demand that we follow his moral standards to the letter. Either we should follow his example literally, or we should critically evaluate it and choose for ourselves. Discussing this contradiction inevitably injects doubt – the mortal enemy of fanaticism (on The Independent’s Open House blog later today, I’ll be discussing how Aisha has become the central issue in a debate in Yemen about children and forced marriage).
So why do many people who cheer The Life Of Brian and Jerry Springer: The Opera turn into clucking Mary Whitehouses when it comes to Islam? If a book about Christ was being dumped because fanatics in Mississippi might object, we would be enraged. I feel this too. I am ashamed to say I would be more scathing if I was discussing Christianity. One reason is fear: the image of Theo Van Gogh lying on a pavement crying “Can’t we just talk about this?” Of course we rationalise it, by asking: does one joke, one column, one novel make much difference? No. But cumulatively? Absolutely.
The other reason is more honourable, if flawed. There is very real and rising prejudice against Muslims across the West. The BBC recently sent out identically-qualified CVs to hundreds of employers. Those with Muslim names were 50 per cent less likely to get interviews. Criticisms of Islamic texts are sometimes used to justify US or Israeli military atrocities. Some critics of Muslims – Geert Wilders or Martin Amis – moot mass human rights abuses here in Europe. So some secularists reason: I have plenty of criticisms of Judaism, but I wouldn’t choose to articulate them in Germany in 1933. Why try to question Islam now, when Muslims are being attacked by bigots?
But I live in the Muslim majority East End of London, and this isn’t Weimar Germany. Muslims are secure enough to deal with some tough questions. It is condescending to treat Muslims like excitable children who cannot cope with the probing, mocking treatment we hand out to Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. It is perfectly consistent to protect Muslims from bigotry while challenging the bigotries and absurdities within their holy texts.
There is now a pincer movement trying to silence critical discussion of Islam. To one side, fanatics threaten to kill you; to the other, critics call you “Islamophobic”. But consistent atheism is not racism. On the contrary: it treats all people as mature adults who can cope with rational questions. When we pulp books out of fear of fundamentalism, we are decapitating the most precious freedom we have.
Good news – the interior ministers of EU countries have unanimously agreed at a meeting to protect people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with the host nation paying the costs.
However the UK government is raising “practical” objections to providing such immediate protection. In which case perhaps it should be sorted out exactly how we are going to operate such protection procedures.
Franco Frattini, the the European commissioner for justice and home affairs commented:
“This is a new decision,” Frattini said, declaring that no new laws were necessary to try to guarantee the safety of Hirsi Ali and others in similar situations. “If we need a law to guarantee the right to life, we’re in a difficult position. We have the decision based on mutual trust.”
While the Members of the European Parliament petition to create a universal fund for protection may have helped in this decision (only one MEP got back to me out of seven saying he would sign the petition) it has to be born in mind this decision is one of intent.
While I am sure that there are issues that the UK may be right to highlight, if the EU is going to really guarantee the freedoms of its member citizens to move around without risk to life because they are targeted, these obstacles can be overcome with enough political will.
It would be a shame if the fear of the anti EU lobby in the UK scuppered this agreement. This measure is one that is needed. It shows the benefits of co-operation where enlightenment values can be defended by nation states. But it may help that there is a legal obligation of member states to offer such immediate protection.
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