Freedom of thought is the only good that is perhaps more precious than peace, for the simple reason that, without it, peace would merely be another name of servitude.
So ends André Comte-Sponville on the existence of God, in his latest book. The book itself is entitled The Book of Atheist Spirituality, outlining a fully rounded human life which includes the numinous devoid of supernatural deities. The central question I wish to ask is this:
Is Comte-Sponville correct in his assessment of freedom of thought?
From my myopic standpoint, I fully agree – but perhaps someone can show me otherwise. I want to lay out an initial argument for my reasoning.
Freedom of thought is one of the most precious things we have, which only reminds me of Einstein’s statement:
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
Does not some of the very notions of scientific inquiry reside in the domain of free thought? If hypotheses were restricted by the domain within which they dwelt, how far could our science and reason stretch? How far would our understanding go? Protracted and stifled on to a banal island of incredulity – this is not a picture of a beautiful mind.
The fight for freedom of thought is perhaps the same battle as freedom of expression. The freedom to express the very thoughts. It is for this reason I loathe the restrictions in any form, be it the banning in Turkey of Richarddawkins.net “after a Muslim creationist [Adnan Oktar] claimed its contents were defamatory and blasphemous”; or the famous Jyllands-Posten depictions of Muhammad (very dubious and overblown); We must not forget that YouTube was banned in Pakistan because, as the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) stated: ”the ratio of non-Islamic objectionable videos has increased on it”.
My attacks here are on Islam. I’m interested in how scared people are over this overtly-sensitive, hormonally charged domain. Many companies and groups are viewing the Muslim world as something of a growing beast, its jaws quivering in anticipation of the next freedom to devour: cartoons, videos, etc. The worst part is not even the direct attacks mocking Islam or Muslims or Muhammad. The worst are those that inadvertently feature something that is related to Islam, by someone who is not themselves Muslim, then retracted upon hindsight because it might “offend”.
A recent example of this was the release of the anticipated PlayStation 3 game Little Big Planet. The release date was supposed to be last month, but has now been pushed back to November. Why? Because one song, in one part of the game, contained two lines which are in the Quran. The music, sung and performed by a devout Muslim no doubt inspired by his faith, is a fragmentary part of an larger whole. Someone isolated it, played it back, repeated it, found where it was in the Quran and sent a letter of complaint to Sony.
In the letter it states:
We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online update, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.
We would also like to mention that this isn’t the first time something like this happened in video games. Nintendo’s 1998 hit “Zelda: Ocarina of Time” contained a musical track with islamic phrases, but it was removed in later shipments of the game after Nintendo was contacted by Muslim organizations. Last year, Capcom’s “Zack & Wiki” and Activision’s “Call of Duty 4″ also contained objectionable material offensive to Muslims that was spotted before the release of the final games, and both companies thankfully removed the content.
This more than annoys me. There may be other issues here, such as the obvious racial stereotyping that occurs in many present video games (American good guys and Arab terrorists), but that is not the case in point. Freedom of expression is being denied here for no other reason than faith. Why are they so special that they are beyond having their faith touched? The intention is not even there: I fail to imagine people making video games, such as the adorable Little Big Planet, to deliberately offend Muslims.
Faith is not a virtue, it is not special. It does not occupy something sacred or special. It is a position that has come to be protected, again and again, for no reason other than traditional treatments in our society. No doubt people are terrified of Islam and its offence and who can blame them?
Do I need to mention the banning and death of writers? The many people that have died as a result of writing against Islam or just bringing it under the spotlight of scepticism? Ignoring my overtly long expose on Salman Rushdie, let’s look at the recent example of Sherry Jones‘ The Jewel of Medina.
What is the blasphemy? Once again, making Muhammad and parts of Islam fall under the mammalian light. The Prophet had sexual organs, he used them. He is an important figure of history and the shaping of our world. Why can Neal Stephenson depict Isaac Newton, but when Rushdie or Jones depict Muhammad it is a no-no? I want answers to this but I want a reasonable justification for why Muhammad is beyond being viewed as human, whilst other historical figures are shrugged off.
Let us understand firstly the paradox: Muhammad is denied depiction in any form to eliminate idolatry. But what has happened? Does it not feel as though he has become the idol? Something divine, restricted from being shunned or mocked by “mere humans”? He was a human being like you and me. But under the guise and protection of faith, he takes on a divine status – beyond all mockery.
Muslims around the world mostly laugh off these ridiculous things. Muslims friends and acquaintances find the action of knee-jerk fundamentalists absolutely bizarre – as much as I do. Muslims who are offended by two lines in part of a game need to face the big wide world. We do not pander to each others thoughts, but question them. In order to move forward, it won’t be through being silent and restricting my thoughts against you, it will be voiced, expressed in co-operation with your own thoughts critical of me.
But if we each wrap our hands around silence, we are both grabbing a blind fold and stumbling mute toward darkness.
I also, however, find the grovelling at the feet of Muslims and Mullahs by, for example, Sony another blow to human sensibility. That person who wrote the letter has all the makings of a bully. Faith would bully us into respecting it, for no other reason than its might, its own circular reasoning and so on. If faith wants us to respect it, properly, it needs better reasons. And there are absolutely no good reasons for respecting something as a virulent and toxic as religious faith.
I expect better of my fellow humans. We are much better than this. Imagine a world where we all just didn’t offend someone, lest we were tried and executed. I can quite easily imagine that this would be one option to ensure peace. No one would be fighting or be enmeshed in conflict, as there can be no offence, no crossing of lines. Yes, this would be peace. But I would rather die than live in a such a world, where my freedom of thought is denied me. This is essentially the ideal of religious dogma and bullying – peace, but one maintained by the silence of freedom.
I wonder, dear readers, do you share my view that this is no life, this is servitude? That peace is only marginally less important than freedom of thought? The tide must turn against faith and respect should be given for good reasoning, humanity and respect – not to the childish faith claims of religious believers, especially (at the moment) Muslims.
In Defence of Johann Hari
Sunday, February 15th, 2009Reposted from my blog.
“Freedom of thought,” says the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville, “is the only good more important than peace. Without it, peace would be another word for servility.” This is the basis for the first amendment in the American constitution; itself formulated from the thoughts from the man who perhaps coined the term “United States of America”, namely the great Thomas Paine.
As Paine wrote in Common Sense:
Those last words are resounding and might be the distant echo to the so-called Rushdie Affair. The “defense of custom” seems to have become the staple diet for the majority. We have fought so long and so hard for tolerance that we tolerate the intolerant; We defend their customs and their ideas which themselves are based on bullying strategies that renders a cloud of protection on “men of faith”. When someone who is not of the cloth utters that the 2007 floods in Northern Yorkshire are a deity’s judgments on homosexuality, as the then Archbishop of Carlyle, Graham Dow, did, we would think them insane. But because he has archbishop next to his name we are meant to “respect” such barbaric, backward and unhelpful thoughts.
Recently, my friend the great Johann Hari has faced a horrible string of threats, underpinned by death, fear and Islam. He alerted his faithful readership to the horrid poison, weaving a noose within the veins of equality in the UN. Islamic countries are demanding that we respect their hideous misogynist notions of shari’ah, to steer clear of criticising an illiterate pedophile who flew on horses to heaven, and to never raise reason as an ecumenical notion for everyone.
They are demanding this because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stresses the right to free-speech, free-thought. This logically means the ability to criticise openly any and all ideas. The only thing that the UDHR even alludes to being “sacred”, in the normative sense of the word, is the unified human spirit to unite without superstitious, overzealous boundaries. Muslims fear this, as Hari correctly highlight, because it would mean that young people would do the one thing all religions fear: THINK FOR THEMSELVES.
“Sapere Aude (Dare to know)!” says Kant in his essay on the Enlightenment. ” ‘Have courage to use your own understanding’ – that is the motto for the Enlightenment.” Islam – and all religions – would quiver under such scrutiny. The use of intellect is hardly encouraged unless it is in accordance with Allah’s will. Everything is supposed to be through Allah; but everything includes good and bad, right and wrong, evil and misconceptions. So wouldn’t this religion, which is mistakenly called a “religion of peace” by many world leaders, cherish such open-mindedness? Why then the fear of Enlightenment values?
Because then the foundations would fail, it would flounder and like a hydra dying and frothing red beneath the sea, it would sink into the bottom depths of our history. Muslims realise this. They realise their grips would falter on the minds of their flock; so much so that they are willing to arrest the Indian editors of Hari’s article.
How could Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha be arrested for publishing Hari’s article? Because hurting religious feelings is part of the Indian penal code. Under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code it forbids “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings”. The irony rests in the double-standards. And what religions are included in section 295A? Why some religions, Islam, but not others, Norse or Roman? And, of course, what about those who are outraged but are not religious? Why do we never get any “special treatment” for our “feelings”?
Boo-hoo, my childish Islamic friends. Your feelings were hurt? Shame. I can tell you exactly why those of us without religion neither have any law against offending us, in India (and most places), and more importantly, why we usually don’t fight for one: Because we believe in the freedom of open criticism. We believe in the right to express any ideas, in a rational, open way.
This means I do not care whether you worship Zeus, Allah, or Yahweh: If it makes you happy, go ahead. If it consoles, by all means do it. But you can not demand me to respect such ideas and to not criticise them. I am open to you criticising my ideas, any of them. I will not be privy to respecting any ideas just to make the faithful happy. To quote Hari:
Whilst we writers against religion limit ourselves to words, our antagonists would find vent in bullets. Whilst we would change and let the plateau of equality be the ground on which we all walk, Muslims would have the high-ground to censure equal human rights. They would rather we shut up and step away from hurting their poor feelings.
I support Hari in his criticisms, as is apparent. Hari had every right to write what he liked, as did people in my country’s past. Consider that Steve Biko’s book is entitled I Write What I Like. I even support the freedom to write tripe like creationist or Holocaust-denial literature. Because scientists and historians can then openly criticise and point out the flaws in the creationist and “revisionist” literature. I don’t believe in banning books or writers or the stultification – in fact, my life is dedicated to fighting for anyone to say anything, in an open minded, discursive way.
Not so for the religious, as this reaction to Hari’s article displays. If that is not a sign of backward thinking, pointing away from the path of reason into the dark woods of dogma, then I am not sure what is. Perhaps the Quran and its horrible statements of death to infidels (”Kill them where ye find them!”)? Perhaps the terror Muslims invoke, when we draw cartoons of their Prophet, or the death-threats when a Teddy-bear is named after him?
I want us all to be amenable to change, criticism and open to ideas. This is a grownup way to look at the world. But the neotony inherent in our species finds vent in that which is itself a product of our mind’s infancy. Consider this bounder, called Abdus Subhan, who “[was] prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet [against Hari]” and Hari should be sent “to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol … He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech.”
But why not? We need to all grow up and face the fact that many things will “offend” us. We are diverse and diversity inculcates a sense of realisation of many different things. So, using “that offends me” as a reason and argument to cease that which causes offence, is no grounds at all for it to cease. Before you think me venturing into the territory of cultural relativism, I mean it simply according with what we understand to be human rights, personal autonomy, the right to liberty, freedom of thought, and so on.
I stand by what I write here as I stand by Johann Hari. Muslims should be more horrified at me, someone who was once Muslim, now admonishing them; I deserve their scorn and outrage more than someone who won the Amnesty International Newspaper Journalist of the Year (2007). Please let us all grow up, face the beauty of the world and time we have. Muslims must realise that we are fighting for them and their freedom as much as anyone else. The ones who suffer the most from the dogmatic assertions of clerical bullying are other Muslims.
We want everyone to be free, we want everyone to have the right to liberty and freedom. Let the ashes of dogma settle to allow some growth of a newfound liberation and reasoned tolerance. If we hurt each others feelings so be it. But that does not mean we are allowed to kill, arrest or maim each other. Growing up and opening our eyes means we see and experience more, which means more opportunity for pain. But it also means more opportunity for growth. Like trees entwined at the roots, our growth rests in each other. The faster we all severe our ties from celestial propitiation, the faster our own lives can be rendered to soar with freedom and openness
I know this will do nothing to stop or cease Muslim’s anger. It might incite more. But, I will quote Paine again to finish. Immediately after the first line I quoted above, he says:
Let it be so.
Tags: atheism, dogma, freedom of speech, islam, Johann Hari, nonbelief, religion, Thomas Paine, universal declaration of human rights
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