Religious Catch 22
Daniel Finkelstein writing in The Times explains why blasphemy laws are a tool of control used by oppressors throughout history - a religious version of Catch 22 if you ask me.
In Joseph Heller's great novel, Yossarian was in awe of the beauty and simplicity of Catch 22 which allowed those who invented the rules also to interpret and adjudicate upon their meaning.
The way Yossarian looked at things a bomber pilot would have to be 'crazy' to agree to fly any more than the required number of dangerous missions, but if the pilot made a request to be stood down on such medical grounds, then by acting rationally and sensibly all the pilot proved was his sanity - that he wasn't really crazy after all.
And it's the same with blasphemy because those who make up the rules can decide that it's blasphemous to even suggest relaxing the rules or dragging them into the 21st century where they have to confront modern-day issues like democracy, human rights, equality under the law and respect for minority views.
So the issue is not just having rights in an abstract sense, like Catch 22, but the ability to exercise your rights and challenge those who make up all the rules and regulations.
The cartoonists are right to fight blasphemy
By Daniel Finkelstein - The Times
Charlie Hebdo and friends may not be to your taste but they have a duty to challenge pernicious, self-perpetuating laws
Oy! You! Yes, you, big nose, the one reading this article right now! You are fat. You are stupid. And you are ugly.
It doesn’t take much sophisticated argument to demonstrate that just because one is allowed legally to say something, it doesn’t mean that it is right, or acceptable, just to go ahead and say it. While I am sure that your second thought is of Voltaire, your first thought was who the hell is he calling big nose?
It doesn’t take much delicate reasoning either to make the case that there are some ideas that are my right to express but that The Timeswouldn’t wish to me to put in print. And to prove it, I am not going to.
It is just good manners to understand and show some respect for the sensitivities of others, and to pay little or no heed to what your interlocutor might find offensive is often unpleasant and generally unnecessary. This is even the case when one wishes to say something that is true and obvious. You, for instance, may actually be fat. Yet I don’t need to say so. A little tact can go a long way (like your nose).
These fairly simple points — surely impossible to dispute — were made often in the days after the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and apply equally to the attack on the free speech meeting in Denmark, set to feature the artist Lars Vilks. Just because we must defend absolutely the right of these cartoonists to express themselves, does not mean we have to approve of them exercising their right.
Their work, often (although by no means always) childish and crude, caused offence and they knew it would. Such provocative behaviour deserves criticism. As I say, this view seems irresistible. It is certainly widely held. I also believe it to be profoundly wrong.
It is not merely the right to free expression that should be defended in the cartoonist’s case. It is the publication of the cartoons themselves.
A misunderstanding about the Danish caricatures of Muhammad has persisted ever since Jyllands- Posten published them almost ten years ago. It is that the issue at stake is one of ordinary offence and tactfulness. The reaction — bombing, rioting, assassination — may be a little, how does one put it, over the top. But in other ways the insult is comparable to any other.
This is totally to misunderstand what is at stake. In their invaluable book Silenced, Paul Marshall and Nina Shea explain how blasphemy law has risen to become one of the main tools of control used by oppressive elites across the Muslim world. It provides secret police, unaccountable regimes and arbitrary courts with an open-ended, vaguely defined law that you can offend against even without knowing that you are doing so.
Silenced gives dozens of examples: the man arrested for playing music when the religious police said he should have been listening to the Koran was sentenced to eight years in prison and 2,000 lashes for insulting Islam; the teacher jailed for ridiculing bearded men (which he almost certainly hadn’t as he was bearded himself); the man executed for “using black magic”, placing the Koran in the bathroom and abandoning Islam.
In countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, the line between the dictates of the regime and the dictates of Islam are blurred so that it is not obvious which is being offended against. Criticism of ministers is prosecuted as an insult to all Muslims. In other places, Nigeria for instance, accusations of blasphemy can be used as an excuse for mob violence and murder.
Naturally, blasphemy is used as a weapon of oppression against minority ethnic groups and religions — Christians, Jews, and Shias and Sunnis against each other. These laws are also self-perpetuating. It has become common for western liberals to argue that what is needed is a reformed Islam that reflects the reality of the lives and views of millions of ordinary Muslims. Blasphemy laws are perhaps the most important reason why such an Islam struggles to be born. Any departure from orthodoxy can be portrayed as blasphemous, the work of an apostate. Even to begin the journey to reform is dangerous.
The attraction to religious authorities of making some forms of expression about Islam taboo is obvious. It allows them to prevent challenges to their power.
Twenty six years ago this week in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini took a bold step. He called on “all zealous Muslims to execute quickly wherever they find them” the author Salman Rushdie and all connected with his book The Satanic Verses.
It was a move designed to shore up his political position after Iran’s unsuccessful war with Iraq. Rushdie had no connection with Iran and nor, naturally, did his Japanese translator, who was murdered, or his Norwegian and Italian translators who were seriously assaulted. Khomeini was arguing for the first time that the restriction against blasphemy should apply internationally, to people living in non-Islamic countries under quite different legal systems.
And, of course, he was claiming to himself the right to determine what blasphemy was, just as Stalin claimed the same right over communism.
Khomeini’s power grab met with much the same reaction from many western liberals as the cartoonists did. Yes, Rushdie must be protected, but what a nuisance that he chose to be so provocative. His book wasn’t even any good. Just stirring a hornet’s nest is all it was.
Just as this view of Rushdie was naive and incorrect, so is the same view of Charlie Hebdo and the Danish cartoons. Declaring that something is blasphemy against Islam is not an ordinary claim that something is offensive. It is asserting the right of oppressive authorities to determine the boundaries of debate and free exchange. It is supporting the power grab of these oppressors as they seek to extend their rule internationally.
The most important thing to understand is that the blasphemy claim is self-perpetuating. The only people who can decide what is blasphemous are the religious and political authorities who already hold power in Islam and the Islamic world. And it is impossible to join that select group without accepting the rules, interpretations and control of those who are already on the inside. To offer an alternative interpretation is to be assured of exclusion and to risk punishment.
So the challenge — vivid, taboo- breaking, colourful, bracing, even tasteless — has to come from outside. It is not just the rights of the Danish and French cartoonists that must be defended, but the content of their work, too.
Oy! You! Yes, you, big nose, the one reading this article right now! You are fat. You are stupid. And you are ugly.
It doesn’t take much sophisticated argument to demonstrate that just because one is allowed legally to say something, it doesn’t mean that it is right, or acceptable, just to go ahead and say it. While I am sure that your second thought is of Voltaire, your first thought was who the hell is he calling big nose?
It doesn’t take much delicate reasoning either to make the case that there are some ideas that are my right to express but that The Timeswouldn’t wish to me to put in print. And to prove it, I am not going to.
It is just good manners to understand and show some respect for the sensitivities of others, and to pay little or no heed to what your interlocutor might find offensive is often unpleasant and generally unnecessary. This is even the case when one wishes to say something that is true and obvious. You, for instance, may actually be fat. Yet I don’t need to say so. A little tact can go a long way (like your nose).
These fairly simple points — surely impossible to dispute — were made often in the days after the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and apply equally to the attack on the free speech meeting in Denmark, set to feature the artist Lars Vilks. Just because we must defend absolutely the right of these cartoonists to express themselves, does not mean we have to approve of them exercising their right.
Their work, often (although by no means always) childish and crude, caused offence and they knew it would. Such provocative behaviour deserves criticism. As I say, this view seems irresistible. It is certainly widely held. I also believe it to be profoundly wrong.
It is not merely the right to free expression that should be defended in the cartoonist’s case. It is the publication of the cartoons themselves.
A misunderstanding about the Danish caricatures of Muhammad has persisted ever since Jyllands- Posten published them almost ten years ago. It is that the issue at stake is one of ordinary offence and tactfulness. The reaction — bombing, rioting, assassination — may be a little, how does one put it, over the top. But in other ways the insult is comparable to any other.
This is totally to misunderstand what is at stake. In their invaluable book Silenced, Paul Marshall and Nina Shea explain how blasphemy law has risen to become one of the main tools of control used by oppressive elites across the Muslim world. It provides secret police, unaccountable regimes and arbitrary courts with an open-ended, vaguely defined law that you can offend against even without knowing that you are doing so.
Silenced gives dozens of examples: the man arrested for playing music when the religious police said he should have been listening to the Koran was sentenced to eight years in prison and 2,000 lashes for insulting Islam; the teacher jailed for ridiculing bearded men (which he almost certainly hadn’t as he was bearded himself); the man executed for “using black magic”, placing the Koran in the bathroom and abandoning Islam.
In countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, the line between the dictates of the regime and the dictates of Islam are blurred so that it is not obvious which is being offended against. Criticism of ministers is prosecuted as an insult to all Muslims. In other places, Nigeria for instance, accusations of blasphemy can be used as an excuse for mob violence and murder.
Naturally, blasphemy is used as a weapon of oppression against minority ethnic groups and religions — Christians, Jews, and Shias and Sunnis against each other. These laws are also self-perpetuating. It has become common for western liberals to argue that what is needed is a reformed Islam that reflects the reality of the lives and views of millions of ordinary Muslims. Blasphemy laws are perhaps the most important reason why such an Islam struggles to be born. Any departure from orthodoxy can be portrayed as blasphemous, the work of an apostate. Even to begin the journey to reform is dangerous.
The attraction to religious authorities of making some forms of expression about Islam taboo is obvious. It allows them to prevent challenges to their power.
Twenty six years ago this week in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini took a bold step. He called on “all zealous Muslims to execute quickly wherever they find them” the author Salman Rushdie and all connected with his book The Satanic Verses.
It was a move designed to shore up his political position after Iran’s unsuccessful war with Iraq. Rushdie had no connection with Iran and nor, naturally, did his Japanese translator, who was murdered, or his Norwegian and Italian translators who were seriously assaulted. Khomeini was arguing for the first time that the restriction against blasphemy should apply internationally, to people living in non-Islamic countries under quite different legal systems.
And, of course, he was claiming to himself the right to determine what blasphemy was, just as Stalin claimed the same right over communism.
Khomeini’s power grab met with much the same reaction from many western liberals as the cartoonists did. Yes, Rushdie must be protected, but what a nuisance that he chose to be so provocative. His book wasn’t even any good. Just stirring a hornet’s nest is all it was.
Just as this view of Rushdie was naive and incorrect, so is the same view of Charlie Hebdo and the Danish cartoons. Declaring that something is blasphemy against Islam is not an ordinary claim that something is offensive. It is asserting the right of oppressive authorities to determine the boundaries of debate and free exchange. It is supporting the power grab of these oppressors as they seek to extend their rule internationally.
The most important thing to understand is that the blasphemy claim is self-perpetuating. The only people who can decide what is blasphemous are the religious and political authorities who already hold power in Islam and the Islamic world. And it is impossible to join that select group without accepting the rules, interpretations and control of those who are already on the inside. To offer an alternative interpretation is to be assured of exclusion and to risk punishment.
So the challenge — vivid, taboo- breaking, colourful, bracing, even tasteless — has to come from outside. It is not just the rights of the Danish and French cartoonists that must be defended, but the content of their work, too.
