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| The Old Way |
The western democratic vision is a
surprisingly fragile flower. The English Bard once served up a lovely adage in Romeo and Juliet that "A
rose by any other name
would smell as sweet," whereby we are made mindful that whether Montague
or Capulet, Juliet is still sweet Juliet. To translate by way of transposition,
it is no longer so clear that a democracy by any other name…. –because despite
sharing the same name, the principles of America democracy are not necessarily the
same principles as those that frame the democracy of the Germans, or of the
English, or of the French, although American democracy shares perhaps more
commonality with French democracy than with other European democracies.
As
a form of governance, the democratic model differs from most other political models
in that power of agency is not ‘seated’ in one specific place, as it is in
authoritarian or totalitarian models of governance. Instead, it is fragmented
into as many pieces as there are participants. Now in order for such a
fragmenting model to work, there are certain essential values that must remain
intact in order to keep power from coalescing in smaller places, thereby
transforming the democratic model into a plutocracy, or autocracy, or
oligarchy.
The model for the democratic vision, of
course, is European enlightenment, and flows organically from the beheading of
the idea of the divine right of kings. When the one king is dead, then ‘We the
People’ is assigned the burden of kingship – each one his own little bit. Upon reflection, though, in the democratic model how does one so tie the power of state to the individual, both
philosophically and functionally, that the state is ensured a long, even if
complex life? Historically speaking, the model of democracy in the west,
inspired by the ideas of enlightenment, began life moored to several
fundamental principles: participation in the vote; freedom of expression;
separation of religious interference from the function and power of the state; and
a press that badgers those holding office in order to inhibit the easy spread
of corruption.
On January 7 at about 11:30 Paris local
time, heavily armed masked men entered into the offices of a newspaper in Paris
and tried to put to death a principle by the assassination of 12 journalists,
12 talking heads, 12 civilian individuals. Certainly the choice of weapons in
this war has been set, as well as the tone. Civilian pens and images oppose
selective-firing military assault rifles and summary execution; intangible
ideas stand up against very tangible ordnance.
Unfortunately, though, the very clear imbalance of power between warriors of
the pen and militarily armed terrorists, wreaks havoc in the midst of civil
society. As one writer has summarized this imbalance of power:
“Terrorist groups are very difficult to fight for the simple
reason that they draw strength from basic “flaws” in Western democracies that
are very difficult to address. Among citizens, terrorism provokes a natural
reaction: fear coupled with an overwhelming desire for security.”
So the Charlie Hebdo attack in fact
revealed a very real ‘weakness’, perhaps even a fatal flaw, in the philosophical
framing of the contemporary democratic model.
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| Official Charlie Hebdo |
Most of the initial commentaries on the
Charlie Hebdo attack focused on the idea of the freedom of expression and
freedom of the press; then came those who turned their reflections upon freedom
of religion. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, there is not philosophical or legal
agreement, no consensus, among western democracies about the precise value of these two principles of freedom. A writer
from The Atlantic expresses it well:
“We are all one” was indeed a powerful message, but what did
it really mean, underneath the noble sentiment and the liberal faith that all
people are essentially good and want the same things, regardless of religion or
culture? Even if the scope is limited to Western liberals, the aftermath of the
assaults in Paris on Charlie Hebdo and a
kosher supermarket has revealed a striking lack of consensus on a whole host of
issues, including the limits of free speech, the treatment of religions versus
racial groups, and the centrality of secularism to the liberal idea. Turns out,
we are not all one.”
FREEDOMS – OF EXPRESSION and RELIGION.
There is much rhetoric in the west about Freedom of Speech, and that it is a
cornerstone of a free society. Yet one also is quick to discover that this
“freedom” is not an absolute concept in most western countries, but that it is
circumscribed by any number of definitions, rules, and regulations concerning
provocative speech, hate speech, ‘incitement’ speech, respect for religion, etc.
Ours is a democratic society in which the phrase, Freedom of Expression or of
Speech, is actually a misnomer—there is no such freedom. Rather, there is the
Right to Constrained Speech, or speech that is hemmed in on each side by some
constraining interest or another – e.g., hatred, race, religion, fill in the
blank according to culture, time, and place.
Of late, especially since the Charlie Hebdo attack, it seems that much of the conversation
about the freedom of constrained speech is linked to religious culture.
A journalist
from New York Magazine expressed the situation in this way: “Every free
society, facing the challenge of balancing freedom of expression against
other values such as societal cohesion and tolerance, creates its own imperfect
solution.”
Possibly the most common myth associated
with western style democracy is the notion of secularism, or freedom of
religion; and yet even this “freedom,” perhaps especially this freedom, is
dangerously absent from western democratic experience. The English philosopher
John Locke (1632-1704), who greatly influenced early Americans in their
thinking and framing of the best form of governance for a people to adopt, made
an excellent case in his 1689 Letter concerning Toleration for the complete separation of church authority from civil authority.
To put Locke’s argument succinctly: how can a civil judge make competent distinctions
between competing religious authorities with competing claims? The question is rhetorical, of course, because
a civil magistrate cannot intelligently choose between one religious interest
and another, not only because any such choice would reek of bias and therefore
be subject to criticism as an injustice, but also because a civil magistrate is
not formally knowledgeable in how to assess the value or validity of one
religious claim over another—how, for example, does a magistrate decide that
Methodism is more valid as a religion than Anglicanism? It is therefore more
than reasonable, and a reflection of right and just thinking, for Locke to
conclude that the separation of church or religious interests from the state or
civil interests must be established as an absolute basis for a free democratic
society. This is also the normative wiki-definition for secularism, which is “the principle of the separation of
government institutions and persons mandated to represent the state from
religious institutions and religious dignitaries.”
Now,
this type of freedom may be the theoretical case in the philosophy of
democracy, but it is certainly not the de facto case of religious thinking or of
the influence of religion in democracy. A writer
from The Atlantic, for example,
assumes that at least one of the goals of democracy [in France] is religious
pluralism – “If the goal is religious pluralism—and
in a country with about 5 million Muslims, it should be—then laïcité, by definition, is doomed to fail. It
effectively forces observant French Muslims to choose between their religious
practice and their French identity.” The
obvious challenge in this line of thinking, however, is that the democratic
vision of a John Locke and a Thomas Jefferson, grounded in the absolute separation
of private religion from the public sphere, never
included the idea of creating a space for private religion. A goal and purpose
of the democratic society was never to create
pluralism, but only to allow it to
breathe and to co-exist, as long as everyone plays by the rules of the
democratic environment – thereby ensuring the freedom of expression and
religious liberty for all of We the People.
In
the United States the First Amendment to the Constitution bans Congress from
passing any law respecting the establishment of
religion and from prohibiting people from freely exercising their religion. In 1981 the United Nations General Assembly passed a "Declaration
on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on
Religion or Belief," which recognizes Freedom of Religion as a fundamental
human right. In the Preamble one finds expressed these classic democratic and
secular sentiments:
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the
foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and
contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged
the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings
shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has
been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
This formulation is not a fluke, because it
is expressly reiterated in Article 18 of the same U.N. document: “Everyone has
the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes
freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in
community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or
belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” And yet, it would seem
that this very guarantee is being regularly violated internationally, with
impunity, if we are to believe Huffington Post headlines such as, “The Charlie Hebdo Murders: An Attack on Religious Liberty, Not Free Expression” (Doug Bandow; Cato Institute; 1/28/2015).
So,
in the present state of western democracy it is certainly beginning to seem
like the civic freedoms of Expression and Religion, which have historically
been the philosophical pillars of enlightened democracy, are crumbling under
the onslaught of world-wide religious authoritarianism.
BLASPHEMY LAWS &
THE QUESTION OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. The
diverse western democracies have negotiated diversely the troubled waters that
stand between private religion and the public domain. In some democracies the
relationship between the private religious and the civic is friendly. In
Germany, for example, as in the U.K. and the Netherlands, there seems to be
relatively peaceful cohabitation between the church and the state. In other
civil societies, however, that relationship is somewhat more tenuous and hostile.
Such is the case in France, Mexico, India, Spain, and in the U.S. In these latter societies, where the
separation between church and state is more clearly defined and codified in
legislation, where the society is formally ‘open’, one might also expect to see
a consistent commitment to secular or non-religious civil social institutions. In
societies where the church and the state have a closer co-existence, on the
other hand, one might expect to find the growth of stronger and more stable ‘closed’
institutions and structures, by means of which ‘open’ societies remain bound to
inherently authoritarian or religious world-views.
But even the more radical separation of the church from the state in
democracy does not guarantee the state’s safety from the inherently colonizing
project (proselytism) of religious thinking. The Americans still have the
formal theoretical idea of the absolute separation of church and state, and yet
their political landscape is infested by the unruly sprouting of Christianized
politicians who patiently seek to bring about the velvet coup d’état of
transforming civil society into Christian theocracy. Religious America,
imitating Moses’ long march through the Sinai, seems to be paving the way for a
modern exodus out of state secularism and into a new-world theocracy. But
democracy, where political authority has been squarely placed on the shoulders
of the individual, is philosophically incompatible with the authoritarianism inherent
to a theocratically defined state. At least philosophically, a velvet
revolution is indeed afoot in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Generally speaking, one tends to find
blasphemy laws more strongly rooted in those countries that have a close
relationship to specific religious traditions. This is predictable in the sense
that a blasphemy is, by definition, an insult of or contempt for the sacred; at
heart, blasphemy is a religious notion. In countries having a weaker
affiliation with formal religion, the notion of the sacred has simply been
transferred to the public dimension through the language of hate speech, etc.;
but the reality of blasphemy continues to thrive through the various euphemisms
of secular thought—this is just a secular expression of the velvet coup d’état
designed to move We the People away from the messiness and tension of secularized
democracy working itself out through the lives of individuals, and closer to a
religious authoritarianism.
In March 2014, in a Policy Brief entitled Prisoners of Belief, The U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom articulated essentially the same philosophy
toward religion, as did John Locke in his
1689 Letter concerning Toleration—which
just goes to show how difficult it is to kill a good idea.
“Blasphemy laws inappropriately position governments as arbiters of truth
or religious rightness, as they empower officials to enforce particular
religious views against individuals, minorities, and dissenters. [… because] In
contexts where an authoritarian government supports an established religious
creed, blasphemy accusations are frequently used to silence critics or
democratic rivals under the guise of enforcing religious piety.”
The Commission’s brief
continues:
“Blasphemy laws are incompatible with international
human rights standards, as they protect beliefs over individuals, and they
often result in violations of the freedoms of religion and expression,
especially when persons are jailed. Article 18 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) protects the individual right to freedom of
thought, conscience and religion, including the right to manifest this belief
through various acts, such as worship, observance, practice and teaching.
Limitations on this right are narrow, and are only permitted as necessary to
protect “public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and
freedoms of others.” Article 19 of the ICCPR protects the individual right to
freedom of expression, which may only be limited to protect the rights or
reputations of others, national security, public order, or public health or
morals. And in terms of the protection of morals, the UN Human Rights Committee
has observed that limitations on this ground “must be based on principles not
deriving exclusively from a single [social, philosophical, or religious]
tradition.””
The conclusion of this
Commission is democratic and secular in the highest degree:
“International law experts have repeatedly deemed blasphemy-type laws
incompatible with human rights commitments. For example, the UN Human Rights
Committee has stated that “[p]rohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a
religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible
with the [ICCPR].” In addition, an international group of experts convened by
the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently recommended
that “[s]tates that have blasphemy laws should repeal the[m] as such laws have
a stifling impact on the enjoyment of freedom of religion or belief and healthy
dialogue and debate about religion.” Furthermore, these laws run counter to
consensus UN resolutions recognizing that religious intolerance is best fought
through positive measures, such as education, outreach, and counter-speech, and
that criminalization is only appropriate for incitement to imminent violence.”
A similar
philosophy motivates another “independent watchdog
organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world,” Freedom House, which argues that, “Founded
in 1941, Freedom House was the first American organization to champion the
advancement of freedom globally.” On the question of blasphemy laws their
conclusion was that:
"blasphemy laws foster an environment of intolerance
and impunity, and lead to violations of a broad range of human rights,
including the obvious rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion,
as well as freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention; the right to due process
and a fair trial; freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading
treatment; and the right to life and security of the person."”
Among the various players of the
democratic game, however, there still remains no especial consensus about the distance,
far or near, that is to define religion’s relationship to the civil state. So,
if there is still no philosophical agreement about how religion might best coexist
within and with the civil state, perhaps it might be possible to find a single
unifying concept that could historically bind together the various democracies
of the west.
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS, or RELIGIOUS
AUTHORITY and CIVIL SOCIETY. Historically speaking, the birth of the modern democratic
principle: We the People, flows from a decline in the idea that kings are
innately endowed, from Heaven, with special authority to rule over societies.
There are many reasons for the decline in this latter idea, including the
perception that kings were not neutral in the distribution of their favors, and
that kings could not be held accountable for excesses and corruption.
Philosophers, such as Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau, and other interested parties
argued for an alternative view of governance for the civil society, which was
grounded in the notion of the ‘consent of the governed’… and, following a
series of revolutions and beheadings, the social contract was acclaimed and
proclaimed, at the heart of which was very firmly embedded the core idea of We
the People.
This
was a moment in western history when it became philosophically clear that
authoritarianisms seem just naturally to want to accumulate social and
political and financial and religious power among a select few insiders, and that
the only practical way to avoid that trap was to fragment and to disperse all
social power among the real builders and players of civil society – individuals,
who would become in that instant of history ‘We the People’.
Now, even though the various
democracies of the world do not necessarily agree on the limitations of speech
and religion, it would still seem reasonable that all states which claim their
philosophical heritage from the western principle of We the People, should
continue to resist the principle of authoritarianism in all of its diverse incarnations;
and this must include our resistance to any private Religious Thought trying to
impose its values and its worldview in the public space on free hearts and free
men.
The principle of the divine right of
kings is resurrected again in the democratic west only when and where
democratic countries allow religious thought, of any ilk, to hold public sway
within their borders. And so democracy dies, not with a whimper but with a bang,
unless citizenry discovers in itself courage sufficient to stand the ground of
its ideas, and commitment enough to the principle of truly free (i.e.,
unbridled) speech, and to absolute public neutrality on questions of religion.
Yet it is unfortunately true, as has been said, that “Among citizens, terrorism
provokes a natural reaction: fear coupled with an overwhelming desire for
security.”
Who holds the real power of our lives
in the democratic state? Philosophers will tell us that we do, as individuals.
And yet free speech and free religion in the democratic state, to whatever
degree We the People allow it, to whatever degree We the People censure
ourselves out of fear, is largely controlled, de facto, by some of
the following religious thinkers who have and are attempting to seize control
of the free world of ideas, and speech, and religion, and choice, through their
fatwas [compiled from various sources and Wikipedia]:
· L’imam afghan [Mir Faroq Husseini, un
dignitaire religieux dans la province occidentale de Herat] qui a offert
400.000 dollars de récompense pour quiconque tuerait le producteur du film
islamophobe ainsi que le dessinateur français Charb.
· Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini in 1989 pronounced a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses.
· In 2001, religious authorities in the United Arab Emirates issued a fatwā
against the children's game Pokémon, after finding that it encouraged gambling, and was
based on the theory of evolution, "a Jewish-Darwinist theory, that conflicts
with the truth about humans and with Islamic principles".
· In 2001, Egypt's Grand Mufti
issued a fatwā stating that the show "Who will Win the Million?"
(modelled on the British show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?)
was un-Islamic. The Sheikh of Cairo's Al-Azhar University later rejected the fatwā,
finding that there was no objection to such shows since they spread general
knowledge.
· In Syria, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badruddin
Hassoun issued a fatwa prohibiting every type of smoking, including cigarettes
and narghile, as well as the selling and buying of tobacco and any affiliation
with tobacco distribution (see also Smoking in
Syria).
· Yusuf
al-Qaradawi released a fatwā on April 14, 2004, stating that the
boycott of American and Israeli products was an obligation for all who are
able.
· Sheik Sadeq Abdallah bin Al-Majed, leader
of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, issued a fatwā that prohibits vaccination of children
claiming it is a conspiracy of the Jews and Freemasons.
· Indian Muslim scholars issued a fatwā of
death against Taslima Nasreen, an exiled controversial
Bangladeshi writer. Majidulla Khan Farhad of Hyderabad-based Majlis Bachao
Tehriq issued the fatwā at the Tipu Sultan mosque in Kolkata after Juma prayers
as saying Taslima has defamed Islam and announced an “unlimited financial
reward” to anybody who would kill her.
· In 1998, Grand Ayatollah
Sistani of Iraq,
issued a fatwā prohibiting University of Virginia professor Abdulaziz Sachedina from ever again teaching
Islam due in part to Sachedina's writings encouraging acceptance of religious
pluralism in the Muslim world.
· In June 1992, Egyptian writer Farag Foda
was assassinated following a fatwa issued by ulamas from Al-Azhar who had adopted a previous fatwa by
Sheikh al-Azhar, Jadd al-Haqq, accusing secularist writers such
as Foda of being "enemies of Islam". The jihadist group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya claimed
responsibility for the murder.
· In 1951 Egypt issued a fatwa on Coca-Cola
and Pepsi-Cola citing it was safe for Muslims to drink both beverages since
"they do not contain narcotic or alcoholic substances, nor do these
analyses show the presence of pepsin. From the bacteriological point of view
the beverages are free of microbes harmful to health."
· Osama bin
Laden issued two fatwās—in 1996 and then again in 1998—that Muslims should
kill civilians
and military
personnel from the United States
and allied countries until they withdraw support for Israel and
withdraw military forces from Islamic
countries.
· Earlier this month a video was release
showing another AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] leader, Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, claiming
responsibility for the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie
Hebdo, which claimed 12
lives. According to reports
from RFI
(Radio France Internationale), "We, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the messenger of
Allah," one of the group's leaders, Nasser al-Ansi, said in reference to the magazine's publications of caricatures of
the Prophet Mohammed.”
In memoriam, not just to these executed
individuals from Charlie Hebdo, who are only the most recent victims to the
divine right of kings, but also to the very idea of secular democracy—unless
the west continues to ensure that the voices of divinely inspired “kings” are given
no hearing in civil society.
[#CharlieHebdo : la vidéo hommage de France
Télévisions ; #NousSommesCharlie]
Further reading: Profane. Sacrilegious Expression in a Multicultural Age, edited by Grenda, Beneke, and Nash. University of California Press, 2014.
Further reading: Profane. Sacrilegious Expression in a Multicultural Age, edited by Grenda, Beneke, and Nash. University of California Press, 2014.
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