Sharia law in democracy? Bite me.

Why, then, should we be commanded to "respect" those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a license for murder and rape? As one who has occasionally challenged Islamic propaganda in public and been told that I have thereby "insulted 1.5 billion Muslims," I can say what I suspect—which is that there is an unmistakable note of menace behind that claim. No, I do not think for a moment that Mohammed took a "night journey" to Jerusalem on a winged horse. And I do not care if 10 billion people intone the contrary. Nor should I have to. But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for "respect."

-Christopher Hitchens

Back in October, during the provincial election in Ontario, I had occasion to interview Richard Dawkins on the subject of faith based schools. (you can find the interview here) He described something he calls "me-tooism." That is to say, sectarian groups wanting special treatment. In that case, because there are Christian schools that get state funding Muslims groups want it too. Of course, Dawkins says tax dollars shouldn't fund faith schools at all, and I agree with him.

I can only imagine, however, how he reacted to the Archbishop of Canteberry's recent suggestion that elements of Sharia Law - the Muslim legal code as found in their religious texts - be used in British courts. Of course, Muslims have cheered the suggestion while everyone else...well, most everyone else did not.

It's the ultimate me-tooism. The legal code isn't enough. They need their own religious laws to supplant them.

Sharia has been criticized, and justly I might add, for being utterly incompatible with democratic legal frameworks. Putting aside for the moment the utterly draconian state of those nations that apply sharia as their legal code, the insane punishments it mets out for crimes, and what's its done to women in those nations (including restricting what they wear and what they are allowed to do for a living), no religious code is compatible with democracy. It was for that reason the religious law courts were banned in Ontario in 2004 on the cusp of sharia becoming part of the civil law code.

The reason is simple. Religious codes are regarded as immutable. The word of god, or Allah, or Zeus or whatever. It cannot be questioned, it cannot be changed. You cannot challenge a tenant of something like sharia in court as unconstitutional, because the entire idea is that these are the laws of a perfect unchanging sky god.

Our justice system is designed to be answerable to the people, and laws that don't work, that are unjust, or need amending, can be through the legislative and executive branches of government - which do so through debate and consultations. Religious laws are regarded as perfect. Of course, as a practical matter, the priests, imams, clerics, monks and others who use and apply religious laws change their interpretations over time, but there is nothing democratic about the process, si there? It's a cleric saying "the law means thusly" and that's it.

And of course, let is not forget that the religious codes of the Bible and the Koran were written by people who had no clue what democracy was, lived in societies ruled by kings and had no idea what a free society is. That's why you don't find any mention of how to run an election, or defend free speech, or provide equal rights for all, in the Koran and bible. You don't get the right to lawyers, appeals, speedy trails, the right to see evidence or the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. These ideals were not born of Christianity or Islam and to deny citizens access to them by applying religious laws is an insult to everything democracy is.

(In fact, I ask you, how many Muslim nations are democratic? It's a really, really short list!)

Yet this is what we have to deal with these days. You hear sometimes from evangelicals that the so called "new-atheists" are too militant and "fundamentalists" The good archbishop has made the charge himself. And yet here we are, in an day and age where the leader of one of the largest Christians church in the world is advocating the secular justice system be amended to accommodate the profoundly undemocratic religious sensibilities of some Muslims.

Well, as Dawkins would say, its all barking mad.

The justice system is a justice system for all citizens. You don't get a separate legal system because of the colour of your skin, religious beliefs or what kind of music you listen to. You are Muslim, or Scientologist or whatever and think you deserve special treatment? Too damned bad. Democracy is not a religious enterprise. As Hitchens often says "Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall."

Defend Freedom of Speech.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
-Salman Rushdie


Take a look at the cartoon posted here. Last year this was one of several cartoons printed in Danish newspapers that triggered violent riots in the Muslim world.

The problem for the faithful was twofold. One, in Islamic culture depictions of the prophet Mohmmad is a big no-no. Second, being commentary on the on going problem of the religiously motivated terrorism of Jihadists, they weren't the most flattering depictions of the prophet.

Of course some people will find this cartoon offensive. That is their right. But in a society with freedom of speech, it is also the right of the cartoonist to make such a drawing. However, in North America the cartoons were not republished out of fear of Muslim backlash. When newspapers and TV stations should have shown the cartoons as part of their coverage, and to stand on the principle of free speech, they trembled like cowards. Not long afterward, the United Nations began to consider adding blasphemy as a violation of human rights. This is effectively saying freedom of speech should bow to religious authority, when the fact is freedom of expression means we have the right to blaspheme all we want. And it shouldn't be any other way.

The violent aftermath of the images,' publications, an aftermath that included the burning of churches and the death of people caught in the wake of the enraged mobs, lead several influential writers to sign a manifesto declaring the importance of freedom of speech.

Although a year old, the world hasn't changed much, so I am posting the manifesto here on the Atheist Handbook. Please take the time to read it. Add your own comments if you like or just repost it on your own blog or webpage. I won't comment further on the manifesto because it speaks for itself:

"After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical intelligence out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatization of its believers. We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical intellect may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism."

The original 12 signatories to this manifesto were Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val and Ibn Warraq.

More information can be found here

Blasmphey is not a crime. Rushdie's Knighthood?

Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable, not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men.

-Salman Rushdie


There is an ongoing scuttlebutt about the most routine of events over in England. The government there awarded one of its most famous writers, Salman Rushdie, a knighthood.

The reaction in some part of the world should have been anticipated I suppose. The boorish and unlettered masses in some Muslim countries - people who probably have never read a single line of Rushdie's work - again were whipped up into a frenzy by their religious and political leaders. Again, they took to their streets calling for the death of the author because he wrote a book.

Unless you live under a rock, you know which book I am talking about. The Satanic Verses, inspired by part of the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. In 1989 when the book was published, the then high Imam of Iran and general lunatic, the Ayathollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, a religious order, that Rushdie be murdered. The book, said Khomeini, was blasphemous. And there is only one thing to do with an apostate like Rushdie.

Rushdie had to go into hiding and while he was never killed, one translator of his book was and two other survived assassination attempts.

In time, the effort to kill Rushdie for having the temerity of writing a book, died out. Although last year, amid surreal and hyper violent reactions in the Muslim world to Danish political cartoons some Muslims found blasphemous, the Iranian government issued a statement saying the death sentence for Rushdie still stands - fatwas as it turns out, cannot be withdrawn.

So it should come as no surprise when the protests erupted last month in some Muslim quarters, particularly in Pakistan, over Rushdie's knighthood. Apparently, those with influence in these countries have no conception of free speech, and claimed that knighting such a "hated apostate" was a direct attack on Islam and all Muslims worldwide.

We've come to expect this. People with little education, who have never read, and probably could not read, Rushdie's books are calling for his murder. But what was even more contemptible, was the reaction by some in the west. There were those who said the knighthood should not have been awarded because Muslims don't like the Satanic Verses. "We really ought not be doing or saying things that upset Muslims."

In other words, we should never say or do things that can be regarded by the faithful as blasphemous.

Well, the proper reaction to the storm of protests from believers who call for the murder of someone for writing a book should have been a short three words: "Too damn bad."

Saying that you cannot publish anything that someone might find blasphemous would essentially force free speech to bow to theology and that is simply not acceptable.

Some of the most important works of art, literature and science have been, and still are, considered blasphemous.

Should we ban Darwin because some Christians think his Origin of Species is an insult to the Almighty? Should The Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantzakis be pulled from bookshelves because it challenges conventional Christian belief?

Most would say no. Yet, because Muslims find political cartoons and fictional novels blasphemous the United Nations is under pressure to adopt a resolution abandoning a basic human freedom - free speech

Ironically, the calls for banning "blasphemous materials" are coming from the Middle East -- a region of the world which has, at best, only the most tenuous history with democratic freedoms. In nations like Iran, theology, not democracy, sets the rules.

That anyone in the west would argue that Rushdie should not be knighted so that the religious sensibilities of religious fanatics are protected is staggering. Those who make this argument should, I think, be ashamed of themselves for they reject one of the bedrock principles of a free society.

The fact is, freedom of expression means we have the right to blaspheme all we want. And it shouldn't be any other way.