Shut Up! Some Things Can't Be Talked About

There are some subjects which are thought to be off-limits for discussion. Topics about which some person or group somewhere on the planet is sensitive. Areas of discourse which might somehow offend deep seated sensibilities.

High, perhaps highest on the list, at least according to the Society Obsessively Protecting the Sensitive (SOPS) with headquarters at the United Nations, is religion.

It appears that people afflicted with a deep and abiding religious faith are so insecure in the value of that faith and its penumbra of beliefs and practices that the slightest hint of any questioning or criticism on the part of those who are not members of the individual's community of faith leads inexorably and inevitably to a crushing sense of despair and depression which can only be relieved by shouts of "Death to..." and threats or acts of violence directed against those who have uttered the questions, criticisms or denunciations. What a quaint and curious notion.

Actually this strange view surpasses the quaint and curious to enter the world of the bizarre. Considering that a deeply held faith is commonly supposed to strengthen the believer against the comments of those who do not share the belief, the movement to limit freedom of speech is identical to the excuse for failure so often advanced by those who seek to communicate with the dead in a seance--"There's an unbeliever here. The spirits won't talk with a skeptic present."

Originating with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the movement to limit free expression on matters of religion has spread to the United Nations. After having gained the full support of the UN Human Rights Commission (to the extent that Sharia cannot be mentioned at their meetings) the gag-the-unbelievers contagion was caught this past week by the General Assembly.

It is easy to understand why the OIC and its member states are grotesquely perturbed by the idea of criticism or skepticism directed at the One Pure Faith. Islam, to an extent surpassing even that of the other monotheistic religions, is predicated upon fear. Fear and its partner in debilitation, personal insecurity.

Islam per se is based on fear. The fear of hell. Its statements of creed linger with pornographic detail upon the punishments which await the unbeliever and the apostate or the Muslim who breaks the laws of the lord when they die. The perils and torments of the pit are put forth with a degree of B movie detail which are scary in the extreme. From infancy on the individual in a Muslim society is raised on a diet of unremitting fear.

That Muslims, particularly Muslim men, are insecure in painfully obvious. The only rational explanation for the constant emphasis in both word and deed upon the subjugation of women is that men are afflicted with near terminal insecurity regarding their male nature and character. The same may be seen in the pathetic emphasis placed upon male secondary sex characteristics such as never shaving and on the presumed male propensity for violence.

Fear and insecurity alike are seen in the constant refrain about the "Muslim community" and the threat posed to that community by any slight odor of divisiveness, of fitna. Humans are a herd animal to be sure and many, even most, religions have sought to capitalise on that fact. At one time or another, for greater or lesser periods of time, each of the monotheistic faiths has sought to maintain its internal coherence by definitions based on exclusion.

But, only Islam has placed the definition of community so firmly on the rock of exclusion. Only Islam has made a article of faith and community membership out of the specious notion that the human race is divided into two camps: The House of Islam and The House of War.

And, in recent decades at least, Islam has stood alone in affirming that it can be and is victimised, threatened and persecuted by open inquiry and free expression. Islam, or at least many Muslims occupying leadership positions in Muslim societies, are more fearful of words and cartoons than they are of bombs and bullets.

Not only is Islam founded on fear, many Muslim majority societies are inherently authoritarian in nature. This is expectable. All too often throughout the sweep of human history people have shown themselves ready, even eager to adopt authoritarian rule in order to lower fear and reduce the insecurity which is a natural part of life.

Authoritarianism is the critical link between the OIC backed move for an international convention preventing "defamation" of religion and its acceptance in an ever-widening international arena. Consider the statement attributed to General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann last week.

D'Escoto said, “Yes, I believe that defamation of religion should be banned." He added, 'No one should try to defame Islam or any other religion. We should respect all religions.”

Miguel d'Escoto Brockman started life as a Roman Catholic priest. Catholicism is a hierarchical and authoritarian creed. It is also a religion that has been noted over the past couple thousand years for having made numerous attempts to prohibit free inquiry and expression. Even today it would be difficult, not to say impossible, to describe the Church accurately as espousing open inquiry, open expression and dissent over matters of faith and doctrine.

Sr d'Escoto joined the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas, as was typical for all Marxist-Leninist parties throughout the world, was rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian. Considering that d'Escoto became the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister during the years of Sandinista government, he must be quite comfortable with limitations on speech and inquiry. He probably even became poopy when the US government made remarks about his government which might be interpreted as icky-poo, as less than flatly adulatory.

Non-Communist, non-Muslim authoritarian regimes, particularly in the Third World, have been plumping for years at the UN and other venues to impose restrictions upon free speech and open debate. Slipping in a major limitation under the guise of protecting religious sensibilities from the potential of something called "defamation" must be a very attractive option for these less-than-high-minded rulers.

Of course Sr d'Escoto denied that preventing "defamation," a term which is impossible to rigorously and objectively define given that its nature depends upon subjective perceptions, would limit free speech. This same outrageous assertion has been and will be made ad nauseum by the OIC and assorted Islamic governments such as those in Pakistan and Iran. While there may be intellectually flaccid members of the Western European and American elites--all card carrying adherents of the Society of the Perpetually Indignant and Concerned, all up-to-the-minute with what is sensitive and politically correct--who accept this contention, it is bankrupt on its face.

Limiting inquiry, expression and debate (including mockery and satire) on a subject which is central to the human condition not only limits speech, it limits our very capacity to be human, to use that most exceptional of human organs--our brains. To declare, as the OIC and GA president d'Escoto want to, that religion is off-limits is to strike at the very heart of political free speech.

With respect to Islam, religion is politics. Given the current state of play in international politics, to deny expression--even expression subjectively felt to be "defamatory," is to surrender the ideological battlefield.

No amount of misplaced sympathy for those whose fears lead to a sense of having been insulted by word (or cartoon) can be allowed to interfere with a dynamic in the world which every day increasingly resembles a "clash of civilizations." No amount of mis-guided political correctness or ill-informed regard for the sensibilities of Islamic populations can be permitted to cause the US or the West to forfeit the contest with the witches' brew of Islamists, born-again Communists, and authoritarian governments which threaten both our lives and our liberties today.