This means the fight would be fair. So, the Geek would like very much to challenge the SecGen to a debate, an open, honest, full, fair, and frank exchange on the question of "religious defamation" and the substance of freedom of inquiry, opinion, and expression.
Of course, such a debate either through written exchanges or up close, live, and personal is impossible. Not because the SecGen is a busy and very, very important person being in charge of the affairs of a large and powerful bloc of Islamic dominated states, but because the SecGen and the organization he heads as well as its member countries fear open and honest debate. Period.
The OIC in keeping with the prevalent Muslim ethos of the day greatly prefers whining about presumed victim status and alleging unfair treatment at the hands of prejudiced and hateful "others" to an open and vigorous heuristic exchange of differing views. The default position of Muslim groups and many individual Muslims whenever and wherever and however confronted with disagreement and challenge is to claim victimization at the hands of "Islamophobes."
One can confidently expect the recent episode of a Muslim Army psychiatrist going a tad bit funny at Fort Hood will raise a storm of protest to the effect that even mentioning the shooter's Islamic affiliation is unfair, unjustified, prejudiced, and defamatory. Only Muslim groups will howl with protest and charges of prejudice, discrimination, and hatred. There is no probability that the American Psychiatric Association will sternly warn of the improper linkage between a lone shrink going postal and the psychiatric profession as a whole. Nor is it likely that the United States Army will complain that identifying the trigger puller as a Major in its Medical Corps will cause violence and threats to be leveled against military personnel generally.
No. The complaints and the whining will emanate solely from the Muslim quarter. Along with dark cautions against the exacerbation of "Islamophobia" will be the obbligato and formulaic denunciations of violence and the demands that Islam be held harmless in the event.
Instead, the focus will be on the person--not the religion which is part of the person's internal structure and motivations. Excuses, usually those of discrimination or alienation will be offered as to why the shooter "snapped" and ran amok in a blizzard of bullets. The power of religion, of belief, of internal imperatives in conflict will be buried in drifts of psychobabble, charge and counter-charge, and, as the context, fear of offending people.
Ah, yes, the fear of offering offense, no matter how unintended--or justifiable--on the basis of fact. What compelling power that particular fear has today for presidents, potentates, popes, and even those of us in the hoi polloi. It is a fear which is both endemic and epidemic in the US and the West generally today.
It is, however, a fear which is remarkable only in its absence in the Muslim world, in the OIC and in the recent writing of Secretary General Ihsanoglu.
Which is why the Geek would dearly love to debate the Secretary General. The subject would be the "defamation" of religion resolution which whizzed through the UN Human Rights Council to the ultimate detriment of that most basic of Western and American rights, the right of free inquiry, opinion, and expression.
Mr Ihsanoglu has taken the standard Muslim line in defense of the unfortunate document co-sponsored by the US and Egypt before the UNHRC. He argues passionately that this resolution and, by implication, both the OIC and Muslms generally have been the victims of a "smear" campaign at the hands of unnamed non-governmental organizations and "interest groups."
You gotta love that. Sinister NGOs and an evil cabal of "interest groups" all plotting a vicious "smear campaign" against the innocent Muslims, adherents one and all of the religion of peace and tolerance."
Oh, the Secretary General's position is not simply that of branding the opposition as the legions of darkness. He also portrays the OIC as the force of light.
Notice the finely nuance wording (the sign of an academic mind at work.) There is no way to "balance" freedom of inquiry, opinion, and expression with the other two considerations when only one religion--Islam--is specifically named in the resolution and when the most vocal advocates for the special position of that religion consider even truthful, factually based critiques of the faith and its works to be "defamatory," to be "incitement to hatred."Let me reiterate the willingness on the part of the OIC to engage constructively with the US, the EU and others with a view to taking a holistic view aimed at defining and maintaining a delicate balance between freedom of opinion and respect for all religions and incitement to hatred.
The "delicate balance" to which Dr Ihsanoglu refers is already impossible in Muslim dominated states which outlaw any criticism of Islam no matter how mild, how truthful, how factual, how justifiable. Given the totalistic nature of Islam which denies any possible distinction between the state and its politics on the one hand and the community of faith on the other, there is no way that the balance to which the Secretary General alludes can be made.
To put it bluntly, there is no tradition of free expression in any Islamic dominated state. There is no allowance for freedom of opinion in Islam qua Islam. Nor is there any probability that such would emerge in this world in the foreseeable future.
Dr Ihsanoglu is aware of this. He has to be. He is Turkish. Turkey, until quite recently at least, has been unique among Muslim majority states. It has had in an off and on sort of way a glimmering of free speech. Of course, as the heritage of Ataturk is cast off by the new Islamist rooted government there, the point will be moot in the future.
Dr Ihsanoglu must also be quite aware of the realities which exist in Muslim dominated states such as Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and so many others of heavy handed repression of disagreeable opinions, disagreeable writings--and disagreeable writers. He must know to his very bones that it is in Muslim dominated states that freedom means only the freedom to conform one's thoughts, words, and actions to the approved protocol.
He must also know, even if faintly, that it is not the words written and spoken by non-Muslims about Islam which creates any hostile attitudes toward either the religion of Islam or its adherents. Rather, it is the actions, the words, the behavior of Muslims which cause the reactions which the Secretary General finds so appalling.
It is very difficult for a person residing in the West to find good in a faith which either allows, or worse, impels the use of suicide bombers, the stoning of women, the amputation of the limbs of petty thieves. It is difficult to say nothing but good about a religion when that religion's sacred writings extol war, applaud the decapitation of Jews, demands violence be directed against those of another confession, calls for the death of apostates, and generally revels in both blood and visions of hell.
The Secretary General may even suspect that the root cause of the recurrent Muslim demands for special protection against the words and views is fear. He may even on rare occasions feel a quiver, a deep inner feeling which warns Muslims are not actually convinced of the worth of their own belief structures. If the believers truly believed in the value and worth and certainty and accuracy of their beliefs they would not tremble before criticism, they would not quake before attacks, they would not whine after special protection, and allege that only sinister and dark forces opposed their need for legal wrappings against the views and expressions of others.
Whining, protestations, and accusations of ill-will are not the sign of strength either in an individual or in a system of beliefs. So, Dr Ihsanoglu, what does this say about Islam? The OIC? Or you?
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