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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Into the dark Freedom of expression or a mental prison? By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 800 words Publication date: February 19, 2006 From one perspective, all religions are equal. They profess faith in a non-existent god or gods and promise rewards in the afterlife for those who follow their rules and punishment for those who break them. But from another perspective, some religions are worse than others. Christianity and Judaism do not impose penalties on individuals who renounce their faith. God may not look on them kindly, but the worst that Christians and Jews can do is to excommunicate them. Excommunication is not pleasant, particularly in societies where everyone obeys religious traditions, but it is usually not life-threatening. There was a period in the Middle Ages when the Inquisition tortured and burned apostates – people they considered had renounced their faith – but given the long history of the Church that was an aberration. Similarly, those who insulted God or Christ could be put on trial in church or criminal courts for blasphemy, but, the Inquisition aside, the penalty was relatively light. By the eighteenth century repudiation of the Bible was increasingly common in America and Europe, with few negative consequences. The last time that blasphemy was an issue in a criminal trial in a traditionally Christian country was in England in 1977. Denis Lemon, the editor of Gay News was found guilty of blasphemy for publishing a poem which suggested that Jesus had had sex with several disciples and Pontius Pilate . It also featured a scene in which a Roman legionnaire had sex with Christ’s dead body. There were peaceful protests for and against Lemon and his conviction was eventually overturned. But even at the height of the controversy, the poem’s most vociferous critic, Mary Whitehouse (a less scary Phyllis Schlafly), didn’t call for mass violence and murder. Now, look at Islam, where, according to the Hadith (the commentaries), the penalty for those who renounce their faith is death. Apostasy is off the menu. Meanwhile, “respect” for the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed / Muhammad is obligatory. “Respect” means that no form of criticism or questioning of these central pillars of Islam in any circumstances whatsoever. While some might say that respect has to be earned, for devout Muslims that is not an option. Unlike other religions, Islam must never be questioned. What you get when you put these two edicts together – death for apostasy and blind respect – is a mental prison. The relatively few Muslims who dare to question the truth of Islam or the Quran can never do so directly or in public for fear of the fatal consequences. Meanwhile the masses are steeped in a culture which stunts their mental growth and denies them the ability to use their minds to the best of their ability. Hence the furore over the Danish cartoons. To non-Muslims and to Muslims who have risen above the shackles of their religion, the cartoons are inoffensive, especially in comparison with the cruel obscenities about Christians and Jews that have been published for decades in the parts of the Muslim press. Some of the pictures are weak and humorless. Others, such as the example here, achieve the highest art in that they portray more effectively in a simple drawing concepts that thousands of words may express badly. This is not new. Nothing is being said that has not been said before by men and women, including Muslims, across the world for the last thirty years. To be offended by it is to be offended by the possibility of free speech, by the simple truth that for many, Muhammad does inspire violence. Yet millions have been offended. Lives have been lost, property has been destroyed and the violence looks set to continue indefinitely. The world is being held to ransom by millions of young men and women who lack the ability to examine their own beliefs and consciences. As in most human activity, there are layers of reality. On the surface this is a clash of cultures focused on a belief attributed to over a billion people. Underneath, the story is different. Those who protest loudest are those with fewest prospects. Condemned by economies that deprive them of work, prevented by their faith from enjoying each other’s company, millions of frustrated young men and women have no outlet for their mental or physical energies. Older, more cynical men encourage them. In such circumstances, burning a Danish flag or destroying a KFC offer a sense of purpose and life to the young and a powerbase to the old. We are heading into another Dark Age, where ignorance and violence overcome knowledge and peace. The blame lies not with cartoons that emerge from a tradition that honors the human mind rather than superstition. It lies with poverty, over-population and the manipulation of the young by those who would destroy the world rather than lose their power within it.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |