Archive for September, 2012

Say No to theological demands for immunity from criticism

Posted on September 22, 2012. Filed under: Antisemitism, China, Christians, Hindu, Iran, Islam, Islamic propaganda, Israel, Jew, Jihad, Left, Marxism, Muslims, neoimperialism, Pakistan, religion, Russia, Syria, Taleban, terrorism, USA |

As the so-called movie-protests continue with random and sometimes what appears as organized violence, here are a few thoughts :

• Claim: The protests are not based on ideology/religion. They are expression of hatred against America and the West and Israel.
• Reality : Muslims have been violently protesting against claimed insults to their religion or to their prophet, from the time of the prophet himself – according to Muslim core texts. Intolerance for any criticism of any Islamic claim is built into the theology. The case of assassinating a mother of suckling baby, for being a poet and composing verses that were irritating to the prophet – is one among many but not unique, iconic examples of the Islamic doctrine  of extreme intolerance of the spoken or written word.
• Reality : If the protests were really against America and the West, why is Saudi Arabia or Saudi monarchy spared the loving expressions of outrage? A key factor in the West’s dominance of the globe is its linkage to Saudi oil and petro wealth. Saudis collaborate effectively with Israel against Iran. But nothing happens against those in the Islamic world who collaborate with and are helped in turn by the West.
• Reality : Afghan Taleban and assorted islamists, Pakistani islamists, Yemeni islamists, Nigerian or Sudanese or Somali or Niger islamists, Iran and Iraq in their war against each other, or continued proxy conflicts in Iraq or Syria between Sunnis and Shias – all are about Muslims repressing Muslims, Muslims torturing, raping, massacring Muslim men, women and children. But no violent Muslim protests happen against them.
• Claim : The reason for hating America, West and Israel, is because of their “mistreatment” of Muslims.
• Reality : Russia “mistreats” Chechen and Daghestani Muslims. China violently represses Uyghurs. No protests happen against Russia and China.
• Fact : Intolerance of the written or spoken word of criticism is built into the core theology of Islam. Even under the rule of the founder himself, the attested cases of execution of women are known to have been about claimed “mockers” of the prophet or Islam – as in the case of when Mecca was “conquered”.  These parts of the story – where poets- women or men were specifically targeted by Islamists, are quietly dropped in even the modern western dramatizations of these stories.
• Fact : Islamic vitriol and denigration of other religions, primarily Christianity [even if use of Jesus in Islamic texts is always cited in apologetics], Judaism, and Hinduism – exist all over the web. The language of the vitriol range from the sophisticated to the vilest gutter versions ever imaginable. Perhaps they reflect more the state and hidden desires or psychological disorders in the repressive Middle Eastern societies, but in terms of cold hard printed or written word – they are worse denigrators of other religions and their respective beloved icons.
• Fact : Christian leadership of the more established church organizations are and will remain ambivalent towards this intolerance, perhaps because some of them also feel the need for protection under neo-anti-blasphemy laws. Ideologies which know they have serious weaknesses in their foundations, resort to ideological as well as physical coercion to enforce their authority.  Their ultimate tool is the demand for silencing of critical voices and doubts – because the fear is that such words would expose the underlying vicious hunger for power masquerading as concern for the “spirit” after “death”.
• Fact : Marxists too will be ambivalent towards this intolerance, because part of them look upon Islamists as a useful tool against their so-called neo-imperialists, or as potential allies against their infantile rage against their more-liberal-than-islam birth societies. Theirs is a search for the mythical golden pre-tribal age of primitive societies assumed to be egalitarian. For the Marxists who are more pragmatic, it is a case too of protecting their dogma and pseudo-religion against critical thinking – the reason Leninist party discipline was primarily seeking to gag dissent being made public, and the public getting uncomfortable ideas.
• Fact : Fighting against the demand for this protection of intolerance, protection or immunity from the assailant “word”, is a crucial aspect of protecting all the gains that human civilization has made over the last five hundred years from the Renaissance. If we retain the right to freely criticize and express our dissent from any dogma, any theology, any ideology, any hypothesis, except the hypothesis of “right to criticize freely” – we can always regain whatever we lose through temporary reversals of the human civilization.
• Appeal : do whatever is needful, democratically, freely, openly, publicly – to preserve the right to criticize, the right to freely speak and express, regardless of any dogmatic claim to the contrary.  Do not let any government or legislature of the free world accommodate the Islamist lobby in this regard. This is about freedom and all about not letting totalitarianism raise its head again.