Despite the Riots and Threats, I Stand By What I Wrote

Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone -- and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.

Here's how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments that forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states have successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets." Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists -- of all stripes -- have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be "respected" -- by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of "adulterous" women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are "religious" issues, and it is "offensive" to talk about them.

This trend is not confined to the UN. It has spread deep into democratic countries. Whenever I have reported on immoral acts by religious fanatics -- Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim -- I am accused of "prejudice", and I am not alone. But my only "prejudice" is in favor of individuals being able to choose to live their lives, their way, without intimidation. That means choosing religion, or rejecting it, as they wish, after hearing an honest, open argument.

A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence through which none of us can pass.

That's why I wrote: "All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him. I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice.... When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade."

An Indian newspaper called The Statesman -- one of the oldest and most venerable dailies in the country -- thought this accorded with the rich Indian tradition of secularism, and reprinted the article. That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested -- or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was "prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet" and I should be sent "to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol... He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech."

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged -- in the world's largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech -- with "deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings". I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

What should an honest defender of free speech say in this position? Every word I wrote was true. I believe the right to openly discuss religion, and follow the facts wherever they lead us, is one of the most precious on earth -- especially in a democracy of a billion people rivven with streaks of fanaticism from a minority of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. So I cannot and will not apologize.

I did not write a sectarian attack on any particular religion of the kind that could lead to a rerun of India's hellish anti-Muslim or anti-Sikh pogroms, but rather a principled critique of all religions who try to forcibly silence their critics. The right to free speech I am defending protects Muslims as much as everyone else. I passionately support their right to say anything they want -- as long as I too have the right to respond.

It's worth going through the arguments put forward by the rioting fundamentalists, because they will keep recurring in the twenty-first century as secularism is assaulted again and again. They said I had upset "the harmony" of India, and it could only be restored by my arrest. But this is a lop-sided vision of "harmony". It would mean that religious fundamentalists are free to say whatever they want -- and the rest of us have to shut up and agree.

The protesters said I deliberately set out to "offend" them, and I am supposed to say that, no, no offense was intended. But the honest truth is more complicated. Offending fundamentalists isn't my goal -- but if it is an inevitable side-effect of defending human rights, so be it. If fanatics who believe Muslim women should be imprisoned in their homes and gay people should be killed are insulted by my arguments, I don't resile from it. Nothing worth saying is inoffensive to everyone.

You do not have a right to be ring-fenced from offense. Every day, I am offended -- not least by ancient religious texts filled with hate-speech. But I am glad, because I know that the price of taking offense is that I can give it too, if that is where the facts lead me. But again, the protesters propose a lop-sided world. They do not propose to stop voicing their own heinously offensive views about women's rights or homosexuality, but we have to shut up and take it -- or we are the ones being "insulting."

It's also worth going through the arguments of the Western defenders of these protesters, because they too aren't going away. Already I have had e-mails and bloggers saying I was "asking for it" by writing a "needlessly provocative" article. When there is a disagreement and one side uses violence, it is a reassuring rhetorical stance to claim both sides are in the wrong, and you take a happy position somewhere in the middle. But is this true? I wrote an article defending human rights, and stating simple facts. Fanatics want to arrest or kill me for it. Is there equivalence here?

The argument that I was "asking for it" seems a little like saying a woman wearing a short skirt is "asking" to be raped. Or, as Salman Rushdie wrote when he received far, far worse threats simply for writing a novel (and a masterpiece at that): "When Osip Mandelstam wrote his poem against Stalin, did he 'know what he was doing' and so deserve his death? When the students filled Tiananmen Square to ask for freedom, were they not also, and knowingly, asking for the murderous repression that resulted? When Terry Waite was taken hostage, hadn't he been 'asking for it'?" When fanatics threaten violence against people who simply use words, you should not blame the victim.

These events are also a reminder of why it is so important to try to let the oxygen of rationality into religious debates -- and introduce doubt. Voltaire -- one of the great anti-clericalists -- said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." If you can be made to believe the absurd notion that an invisible deity dictated The Eternal Unchanging Truth to a specific person at a specific time in history and anyone who questions this is Evil, then you can easily be made to demand the death of journalists and free women and homosexuals who question that Truth. But if they have a moment of doubt -- if there is a single nagging question at the back of their minds -- then they are more likely to hesitate. That's why these ideas must be challenged at their core, using words and reason.

But the fundamentalists are determined not to allow those rational ideas to be heard -- because at some level they know they will persuade for many people, especially children and teenagers in the slow process of being indoctrinated.

If, after all the discussion and all the facts about how contradictory and periodically vile their 'holy' texts are, religious people still choose fanatical faith, I passionately defend their right to articulate it. Free speech is for the stupid and the wicked and the wrong -- whether it is fanatics or the racist Geert Wilders -- just as much as for the rational and the right. All I say is that they do not have the right to force it on other people or silence the other side. In this respect, Wilders resembles the Islamists he professes to despise: he wants to ban the Koran. Fine. Let him make his argument. He discredits himself by speaking such ugly nonsense.

The solution to the problems of free speech -- that sometimes people will say terrible things -- are always and irreducibly more free speech. If you don't like what a person says, argue back. Make a better case. Persuade people. The best way to discredit a bad argument is to let people hear it. I recently interviewed the pseudo-historian David Irving, and simply quoting his crazy arguments did far more harm to him than any Austrian jail sentence for Holocaust Denial.

Please do not imagine that if you defend these rioters, you are defending ordinary Muslims. If we allow fanatics to silence all questioning voices, the primary victims today will be Muslim women, Muslim gay people, and the many good and honourable Muslim men who support them. Imagine what Europe would look like now if everybody who offered dissenting thoughts about Christianity in the seventeenth century and since was intimidated into silence by the mobs and tyrants who wanted to preserve the most literalist and fanatical readings of the Bible. Imagine how women and gay people would live.

You can see this if you compare my experience to that of journalists living under religious-Islamist regimes. Because generations of people sought to create a secular space, when I went to the police, they offered total protection. When they go to the police, they are handed over to the fanatics -- or charged for their "crimes." They are people like Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the young Afghan journalism student who was sentenced to death for downloading a report on women's rights. They are people like the staff of Zanan, one of Iran's leading reform-minded women's magazines, who have been told they will be jailed if they carry on publishing. They are people like the 27-year old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman who has been seized, jailed and tortured in Egypt for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah law.

It would be a betrayal of them -- and the tens of thousands of journalists like them - to apologize for what I wrote. Yes, if we speak out now, there will be turbulence and threats, and some people may get hurt. But if we fall silent -- if we leave the basic human values of free speech, feminism and gay rights undefended in the face of violent religious mobs -- then many, many more people will be hurt in the long term. Today, we have to use our right to criticise religion -- or lose it.

If you are appalled by the erosion of secularism across the world and want to do something about it, there are a number of organizations you can join, volunteer for or donate to.

Some good places to start are the National Secular Society, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason, or - if you want the money to go specifically to work in India - the International Humanist and Ethical Union. (Mark your donation as for their India branch.)

Even donating a few hours or a few pounds can really make a difference to defending people subject to religious oppression - by providing them with legal help, education materials, and lobbying for changes in the law.

An essential source of news for secularists is the terrific website Butterflies and Wheels.

Comments

[thinkerandbeliever]

Johann,
I appreciate your comments on free speech. They are important and I wish they were respected world-wide. They mirror the importance of a true form of tolerance--one that demands respect of persons, but not ideas. I am a Christian. Not only a Christian, but one of those that the left has a strange fear of--a Bible believing, young earth creationist. I am not posting to argue those views; that is beside my point. Many of my friends and family also share these views, and all of us have the exact same respect for the freedom of speech that you have, even when that speech is "offensive­." That is the point.

t&b

[Vikram Krishnan]

As an Indian, I would like to thank you for having written this. I have a large number of Muslim friends who are moderate and do not believe in this nonsense but these extremists are hijacking the discussion and not letting these people speak.
And now to the question of people getting offended. The simple counter argument is that I get offended whenever I see the Old testament of the Bible(hence by extension the Torah and the Koran). I get offended when I hear of a God who orders all Caaanites to be slaughtered. I get offended by a god so jealous, malevolent and mailicious that He makes Hitler and Stalin look like saints. I get offended by the fact that those who do not praise him and bow tohis super-fascistic notions should be eternally damned.
I get offended when the Manusmirti permits and indeed enforces the apartheid of casteism. I get offended when that is used as an excuse in rural India to put lovers to death because they were from different Castes. I get offended when the Bajrang Dal and the VHP try to out do each other in fanaticism and use some obscure scripture to justify the progroms in Gujarat.
Above all, I ge offended when the secular govt of India plays the politics of the vote bank and crumbles in front of these maniacs, and if these journalists are to be arrested then so should all the above people

[DoesItMatter]

I get offended when people do needless equal equal comparison.

[LovingHope]

Thank you for your article. I was raised by a very religious mother. I was baptized catholic. I am so turned off by religion. They were actually telling my mother how to vote. And they were voting for Bush. Since that day I saw how much religion was to play a part in our politics, and I didn't like it. I am glad that there are rational people that think outside of Christianity and other extreme religions. I agree that we must respect people of faith, but they need to respect us, who are no longer believers of the old book "The Bible."

[zanzig]

Outstanding writing and arguments, Johann. I wish you well in your attempts to have the voice of rationality given more prominence. As for the Indian situation I am hopeful that by the time this gets to Court, lawyers and Judges will have found a way to dispose of the matter. From what I have observed, the Indian Police/CBI tend to make the arrests in such matters to appease the crowds, and leave it to the Courts to resolve it.

I have not seen much reason in my life to respect any religion, and have these arguments frequently at work (an NGO dealing with migrants and refugees, which is occasionally visited by some fairly rigid Muslims, and some equally rigid Christians seeking to impose their theocratic views on the rest of us). On one occasion a fairly irritating woman came to us demanding that as an agency representing migrants we should assist her group in promoting sharia law to equal status in Australia. The fur flew on that occasion and she left in some disgruntlement.

[knosiswar]

FYI

Zeus is the Father of Mars, the Grandfather of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, the Roman empire that continues to dominate western culture, first through Armies, the Paux Romana, and later through the domination and monopolization of Religion with the establishment of the Catholic Church, when its' success was insured by Constantine's destruction of any competing ideas through-out the Roman Empire, later expanded through the Catholic Crusades and Inquistions. Not until King Henry established the Church of England did Free Speech become a possibility.

Zeus, the God of Lightning, is Lucifer, the God of Light, is Amen-Ra, the Sun God.

All OBELISKS are dedications to the SUN/SON God Amen-Ra. The Roman/Bavarian Illuminati demonstrates it's influence and control internationally with the marker of the Obelisk. Just look at some of the places you will find the Obelisk.

The Washington Monument on the Mall in D.C.
St. Peters Basilica at the Vatican
Wall Street
The London Financial District

Just look at your Western centers of Goverment and Finance. Ask yourself WHY ARE THEY THERE?

[Iratus-vir]

Three out of the four are city states which creates a scary triangle.

Faith
Money
Military

What do we really mean when we say Amen. So be it. I don't think so.

[protagonia]

The members of a religion that sit by while members of some other branch of their very same religion bring madness, destruction and fear wherever they go, are the lowest order of coward.

They let THEIR belief system become OUR problem? Then the world has every right to associate THEM with their other, related branch. They allowed their own to bring terrible things to society. THEY watched and shrugged.

Shallow, weak, bad people.

[Meah]

You mean like evan gelical Christians unlike Christians who are not radicals?

You are calling the latter cowards because the former have infiltr ated and burrowed into our government for the last eight years, and have wrought vast destruction upon our country, nay, our world?

It is funda mentalism everywhere, and the rest of us are not cowards because we cannot control their mad ness?

Using THEY and THEM so much is not helpful, either.

[protagonia]

Even the mob is better at policing it's own.

[protagonia]

So then just shrug, and say "Those guys are a different branch of the tree I am a part of. Too bad that other branch is crushing all the good left in this land, but I am not that branch. My branch is good. I will merely allow that other branch to do what it does."

Well. As long as we are discussing "We" and "They", when your tree goes rotten and starts to crumble down, your branch falls along with theirs.

They rotted YOUR tree.

[StephenJK]

If innocent children were not forcibly indoctrinated with the brainwashing of "religion" there would be so much more peace on earth. There would not be billions of muslims, christians and whatever other religions. Given the chance to think for yourself will help you see that religion is the biggest game of "fear factor" ever put on the minds of men. I believe in a higher power. That higher power is ENERGY. Call it God. Call it what you will. Energy is the lifeblood of everything. It cannot be destroyed and it cannot be created out of thin air. It is real and it is everything. It is eternal. And it has no name. To me, God is energy, time and space. No beginning and no end. For eternity.

[rockyersocksoff]

You can add the Cult of Military Fundamentalists to the religious groups you've mentioned.

[protagonia]

An armed man is not a servant to Jesus Christ. He serves the devil, but is too prideful and unintelligent to face that fact.

They fire on the unarmed. These are demons.

[protagonia]

The devil himself made these ones. They are his product, for certain. They act just like him.

[doriath22]

Mark Twain had it right--Religion is the greatest impediment to progress ever invented

[Aviva21]

I'm not a secularist, but I applaud your fight for freedom of speech. How can we as human beings truly understand each other if we don't embrace dialog?

[gorgonopsid]

"Logic is the salt on the slug of religion"
---Simeon H. P. McCloud

[helpontheway]

great quote!

[arvay]

Freedom to speak our minds is the most essential freedom -- even more important than property rights or the franchise.

Human progress depends on the ability to openly discuss ideas, to question received opinion and to be -- yes -- offensive.

That term, "offensive," is just another way to tell people to shut up when you don't like what they're saying.
It's become one of those psychobabble expressions -- like calling someone who doesn't agree with or like you a "hater."

Unfortunately, the effects of this dumbing down go far beyond social ostracism, as nations and interest groups try to silence us when their interests are threatened by ideas they don't like.

[hegdehog]

"I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice..­."

Why is that so much more difficult to believe than the idea that you once appeared in the form of a baby and that you will someday transform into an old man? And at various points in between, not one single cell of your body will be the same as on the day you were born or on the day you will die. How can you believe in such impossible nonsense?

[hegdehog]

Mr. Hari, respectfully, when you make a statement like this:

"it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason."

can you really pretend to be surprised when people of faith are offended? Can't you at least admit the possibility that you were trying to offend? That you have a personal axe to grind? In many parts of the Middle East, deep faith in Islam is the glue that holds society together. You may not understand it or agree with it, but you must respect it. Because it is far larger than you or your personal concerns. When you take a stick to a hornets' nest, there's a very good chance you and those around you will be stung. Fighting with the hornets is hardly a sane response.

[Susan Bruther]

Having a different opinion or making a comment that offends shouldn't provoke threats of violence or arrest. Freedom of speech ensures that anyone can state their opinions without fear of punishment.

[hegdehog]

I agree. But to ignore reality is not a wise idea. I'm sure Theo van Gogh would be happy to explain it to Mr. Hari, if only he were able. There are many places and times in a person's life when one chooses not to express ones opinion for one reason or another. Perhaps you hold your tongue at work when your boss acts like a jerk because you want to keep your job. Or perhaps you don't mouth off to a bunch of gang members when they're robbing you at gunpoint. It isn't fair, but sometimes it makes sense. Freedom of speech needs to be applied with intelligence.

[cruzy]

Hegdehog, perhaps you should reread Mr. Hari's column. He NEVER stated the he didn't intend to offend, or even that he was surprised that certain religious fanatics were offended by his comments. He even states, "Offending fundamentalists isn't my goal -- but if it is an inevitable side-effect of defending human rights, so be it."

Being respectful of another individual's beliefs, whether they be religious, political or moral beliefs, does not mean one must refrain from ever disagreeing or even critiquing such beliefs. Similarly, being pious in ones faith or grounded in ones convictions, does not mean one is compelled to respond to questioning or criticism with outrage and violence.

If fundamentalists cannot behave as rational human beings and handle questioning or even measured criticism in a calm and thoughtful manner, and choose instead to act like "hornets" threatening others with injury, then perhaps they should realize that victims of hornets are not helpless from their stings. Hornets which sting get exterminated.

[zanzig]

One of Johann Hari's points is also that No he does not have to respect it. And I am with him all the way on that one. How can any religionists today demand and expect respect for all that has been done in the names of their religions and gods? Frankly the lot of you should hang your heads in shame.

[Social Construct]

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.” Stuart Chase.

For those that live on one end or the other of those extremes, there is no hope of reason and tolerance. Reason and tolerance are their enemies, and fear of of reason and tolerance is their tool to oppress.