Tag Archives: free speech

Terry Jones: Another View

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Cyrus Tahir is a graduate of the distinguished Lahore University of Management Studies in Lahore, Pakistan, and of the University of Warwick, U.K.  He now lives in London.

The oppression brings a reaction: Indiscriminate bombing of people who’ve never had the chance to equip themselves with the academic tools of the modern-world and to understand the intricacies of political, social and economic games that are played in the realm of world politics.

They live and have always lived by a system of tribal allegiances which has supplied them justice, social harmony, support and a life that they have enjoyed for centuries. When the need occurred, the world in general, and the US in particular, conveniently decided to support the war-lords and tribes, facilitating the importation of warriors from different parts of the globe into Afghanistan. Whilst these were men and children from a wide spectrum of Islamic schools of thought, one particular brand was keenly supported owing to their views about waging holy war and the concept of Jihad.

The pragmatic-realist US government discerned the need of the hour: as an expedient, it allowed the training of millions of individuals for warfare against the communist threat. The scale of the training can be imagined by the fact that a late Pakistani army officer, who worked in close proximity with the CIA, Sen. Charlie Wilson and was even trained in the US, single-handedly trained 95,000 people for waging America’s own holy war.

What wasn’t done was to equip these ‘units’ as he called them, with education, and the  knowledge and skill to live their lives and earn their livings once the war was over.

Thanks to the training given to them, these people of local Afghan origin, Pakistanis, Africans, Arabs and others from the Balkans knew how to make incendiary bombs from items of daily usage but did not know the Pythagorean theorem or history, beyond their own, or literature–a gap in education that haunts all and sundry across the globe today.

The Taliban (literally  ‘the students’) were merely a part of these warring forces who supported the US cause and were left to their own devices once the Soviets retreated. With ample ammunition, a culture of tribalism and war, plenty of stinger missiles to play with and no sign of any of the GOD’s enemy (the US had first invoked term to describe the USSR), what any warring nation or people would do is no hard task to imagine.

Someone tells a person that the entire system you have believed in all your life is going to be taken away from you and you are the only one who can save it.  Without fail, the instinct to be a saviour arises – such is the fragility of  human-kind. Not to forget the often quoted phrase, ‘Give a man a bullet & he’ll want a gun. Give the man a gun and he’ll be giving away bullets.’

Soviet troop withdrawal

The Terry Jones Affair

There is ample room for pointing fingers and blaming the Revd. Terry Jones or the Afghan mullahs for the cold-hearted murder of UN workers and the desecration of the Holy Quran. What needs to be looked at is the underlying reasons for the occurrence of these events.

The oppression and wave of terror faced by even the most peaceful of citizens in the Northern tribal belt of Pakistan and bordering areas of Afghanistan is the worst imaginable. Un-manned drone attacks, indiscriminate carpet bombing and the total lack of value for life by the US forces has become the daily norm. Whilst the pastor was operating fully within his constitutional guarantee of free speech and did not violate American law by burning the Holy Quran, what the security forces and their operatives have been doing in South Asia is not acceptable under any law, local or foreign.

What does one expect of a population that has been marred by war, grossly mistrusts the US, has always been a proud nation that detests invaders and wants to live by their own laws which are a mixture of tribal custom and laws emanating from religion.

In the same way that any liberal would defend Mr. Jones’s right to burn the Quran under the provisions of the American Constitution, an Afghan could perhaps demand his death under the laws which he is governed by. A simple case of quid pro quo. The issue with the US government, from the standpoint of the Islamic states, has not been its democratic values but its hypocrisy. Dictated by political expediency, the same Islamic law, which might find Mr. Terry Jones guilty and subject to the death penalty, was invoked in getting Mr. Raymond Davis free after he murdered two young men in broad-daylight.

Raymond Davis, freed by ransom

There are two things that deserve comment, in my capacity as a Pakistani citizen viewing these events and knowing something about the historical context where they unfolded.  I cannot and will not be party to any causes which condone the murder of any individual, be it a UN worker, a soldier or a civilian caught in the midst of a fight.

However, we must accept the fact that whereas the US constitution lays down rights and liberties for everyone, so does every constitution in the world in relation to its own people. I am not an expert in constitutional law but I think that the claim to have a right to burn a book revered and held as a Holy book must be weighed in the balance against the existence of a law that bars anyone from committing acts against another citizen’s set of beliefs and values. That said, Mr. Jones is allowed under the US constitution to desecrate the Quran, yet the effects of this act materialize in a country whose constitutional law forbids desecration of the Quran and in certain case specifies the death penalty.

If put into context, these laws propose a “will of the people and citizens” put into writing and effect by elected members of the government and accepted as laws that the citizens of the country regard as correct. This does not necessarily mean that there is no recourse if the laws are mis-used or abused for the good of one or with mala-fide intention.

Essentially, while the American law may not require respect for any religion, I think it does not necessarily indicate that the actions of any individual towards religion must be disregarded. Thus Mullah Kashaf’s demands–though they may be out of context in the US society and law–seem to hint at the outburst of reaction that may occur across the globe.

The US government is not seen as a saviour by all even in Afghanistan and the perception that the Afghans want the same values and lifestyle as the citizens of the US is perhaps the incorrect of generalizations.

It is extremely wrong to believe that the United States has sent its soldiers in Afghanistan to provide the Afghan people with a better future, for a multiplicity of reasons. Primarily, there was never a call from Afghanistan itself or the people to invite the US forces into Afghanistan. It had a great deal to do with the US’s obsession of Osama Bin Laden and not much to do with the more recently developed rationale of granting liberties to the Afghan people.

The incidents that have come out through the news and other sources tell a different story than that of providing liberty and peace to the Afghan populace.  Now Terry Jones is part of this larger story.

What must also be noted is the fact that during the early 90’s when Mullah Omar and his regime reigned in parts of Afghanistan, the women felt so safe that they did not bother covering themselves in the presence of unknown males, if these males belonged to the Taliban. There are hard-liners and moderates in every stream of life. Cases of domestic violence are aplenty in the US, the UK and the Arab world. Women are not allowed to drive cars or leave homes without their male relatives in many parts of the world, yet the US continues to support the regimes; for obvious vested interests. Therefore, the logic of helping build a better Afghanistan does not hold much weight. Perhaps, the US forces would be better off with their young men and women confined to the boundaries of the US whilst the religious zealots of Afghanistan fight amongst themselves from the remains of what the US left behind.

Explain: Why?

I could not agree more with the principle that there is no moral equivalency of the Mr. Jones’ actions and the actions committed in Afghanistan. But once we take into context the fact that hundreds of Afghan citizens are indiscriminately killed in the search for a group of men, these are citizens who have never had the chance to actually receive education and were left in the lurch with guns, weapons and training, training in how to build bombs once the USA’s purpose of defeating the USSR was achieved.

What they are left with is hatred for a country and anything to do with it and the idea of violent opposition to anything that comes their way with violence.  The murder of the UN workers may seem only a small part of their daily life.

The Devil in Mr Jones

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Codex Gigas (The Devil Codex)

Since I posted my commentary on the Terry Jones case I’ve received lots of feedback–mainly attempts to vindicate Jones and wondering why I am “coddling Muslims.”  I like the term feedback because it doesn’t discriminate as to the quality of responses.  Some were actually very insightful–the ones laying out, for example, the conditions for incitement and sedition; some less so–the ones that simply insist that we are citizens of a democracy that values free speech above everything else. I’ve received no recipes for coddled Muslims, but I’m sure they’ll be coming soon.

Often misquoted, in the United States v. Schenck case (1919: involving a man’s distribution of anti-draft flyers during World War I), Justice Holmes wrote that

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. […] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

“Falsely” is the word that is often omitted. What emerged was the “clear and present danger test,”  since weakened and greatly modified.

I’m reliably informed by no fewer than three lawyer-respondents and my buddy Guido that its successor, the “imminent lawless action” criterion, cannot reasonably be applied in this case because the damage and the loss of human life, even though preventable, did not transpire on American soil and that under current law (Hess v. Indiana [1973], Brandenburg v. Ohio [1969]), Jones would likely be given a pass.

And even though Americans, according to groups claiming responsibility, including Afghani Taliban, were the target (United Nations workers were an easier and softer hit), so far (April 5th) American soldiers did not die as a result of this provocation.  On the other hand, those who have replied that it was not Jones’s intention to do harm have not been following the story closely enough: he is quoted in the Washington Post as saying that after due consideration he felt he had no choice, and was only indecisive as to the method of execution (drowning, shredding, or shooting).  Fire is always the first choice of southern Christian bigots. And there is the small matter of his careful plans to broadcast the events in English and Arabic.

But my guess is that Terry Jones will become a kind of hero.  He already is to his congregation and thousands of well-wishing ultra-conservative Christians around the country. And much more cheaply than buying billboards, his gallon of kerosene has ignited his “Stand up for America” campaign.

But I hope he will not become a culture-hero to people who see his actions as brave and somehow correct–as a test case of the right to express hatred in equal measure to the religious population of a country where American lives are being lost each week in defense of democratic principles that the Afghan people, like the Iraqis before them, have shown no natural interest in pursuing on their own.  I am highly distrustful of the respondents who say they “disagree” with Terry Jones, but approve of the principle.  What principle?  That Islam is evil and he is no more evil than it is?  Or that his example serves as proof to the world (as if it cares) that America is the beacon for the unfettered right to speak even the most hateful and dwarfish ideas openly?

Terry Jones is not fighting for a principle.  He’s merely hiding behind one. It seems plain tawdry to invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on behalf of a listless cracker who wants to see people killed seven  thousand miles away from his sanctuary.

A weird  undercurrent of responses has seen Jones as a symbol of the cowboy freedom to shoot the people who get on his nerves. It’s hardly a mariage de covenance (like the one between anti-abortion Catholics and fundamentalists), but Islam is regarded by right wing Christians, as well as by many atheists, as a toxic faith, so the symbol works for both constituencies in slightly different ways. When Jones sells the movie rights to his saga of upward struggle against the forces of Satan and his lonely coup de grace for freedom and democracy in this sin-loving land, the part should go to (no relation) Tommy Lee Jones.

There are two propositions that keep me away from reducing this episode to just another example of hate speech or civil disobedience, on the analogy of the Klan marching through Skokie in 2000 or burning draft cards in 1969 or the Haymarket riots of 1886.   The difference may not be immediately obvious, or compelling, but it is a difference.

If Mr Jones had staged his execution of the Koran, “a work of the Devil,” in 1969, it would have been the shot heard round Lake City, Florida.  No one would have cared; few people would have known.  It would have the resonance of a wooden clapper.  As a Florida boy myself, I can easily imagine a woman outside the Lake City Winn-Dixie store saying, “He burned the whut?” But it did not happen in 1969.  It happened in the age of rapid information-transfer, and sudden celebrity–the age and space that Jones is counting on to raise him from evangelical crackerdom to national guru.  I see Dancing with the Stars down the road for this guy and I pray that his partner will be someone named Aisha.

The Amendment we depend upon to protect us from slander while, at the same time, defending our right to blaspheme, criticize, oppose, peaceably assemble and demonstrate was carved at a time when America was relatively isolated from the foreign effects of domestic action.  Even though the polemic was hot and strong throughout the pre-Revolutionary era (one of the reasons the First Amendment exists at all) reaction was slow because news traveled that way.

I think there is something qualitatively different about Jones and the way he does business, and it has to be acknowledged. There is something different about what constitutes “imminent and likely lawless action” in an age where cause and effect have been reduced to days, sometimes seconds.  And one day the courts will have to deal with it–but not yet. Jones’s only miscalculation in this case was that the media wasn’t paying attention to him anymore, so he had to try doubly hard to get the word out.  He was duly abetted by Hamid Karzai.

As to preserving free speech against the odds of too much sway in the direction of controlling it: As a Christian triumphalist, Jones would like nothing more than an America in which the very thing he was permited to do could not be done.  A sheer increase of the Terry Joneses of this country–among people who now see his action as noble–would lead to a Christian state wherein it would, at a minimum, be illegal to burn a Bible or insult a man of the cloth, or more precisely, the evangelical cloth. Atheism in Jonestown, USA? As likely as a women’s right to education act under the Pakistani Taliban.

No one realistically thinks that this kind of America is coming, least of all me.  But it is an interesting test of priorities that condemning Jones’s action as being fundamentally opposed to the cardinal American values of freedom and tolerance  should be immediately seen as a complaint about hypothetical “infringement” of Mr Jones’s rights, without any equivalent assessment of what he did and the way he did it.  –I’m reluctant to mention the one muddled response that compared Jones’s burning of the Koran to the 1933 (fol.) book burnings in Nazi Germany because, frankly, I couldn’t understand the premise.

The way the Rev did it was to make sure that Muslims were paying attention.  When he streamed the “trial” and execution of the book, with some hapless imam from Dallas acting as a defense atttorney, he dressed in judge’s robes.  He streamed the proceedings with Arabic subtitles.  Those are the facts; I am guessing, but cannot know for sure, that he was also trying to convey an impression of “authenticity” to the web-viewers, as though to suggest this was a real trial.  Given the limited sophistication of the Arab street, this would not have been a difficult thing to do.

So, this was not an act confined to the churchyard; this was a belligerent act designed to do harm, to substantiate his weird metaphysic about Islamic violence, and he was right: harm was done. People are dead. or should I say, more people are dead.  Now to search “Koran Burning” on Youtube will link you to dozens of copycat rituals going on all over the world.  Congratulations, Mr Jones: you are a success because this is how we now measure success, the degree of lunacy that a single image can generate.

After further thought, however, I have decided that Mr Jones is really being judged by the wrong criteria.  His case falls between free exercise and free speech, and so it falls between the stools.  Holmes’s aphorism about “clear and present danger,” and all later refinements, are not going to help us with the Terry Jones case, unless he magically appears in Kandahar and starts shooting Muslims.  Even then, alas, he would likely find supporters back home and die a hero.

I’ve asked a number of respondents if they think Jones is “guilty” of anything other than bad judgement.   Law and ethics are not only two different areas but fields that often collide on principles. If law does not help us with this one, is there a moral position that can be condemned–or vindicated?  Is Mr Jones “just a cracker” and his actions as predictable, and thus as unremarkable, as the predictable response of angry young men in Afghanistan?  After all, we have become accustomed, to the point of dozing off, to images of angry, mainly young Muslim men all over the Islamic world.

I don’t fully understand the pathology of their anger, but I do know that the symbolic respository for what they are willing to die and to kill to defend is the Koran. I also think I know that lectures on God’s existence or their foolish and superstitious ways are not going to get their attention.

“Drawing Muhammad”? Free Speech and Fake Goods

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In general, I am in favor of free speech. The sole exception being when my sixteen year old daughter talks through re-runs of Seinfeld or Frasier.

I have even gone on (nuanced) record as saying that no one should be put to death for trying to represent the Prophet of Islam. My final verdict on the Danish cartoon debacle a few years ago is that the Danes aren’t very funny. No wonder Hamlet never smiled.

Not that anyone has the foggiest idea what Muhammad looked like, making the idea of “caricature” about as useful as painting Moses with eye shadow and ringlets. Oh wait: he probably did use eye shadow and have ringlets, at least until he discovered he was a son of Israel and not a prince of Egypt. My bad.

In general however: it is a bad idea to threaten someone for disparaging your religion. Especially when the disparagement in question does not even rise to the level of sophisticated satire, let alone to a level where it should be a test case in free speech.

I personally favor a United Nations Commission for Insult and Indignation (there’s one for everything, anyway) to vet all cases where insult or defamation has been alleged. The Commission (I am glad to offer my services as its first director) would distinguish between (1) “really good satire,” (2) “disgusting and unfunny ridicule,” (3) “pathetic attempt at humor”, and (4) “potentially blasphemous and insulting, even to bystanders.” It would take a unanimous vote of the Commission for anything to achieve level (4), which would require the offenders to dress up like altar boys and spend a weekend in a rectory.

I don’t have a category for “literary” works considered to be blasphemous but apparently the Nobel Committee does, which is why Salman Rushdie will never win the prize for Literature.

All of this is to say, that the rudderless and publicity-starved “Center for Inquiry” is at it again. And (according to the legal puritans in Buffalo) it’s all about free speech.

In its latest attempt to appear useful, CFI comes to the unsolicited defense of two improbable offenders: South Park and a contest to “Draw Muhammad” that never really got off the ground.

Religions have traditionally bristled when their core doctrines have been lampooned. South Park‘s spin is usually tasteless (Who doesn’t hum “Mr Hanky the Christmas Poo” during the holy season? Who can forget the vision of the Future in the Go God Go episode, when Cartman can’t wait three weeks until the Wii console is available and is transported into an atheist future where Richard Dawkins has become a messiah?)

When South Park “does” religion, it can be sweepingly irreverent and occasionally poignant. It is sometimes offensive,as Comedy Central discovered when it received veiled threats from an Islamic organization based in New York over its 200th episode where Muhammad is “represented” as being inside a bear suit.

The episode has attracted attention in the blogosphere, with young Muslim South Park fans expressing reactions ranging from “disappointment” to anger and frustration. A viewer named Bilal el-Houri says that Muslims should take the episode and the furore as a wake-up call, and instead of grunting, boycotting and screaming should be asking themselves why these depictions are now standard.

The so-called threat comes from a certain Abu Talhah al Amrikee and is pretty dull: “It’s not a threat, but it [violence] really is a likely outcome. They’re going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It’s just the reality.” The show’s producers didn’t know that was a likely outcome? Really?

Good satire is supposed to annoy the satiree–otherwise no game. And it is merely masturbatory for a secular advocacy group to enter the picture with a typically onerous lecture on how South Park has a right to be offensive. We know that. That’s why we watch it. Not because we see every episode as a cannon shot for free expression.

Besides, some young bloggers thought the South Park episode was less funny than it was deliberately provocative, a crass bet on a sure-fire reaction to any attempt to insult the Prophet. Wrote Sher Zeinab, “2 b honest 200 episode wasnt funny at all to me!” She then added, “Bringing Mohammad back! when you know it is a sensitive issue […] seems to me southpark is running out of ideas!!! that angle just brought everything down.”

In other words, South Park got what it wanted, or maybe more than it bargained for, with Episode 200–the same way you might get a faceful if you tell fat Mrs Murphy, your annoying neighbor, a series of “Yo mama is so fat” jokes. Are you really going to the cops when she tells you to desist or she’ll sik her Rottweiler on you?

Taste and discretion are not essential considerations if you just want to be tasteless and indiscreet, but the question of motive does arise. Free Speech? Solidarity? Puhleez. Save it for real cases of censorship.

That brings me back to my drum. Surely if secularists and atheists have the right to satire and what they are self-describing as “blasphemy,” offended parties have the right to bristle. Listen, atheists: no such thing as a free ride. Your right to deliver insult is matched by my right to be offended and to call you a tasteless cur. No good whining about your right to be dull and overbearing when I do–not even when I say–hyperbolically of course–that you need a good thrashing for your lack of manners and civility.

If you think the pope molests little boys, as a winning cartoon in the CFI Cartoon Cavalcade suggests, then be prepared for the Catholic Church to cry foul.

When Arabs produce cartoons of Jews eating Palestinians, prepare for the Jews to disagree.

Sharon as Cronus

And if Muslims cringe and mumble threats when they see their religion pilloried on South Park or by a desperate Seattle News cartoonist looking for spin (bad idea after a bad night at the bar?), please don’t try to sell this to me as real jewels: they aren’t.

They’re publicity stunts, nothing more. Not only that, but in a world where religious emotions are running high on our crowded planet they are stunts that raise the temperature–like yelling fire in a crowded theatre, nudge nudge.

It has been a long time since an atheist was burned at the stake for his unbelief or a philosopher roasted on a spit for being an Epicurean. Not so long for Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and even Catholics. Given a complicated recent history I’m not sure that South Park‘s post-religious take on heaven or its enviable skill in stirring the pot of religious sensitivities is the place for a serious meeting of minds on the question of free expression and tolerance.

The right to criticism and insult is, surely, the low bench mark in what the doctrine of free expression is all about. The principle does not command the assent of the offended: it condones vigorous disagreement and defense. And to call every case of disagreement and even “veiled threats” and overreaction an attack on the Constitutional guarantee of free speech reaches so far beyond common sense and sound judgment that it is difficult to know whether the atheist Lilliputians are really really afraid Gulliver is trampling on their rights or are simply inventing him to scare others.