The
good book says that the humans "are
blunderers and at a loss." The
problem appears to be our "limbic
system" that generates all our
emotions (anger, happiness, pleasure
and sadness, dominance and jealousy,
love and hate) and is also the seat
of our religious beliefs. As all
brain activity is generated by
chemical electricity, both emotions
and beliefs are tightly bonded to
each other. The activity of the
limbic system is further magnified
by our hormones, that provide us
with qualities and tools to make us
a better fit in our environment. The
filtration system (or the Central
Nervous organ) that exerts almost
total control on emotions and
beliefs is our cerebrum (or the
conscious brain, the thinking part),
which controls all our voluntary
actions (actions which we can either
magnify or completely abolish, like
hitting or kissing someone). Our
immediate environment (as we
perceive it) also has a great
influence on our public behaviour
and perception of events.
Thus, it is a human tendency to
dominate not within our own species
(tribe or family) but also over
other species (the rutting season in
male deer's, wild dogs and mountain
goats, in order to gain the right to
breed, as well as the defense of the
territory are prime examples of the
phenomenon). Similarly, religious
sensibility and freedom of speech
fall within the same category. Each
individual wants to have the freedom
to criticize every other (including
their beliefs) but is very
protective (and sensitive) of
her/his own holy cow.
All societies in general are
male dominated, in which the males
of the family (or tribe) control the
breeding rights, as well as the
public behavior of their women and
children (who are given the status
of the "honor of the family or
tribe," while the political and
religion thought is strictly
controlled by the community at
large. After the Industrial
revolution, Europeans societies cast
off the shackles of most paternalist
tendencies, and the citizens more or
less became tolerant of freedom of
speech and religious tolerance.
Furthermore, various movements
within the European societies (e.g.,
Martin Luther's protestant movement;
separation of the Anglican Church
from the Roman Church) helped the
separation of state and religion
from each other (“Pay to Caesar what is due Caesar
and give to God what is due to God.”
).The battle
for enlightenment in Europe was
about the church's desire to place
limits on thought. Diderot's novel
"La Religieuse," with its portrayal
of nuns and their behavior, was
deliberately blasphemous: It
challenged religious authority, with
its indexes and inquisitions, on
what was possible to say. Most of
Europe's contemporary ideas about
freedom of speech and imagination
come from that Enlightenment.
Unfortunately, we Muslims have not
undergone such an experience, and
unlike majority of the European
societies we have remained trapped
in our past. This is also reflected
in the way we are ruled. Thus,
whereas most industrialized
countries are well established free
democracies, we are still being
ruled by despotic dictators or
kings, who create mindless greedy
goons from among us to enforce
draconian measures to
control the thoughts and behavior of
their citizens at large, while free
thinking writers and intellectuals
are tortured and rot in jail cells
under miserable conditions.
Offense and insult are part of
everyday life for everyone in free
industrialized societies. All one
has to do is open a daily newspaper
and there's plenty to offend. Or one
can walk into the religion section
of a bookshop and discover that one
is damned to various kinds of
eternal hellfire, which is certainly
insulting, not to say a cause to
kill. But, as Salman Rushdie points
out that there can be no free
society in which people would never
be offended or insulted, or in which
they might have the right to call on
the law to defend them against being
offended or insulted (http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/164).
According to him, "democracy is not
a tea party where people sit around
making polite conversation. In
democracies, people get extremely
upset with each other. They argue
vehemently against each other's
positions. (But they don't
shoot.)"
At Cambridge University,
students are taught that they never
should personalize, but they should
have absolutely no respect for
the opinion of others. They should
never be rude to the person, but
they should be savagely cruel about
what the person says and thinks.
This is a crucial distinction:
People must be protected from
discrimination by virtue of their
race, but one cannot ring-fence
their ideas. The moment we say
that our ideology (may it be
religious belief system or secular)
is sacred, the moment we declare a
set of ideas to be immune from
criticism, satire, derision or
contempt, freedom of thought
disappears into thin air.(http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/164).
Thus, we, Muslims should learn to
shake off our sociatial baggage, and
learn to carry on an intelligent
dialogue, without running for the
flag and the sword, and then perhaps
we will be able to redeem ourselves
in the eyes of our God, the Prophet
and the Nations of the world in
general.
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