Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Afghanistan and the Issue of Religious Tolerance

With the start of a new administration, we have an opportunity to start to look at existing issues in a new light. Since I am not a holder of or a candidate for public office, I have the luxury of speaking plainly.

I want to start with President Obama’s Inaugural Address and, more specifically, about the war in Afghanistan. The Address contained a couple of passages relevant to that conflict.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

. . . for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

There are some who will argue that this is a contradiction. They hold that Islam is a religion that promotes the use of terror and the slaughtering of innocents, and are able to quote multiple passages in the Koran to support this interpretation.

Though there are other passages that can be interpreted as prohibiting the slaughter of innocents, when God commands people to do X in one instance, and prohibits people from doing X in another, it is left up to the reader to decide whether or not to do X. Whatever he decides, he can claim that he is doing God’s will.

I deny that there is a “Muslim World” per se. Instead, there are hundreds or thousands of Muslim cultures that share in some characteristics and differ in others. Among these hundreds of Islams there is one that is the most peaceful, and one that is the most violent, and a range of Islams in between.

I would be hard pressed to argue that there is any one thing that all of these Islams have in common. There is probably even an atheist Islam, just as there are atheist Jews and – cultural Islams in the same mold that Richard Dawkins talks about when he calls himself a cultural Christian.

In light of these facts, and in light of the quest for peace, there is an inescapable conclusion that people are seemingly extremely reluctant to admit out loud.

The quest for peace will necessarily involve a decision on the part of this administration and every other government in the world to promote some religions and to inhibit others. The war against terror is, at one level, a war against some Islams.

In other words, there are some Muslim worlds against which the United States cannot and will not “seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

There are some who read the First Amendment to the Constitution – the one that says that Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof – to mean that the government cannot get into the business of promoting some religions and inhibiting others.

This is nonsense.

The government has every right – it has a duty – to inhibit some religions. It has a duty to inhibit those religions that tell their people that God wants them to strap on bombs and kill innocent people.

The only way that this duty can be made compatible with a prohibition on laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion is if we define religion in such a way that nothing that commands such an act is defined as a religion. Yet, if we take this route, we can easily get to a conclusion where the First Amendment tolerates even so much as a national church. All we need to do is re-define religion so that only a given faith (e.g., Catholocism) counts as a religion, and all competitors are thus defined as “non-religious” (meaning “non-Catholic”).

The first Amendment then becomes a law that merely prohibits the government from passing laws against the free exercise of Catholicism, while permitting any restrictions one can imagine against other “non-religious” practices.

The point here is that these types of maneuvers are just playing with words. In the absence of these types of word games, we should be honest with is involved in this war on terror. It is a war against both religious and non-religious philosophies that practice certain forms of violence against innocents. It is, in part, a promise to pass laws and to use weapons to prohibit – to outlaw and to arrest those who promote and practice – certain varieties of Islam, Christianity, Judaism . . . and, yes, certain species of atheism.

There are some religions that simply do not deserve – and can never be granted – our respect.

I do not need to take the position of somebody like Sam Harris that this should be a war against Islam in all of its manifestations. In fact, I do not agree with Harris' position. Harris argument involves an unwarranted leap from what is true of "a religion" (the specific religion he uses as an example), and what is true of "religion", making his arguments invalid.

However, we do not need to make this leap to reach a similar conclusion. Even if our complaint is against "an Islam" and we refuse to make the hasty generalizations that Harris makes, it is still the case that there is just cause for a war against some Islams. Congress can and will pass laws prohibiting the free exercise of some religioius practices - such as the practices of flying airplanes into sky scrapers and blowing up busses and trains.

5 comments:

BlackSun said...

I think a simple distinction between beliefs and actions will resolve this contradiction.

All forms of Islamic belief are constitutionally protected under the establishment clause--even those which advocate violence and destruction of unbelievers. I could argue that as long as believers never acted on those violent beliefs, they remain within the law.

As a practical matter, we have observed that such believers usually do act on those beliefs, so an argument could be made that infiltrating mosques or madrasas and acting to prevent those beliefs from being put into practice would be a good idea.

But still, according to the constitution, we cannot act against a religion that behaves peacably, no matter what it believes. That's what we should emphasize, a zero tolerance policy toward religious violence.

The gray area is when religious speech is used to incite violence. I think this could be prosecuted under conspiracy laws, whereby the mere discussion of a crime forms a conspiracy.

As for Obama's speech, I thought it was clear that he was saying to the Muslim world in the spirit of the Treaty of Tripoli that we have mutual secular interests such as trade. So it was an olive branch coupled with a warning.

Alonzo Fyfe said...

Blacksun

You wrote: I think a simple distinction between beliefs and actions will resolve this contradiction.

There is no simple distinction between beliefs and actions.

For example, a person takes a gun, points it at another person, and pulls the trigger? What was his action in this case?

Murder?

Self-defense?

Accident?

Answering this question means looking at what the agent believes (and desires). An action, separated from beliefs and desires, is just a muscle spasm - a twitch.

Furthermore, it is the beliefs and desires of the agent that determines if he is guilty of wrongdoing and deserves to be punished. In order to determine guilt we determine "mens rea" - or "guilty mind" - or the quality of his beliefs and desires.

(Ultimately, I would argue that we are interested in the quality of desires. However, since people tend to believe what they want to believe, we can use "bad beliefs" as a sign of "bad desires".)

BlackSun said...

Good points. So maybe we need to define a special category in the law for religious violence? Or exclusions in religious freedoms for beliefs that advocate such?

I think that is what you were saying in the original post. But how would you define such beliefs? Since most come from different interpretations of the same scripture, would you define a limit to the rights of scriptural interpretation that a given imam or pastor could preach? Would that person then be subject to arrest for speech? For going outside those limits and preaching those things? (I've advocated that in the past.)

Not trying to be difficult, but since we're talking about specific limits on freedom of expression, these are the kinds of questions that would be asked in court.

Alonzo Fyfe said...

BlackSun

Actually, I wanted to respond to this comment as well.

But still, according to the constitution, we cannot act against a religion that behaves peacably, no matter what it believes.

Actually, the Constitution says that we cannot act against a religion.

It says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Not

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof that behaves peacefully.

However, since it would be an act of insanity to follow the strict interpretation of the Amendment, the courts have written exceptions into the Amendment that do not exist in the literal text. Congress may pass laws respecting the free exercise of religion where the exercise injures the country or other citizens.

The Amendment is not taken to be an absolute prohibition against those laws, but a presumption against such laws that can be outweighed by sufficiently strong evidence of a compelling state interest in prohibiting a given practice.

Which is what we have with respect to certain Islamic religions that exist in Afghanistan and Pakistan - a compelling state interest in prohibiting those religious practices that involve flying airplanes into skyscrapers and setting off bombs in busses and subways.

I continue to hold that the only legitimate response to words alone are words and private actions. So, the arrest of somebody who merely spoke words or wrote text would not fit this model.

However, it is quite appropriate for the government itself to respond to religions that there is a compelling state interest to fight against with its own words and private actions - with statements of condemnation against particular religious practices and the expenditure of money that aim at reducing their harmful influences.

anticant said...

"For those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

Presumably he didn't have Israel's recent atrocious behaviour in Gaza in mind. Unless he speaks out against that on behalf of the civilised world, these high-flown sentiments ring very hollow.