By Rudy
Barnes, Jr.
In
April posters appeared on NYC subways and buses with a young man in a checkered
headscarf and the words, Killing Jews is
Worship that draws us close to Allah, followed by That’s His Jihad. What’s Yours? It was not sponsored by radical Muslims but
by the pro-Israel American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), headed by Pamela
Geller. The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority tried to prohibit the ads, but a U.S. District judge ruled with
Geller and held that the ads were protected by the First Amendment freedom of
speech.
A
few weeks later two Muslim gunmen were killed after they opened fire at a Texas
competition to draw the prophet Muhammad.
The event was sponsored by Geller’s AFDI, and like the NYC posters it was
considered protected by the freedom of speech, even though violence could have
been anticipated. Because of these and
other anti-Muslim activities sponsored by the AFDI, the Southern Poverty Law
Center considers it a hate group.
The
activities of Geller’s AFDI have certainly pressed the limits of the freedom of
speech. They were clearly intended to
antagonize and likely to provoke violence among Muslims who do not have an
appreciation of how the freedom of speech allows blasphemy, and it raises the
issue of whether there should be limits to the freedom of speech beyond yelling fire in a crowded theater. But beyond legal arguments, there is the
moral responsibility to limit our freedom of expression to avoid offending others.
The greatest commandment instructs Jews
and Christians to love God and to love their neighbors as themselves. The two commandments were taken from the
Hebrew Bible and taught by Jesus as the most important of all commandments, and
affirmed by Muslims as a common word
of faith. The version in Luke’s gospel
is the most relevant since in it Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan in answer to the question, Who is my neighbor? In it the good neighbor to the wounded Jew was
a Samaritan, who was considered by Jews to be a detested apostate.
The greatest commandment reflects the
primacy of love over law that restrains
legal rights with moral responsibilities.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have standards of legitimacy as
religious norms of what is right, and to be compatible with democracy, human
rights and the secular rule of law those religious norms must be voluntary
moral standards rather than coercive laws.
That is the case in the libertarian democracies of the West, but not so in
the tribal cultures of the Islamic East, where apostasy and blasphemy laws
preclude human rights.
Religions
in libertarian democracies must rely on moral restraints to limit the legal
right to speak freely. Christians are
admonished to tame the tongue: “It is
a restless evil, full of deadly poison…Out of the same mouth come praise and
cursing.” (James 3:8-10) In like manner Michael
Gerson has characterized blasphemous acts that are protected by the freedom of
speech as immoral and urged restraint in exercising the freedom of speech:
There
is no contradiction between First Amendment absolutism and a moral commitment
to the cultivation of mutual respect among the Abrahamic faiths (and outside
them). Just as there is no inconsistency
between the vigorous defense of the United States against terrorists and a
respectful engagement with Islam. They
are, in fact, inseparable.
Gerson asserts
that “high profile, attention-seeking acts of blasphemy” directed against Islam
can undermine U.S. efforts against al-Qaeda and ISIS, since those terrorist
groups “…thrive on the narrative of West vs. Islam.” He notes that “both Judaism and Christianity
have made progress over the centuries…interpreting their violent scriptural
texts and finding resources of respect
for the other.” That progress culminated
in the Enlightenment of the 17th century in the West when reason gained
an equal voice with religion and put human rights and man-made law over
religious law, but that did not happen in the Islamic East where Shari’a
continues to reign supreme. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-radical-necessity-of-loving-thy-neighbor/2015/05/11/70db588e-f807-11e4-9030-b4732caefe81_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1.
David Ignatius sees psychology
rather than religion at the heart of Mideast violence and recommends freedom as
“the most potent weapon against the ‘viral’ jihadist narrative on Arab social
media.” Freedom is the same weapon needed
to counter religious fundamentalism. See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-islamic-state-antidote/2015/05/12/68ae72ce-f8dc-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1.
The
freedoms of religion and speech are the best antidotes for Islamist extremism, whether
its roots are psychological or religious—or most likely, both; but as
illustrated by AFDI those freedoms can be abused and actually incite such
extremism. The problem can be resolved
if people of faith restrain their legal right to the freedom of expression with
their moral responsibility to love God and their neighbors as themselves—even their
unbelieving neighbors.
Notes
and References to Resources:
See Blog/Archives at http://www.jesusmeetsmuhammad.com/
for the following blogs related to this topic: Faith and Freedom, posted December 15, 2014; Religion, Violence and Military Legitimacy, posted December 29,
2014; The Greatest Commandment,
posted January 11, 2015; Love over Law: A
Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, posted January 18, 2015; Jesus Meets Muhammad: Is there a Common Word
of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims Today? posted January 25, 2015; Religion and Human Rights, posted
February 22, 2015; The Kingdom of God,
Politics and the Church, posted March 15, 2015; God and Country: Resolving Conflicting Concepts of Sovereignty,
March 29, 2015; Faith as a Source of
Morality and Law: The Heart of Legitimacy, posted April 12,2015; Religion, Human Rights and National Security,
posted May 10, 2015.
On the central role of legitimacy
in faith, see the Introduction at
pages 10, 11 in The Teachings of Jesus and Muhammad on Morality and Law: TheHeart of Legitimacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment