By Rudy
Barnes, Jr.
Last week’s blog addressed the
conflict between individual rights and the collective obligations all people
have for one another. Fundamentalist
religions and secular authoritarian regimes resolve that conflict by
eliminating individual rights with a religious or political ideal and imposing oppressive laws. So it was with Cotton Mather’s 17th
century Puritans in New England, with Communists in the 20th
century, and with today’s radical Islamists like ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Roger Cohen has asked: What leads young European Muslims in the
thousands to give up lives in France, Britain or Germany, enlist in …the
Islamic State, and dedicate themselves to the unlikely aim of establishing a
caliphate backed by digital propaganda?
Cohen acknowledges that we don’t know the answer why the violent
rejection of modernity and the extreme, literalist interpretation of certain
teachings of Sunni Islam have “…proved of unquenchable appeal.” He suggests one reason may be that the
freedoms of libertarian democracies have all but eliminated traditional moral
boundaries, allowing people to do what they want without concern for others.
Absolute freedom is anarchy, but the
absence of freedom is tyranny. The challenge
for libertarian democracies is to balance individual rights with providing for
the common good. Religion can help the process
by providing the moral standards of legitimacy that balance individual freedom
with collective obligations to provide for the common good, but fundamentalist
religions distort the process with sacred ideals and laws that eliminate
freedom.
Secularism is an antidote for
religious fundamentalism. It does not
exclude religion from politics, but prohibits government from favoring any religion
to protect libertarian human rights. Secularism considers
advances in knowledge and reason in shaping standards of legitimacy that
balance religious ideals with the secular ideals of politics. Human rights are critically important, but
they only define what government cannot do, not what government can or should
do to provide for the common good. That
is the province of democratic politics and religion.
Fundamental
human rights begin with the freedoms of religion and speech, and they are defined
and protected as universal human rights under the International Covenant of
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Economic
and social needs are also treated as human rights under the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); but government
benefits cannot be universally enforced as rights since they depend on a
nation’s capability to provide them. As
a result government benefits must remain a national political responsibility.
The
U.S. is a party to the ICCPR (signed in 1977 and ratified in 1992), but not to
the ICESCR. Most Islamic nations in the Middle
East and Africa embrace Islamic law, or shari’a, and have an Islamic version of
human rights law that subjects human rights to shari’a. The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in
Islam of 1990 condones apostasy and blasphemy laws that deny the freedoms of
religion and speech, and shari’a condones discrimination against women and
religious minorities. Islamic scholars
have debated issues of justice and human rights in Islam, but there is no
consensus on providing libertarian human rights or eliminating discrimination
against women and non-Muslims, so shari’a reigns supreme over libertarian human
rights.
Unlike
Muslims in Islamic cultures, those in libertarian democracies have come to
appreciate the freedoms of religion and speech and equal treatment of women and
religious minorities. Those progressive Muslims
have not lost their religion, they have only secularized it—much like their
Jewish and Christian neighbors. They consider
politics and law the province of man, not God, and know that if government is
controlled by any religion there can be no freedom of religion or speech. The secularization of religion thus allows the
fundamental freedoms that are at the heart of libertarian democracies, but that
are missing in Islamic cultures.
Secularism
acknowledges advances in knowledge and reason as sources of truth, while
religious fundamentalism rejects any advances in knowledge or reason that challenges
the truth of God’s will as revealed in its holy scripture—the Hebrew Bible for
Jews, the Christian Bible for Christians, and the Qur’an for Muslims. Such a conflict came to a head in the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, where
the teaching of evolution challenged the Biblical creation story. And the issue is not resolved; Christian fundamentalists
continue to promote the teaching of Biblical creationism along with scientific
evolution in public schools.
In
their search for truth, progressive believers use inductive reasoning to accept
advances in knowledge and reason, but also use deductive reasoning to retain
belief in ancient mystical truths such as eternal life that remain beyond
knowledge and reason. By way of
contrast, fundamentalists rely entirely on the unyielding truths of their
ancient holy scriptures.
Religions
are expected to grow worldwide even as they shrink in libertarian democracies,
and secularism is necessary to enable Islam to embrace the freedoms of religion
and speech that are necessary for Muslims to debunk the demagoguery of
ISIS. While the excesses of liberty can
be a license for immorality, liberty in
law is essential to enable reason and truth to prevail over religious
demagoguery. That is why religious
fundamentalists are a minority among believers in the U.S., while they are
majority in Islamic cultures that have no freedom of religion or speech. Secularism can provide the needed balance
between libertarian human rights and the moral imperative to provide for the
common good. It is expressed in the greatest commandment to love God and
one’s neighbor as oneself—even one’s unbelieving neighbors.
Notes
and References to Resources:
Previous blogs on related topics
are: Religion and Reason, December 8,
2014; Faith and Freedom, December 15,
2014; The Greatest Commandment,
January 11, 2015; Religion and Human
Rights, February 22, 2015; God and
Country: Resolving Conflicting Concepts of Sovereignty, March 29, 2015; A Fundamental Problem with Religion, May
3, 2015; The Future of Religion: In
Decline and Growing, June 7, 2015; Christians
Meet Muslims Today, June 14, 2015; Fear
and Fundamentalism, July 26, 2015; Freedom
and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015.
Roger Cohen has asked why the
propaganda of ISIS trumps the freedom of libertarian democracies for many young
Muslims. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/opinion/roger-cohen-why-isis-trumps-freedom.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0.
On religion and secularism, Alan
Wolfe has argued “…religion’s priority of belief and secularism’s commitment to
individual rights are not in opposition; rather they complement each
other.” He believes that secular values
are essential to the survival of religion in the modern era. See http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/and-the-winner-is/306654/.
Ken Gibson has stated that Islam is not the problem. Islamism is. “Secularism, the separation of politics and
religion, is the only force that can deliver a peaceful accommodation [of
politics and religion].” And Gibson
concludes, Extremism is religion’s
enemy. Secularism is its ally. See http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/ken-gibson-secularism-is-religion-s-ally-against-extremes-1.2305739.
On how the U.S. has promoted
democracy, human rights and the rule of law in its foreign policy, see generally,
Military Legitimacy: Might and Right in the New Millennium, chapter 4 in
the Resources. On the differing opinions of Islamic scholars
on justice and human rights, see Religion, Legitimacy and the Law: Shari’a, Democracy and Human Rights at pages 10-17
in the Resources. On
the separation of church and state from a Christian and Muslim perspective, see
Church and state: conflicting concepts of
sovereignty in The Teachings of Jesus and Muhammad on Morality and Law: the Heart of Legitimacy at page 57 in the Resources.
Craig Stern has explained why
libertarian or negative human rights
under the ICCPR are enforceable, while economic entitlements or positive human rights under the ICESCR
are not, and why the latter can corrupt the former as part of the rule of
law. See Craig A. Stern, Human Rights and the Rule of Law—the Choice
for East Africa, SSRN, March 6, 2015, at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2574823. On democracy, human rights and
fundamentalism, and differing views of Islamic scholars, see Barnes, Religion, Legitimacy and the Law: Shari’a,Democracy and Human Rights at pages 2-18.
Mark R. Amstutz has noted “The
limited consensus on human rights doctrines, coupled with the ever-expanding
list of rights, has had a deleterious effect on the moral foundations and
priority of international human rights claims.” And that human rights provide
“…norms that if not fulfilled by a state can undermine its international
legitimacy.” Amstutz, International Ethics:
Concepts, Theories and Cases in Global
Politics, Third Edition, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008,
pp 97-99.
Articles 18, 19 and 20 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) provide for the freedom of
religion and free expression, and Articles 18, 19 and 20 of the ICCPR make
those rights a matter of international law.
The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam of 1990 has no provisions
comparable to Articles 18, 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights or the ICCPR, but following a Preamble that asserts the primacy of
Shari’a in defining human rights, Article 11 provides in part: Human beings are born free, and no one has the
right to enslave, humiliate, oppress or exploit them, and there can be no
subjugation but to God the Most-High….
Article 18 provides in part: Everyone
shall have the right to live in security for himself, his religion, his
dependents, his honour and his property….
Article 22 provides: (a) Everyone
shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not
be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.
(b) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and
propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to
the norms of Islamic Shari’ah. (c) Information is a vital necessity to
society. It may not be exploited or
misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets,
undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or
weaken its faith. (d) It is not permitted to arouse nationalistic or doctrinal
hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form of racial
discrimination. Article 24 provides
specifically what the Preamble implies: All
the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the
Islamic Shari’ah. Article 25
provides: The Islamic Shari’ah is the
only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the
articles of this Declaration.
The
Scopes Monkey Trial was an American
legal case in 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John Scopes, was
accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach
human evolution in any state-funded school. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually
taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could
have a defendant. Scopes was found
guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,345 in 2015), but the verdict was
overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense
national publicity. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate,
argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney,
spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist
Controversy, which set Modernists [Secularists], who said evolution was not
inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God
as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was
thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether modern science
regarding the creation–evolution controversy should be taught in schools. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial.
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