"The Shi'ites have no right to live in this country"
"Only the Muslims defend
their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying
embassies."
John Kerry sets the tone for the State Department:
Secretary of State John Kerry offered a defense of freedom of speech,
religion and thought in the United States on Tuesday telling German
students that in America "you have a right to be stupid if you want to
be."
"As a country, as a society, we live and breathe the idea of religious
freedom and religious tolerance, whatever the religion, and political
freedom and political tolerance, whatever the point of view," Kerry told
the students in Berlin, the second stop on his inaugural trip as
secretary of state.
"People have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one
group or another to march in a parade even though it's the most
provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult
to one group or another," he added.
"The reason is, that's freedom, freedom of speech. In America you have a
right to be stupid - if you want to be," he said, prompting laughter.
"And you have a right to be disconnected to somebody else if you want to
be.
"And we tolerate it. We somehow make it through that. Now, I think
that's a virtue. I think that's something worth fighting for," he added.
"The important thing is to have the tolerance to say, you know, you can
have a different point of view."
Ibn Warraq, originally from India/Pakistan, some years ago expressed similar values from the perspective of a sojourner in the West:
A
democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom
to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely
lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain
unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified,
totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam
will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality;
originality and truth. ... Do not apologize.
This
raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to
defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. ... The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual
liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural
freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought
against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. ... By
defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic world a valuable
lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished traditions to
Enlightenment values. [Original link no longer functional:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398853,00.html]
As Historian Fritz Stern wrote in the New York Times September 4, 1988:
Liberalism—one
of “America's noblest traditions,” I insisted, often defined as a state
of mind—had “transformed the world . . . [I]ts greatest victory has
been the American Revolution; its greatest pronouncement, the
Declaration of Independence; its greatest bulwark, the Constitution of
the United States and the Bill of Rights.” It had “stood for freedom
against tyranny. At its best . . . a force for change and progress,
seeking the institutional defense of decency.” ... In America's
liberal premises the world had seen “the best promise of the West.”
Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others issued a "manifesto" defending underlying liberal values of the modern world against the excesses of Islamism:
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We,
writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious
totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and
secular values for all.
The
recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of
Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the
struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by
arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations
nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global
struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like
all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations.
The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions
destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we
clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the
choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a
reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism
wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of
domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all
the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to
oppressed or discriminated people.
We
reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men
and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality,
freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and
traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of
being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses
criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We
plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical
spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all
dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
As Kerry, Warraq, and Ali remind, liberty and a largely peaceful and prosperous society are more valuable than we may realize. Only a few centuries back our ancestors were chopping off heads and burning dissenters at the stake. The civil society of today was won through centuries of hard progress. Yet now our universal civilization, as V. S. Naipaul calls it, is confronted by a jihadist movement which would eradicate these freedoms. It is horrifying beyond belief:
The group doing the killing [in Pakistan] is called Lashkar e Jhangvi, "The Army of Jhangvi" ... LEJ is using massive bombs in places frequented by Shia civilians: social clubs, computer cafes, markets and schools. About 1,300 people have been killed in these attacks since 1999, according to a website dedicated to raising awareness about them. More than 200 have been killed so far this year. ...
"We are solely fighting this war in Allah's name," a spokesman for LEJ told local media, "which will end in making Balochistan a graveyard for the Shias." In an open letter that began to circulate a year and a half ago, LEJ made plain their belief that "all Shi'ites are worthy of killing. We will rid Pakistan of unclean people. Pakistan means land of the pure and the Shi'ites have no right to live in this country."
And as if to acknowledge that theirs is not merely a sectarian conflict but an ethnic one, they laid bare their desire to eliminate one group in particular: "We will make Pakistan the graveyard of the Shi'ite Hazaras and their houses will be destroyed by bombs and suicide bombers. Jihad against the Shi'ite Hazaras has now become our duty."
There is no need to temporize, or posit a false equivalency between such fanatical values and the values of a liberal society, as can be seen when Wafa Sultan, formerly of Syria, debates an imam (French version):
The
clash we are witnessing around the world ... is a clash between a
mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that
belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and
backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity
and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between
democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the
one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a
clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat
them like human beings. ...
We
have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We
have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single
Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha
statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a
Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend
their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying
embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask
themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that
humankind respect them.
The "promise of the West" may be clearer to those who come from elsewhere. But so long as we resist the pressure to betray it, it still stands, as the Secretary of State reaffirmed, as a beacon to the world. "Be proud, do not apologize."
