Rushdie weighs in

Rushdie had what I have to call a must-read piece in the The Independent this weekend. Commenting on the UK's pending 'incitement to religious hatred' law, he steps up admirably in defense of the freedom to offend. It's one of those articles I'm loath to excerpt, as the whole damn thing's worth reading, but I guess the nub is:

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended, or, [if] insulted, have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted, is absurd. In the end a fundamental decision needs to be made: do we want to live in a free society or not? 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.)

-- Salman Rushdie, Do we have to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again?, in The Independent

... I've not a great deal to add, and all of this has been said before, but Rushdie (apart from being a writer who's written a few books I quite love) says it well, so I'd argue his comment on the matter is worth anyone's attention.

As a sidebar: yes, Rushdie's comment happens to come within days of (sadly appropriately enough, I suppose) one of Iran's vicious zealots renewing the fatwa calling for his murder yet again. And so this cranky atheist and occasional critic of the various lunacies of various self-important superstitions would like to repeat again what seems to be the sensible question here: what's the functional difference, really, between a law forbidding 'incitement to religious hatred' and the Islamist injunction against blasphemy under sharia law, if either can assign criminal penalties to criticisms of religion? Yes, I suppose, the UK law is unlikely to assign the death penalty for supposed offences, but isn't one particularly important effect the same either way: a tendency to discourage such critiques?

Again: this is a comment that's been made, and one Rushdie makes, too. But it bears repeating: freedom of expression is freedom to offend, and unless you're for the freedom of speech even of people whose opinions utterly disgust you, you're not really for freedom of speech.

Speaking of which, do let's talk 'incitement to hatred': I'd argue many religions and practitioners thereof commit this on a daily (if not hourly) basis. And let's not forget: there are passages in their very canonical books that answer nicely to this description. Despite more ecumenically-minded modern apologists' reinterpretations (and don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for those) of said passages, both the Christian and Islamic faiths' supposedly 'holy' texts contain more than a little 'incitement to hatred'.

So, what now? Are they no longer to read those?

That, I suppose, might sound like a step forward. But I think we all know it isn't. Firstly, on principle, as I said, the very notion of the law--stifling as opposed to answering--isn't wise

And secondly, it probably won't cramp the style of the more vociferous (to use a somewhat euphemistic term) voices within the religious camps one little bit in any case. The traditional faiths, as they always have, will insist this is their right, this is tradition; freedom of religion and all.

So if anyone's going to see their opinions stifled by the law, it's far more likely going to be those who don't have those entirely-too respected canonical books on hand to use as shield and excuse.

And those, let's be clear, could well be the secular voices--mine and those like it.

No, I'm not planning on 'inciting' anyone to 'hatred'. But it certainly seems to me, as others before me have commented, that those who, even with the best of intentions, satirize or mock such eminently ripe targets for satire and mockery as religions could well find themselves answering for it under this law in any case. Under a law no free society should need, we could well find the criticisms we feel our society needs most urgently to hear ruled out of bounds.

Yes, I happen to think most religions are either ridiculous or disgusting--either amusingly silly, terrifyingly nasty, or a little of both at various times. Even at their best, even when furthering values I share, I think those claiming various 'revealed' routes to wisdom tend to corrupt and subvert the human intellect, subtly or not so subtly teaching their adherents that it's okay to believe and to assert things anyone employing reasonable standards for evidence should deny--subtly or not so subtly teaching them it's acceptable to use any dishonesty and any bastardization of logic necessary to achieve this. Even at their best, said overgrown cults thus tend to pollute honest discourse, and to make once proud and independent intellects slaves to obscurantism.

So what, now? Can I still say so in the UK?

And can I still call the parroted second-hand superstitions of Christianity and Islam childish absurdities? Can I still say the fundamentalists of both camps are nasty, brutish twits, obsessed with an idiotic, narrow view of morality, oozing with a xenophobic hatred--a hatred which, in polite company, they call piety?

Do let me know. I'm making my vacation plans shortly.