Does Johann Hari know the wrath and hatred by Kolkata Muslims for his article hereunder ?
“Why should I respect these oppressive religions?
--Johann Hari
The right to criticise religion is being slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism ~ giving us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds ~ are being beaten back by belligerent demands that we “respect” religion. A historic marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten: to put him on the side of the religious censors.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that “a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people”. It was a Magna Carta for mankind and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it “Western”, Robert Mugabe calls it “colonialist”, and Dick Cheney calls it “outdated”. The countries of the world have chronically failed to meet it, but the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.
Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to “respect” the “unique sensitivities” of the religious, they decided, so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within “the limits set by the shariah (law). It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community”.
In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.
Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN’s Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech ~ including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets”. The council agreed, so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.
Anything which can be deemed “religious” is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN ~ and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah “will not happen” and “Islam will not be crucified in this council” ~ and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.
Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest ~ but the shariah police declared it was “un-Islamic” and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country’s most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.
To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women’s, those children’s, this blogger’s ~ or their oppressors’?
As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: “The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom.”
Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this.
Underpinning these “reforms” is a notion seeping even into democratic societies, that atheism and doubt are akin to racism. Today, whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents immediately claim they are the victims of “prejudice” ~ and their outrage is increasingly being backed by laws.
All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a “Prophet” who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him.
I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of “prejudice” or “ignorance”, but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.
When you demand “respect”, you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.
But why are religious sensitivities so much more likely to provoke demands for censorship than, say, political sensitivities? The answer lies in the nature of faith. If my views are challenged I can, in the end, check them against reality. If you deregulate markets, will they collapse? If you increase carbon dioxide emissions, does the climate become destabilised? If my views are wrong, I can correct them; if they are right, I am soothed.
But when the religious are challenged, there is no evidence for them to consult. By definition, if you have faith, you are choosing to believe in the absence of evidence. Nobody has “faith” that fire hurts, or Australia exists; they know it, based on proof. But it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason. It’s easier to demand the source of the pesky doubt be silenced.
But a free society cannot be structured to soothe the hardcore faithful. It is based on a deal. You have an absolute right to voice your beliefs, but the price is that I too have a right to respond as I wish. Neither of us can set aside the rules and demand to be protected from offence.
Yet this idea ~ at the heart of the Universal Declaration ~ is being lost. To the right, it thwacks into apologists for religious censorship; to the left, it dissolves in multiculturalism. The hijacking of the UN Special Rapporteur by religious fanatics should jolt us into rescuing the simple, battered idea disintegrating in the middle: the equal, indivisible human right to speak freely.”
....n The Independent,Wednesday, 29 January,2009 >>Published in The Statesman, Kolkata, 05/02/2009
Protests outside Statesman House
Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, Feb. 7: The traffic gridlock for over four hours from 4.30 p.m. on CR Avenue and adjoining areas of the city due to protests by Muslim organisations against an article published in The Statesman eased in the evening today after the protestors withdrew their traffic blockade in front of Statesman House. Protestors demonstrated in front of Statesman House for the second successive day today and for nearly six hours until well into the evening. In the afternoon, the protestors blocked traffic on Lenin Sarani, Dorina Crossing and SN Banerjee Road but traffic flow returned to normal by 8.30 p.m. following a meeting between senior police officers and representatives of the agitators.
The protestors began raising slogans and put up posters at the entrance of Statesman House this afternoon demanding the "arrest of the author of the article". They were referring to an opinion piece by veteran journalist Johann Hari of The Independent, London, published on The Statesman's Perspective page on 5 February under the headline: "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?" Kolkata Police acted with urgency and deployed a huge police contingent in front of Statesman House and the Esplanade area to thwart any untoward incident.Through the evening, various roads in north and south Kolkata became clogged due to the spillover effect of the traffic chaos at Esplanade as police had to divert traffic. Many commuters complained of being severely inconvenienced due to the disruption of traffic. Police officers spoke to representatives of the agitators repeatedly in order to pacify them but the latter were reluctant to withdraw their road blockades. Commuters were left stranded owing to the diversion of buses and many were caught in traffic snarls.Later in the day, Janab SM Noorur Rehman Barkati, Shahi Imam, West Bengal, wrote to the Commissioner of Kolkata Police Mr Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti. His letter said: "The All India Majlis E Shoora and the Muslim community is very hurt, disappointed and dejected with the vulgar and objectionable article, with references to Islam and Prophet Mohammed published in The Statesman… we express our deepest anguish and resentment at such vulgar and cheap journalism. We request/appeal for strong and strict action against the people/journalist behind the article, as it tend(s) to disturb secular fabric of our state which has always been an epitome of communal brotherhood & unity."
The Statesman wrote to the Commissioner of Police thanking him for sending the newspaper a copy of the communication addressed to him by the Shahi Imam and said: "We note with anguish the sentiments expressed therein. While upholding the right of media to provide space for a plurality of opinion, we seek to emphasize it is not and has never been the intention of The Statesman to defame any individual or institution or cause hurt to any community. If any action of ours has unintentionally caused hurt to any section of society or group of people we wish to assure you that was not our intention and we have no hesitation in expressing our regret for any unintended hurt. We will report the day's developments in our editions tomorrow and assure all communities of The Statesman's abiding faith in the Constitution of India and the secular fabric of our country."
Source: The Statesman, Kolkata. 07/02/2009.
Paralysis, the Kolkata city’s password
Anger & apathy clog artery
- PORTRAIT OF PATHWAY AS PROTEST PLATFORM by FRENZY MUSLIMS
BY A STAFF REPORTER
The heart of the city was clogged for four hours on Tuesday, but no one really cared.
No one apart from the hundreds of hapless commuters caught between belligerent protesters determined to create maximum traffic chaos and a paralysed police force doing precious little to unclog the arteries.
On Wednesday it happened to be a protest meeting by around 5,000 Jamiat-e Ulema Hind supporters, but on other days it hardly takes a handful at Metro channel — opposite Metro cinema — to hold the city to ransom.
All because the law that debars a thoroughfare from being used as a protest platform is not enforced.
Why? Because no one in this city really cares.
The rulebook allows Lalbazar to sanction rallies near Shahid Minar, that too after the organisers have obtained a no-objection certificate from the army which is the custodian of the Maidan area.
But 20-24 meetings are allowed to be held every month in Metro channel, ensuring maximum effect with minimum effort for protesters seeking to disrupt traffic and grab attention.
From 10.30am on Wednesday, supporters of the Jamiat-e Ulema Hind started descending on Metro channel from the city and the districts.
Their agenda? Protest the policies of Israel and punish the Calcutta commuter.
The cops at Esplanade caught napping by the “unexpected turnout” were outnumbered and outwitted by the protesters who soon overran both flanks in front of Metro cinema and paralysed traffic at the vital intersection.
“We had no clue so many people would come for the rally. We had no option but to barricade several approach roads, causing traffic snarls on Chowringhee, Red Road, SN Banerjee Road, Lenin Sarani and Central Avenue,” admitted an officer on duty.
With nothing official about holding a meeting in Metro channel — after all, no official permission can be given — an organisation normally checks with the office of the deputy commissioner of police (headquarters) whether the venue is free on a given day. Then, details of the meeting are sent to the police headquarters, which in turn is forwarded to the Special Branch of the city police where a rough estimate of the turnout is calculated. Based on that, police arrangements are made and traffic diversions planned.
A senior police officer blamed Wednesday’s traffic chaos on the protesters holding a sit-in-demonstration on both flanks on Chowringhee.
But why clog Metro channel? Why not, countered Siddiqullah Chowdhury of the Jamiat-e Ulema Hind. “If Biman Bose and Mamata Banerjee can hold rallies here why can’t we?”
Which brings us back to the basics — why don’t the police take action against Metro channel marauders?
“We can take legal action against those obstructing a thoroughfare but we don’t because even the ruling party is guilty,” an officer admitted.
After all, no one in this city really cares.
Source : The Telegraph, Kolkata, 29/01/2009.
posted by Bengal Spotlight.
