Salman Rushdie on New Hate Speech Laws

Freedom of speech and of the press are the biggest weapons in our arsenal against against radical islam. These hate speech laws (which appear well intentioned) will backfire against their authors.

This is the mess that Victoria (Australia) got into with similar laws:

FROM AUSTRALIA'S RADIO NATIONAL:

Recently, in the first successful case of its kind here in Australia, Catch the Fire Ministries, an evangelical Christian group, got burned when two ministers were found to have religiously vilified the Muslim community.

In mid-December, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that two pastors had made a range of false statements about the Muslim religion and Muslim people. And just last week the parties in the dispute were back before the tribunal to set a date to argue over what remedies should be imposed.

Waleed Aly is a commercial solicitor with Maddocks lawyers in Melbourne. He’s also a member of the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria, the organisation that brought the complaint, involving three separate events.

Waleed Aly: One was a seminar that was held at a church in Surrey Hills in Melbourne, and then there were two other things that were written pieces in newsletters and internet and so on. And essentially Catch the Fire Ministries held these events that published these articles, and it was the seminar that was really the starting point for the whole thing—which was a discussion of Islam and Islam in Australia, and Jihad and some kind of threat to Australian society. And so it’s the Muslims who went along to that, basically, they heard what was being discussed and I think it’s pretty hard to go into all the details of everything that was said, I mean we’re talking about a lot of words. But in basic terms, I think that what they felt was that there was a general tone that there was some kind of conspiratorial plot that Muslims would be trying to take over Australia at some point by violent means, and it’s almost like there’s this genetic disposition that Muslims have to wanting to rape and torture and kill Christians, and that Australia would be no exception to that.

So there were a lot of imputations and a lot of different shades to what was actually said on a broad spectrum. But that was the tone, I guess, of what was said, or at least that was felt by the individuals who went.

Damien Carrick: Now you say that this came to the attention of the Muslim community because essentially three Muslim people went along to the publicly advertised seminar and sat down and took notes. There’s been a lot of controversy around that, that idea of going out and fishing for trouble perhaps, fishing for offence.

Waleed Aly: Yes, I can understand that people would be pretty concerned if that were the case. Certainly some Muslims have become aware of the seminar and they spoke to each other about it beforehand, and decided to go along. But that’s not something that I think should really surprise people. Muslims will often go to seminars on Islam, because it’s something that interests them, and if they think that’s going to be hostile to them, then that’s not necessarily going to stop them going. They’ll go because they want to know what’s being said about them, and I think that’s the case in society across the board. If you belong to a particular social group and there’s a seminar specifically about you, you’re probably likely to want to go along. So I don’t think there’s anything too sinister in that specifically.

Damien Carrick: But can you realistically separate what a religion says about a particular issue, can you separate that kind of criticism from criticising the group?

Waleed Aly: I think you can. I think that religious debate is something that’s been known to the world for centuries, for well over a millennium. So that’s not something new. And that happens between academics and scholars all the time, yet it’s not done in a way that creates malevolence or ill-will or anything like that. There is, I think, a point where what really is being attacked and what’s being, I guess, the encouragement to be hated, is directed at people, and when that happens I think that’s really when the law steps in.

Damien Carrick: Yes, but doesn’t that mean that if you dress up your hate in polite, well-structured academic language, you can maybe get it under the radar in terms of this legislation; but if you’re direct and a bit coarse you get done?

Waleed Aly: I think the key word that the legislation uses is ‘reasonable’. And so there’s this element of reasonableness. And part of that is obviously how you say something, and that is an important factor that’s to be considered, and that’s something that becomes relevant in defamation law, it’s something that becomes relevant in racial vilification law. So I don’t think that we can necessarily say that merely because how you say it is relevant, that the law somehow creates an artificiality in that way. I think in fact it’s one of the strengths of the law that at least as the legislation looks on paper, it’s not so much the scope of the debate that’s compromised, it’s more how extreme the conduct is that surrounds that debate that is really the legislative focus here.

Damien Carrick: Waleed Aly, from the Islamic Council of Victoria.

The complaint was brought under Victoria’s relatively new Religious and Racial Tolerance Act 2001. The only other states which prohibit religious vilification, as opposed to racial vilification, are Tasmania and Queensland. Now of course like all communities, Victoria’s Muslims don’t speak with one voice.

Amir Butler is the director of the Muslim Australian Public Affairs Committee. He thinks the legislation is fundamentally flawed. He maintains racial vilification is one thing, but religious vilification quite another. Race, like gender, is an inherent quality, but religion’s only an abstract concept, just a set of ideas. For Amir Butler the laws simply don’t achieve their objectives—namely building cohesion and eradicating extremism.

Amir Butler: Well one of the problems with these types of laws is that they prevent people speaking things publicly. So someone may have hateful ideas, but these laws will prevent them from articulating this. One of the problems with that is, if people aren’t allowed to express their ideas, then we don’t know who are the people in our society who hold those ideas, and that makes confronting extremist groups and so on rather difficult, because it forces them underground. And if you look at the United Kingdom, for example, and you have groups like the British Nationals Party, the reason people know that they hold offensive ideas about minority groups and so on is because they are allowed to speak those ideas publicly.

The second problem is if people are not allowed to articulate their ideas publicly, then it becomes difficult to refute them, but by bringing these ideas into the public square, they can be refuted and debunked in the public square, and that’s the best way, in my view, to confront extremism. However, if you silence people, it doesn’t mean that they stop holding those ideas, it must means that they stop speaking about them publicly. And a third criticism or a third concern is that religious groups, or all religions, are essentially systems of ideas, and if someone believes in their religion, it requires them to disbelieve in other religions. And so because of this, it means that there are differences between the religious groups, and sometimes when one religious group is critiquing the beliefs of another, it can be offensive to people of that group. For example, someone robustly criticising Islam or Christianity, or any religion, is going to likely offend some of the adherents of that religion, so it opens the way for people to be offended and then launch what could be vexatious suits or so on, under this law.

Damien Carrick: Do you think there’s a privileging of certain kinds of ideas, that is religious ideas, in this legislation, and ignoring other kind of ideas or ideologies or belief systems which don’t perhaps spring from commonly understood traditions?

Amir Butler: Well, a religion is simply a set of ideas about how one views the world, how one leads their life, how one conducts their affairs. So if you distil it down to that, a religion is really no different to another system of belief, for example a political belief—say, for example, socialism or communism, both of which provide the adherents with guidance as to how they should live their life, how they should organise their society.

Damien Carrick: Or, for that matter, atheism or humanism.

Amir Butler: Well, exactly; atheism is itself a belief. So if you were going to extend this kind of legal protection to religion, where do you draw the line? What’s to distinguish a religion from any other system of belief?

Damien Carrick: So you’re saying that these kinds of belief systems, while not religious, can be really closely tied to somebody’s identity and personal make-up?

Amir Butler: Yes, definitely, definitely. I’ve met atheists who are every much as fanatical or committed to their atheism as staunch Muslims or staunch Christians or staunch Jews. So I guess my concern is where do you draw the line?

Damien Carrick: But isn’t it one thing to say that, look, we have the one true path; it’s another thing to say, well, Muslims believe in world domination, Muslims believe in raping and killing people—which is pretty much what these people were saying in the seminar of the Catch the Fire Ministries, according to the court.

Amir Butler: I agree. Definitely, that’s offensive, and definitely that’s wrong, but that’s something that’s obviously wrong. I think most Australians, if they heard that, would reject it. But going after them with these laws, it hasn’t changed their points of view. If anything, it would reinforce that point of view because many of these people will say, Look how powerful the Muslims are, they’ve been able to defeat us in the court, and silence us, that just validates what we’ve been saying all along, that they’re going to use the system to eventually take over the country. So I don’t think that it’s necessarily solved those problems—in fact in some respects it’s exacerbated them.

Damien Carrick: Are you saying that ultimately we should be free to hate, and we should be free to express that hate?

Amir Butler: Well we should be free to—if people want to hate, they should be allowed to hate, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. People should be free to have their views. So going back to what I said before about socialism and communism, does that mean if I say I hate communism as an ideology, and I disagree with communists, and I don’t like communists, and I don’t think communism should be allowed to take hold in Australian society—would anyone disagree with that? I mean people should be allowed to express their hate, and I think the line is already drawn. People who advocate criminal behaviour, people who discriminate, it’s already illegal, people who defame, it’s already covered, and I don’t think that these laws really add anything.

Damien Carrick: What have been the practical, real-world consequences of this legal action for you and your organisation?

Amir Butler: It hasn’t really been any implications for my organisation because we’re not involved in dealing with the wider community or involved in proselytising and things like that. But those organisations that I have contact with that are involved in, for example, what could be considered evangelism type work, or those organisations that organise lectures or those organisations that organise classes for the community, while the legal action was under way, we noticed that there were people coming (non-Muslims) who were coming and attending these classes and so on with notepads. And they were people who are associated with the case, and so the intent being that they might find something that they could use in the court case to say, yes, we’ll see some of the things that we’re saying are true. And I’ve seen that across the board. I attended an Yvonne Ridley—the British journalist, who was held by the Taliban, she came here to give a fundraising speech and they were there. So this is one of the things, and I think that that’s really building cohesion between the routine religious groups in the community.

Damien Carrick: You talk about people kind of turning up at classes and lectures; as far as you can tell, has that simply been people involved in this case, or has it been by a large number of groups of 'let’s find out what’s going on in the Muslim community' ?

Amir Butler: I think initially it was people who were associated with the case, maybe not directly associated but associated with the churches and religious communities that were involved. But what I’ve been seeing lately is there’s a much broader net that’s been cast. So I’ve seen some emails, for example, from members of the Christian community who are saying, well, okay, they’ve got us on this, so let’s go after them and get them on the Qu’ran. Like go and look at things in the book that could be used to argue vilification with the eventual aim of trying to get the book banned. And so I think now it’s a much wider net that’s been cast.

And the other thing is, the organisations that were targeted, or the organisations that were experiencing the brunt of this were not organisations who were involved in the court case. They were organisations who had no association whatsoever with the Islamic Council, had made no public statements or even really held any views on it, and they were the ones who suffered the consequences of it.

Damien Carrick: In what sense? In the sense that they were the ones whose classes were now being infiltrated, or subject to surveillance?

Amir Butler: Yes. So there was a class specifically for women, discussing women’s issues, like the Islamic law relating to menstruation and so on. And they had people from one of the church groups coming along and sitting there and listening to the class and making notes, and it’s an uncomfortable situation for people. I can understand why they’re doing it, because they’re trying to gather evidence that can be used to bolster their arguments in the court, but it’s not—no-one can say that this is building cohesion, it’s not something to be welcomed.

Damien Carrick: Amir Butler, from the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee.

So has the law and this case created a climate of surveillance and suspicion? Waleed Aly, from the Islamic Council of Victoria, says it’s too soon to say. But even if it does, it’s not necessarily such a bad thing.

Waleed Aly: If I imagine myself as someone organising a religious seminar or someone who’s keen to convey the message of my faith, the fact that people from another religious group are motivated to attend, for whatever reason, is not something that I would actually discourage. I would probably be quite happy about the fact that at least they’re coming, and if you’re talking about disseminating some kind of religious message—and not all religious organisations are concerned with that, but some are—if that’s what you’re talking about, then half the battle’s won by the fact that some of the people you’re trying to reach are coming along. So I can understand Amir’s point. Personally it’s not something I’ve seen. I haven’t seen a lot of Christian surveillance at Muslim gatherings and vice-versa, I haven’t seen that. I’m prepared to admit it might be going on, I think that might be a fairly short-term symptom, but I don’t think that it’s something that religious groups can really be scared of. If people are coming to listen to them, well and good.

Damien Carrick: So you’re suggesting that you should probably, to some extent, welcome the surveillance, and everybody keeping an eye on everybody else in this regard?

Waleed Aly: I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘surveillance’; I don’t think we should think of this in terms of being policed. But what I am saying is that if people want to come along because they want to try to catch you out, great, let them come along and hear what you’ve got to say. What my question would be, what exactly is the problem with having people come along to try to catch you out? What are you saying that you have to be secretive about? Surely if you’ve got a message that you think is something that people should hear, you should be happy for people to come along and hear it, whatever their motivations.

Damien Carrick: Waleed Aly, lawyer and member of the Executive Committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria.

That’s The Law Report for this week.

Guests on this program:
Phillip Ruddock, Australian Attorney General
Terry O'Gorman, President Australian Council for Civil Liberties
Clive Scott, Melbourne Barrister
Amir Butler, Director, Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee
Waleed Aly, Member, Executive Committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria and solicitor with Maddocks lawyers, Melbourne

The Muslim areas of Sydney are now the most dangerous in the city. On Sept 11th 2001, they were having street parties in these areas to celebrate the mass murder.

Lakemba has the biggest mosque. In other areas of Sydney, police stations have an area where you can walk in off the street and talk to a duty officer. In Lakemba the police have locked themselves into a small fortress. You have to press a button outside to speak to an officer and they will only let you in if you are bleeding to death or if they know you. The Muslims have turned this once leafy and pleasant district into a criminal hell hole where no woman would want to walk home at night. I am told they have done the same in Paris, Rotterdam and a host of other places.

Like the Pakistanis in Britain, the Muslim Lebanese here show no patriotism or gratitude towards their host country. Every security guard in the city who has worked in any public place will tell you that Lebanese youths are their biggest headache. They are violent, anti-social and for the most part unemployable. They are the riff-raff sons and daughters of war refugees which the moronic Labor government contaminated this fair country with back in the 80's. They thought that this traumatized and hateful community would suddenly turn into happy-go-lucky Aussies the minute they walked off the plane. They didn't - 20 years on they still have that civil war Jihadist mentality.

The pattern is global. The Hindu, Sikh, foreign Christian and Buddhist immigrants for the most part try to be good citizens in any given Western country, and although they might not always integrate, they at least do not wish to cause trouble for the wider indigenous community, whereas the Muslims delight in trouble and see law breaking as a virtue. I complain about Sydney, but the same goes for a dozen major cities in Europe as well.

....

Unfortunately Radio National chose only to speak to Muslims [see above]. This is to be expected from an organization with an anti-Liberal republican bias. Nevertheless I also found this on the RN site:

"The mainstream Christian churches with their liberal attitudes, their tolerance of just about anybody and anything, seem like pale and ineffectual offshoots of nihilist humanism. It is little wonder that it is Pentecostalist churches that are growing, with their combination of vital contemporary music and fundamentalist views on scripture and morals. Likewise, liberal and secular Judaism has sporned a fundamentalist reaction.

Fundamentalist Islam brings with it an additional, potent ingredient—power envy. As the foremost Western scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis put it, the Muslim world has spent five hundred years in economic and social stagnation, watching the West remorselessly increasing in wealth and global power.

Osama bin Laden combines fundamentalist belief with a mania for destruction.

Lewis argues that the fatal flaw in Islam has been its xenophobia, its refusal to open itself to the benefits of humanism. It has closed its mind to modern science, and the entire spirit of enquiry that has driven Western progress. It has likewise closed itself off from the one cultural achievement of humanism, its positive, the Enlightenment belief in universal human rights, and the practical implementation of this belief in liberal-democratic political orders.

Fundamentalisms, in general, are illiberal. In flight from humanist nihilism, they also reject humanist tolerance.

The West continues itself to generate a range of secular fundamentalisms, ones without the horror effects of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are fanatical greenies who believe that to damage one tree is to poison the Garden of Eden. There is a virulent new anti-Americanism.

Fundamentalism today is one of humanism’s pathologies. It is a creation of the West and will continue as long as we fail to rediscover from within our own culture persuasive answers to the central metaphysical questions. Without such answers we humans cannot live."

..............

engages in simplistic moral equivalence

Could you elaborate? I must be simplistic myself since I couldn’t find much to disagree with in Mr. Rushdie’s article. J Is it because he made statements that are critical of religious thought in general? Doesn’t Mr. Rushdie make several valid and important points about the proper place of religion in society?

Best Regards,

f.g.

I am a non-believer, but I do not accept the label of atheist. Because to do so will make me an associate of "atheism", of which I want no part of. I will not be trapped in any ideological box.

Personally I think the 59% figure of "devout" believers is an exaggeration and possibly an intentional case of disinformation. Maybe my definition of devout is wrong, but just because people go to church every Sunday,or think the 10 commandments are good rules to live by, does not devout make.
To me it means that people base their lives entirely and purposely in actual service to Christ. I doubt the figure actually makes it to 20%.

Less government intrusion and regulation is the answer, not more. Hate laws are government enforcement of political-correctness. Political-correctness and it's basis(moral/cultural relavitism) and off-shoots( indescriminate multi-culturalism/ diversity) are the main cause of the islam problem in the West in my opinion. It's true-believers are ideologically trapped(and in comfortable positions of power), and will deny reality and try to distort it every which way in an attempt to maintain the (supposed) validity of their world-view.

Too bad the Soviets were'nt able to subvert islam like they did the others, and no, the effects did not disappear with the USSR. Moral/cultural relavitist theory was an absolute necessity for the (political)survival and advancement of communist sympathizers and thought in the West during the Cold-war, it was their protection, cover, for advocating the Soviet line.
They were very busy too. For instance:
http://www.schwarzreport.org/SchwarzReport/2000/august00.html#Communist

Personally I think the 59% figure of "devout" believers is an exaggeration...definition of devout

I agree. One man's devout Christian is another man's backslid Lutheran.

Nuff said,

f.g.

Imagine not being able to openly speak or even write about what you may conceive as an ominous threat to your country in the disguise of a religion. How does one deal with this imposing threat that is driven by its antisemitic ideological base? We see its openly accepted imposition on American campuses who will fire a professor for arguing against that totalitarian ideology rather than allow the open free debate that our liberal colleges are known for. or so we thought. Application of such laws only incourages the practices of kitman and taqiyya to promote sharia and the imposition of a religion that chooses to ignore the foundations of any western countries laws.

Religious faith, whatever that means, is not the issue in American politics nor with relation to British hate speech laws: religious ideology is.

And, of course, ideologies are not created equal.

A flaky argument from a crispy writer.

I fear there is going to be no end to this war. In fact I'm certain of it. This war is going to continue for we have allowed muslims into our lands. Our peace and our freedoms are threatened each passing day, if not buy our own government, then by any passing muslim who has taken offence at what you said about islam. People live and travel in fear, as Muslims living among us, are the most likely to be active in terrorism. A whole society (all the West) is terrorised and life made difficult, just to keep Muslims here.

The only way we will win this war and at the sametime regain our freedoms, as well as free muslims from islam, is by separation. I do not think our societies, geared as they are to free and open thought, can continue while this assault on freedom in underway. If this assault is not brought to a halt soon, then free society will start to perish. It may not be evident immediately, but perish it will in the fullness of time.

It is irrelevant if 60% of Muslims in the West are "innocent"; the rest of the population i.e. all of us, are being victimised as a consequence of PC. Our civilisation is dying right at this moment, as freedoms we have taken for granted, are slowly being strangled in the name of security. In the end, our whole way of life will be changed, Western nations de-stabilised and finally, we will strangle our civilisation just to keep a few million Muslims here. It is far far too high a price to pay.

JTF,

Religious faith, whatever that means, is not the issue in American politics nor with relation to British hate speech laws: religious ideology is. And, of course, ideologies are not created equal.

What do you see as the difference between a religious "faith" and a religious "ideology"? They would seem, for all practical purposes, to be the same thing.

Regards,
f.g.

We will be able to finish the war-- win it, if and when the irrationality/irresponsibility that was normalized- celebrated,and confused with enlightenment by the counter-culture revolutionaries of the 60's and before and today, are repudiated and dislodged from their dominant positions in society.
The main problem is the corrupting effect they have had on those who do not whole-heartedly embrace their ideology, but nevertheless compromise with and enable it.
The leftist radicals of the 60's are running the Dem party, and in the process have forced the supposed opposition to move leftward with them.

This explains the pathetic Republicans going along with the leftist destruction of T. Lott over his remarks to S.Thurmond. The pathetic Republicans legitimized and validated the lying smears and falsification of history that the leftists had been engaging in for decades.

It also explains Bush's ridiculous proclaimations about islam and "kwanza", and probably 100 other bizarre things.
IT IS ALL ABOUT THE LEGITIMAZATION,ACCEPTANCE, AND CELEBRATION OF IRRATIONALITY,INSANITY, IRRESPONSIBILITY AND DENIAL OF REALITY.
The consequences will not be put off----- SOMEBODY WILL PAY THE PIPER.

Look at the politically-correct appointed female guard whom that rapist over-powered and went on a rampage--- UTTER FRICKEN INSANITY.
But what will they do about it? They will deny reality and try to figure out some way to pretend the physical size and demeanor of the guard had nothing to do with it, and therefore continue it in some modified form. This is just the tip of the iceberg, political-correctnes is murderous, but the true nature is minimized or witheld. Certain angles are not allowed to be considered when evaluating it, usually with the threat of character assasination by being associated with Nazis, racists etc.

I'm not holding my breath for reality to be accepted and confronted, too many people have a vested interest in the current Alice in Wonderland-- Brave New World- 1984 and Frankfurt School world we live in.

F.g.~ my poor two cents on your question:

Faith~ I believe in God. (This one is stand-alone)

Ideaology~ This is what I think God wants the world to be like. (so lets make everyone conform to it. Which unfortunately is what some people in Any faith are going to be like, being imperfect humans. It is also what some people would have everyone believe typifies ALL people of a given faith, such as Christianity)

However when it comes to islam I suspect they are rather closely entwined.

Better writers, please come forward!

There's my poor two cents :P

Funny thing about these laws it is doesn't seem to have inspired fears of a "chilled" environment in the imams of the UK or too many other places.

And then there's Red Ken Livingston.

The 'nature' of religious faith, belief in God or Gods, or an experience of some sort, is a matter of interpretation, of course. (And many secular thinkers might like pry the notion of faith from 'religion' altogether). But only the most narrow-minded thinker would see an equivalence between 'religious faith', 'the experience of God or what is transcendent', 'the reaching out' or 'the leap' a la Kierkegaard, and 'ideology', or a system of ideas and beliefs. The 'politicized religion' Rushdie talks about requires religious ideology or a system of beliefs; religious ideology presupposes faith of some sort, but faith, however we interpret it, does not presuppose ideology. And, once we focus on ideology rather than 'religion' or 'religious faith' (Rushdie stresses the former but also uses the latter) we may clearly distinguish the false analogy between 'political Islam' and the Christian ideologies that influence American politics. Herein lies the problem with the article, and this is what Spencer points out, I think; by focusing on 'religion' and 'faith' Rushdie fails to distinguish the very different kind of threat Islam represents in political and social life. The reason to oppose the hate speech laws is because is will silence critique of the ideology, the belief system of Islam, which is horribly dangerous; possible reasons for attacking the Christian coalition in the US have an entirely different character, and that fact has everything to do with the differences between the ideologies of Christian fundamentalism and Islam.

JTF,

the false analogy between 'political Islam' and the Christian ideologies that influence American politics.

I think the idea of a ‘political Christianity’ in the states is a valid concept. I’m quite aware of the differences between the two (Islam and Christianity) so I really don’t need that lecture. Admittedly ‘political Christianity’ isn’t necessarily the threat to life and liberty that political Islam is and doesn’t warrant the amount concern that its nasty cousin does.

One to remember here is that although comparing the two ideologies seems like apples and oranges to some they are still both fruits to some of us. No pun intended.

Free people should be able to set up any ideology (religious or secular) in the public square and throw rocks at it to their hearts content without fear of being stoned themselves.

Regards,

fg

IDEOLOGY :

a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture b : a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture c : the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program.

Faith:

1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs

Rushdie was the first target of contemporary Islamic terror. Here is an article written by him after the 9/11 murders:

November 2, 2001

Yes, This Is About Islam
By SALMAN RUSHDIE

LONDON -- "This isn't about Islam." The world's leaders have been repeating this mantra for weeks, partly in the virtuous hope of deterring reprisal attacks on innocent Muslims living in the West, partly because if the United States is to maintain its coalition against terror it can't afford to suggest that Islam and terrorism are in any way related.

The trouble with this necessary disclaimer is that it isn't true. If this isn't about Islam, why the worldwide Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Why did those 10,000 men armed with swords and axes mass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, answering some mullah's call to jihad? Why are the war's first British casualties three Muslim men who died fighting on the Taliban side?

Why the routine anti-Semitism of the much-repeated Islamic slander that "the Jews" arranged the hits on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with the oddly self-deprecating explanation offered by the Taliban leadership, among others, that Muslims could not have the technological know-how or organizational sophistication to pull off such a feat? Why does Imran Khan, the Pakistani ex-sports star turned politician, demand to be shown the evidence of Al Qaeda's guilt while apparently turning a deaf ear to the self-incriminating statements of Al Qaeda's own spokesmen (there will be a rain of aircraft from the skies, Muslims in the West are warned not to live or work in tall buildings)? Why all the talk about American military infidels desecrating the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia if some sort of definition of what is sacred is not at the heart of the present discontents?

Of course this is "about Islam." The question is, what exactly does that mean? After all, most religious belief isn't very theological. Most Muslims are not profound Koranic analysts. For a vast number of "believing" Muslim men, "Islam" stands, in a jumbled, half-examined way, not only for the fear of God — the fear more than the love, one suspects — but also for a cluster of customs, opinions and prejudices that include their dietary practices; the sequestration or near-sequestration of "their" women; the sermons delivered by their mullahs of choice; a loathing of modern society in general, riddled as it is with music, godlessness and sex; and a more particularized loathing (and fear) of the prospect that their own immediate surroundings could be taken over — "Westoxicated" — by the liberal Western-style way of life.

Highly motivated organizations of Muslim men (oh, for the voices of Muslim women to be heard!) have been engaged over the last 30 years or so in growing radical political movements out of this mulch of "belief." These Islamists — we must get used to this word, "Islamists," meaning those who are engaged upon such political projects, and learn to distinguish it from the more general and politically neutral "Muslim" — include the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the blood-soaked combatants of the Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, the Shiite revolutionaries of Iran, and the Taliban. Poverty is their great helper, and the fruit of their efforts is paranoia. This paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, "infidels," for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.

This is not wholly to go along with Samuel Huntington's thesis about the clash of civilizations, for the simple reason that the Islamists' project is turned not only against the West and "the Jews," but also against their fellow Islamists. Whatever the public rhetoric, there's little love lost between the Taliban and Iranian regimes. Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West. Nevertheless, it would be absurd to deny that this self-exculpatory, paranoiac Islam is an ideology with widespread appeal.

Twenty years ago, when I was writing a novel about power struggles in a fictionalized Pakistan, it was already de rigueur in the Muslim world to blame all its troubles on the West and, in particular, the United States. Then as now, some of these criticisms were well-founded; no room here to rehearse the geopolitics of the cold war and America's frequently damaging foreign policy "tilts," to use the Kissinger term, toward (or away from) this or that temporarily useful (or disapproved-of) nation-state, or America's role in the installation and deposition of sundry unsavory leaders and regimes. But I wanted then to ask a question that is no less important now: Suppose we say that the ills of our societies are not primarily America's fault, that we are to blame for our own failings? How would we understand them then? Might we not, by accepting our own responsibility for our problems, begin to learn to solve them for ourselves?

Many Muslims, as well as secularist analysts with roots in the Muslim world, are beginning to ask such questions now. In recent weeks Muslim voices have everywhere been raised against the obscurantist hijacking of their religion. Yesterday's hotheads (among them Yusuf Islam, a k a Cat Stevens) are improbably repackaging themselves as today's pussycats.

An Iraqi writer quotes an earlier Iraqi satirist: "The disease that is in us, is from us." A British Muslim writes, "Islam has become its own enemy." A Lebanese friend, returning from Beirut, tells me that in the aftermath of the attacks on Sept. 11, public criticism of Islamism has become much more outspoken. Many commentators have spoken of the need for a Reformation in the Muslim world.

I'm reminded of the way noncommunist socialists used to distance themselves from the tyrannical socialism of the Soviets; nevertheless, the first stirrings of this counterproject are of great significance. If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar. Many of them speak of another Islam, their personal, private faith.

The restoration of religion to the sphere of the personal, its depoliticization, is the nettle that all Muslim societies must grasp in order to become modern. The only aspect of modernity interesting to the terrorists is technology, which they see as a weapon that can be turned on its makers. If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream.

A man I have trouble respecting has criticized a law I find reprehensible. I only hope that when American hate speech laws are passed, the first cases will be arrogant secular leftists who were charged by Christians: that way the ACLU will get in a tizzy, fight the thing all the way to the Supreme Court, and such laws will be struck down as contrary to the First Amendment.

Yes, Salman Rushdie is right about the hate speech law being a cynical political ploy and that terrorism grows straight from Islam's bosom. Yet he was one who romanticized the vicious Leftisms of the so-called Third World and long called on us Americans to "understand" folks who'll always cheer when we are attacked (as in _Jaguar Smile_) rather than let them stew in their own seeping juices. His _Satanic Verses_ is the sort of book you probably have to be a Briton of South Asian ancestry to really appreciate; and his poisonous picture of bobbies of clearly continental European (especially Jewish) origins beating up his poor protagonist Saladin leads me to guess that he's still, in his heart of hears, part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Finally, Mr. Third-Worldite-proto-Sa'id-Rushdie, when the chips are down, wants the protection of the Great Shaitan itself. And he also has his nerve complaining about the decline of free speech in Britain when it's long been his side of the spectrum that's pushed for it, and when his earlier career was full of praise for regimes that had no use for free speech at all. Hmmmmph!

Gary, there's a religion out there that mistrusts human claims to self-perfection: it's called Protestantism. I hear in your complaint about believers an echo of Martin Luther's dictum that there's a pope in every man's belly.

Never thought that I'd agree with a muslim, but I have to agree with Amir Butler. Religion is just a set of ideas.

Congratulations to him for pointing that out.

Mackie

I could have done that. :) And you left a thing or too out.

Besides, I was hoping to get JTF to explain what he thought difference was.

A common usage of Faith when folks are speaking about a "Faith" is often 5 or 6 in the definition of faith below. When one expresses faith in someone or something, they are intending 1 thru 3. 4. is used in a more 'spiritual' manner

From Dictionary.com
faith
n.

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often "Faith" Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.

A religion or faith easily falls within the second entry in the definition of ideology below. A religion or "faith" is therefore an ideology by definition.

ideology.
1. The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture.
2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.

In short, a religion a.k.a. a faith, is an ideology with supernatural aspects.

f.g.