30 September -- Blasphemy Day

"Blasphemous Rumours" -- Depeche Mode

I do not go out of my way to insult the religious views of my fellow humans, be they Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever. Many people are defensive of the tenets upon which they base their lives, which guide their conduct, and inform their consciences. I understand that defensiveness. I myself am not immune to that emotion. But as a citizen of the Open Society, I must recognize that your deeply-held religious views have the same legal weight as my lack of faith in the supernatural. Neither is immune from either criticism or ridicule. Religious views be may freely subjected to crude, insulting, and unfair mockery. To put it bluntly, we have the right to be a jerk, and that right must be protected.

But, on the other hand, we have no right not to be offended. That is the very essence of free discourse. A free exchange of opinions and unrestricted discourse is the lifeblood of the Open Society. To exist as a free people is to risk having our most deeply held beliefs open to question. Blasphemy Day is acknowledgement of this basic truth. Allow me to quote its promoters.

International Blasphemy Rights Day, held each year on September 30, is a day to show solidarity with those who challenge oppressive laws and social prohibitions against free expression, to support the right to challenge prevailing religious beliefs without fear of violence, arrest, or persecution.

...

While many perceive “blasphemy” as offensive, this event is not intended to ridicule and insult others. Rather, it was created as a reaction against those who would seek to take away the right to satirize and criticize a particular set of beliefs given a privileged status over other beliefs. Observing International Blasphemy Rights Day is a way of showing opposition to any resolutions or laws, binding or otherwise, which discourage or inhibit freedom of speech of any kind.

Freedom of expression, including the right to criticize any belief, religious, political, or otherwise, is the only way in which any nation with any modicum of freedom can exist. Without this essential liberty, dissent can be suppressed and silenced by labeling it as “defamation” or “blasphemy.” Even rhetoric that uses the guise of sensitivity, such as “hurting religious feelings” can be twisted to stifle opposition by turning popular sentiment against it. (Center for Inquiry's Campaign for Free Expression)

Campaign for Free Expression

So why 30 September?

On 30 September 2005, the Danish broadsheet daily Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, (The Morning Newspaper Jutland Post) garnered attention far exceeding that of the 120,000 readers who routinely received the most recent edition each morning. On this day, the paper published 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Prophet Mohammed, accompanied by short statement by editor Flemming Rose entitled "Muhammeds ansigt" ("The Face of Muhammad"):

Modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where one must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context. ... we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him.

Almost instantly, across the entire globe, outraged voices erupted in religiously fueled fury. An estimated 100 people were killed in the resulting protests and riots. While the value of an individual human life is, in and of itself, without measure, that is not the story being told here. Likewise, many journalists and editors suffered unfair and unjustified professional harm from timid publishers and peer; that too is a tale for another day.

Today is set apart to protest efforts by those who seek to use the machinery of the state to stifle speech they find offensive.

A group of diplomats representing 11 Islamic governments --  Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya, Morocco, and the Palestinian General Delegation -- asked to meet with a representative of the Danish government and discuss their opposition to the offending cartoons. Their hopes of persuading Denmark to censor Jyllands-Posten was rebuffed. The government declined to meet with the delegation,  replying instead to its entreaty with a letter reading in part:
The freedom of expression has a wide scope and the Danish government has no means of influencing the press. However, Danish legislation prohibits acts or expressions of blasphemous or discriminatory nature. The offended party may bring such acts or expressions to court, and it is for the courts to decide in individual cases.

Undeterred, Danish Islamic groups asked prosecutors to bring charges against Jyllands-Posten, accusing the paper of two violations of criminal law. The first accusation invoked Denmark’s Blasphemy Law. The claim accused the paper of violating a against criminally disparaging persons on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnic background. After a brief investigation, the prosecutor dismissed the case, saying he could find no basis for bringing charges. No individual had been successfully prosecuted for blasphemy since 1938, rendering the law an anachronism. Furthermore, the prosecutor explained that, yes, citizens were legally protected from bigoted disparagement, but the right of the press to discuss issues of public interest was paramount.

Hundreds of newspapers across the globe reprinted some or all of the offending cartoons, sometimes in support of Jyllands-Posten, sometimes to display the iniquity of Danish cartoonists, sometimes just to inform their readership of the images generating all this fervor.

In some nations lacking our commitment to free speech, editors paid a price for reprinting the drawings. Only one editor in the western world was charged after reprinting the cartoons, a Canadian newspaper editor. While he was cleared of wrongdoing, he racked up over $100,000 in legal fees defending himself. Even so, the his cost for free expression was relatively cheap when compared to the price paid by editors and journalists elsewhere:

• Two Algerian pro-islamic editors were arrested and their papers closed.
• In Belarus, an editor was sentenced to three years in prison. His paper remains closed even now.
• Two Jordanian journalists were sentenced to a two month jail term.
• One Malaysian paper was closed for reprinting the cartoons. Another received a brief suspension.
• In Russia, one paper was closed. The editor of another paper was the target of a criminal investigation.
• The Saudi Arabian government closed a newspaper for reprinting the cartoons.
• Three Yemeni papers were briefly closed and four journalists arrested for publishing the cartoons.

While in the West -- an admittedly dubious term for those nations of world once referred to as the even more problematic First World -- saw no criminal convictions, no press office raids, no newspapers closed, we must not be so quick to pet ourselves on the back. While our failings are not nearly so severe and troubling as those haunting many Islamic theocracy and former republics of the now defunct Soviet Union, our shortcomings are very real indeed.

Americans no longer read history so much as in the past, and that is our misfortune. But the Founding Fathers and Constitutional Framers did. They were all too familiar with the Wars of Religion that had wracked Europe for six generations during the 16th and 17th Centuries, leaving between six and 17-million dead in their wake -- the death count still remains unclear. Entire communities vanished to massacre, starvation, disease, and genocide, all wrought in the name of the One True Religion. Far more recently and far closer to home, the memories of harsh and dictatorial New England Puritan communities hanging Quakers, witches, and assorted heretics remained uncomfortably fresh.  The men who created our nation had many flaws, but they did possess the wisdom to realize that such religious dissention need be kept from infecting our new republic least it ruin all they hoped to accomplish.

George Washington himself warned of this danger toward the end of his first term of office in a letter to a friend, the Irish MP Edward Newenham then waging a losing parliamentary battle to bring religious equality to his own nation:

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.

George Washington, Letter to Edward Newenham (20 October 1792)

Washington's concerns were well founded. Today, the various congregations falling under the Baptist umbrella are a major presence in America, second in size only to Roman Catholic adherents. But in colonial times, they were a persecuted minority. Colonial governments and populations, motivated by religious bigotry and unnerved by the rapid growth of this upstart sect, sought to keep these upstart Christians in check. Baptist congregations were, in some places, could not legally congregate for worship. They were occasionally imprisoned and even publicly whipped for proselytizing. In many colonies, Baptists were taxed to pay for the maintenance and support of non-Baptist churches and ministers. While most of the more severe abuses had ceased by the time of the Revolution, some of the new states enacted statutes discriminating against Baptists and other minority religions.

Not surprising, American Baptists were among the strongest advocates of separation of church and state. Soon after taking office in 1801, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut expressing their not-unreasonable fear that the abuses which had historically disadvantage them might continue.

Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that Religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions, [and] that the legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor. But sir, our constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter, together with the laws made coincident therewith, were adapted as the basis of our government at the time of our revolution. And such has been our laws and usages, and such still are, [so] that Religion is considered as the first object of Legislation, and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights. And these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgments, as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen. It is not to be wondered at therefore, if those who seek after power and gain, under the pretense of government and Religion, should reproach their fellow men, [or] should reproach their Chief Magistrate, as an enemy of religion, law, and good order, because he will not, dares not, assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.

In Jefferson, a man often condemned and criticized for very unorthodox beliefs, found an enthusiastic supporter of secular government. His response in part reads:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Jefferson sought to ensure his devotion to a secular government survived his demise. He himself dictated the epitaph inscribed on the obelisk marking his grave: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia." All three accomplishments speak to the late Founder's commitment to secularism.

• The Declaration of Independence challenged the ancient tradition of divine right or rule, asserting instead the Enlightenment ideal of citizens living by a Social Contract of their own making.
• Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1777, but the state did not make his proposal law until 1786. The statute provided religious equality under law, the end of government support for churches, and the abolishment of forced tithing. 
• When the University of Virginia opened its doors in 1819, Virginia was already home to a perfectly fine university, the College of William and Mary, Jefferson's very alma mater. And while Jefferson had prospered intellectually under the tutorage of its staff, he found its curriculum and practices troubling. Not only did Jefferson find the College of William and Mary deficient for its neglecting of the physical sciences, he was troubled by the school’s requiring all students to recite a statement affirming Christian doctrine. His University of Virginia would not neglect the study of the physical world for that of the ethereal, but it would not impose any religious orthodoxy on students. 

Grave Marker of Thomas Jefferson

Far more religious than either Washington or Jefferson, John Adams insisted that the new American nation and its government was the creation of human intellect and will, historical forces, and Enlightenment principles rather than the product of divine intent. In his  A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, written in France even as the Constitutional Framers drafted a new Constitution in Philadelphia, Adams defended the secular vision of the Founding Fathers:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America

(John Adams, Three Volume, 1787)

We in the Western world -- that troubling phrasing again -- enjoy a freedom of conscience unknown to any prior generation in history and even the majority of the world’s current population. But we must always be guard against the fatal sin of hypocrisy. Our defense of Danish cartoonists is correct only if we are defending the freedom of expression essential to the Open Society.  But had those artists run afoul of critics for, say, insulting Judaism or Christianity, we must be willing to defend their rights just a fiercely. If we apply a double standard, we are not defending free speech. Rather, we are insulting Islam. Free speech recognizes no sacred cows: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and every other belief system must be measured by the same ruler.

Furthermore, despite the unparalleled freedoms we enjoy, our disinclination to study history and learn has steered us into some dangerous waters. I am at once both frightened and fascinated by how little we retain of the Founding Fathers fear of sectarian strife. Too many Americans seek to embrace the very danger the Founders feared.

That is why we need Blasphemy Day.

Many people celebrate Blasphemy Day by burning a sacred book, a Bible or Quran for example. I do not. I do not approve of book burning as a rule, and I think the destruction of literature to be an absurdly ironic means of advocating for free speech. To be honest, I am tempted to make an exception with respect to the Living Bible, an awful text lacking both the poetic beauty of the King James Bible and the textual accuracy of the New American Bible, but I restrain myself.

Instead I post a blasphemous song. For those of you who wish to engage in a bit more blasphemy, I point you towards Salman Rushdie’s deliciously subversive The Satanic Verses.

Girl of sixteen

Whole life ahead of her

Slashed her wrists

Bored with life

Didn't succeed

Thank the Lord

For small mercies

Fighting back the tears

Mother reads the note again

Sixteen candles burn in her mind

She takes the blame

It's always the same

She goes down on her knees

And prays

I don't want to start

Any blasphemous rumors

But I think that God's

Got a sick sense of humor

And when I die

I expect to find Him laughing

Girl of eighteen

Fell in love with everything

Found new life in Jesus Christ

Hit by a car

Ended up

On a life support machine

Summer's day

As she passed away

Birds were singing

In the summer's sky

Then came the rain

And once again

A tear fell

From her mother's eye