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| নির্বাচিত পোস্ট | লগইন | রেজিস্ট্রেশন করুন | রিফ্রেস |
I have bad bad habit of asking questions- unnecessary questions which often ends up someone telling me how unpleasant they think I am!
And then comes the filthy habit of expressing how I feel or what I think. (mostly in small jabbing sentences, mostly via my Facebook; never had the focus to write long “stuff” until recently, and this would be short-lived I am sure),
Inevitably a combination of both resulted into me talking to a lot of people on different things: atheism, freedom of expression, Islam, fundamentalism, secularism etc. being on top of the pile recently.
Because I made the mistake the of pointing out that regardless of what Thaba-baba did or wrote, his killing is still a murder and responsible parties ought to be brought under justice, questions about my Imaan have been asked ( with disgust and disappointment). Because I questions if Thaba-baba, who was a known atheist, should have been given a “Janaza”, my respect for freedom of speech has also questioned.
Out of a lot of comments, conversations a few stood out.
One with an elderly related- a 70+ years old lady who could not be bothered about earthly politics of anything of the sort. She apparently was given a copy of a newspaper, with details of the so called “atheist” blog. After reading a little of it she almost went into seizure and while crying the question she threw at me was: “ and they can do whatever the like, say whatever they like and make mockery or my Allah, My prophet in my country and there is nothing I can do?...I can die to save the glory of my Allah…”
Another one was with a “choto bhai”, in a tear-filled conversation he says: “ ..But he was preaching his (dis)belief….and we can’t express our thoughts in our country….what about freedom of speech..?
And after each of these, I felt like everyone is asking the same question: “where is the line on the sand”? How do you maintain a balance between freedom of speech and offending someone ? What gets precedence ? Are all atheist “bad” ? ( Yes yes…seen the now famous list of atheist- sent to me several times as “proof”- of what I don’t know)
I work, dine, car pool, play with a lot of atheist. I have never had to choose between them and my religion. These are same people who would let me choose a halal restaurant if convenient when we are dining. These are the people who will arrange meetings around my prayer times. And I know they have their reasons to not only be atheist, but also blasphemous (for example, one being lesbian). Then it occurred to me, none of these people ever pushed me to choose between them or my religion- because they are not necessarily “blasphemous”; none of them ever tried to tell “funny stories” about Jesus, Muhammad (PBUH), Moses or Krishna; none of them tried to show me their vast “knowledge” or impeccable logical reasoning on how “religion is harmful for humanity” or tried to compare my prophet with Hitler. I asked myself, am i in a constraint politically correct relationship with these people? Then I realized, we are not. We had conversations about religion, race, politics, middle-east, gay marriage and some local controversial issues. And yet, none of us tried to be exalting in others eyes or an insensitive “dick”. And then I realized, there it is the: the sand on the line.
Then there is the argument of: “ but, but this is the truth!”…..i had this conversation with an idiot on a different issue few years back. And one of the analogy used were of a Caucasian person in an office full of ethnic people. During lunch time, he might not be comfortable with foreign, spicy smell ( let’s say curry). Imagine him jumping on top on the kitchen counter ( like Samuel L Jackson) and going: “ I hate M*****r******g curry smell on in this M*****r******g kitchen every day! It would be 1) true expression of his thought and 2) not racist ( apparently some joker said somewhere that it is OK to exercise freedom of speech as long as its not about your skin colour. you don’t have eat curry just because you were from a certain place). Would that be acceptable? I think we can all agree safely that it would not be. Because freedom of speech does not make “Hate Speech” ( or what can be perceived to be a hate speech) acceptable socially and in some cases legally.
Hate speech is even more dangerous in a public space within a multicultural environment. And the more your audience are, the more careful you should be. (Example: Thaba-baba wrote junk for years, but nobody cared, it did not matter. Now that it was on a daily newspaper, it does matter). The carefulness could mean criminalizing hate speeches; like it has been in certain countries. Or at a minimum people with access should exercise their freedom of speech with the grey line between that and hate speech. In a lot of society (and legality) it is agreed that hate speech is one exception of freedom of expression. The principals of freedom were around Freedom (duh), Protection (your right to be protected after expressing yourself, which is why killing someone for their expression would be illegal), autonomy of individual ( you are who you are) and operation of a representative form of an entity ( so I should be able to tell people that I am Muslim but I might not flood their Facebook page with Dawah if they don’t want me to). However, I will advance the view that the “right” to freedom of expression is not final and absolute. Your freedom can “cross the line” when it break the barrier or acceptability socially and/or legally; e.g. when your communication carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some “identifiable” group …..Especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence.
I know the age old “argument” of so many free thinking soul of our age (especially the secular kind, in relation to “sacred” things) in defence of them saying whatever they like in the line definition of “sacred”, or not meaning disrespect to the person by showing disrespect (i.e. making up vulgar stories) towards something that person holds close to his heart. Those are all good if all of us were Vulcans (logical beings from a pop Sci-Fi). Problem is we are not. An irresponsible free expression can easily become a hate speech and can hurt people, can disrupt social harmony etc. etc. I understand if someone equipped with freedom of expression suffers from a moral heroism and feel the need to let the rest of the world know what we think of them or anything they might hold sacred, sometimes using mocking stories in Greek mythology style, which a lot of people can find offensive. And that when we start to suffer from moral autism, we are focusing on the one element of the morality (expression) and forgetting the mote important one (humanity). The same way when you decide to support each and any expression, take a minute to think of consequences (because of how you say things and what you say, people might or might not join an irrelevant noble cause you invite them to), think of your environment and people around you (even if you think it is silly for them to jump up and down) compare the moral cost of saying things in certain way (i.e. could you send your atheist message without being pornographic) against the emotional pain it might cause. Until we all evolve to be Vulcans.
Live Long & Prosper
***At one point I was almost going to get derailed and go on a journey comparing Atheism and blasphemy- I would keep this one for later. One line though, you don’t have to be blasphemous to be atheist (unless you want to be talked about too)…yea yea…freedom of speech; haven’t you been reading?
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