Wake up and oppose theocracy: Bill Maher, Rula Jebreal and the urgent Islam debate [View all]

[applegrove]

Wake up and oppose theocracy: Bill Maher, Rula Jebreal and the urgent Islam debate

by Jeffrey Taylor at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/15/wake_up_and_oppose_theocracy_bill_maher_rula_jebreal_and_the_urgent_islam_debate/

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Did Jebreal really think she would help her cause by chastising Maher for speaking his mind and thereby reminding us of the intolerance that has so frequently characterized Islam? (To wit: the longstanding Muslim-led campaign to make blasphemy against Islam an international crime.) The rush among Muslims to condemn their faith’s critics discloses a valid underlying fear — that possibly those critics are onto something, that maybe the religious beliefs in question are untrue and even ridiculous.

This fear is nothing new, nor is it by any means peculiar to those professing Islam. Recall Galileo, who faced the Roman Inquisition and subsequent decades of house arrest for his wildly “heretical” assertion of Heliocentrism – that the Earth and the planets orbit the sun. The Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books grew to contain more than 4,000 titles, including those by the Enlightenment’s key proponents, by the time it was abolished in 1966. The Catholic Church can boast a gruesome roster of shameful acts, but most pernicious has certainly been the retrograde influence it has exercised on humankind’s advancement by blocking free speech and thereby stultifying its followers. The prohibition against condoms in AIDS-stricken Africa, the sheltering of pedophile priests and opposition to gay rights and abortion are other manifestations of the baleful, at times lethal, mortmain the Vatican still has on our affairs.

Maher’s detractors, and often their interviewers in the media, ignore the central point he made in his controversial monologue, which was that if being liberal means anything, it means opposing theocracy. He declared that, “It’s okay to judge that rule of law isn’t just different than theocracy, it’s better. If you don’t see that, then you are either a religious fanatic or a masochist. But one thing you are not is a liberal.”

Put another way, secularism and legal protections for free speech are the finest fruits of the Enlightenment. They merit spirited defense and should not be casually surrendered to those who, in the name of misbegotten notions of “multiculturalism” or political correctness, would institute their own versions of the Inquisition and decide for others what speech is permissible, what is not. Nonbelievers should not sit idly by as those who attack the single greatest historical enemy of human progress, organized religion, are intimidated or barred from the debating table (or the commencement-address podium). In Islam’s case, this is no easy task, given that for many Muslims the faith infuses their politics, customs and identity, and its critics have faced violence and assassination.


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