Clash of Civilized Ideas – How Can We Reconcile Religious Freedom and Individual Freedoms

[stevenleser]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_070811_clash_of_civilized_i.htm


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August 11, 2007

Clash of Civilized Ideas – How Can We Reconcile Religious Freedom and Individual Freedoms

By Steven Leser


If you follow my articles, you know that in addition to the Liberal and Progressive sites I include in my regular reading list, like OpEd News www.Opednews.com , Democratic Underground www.democraticunderground.com and Daily Kos www.dailykos.com I wade through the postings on Free Republic. I read FR for two reasons. First, I want to see what my diametric opposites are thinking, doing so helps me see what arguments are made against the ideas I have and how to counter them. I also read FR because sometimes, people from a different viewpoint/culture/etc. can come up with ideas that you would not, which is one of the ideas behind and arguments for multiculturalism.


The Freepers hit on something the other day. Of course, when they refer to people of Progressive or Liberal thinking, it is all in a nasty or condescending way, but they asked in a mocking way how Liberals and Progressives reconcile the idea of promoting women’s rights and women’s empowerment with promoting the rights of Muslims to freely practice their religion. Because the Freepers have a narrow minded and specific hatred of Islam, they didn’t stop to think that #1 – Only a small minority of Muslims treat their women this way and #2 their argument can also be made against sects of Judaism and Christianity who operate in such a way that keeps women in subjugated roles. I wrote an article two days ago criticizing Chick-Fil-A for promoting media by Focus on the Family and James Dobson. FOF and Dobson see wives as subservient to their husbands and not as equal members of society.


Considering all of that, what should be the position of Progressives and Liberals? Do we support those highly conservative Muslims, Christians and Jews in the most free practicing of their religion even if it means that some practitioners, many of whom may be vulnerable and not able to speak for themselves, surrender some of their individual rights or do we promote the rights of women and others that these religions sometimes attempt to subjugate and in doing so force some religious practitioners to back off some of their practices like making women wear veils or not allowing them to work outside of the home?


I try to write articles that contain solutions. I have to admit to not knowing the right answer(s) here. It is easier for conservatives like those on Free Republic. They just hate Muslims and say Islam should be eradicated from the world and Christians and Jews are OK in anything their religious practices say they should do, end of problem. They accuse people like me of “colluding with Islamo-Fascists to take over the world”. In reality, people like me have struggled for centuries with how to allow religion and those who believe in one to have as much freedom as possible without infringing on the rights of others, that includes allowing women and even children and other vulnerable people who are in religious families to leave the religion and its practice.


The stakes in this policy exercise are high. Groups like Al-Qaeda are trying to engineer a “Clash of Civilizations” between the West on one side, and practitioners of Islam on the other. If the Western countries adopt Freeper/Conservative Republican-inspired policies toward Muslims, they may help Al-Qaeda convince the world’s Muslims that the West is their enemy and the ultimate clash will be a reality. However, we should not sacrifice our safety or our belief in equality or individual liberties either.

What is your suggestion? I’d like to hear it.

[The Magistrate]

1. An Individual's Freedom To Practice A Religion, Sir

Does not extend to a right to subjugate other individuals. Where a doctrine prescribes this, it cannot be freely exercised in a liberal society, any more than could a doctrine requiring human or animal sacrifice, or the whipping of children, or the refusal of medical care for minors or other family members. All of these things can bring practitioners into conflict with civil law, and properly so. Doctrines enjoining on believers subjugation of women, hate speech against some other social group, or restricting the expression of persons who do not share the believer's religious convictions, are no different.

[stevenleser]

2. How do you define subjugate? Merriam Websters...

has two definitions:

1 : to bring under control and governance as a subject : CONQUER
2 : to make submissive : SUBDUE

I could make a pretty convincing argument that this covers most women and children in most households of families that are highly observant of either Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

So, using your response as a basis for an action, it would seem we should go into these households and emancipate all the women and children therein.

[The Magistrate]

3. And Your Point Would Be, Sir?

[stevenleser]

4. First you would have to tell me if I accurately captured your point of view.

then I'll tell you the point. At least as it pertains to our part of the discussion.

[The Magistrate]

5. The Principle Seems Clear Enough, Sir

Practical execution is seldom pure or clean. There would have to be complaints, for instance, by persons actually injured by the practices, or they would have to come to the attention of the law by some other regular means, for legal actions to be taken. That is how it works in the instance of, say, a church that promotes whipping children as a religious duty: someone comes to the attention of a teacher or a neighbor, the child protective services are summoned, and matters proceed....

[stevenleser]

6. The principle is not clear

First you have to define what it means to be subjugated, because in your estimation, it would seem that once a religion has begun to subjugate someone, the state can intervene. I think you will find that the devil is in the details of that definition.

And because, as you note, practical execution is seldom pure and clean, we better be sure we know when it is OK to execute our principles.

[The Magistrate]

7. Perhaps, Sir, You Might Try To Express Clearly What You Are Defending Here....

Freedom of conscience is an individual affair, of necessity, no person being able to have one other their their own. A person has every right to act in accordance with their beliefs, so long as those actions pertain to themselves alone, but no one can compell another person to act in accordance with their own beliefs, and a belief which requires this cannot be practiced in a society where the liberty of each individual is valued.

[stevenleser]

8. Perhaps at this point you should re-read the article or at least...

this part:
- Considering all of that, what should be the position of Progressives and Liberals? Do we support those highly conservative Muslims, Christians and Jews in the most free practicing of their religion even if it means that some practitioners, many of whom may be vulnerable and not able to speak for themselves, surrender some of their individual rights or do we promote the rights of women and others that these religions sometimes attempt to subjugate and in doing so force some religious practitioners to back off some of their practices like making women wear veils or not allowing them to work outside of the home?

and consider it in the general context of a world where we have a fringe group, Al Qaeda, attempting to convince the worlds 1.5 Billion Muslims that we hate and disrespect Muslims and Islam and therefore the worlds Muslims should unite and fight us. In other words, some additional sensitivity might be called for but...

in direct opposition to that is the UN's Universal Declaration of Human rights that espouses many of the general principles you raise.

[The Magistrate]

9. Why, Sir?

These are hardly new ideas, and far from the first time the matter has crossed my own mind.

We mean what we say about human liberty and equality as progressives, or we do not. For my part, I mean it.

[stevenleser]

10. Saying an argument or idea isnt new, isnt new...

What does the fact that a dilemma isnt new have to do with anything? Mathematicians and Physicists have been struggling with coming up with various theories and proofs for hundreds of years. Does the fact that they arent new problems make them less worthy of solving? Attempting to dismiss an issue this way is intellectually dishonest and a virtual admission that you dont have a good answer. I sincerely hope you dont try to do it to anyone else ever again.

I guess I should have figured out after trying to get you to expand on your position three or four times that you were not serious about discussing a real substantive solution and really just wanted to use the thread to pontificate.

[The Magistrate]

12. Now That Did Definitely Miss The Point, Sir

Your comment seemed rooted in the idea that there was something novel in the article you have presented, and there is not. Nor is the actual, exact and exacting work of physicists and mathematicians, fields in which things can be solidly proved by objective criteria, anything remotely resembling philosophical, sociological and political speculations, which are wholly subjective and in which positions taken by a disputant can never be proved or disproved by any objective criteria. That is why political disputes, particularly, tend be settled by violence, whether present in actual cracked heads or in the symbolic form of head-count in a vote.

Since you, Sir, again, resolutely refrain from presenting your own position on the matter, you may forgive me for indulging in a straw-man exercise, by attempting to present some positions it seems possible might be yours, simply to have something to engage while caffeine and nicotine flow into the system....

For the first, judging by your initial response, which seemed to proceed from the premise my comments were directed only towards violations of liberty present in Islamic culture, it would seem you may be of the view that no criticism of any wrong may be made by a party that is itself committing wrong in some degree, and that therefore Western progressives should make no criticism of wrongs done elsewhere so long as any persist in our own culture. This is a pretty common view in some circles, but does not carry much weight with me. On the specific matters of freedom of conscience and women's rights, the degree to which these are absent in one culture as opposed to another is the most important consideration, since the presence of some degree of flaw in human arrangements is axiomatic, and in this comparison, Islamic society does come off a very poor second to the West, by reasonably objective criteria such as literacy rates, life expectancies, legal procedures, and economic power.

For the second, it seems you may be inclined towards a feeling that criticism of deficiencies in freedom of conscience and women's rights in Islamic societies ought to be down-played by progressives because such criticism can be seen as playing into a propaganda line of right reactionary elements in Islamic society, confirming their view of a war between Islam and the West. This strikes me as weak for two chief reasons. First, there is in fact, and has been for centuries, war between Islam and the West, and that this is so is inherent in the two competing systems of social organization, which clash on many levels. The recommended remedy will have no more effect than Calamine lotion on plague buboes: the inherent conflict will proceed undisturbed by the cosmetic measure. Second, when progressives take the course of down-playing criticism of deficiencies in freedom of conscience and women's rights in other societies, deficiencies which most people in our society see, and rightly, as far more egregious than those that exist in our own, we strike most of our fellow countrymen as being hypocrites, not really interested in the things we say we are interested in, but simply seeking excuses to disparage our own society. It makes people far less likely to take seriously any criticism of our own society and its practices that we level, and contributes to the isolation of the left in our own political life. Remedying this latter strikes me as the most important task before us on left, and most any other consideration ought to be subordinated to it.

[stevenleser]

11. Bumped for the Sunday crowd. Folks, I know this article probably makes you feel uncomfortable

but I think it needs to be discussed. I'm not seeing good overarching philosophies and policies discussed for how to deal with these conflicts in freedoms and a lot seems to be riding on our ability to get it right, globally.

[bemildred]

13. Why should we want to "reconcile" the two?

Religious freedom extends right up to the point where it infringes on other political freedoms. It is ludicrous to even consider that any particular religious dogma somehow overrides other political freedoms. There is, for example, obviously no "religious freedom" to compel others to your own belief. It is an oxymoron. And if that is so, then that lack of power to compel belief applies to both genders and all ages equally.

"Freedom" does not exist in a vacuum, it is always "freedom to do what?". What you have by virtue of "religious freedom" is freedom of belief and freedom of conscience, for yourself, and it does not imply in any form freedom of action, freedom to treat others as you please. And further, ones confessional choice must be an irrelevant to the discussion, else this so called religious freedom is nothing of the kind, being freedom only for the "approved" religions.

[The Magistrate]

14. Have Not Seen You Around Lately, My Friend

Always a pleasure to do so, of course....

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

[bemildred]

15. Reading my way through the Summer, Sir, and other things.

Sometimes one loses interest in the noise machine here, and I have had a busy Summer, in some respects.

I have been reading the "Northern Expedition", among other things. It took me a while to see your point about it, WRT to the Hamas/Fatah discussion we had some time back, but now I do. One is tempted to look around for other applications of that lesson, but there are so many to choose from.

I trust things are well with you too.

[The Magistrate]

16. Glad You Could Find A Copy, Sir

That period of Chinese history fascinates me, and I have found understanding it useful to a wide range of situations. There is a chemical purity about it that illuminates many seemingly chaotic clashes.

Things are going well as can be expected here: the grand-children are very loud, the weather is damnably hot, and the ingenuity of fools continues to amaze....

[yurbud]

18. compulsion and kids seems to be widely tolerated

[bemildred]

20. And women too. In fact, even with guys, it's very popular.

When they can get away with it. Who can argue with what God tells us to do, anyway?

[yurbud]

17. allow diversity of belief and practice but don't hesitate to criticize, but don't let people harm

kids.

One of the most shameful things we do in this capacity is let Christian Scientists and others deny medical care for their children. If you are over 18 and want to die of stupidity, I support your practice of voluntary natural selection.

But don't take your kids with you.

A tougher call might be female & male circumcision. The West has rightly condemned and outlawed the female variety, but have remained silent on the male variety. Is this because the female kind is practiced almost exclusively by Muslims and Africans, while the male kind is widespread among Christians and Jews as well?

If Christians decided to cut off one of their sons' testicles to reduce their sex drive and it became widely popular, would we allow that?

[The Magistrate]

19. Regarding Circumcision, Sir

The differential has nothing to do with who practices it, but with the tremendous contrast in degree of injury the things inflict. The excision of the clitoris, and other common features such a sewing the labia shut, have nothing in common with mere removal of the foreskin: to compare them is to compare a hang-nail to amputation at the wrist.

[yurbud]

21. how much should you be allowed to injure your child then? can I get my kid tattooed?

[The Magistrate]

22. The Sideline Does Not Interest Me At All, Sir

Wife takes an extraordinarily hard line on the topic of grotesque mutilation of young women's genitals, and comparison of removing a foreskin, or adding a tattoo, is apples and oranges.

[yurbud]

23. when does it cross the line from acceptable to grotesque?

[The Magistrate]

25. When A Person Attempting It In My Presence, Sir, Would Recieve Life Threatening Injury

Seriously, if you do not know a reasonable answer to that yourelf, there is not now, and never will be, the slightest point to pursuing a conversation on the subject with you....

"All men of reason are men of violence at heart."

[yurbud]

26. I know the difference, but I'm wondering if you're drawing the line in a culturally convenient place

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. I don't think there's a dilemma here

You say:

"Considering all of that, what should be the position of Progressives and Liberals? Do we support those highly conservative Muslims, Christians and Jews in the most free practicing of their religion even if it means that some practitioners, many of whom may be vulnerable and not able to speak for themselves, surrender some of their individual rights or do we promote the rights of women and others that these religions sometimes attempt to subjugate and in doing so force some religious practitioners to back off some of their practices like making women wear veils or not allowing them to work outside of the home?"

We can support both. The conservative religionists have the right to say it's God's will that women wear veils, stay at home, etc., and everyone else has the right to say they're wrong, and that women should be full, independent members of society. By keeping religion out of schools, we should give children growing up with conservatively religious parents a chance to see the normal world, and thus make up their mind the attitude they want to follow.