Time Immortal

Ezra Levant was apparently invited to speak at a human rights caucus meeting at the U.S. Congress yesterday. That’s pretty cool, and certainly a much-deserved honour for one of the men who has been at the forefront of the human rights/freedom of expression debate in Canada, and who has himself been made to appear before one of the many HRCs that operate within this once-proud country.

In particular, it is interesting to read his interpretations of the words of the Second Secretary of the Embassy of Pakistan, one Asma Fatima by name, on the nature of the thrust by Islamic elements world-wide to see criminalized any form of “defamation of Islam”…which, as Mr. Levant goes on to explain, basically amounts to an effort to criminalize blasphemy against Islam.

But the single most revealing comment I heard all day about this matter was from a State Department lawyer on the panel (whose name I wish to confirm before publishing it.) She has done meticulous research on the Muslim campaign to ban criticism of Islam, and has helped develop the U.S. response to the idea in international legal forums.

She went deep into the issue: she looked at the Arabic word used by Muslim diplomats when describing the “defamation of Islam” that they sought to illegalize. She consulted scholars of Arabic who confirmed for her that the particular legal phrase had been coined very recently, especially for the international diplomatic campaign — and that, when discussed domestically, Muslim countries used the real Arabic words they mean: the traditional words for blasphemy.

So, I suppose, Fatima was following the old diplomat’s dictum after all. She was very honest about her goals — stopping people (especially other, moderate, Muslims) from criticizing Islam. But her dark art was to re-classify her censorship in the Western legal term of “defamation”, instead of the more honest classification of “blasphemy“.

If Muslim diplomats the world over were to lobby for international and Western laws against blasphemy, that would likely trigger a reaction — not just from those who believe in Christianity, Judaism, etc., but from atheists, too, who might not go quietly into a merger of mosque and state. But calling blasphemy by the word “defamation” (and making up a special new word to mislead the proposed law’s targets), makes sure that fewer alarm bells in the West will ring. It transforms an attempt to Islamicize our entire legal system into merely another lawsuit amongst countless others. That’s the diplomatic sleight-of-hand that Fatima was peddling.

Which is basically what most of us freespeechers have been observing all along: the thrust of e.g. the human rights complaints against Maclean’s, and against Mr. Levant, as well as silly contrivances such as the enterprising individual who claims to hold the copyright on any and all graphical depictions of the (false) prophet Muhammad, are all part of a larger scheme. And that scheme, methinks, is to work within the legal frameworks of Western nations — nations that in the past have resisted the spread of the Ummah — to make any and all criticism of Islam, or of the actions of Muslims, criminal.

Count Roland writes in with some thoughts about some recent promotional material for a series we both enjoy watching — Battlestar Galactica. While the picture itself dates back to a promotional campaign that the SciFi Channel ran back in January of this year, I haven’t really commented on the image….well…because let’s face it: rip-offs of the famous painting of Christ and the apostles sitting at the table are a dime a dozen.

Have you seen the picture on scifi.com’s BSG page? It is The Last Supper but with Caprica Six presiding and BSG characters attending. I was surprised to see it, but it seems to be in some taste - not raunchy, say - and it would seem to be in jest. Especially since the Cylons are the monotheists and Caprica saved them from their destructive path (sort of…).

I wonder, O Writer, if this would generate problems and if it generates less than the homosexual parody, then perhaps the Muslim response is made at least more understandable if not condonable. If we react less harshly to fiction than doctrine parodies, perhaps they react more strongly for dogma than we do for doctrine.

But wait, fiction, such as The Satanic Verses, has caused quite vehement response too. Perhaps the dogma of “Islam and Muhammad are always right” creates a great deal more fiction than our dogmas, the creeds for Christians and some others, such as inspiration of Scripture not specifically mentioned in the creeds. Maybe , too, our dogma of love impels us to a different response than the dogma of shame and retribution.

Here’s the picture to which Roland is referring, just for reference (corrected — oops!):

As noted above, I am aware of the “Last Supper” promo picture, and I am equally aware of the various ways in which it alternatively is and is not supposed to be concerned with the identity of the final Cylon, whoever he or she might be. I don’t think it is in the best taste, but I certainly don’t find it offensive. The positioning of Tricia Helfer’s “Head Six” at the center of the table is interesting, and may be a commentary on the nature of the being that only Gaius Baltar can see (she does assert, often, that she is “an angel of God“). More interesting, I think, is the positioning of Jamie Bamber’s Lee Adama in the place of Judas Iscariot, and the fact that the seat of Simon Peter is yet empty*.

I may be misunderstanding Roland‘ second paragraph, but I don’t think anything about this picture — the intent that went into it, its composition, or the reaction to it from both Christians and non-Christians — in any way condones some of the more violent reactions that one sees from the Islamic community against similar, greater, and sometimes lesser slights. That’s not to say that a response is not justified — it is simply to remark that if the response takes the form of murderous riots, it has become far worse than that which it protests, and is a grave moral evil.

I think Roland hits the mark exactly by mentioning the concept of fiction, which I think is key in forming a proper response to what could be called parodies of representations of religious figures. In much the same way as anyone who thinks that the Da Vinci Code has anything more than a coincidental relationship to reality needs to give his or her head a shake, so too does anyone who is offended by a fiction-derived representation of a real religious figure need to pause and consider carefully his or her reaction. Fiction is just that — fiction, not reality. It doesn’t matter where Head Six is positioned in the picture, nor does it matter who occupies the central position of the picture, so long as in reality that position was and is occupied by Christ. And it is, just as it was.

I think that Roland also hits the mark by noting a major difference between Islamic theology and Christian theology — whereas Christian Theology is predicated on the concepts of love and mercy, Islamic theology seems to be predicated on doctrines of submission and militarism. And so while the Christian response to a perceived blasphemy (because really, that is what is at issue here) might be to shake one’s head and wonder at the reasoning behind the composition, the Islamic (Islamist?) response seems to be to demand that the errant composer be made to suffer for his actions.

The question, I suppose, becomes why Islam tends toward the violent response, whereas Christianity tends toward the non-violent, when the issue at hand is something which is perceived to be a slight against each respective religion. One thought which I keep returning to is that the only real reason to act violently in response to a blasphemous or insulting depiction of a religious figure is if the true nature of the figure depicted is more accurately revealed in the blasphemous image than in the traditional depiction, and if the intended goal of the violence is to suppress that truth. I don’t suggest that I am condoning violence in the cause of a cover-up — I am merely noting that, to me at least, that’s really the only thing I can think of when I try to imagine a motive that would cause a person to act out violently against a cheap-shot blasphemous image. In essence, the violence emerges when the blasphemy hits too close to home.

Since I regard Muhammad as a false prophet, and as a generally unsavoury person, I regard depictions of him which dispute his sanctity as being more accurate than those which affirm it, and I realize that I admit a certain bias in my thinking if this latest statement is considered in parallel with the previous paragraph. I submit, nevertheless, that the preceding is still a valid point for consideration.

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