The US Army has withdrawn a soldier from active duty in Iraq
Today, President Bush even expressed his “deep concern” at the offence.
I can understand why officers saw preemptive apology as necessary. Rumor of the incident was probably spreading before Western news outlets picked it up, and they hoped to soften backlash by admitting the incident. But the general’s kissing of a holy book he didn’t believe holy seems too much. In fact, Muslims could call it another form of defilement, false honor of a holy object for utilitarian ends rather than genuine reverence. Despite the best and noblest efforts, I’m sure the affair won’t end well, and no one will be happy.
Of course, there is the question of the undeservedly disgraced soldier. Granted, he might have had a longer record of troublesome activity, but given current data we cannot say whether or not this is the case. So it might be true that he was granted ignoble expulsion from a combat zone, to the soiling of his record and loss to his own outfit, over shenanigans that, if initiated against any other book, would barely have merited admonishment from his superiors. His actions were in poor taste, but not so much as to forfeit his career.
But I am most frustrated by the setback in freedom of expression in the Islamic world the apology will incur. Whenever Westerners apologize on behalf of the more insensitive of their ranks, they do nothing to placate radicals. Merely, they worsen the state of moderate Muslims and reformers.
Commanders’ offers of apology in of itself suggests the soldier was not entitled to that form of expression—but airlifting him out of the country will justify in the minds of extremists the severity of his crime. If the crime is so heinous even infidels atone and strip the offender of privileges, surely greater retaliation is justified. And if retaliation against outsiders is justified, the imperative to silence criticism from within is reiterated.
Not until the most offensive of speech is tolerated, whether it originates outside a society or within, can speech free. To achieve enlightenment, a society first must learn to live with blasphemy.
(Please excuse Mr. Kant’s misogyny; it was 1784.)
Filed under: Uncategorized
Dashaway
femmemeister
Bento
I just find it interesting that the U.S. is supposed to be an ally to the new Iraqi government, yet we scoff at their faith and take literal shots at their holy book. Perhaps if Christianity weren’t advertised as the “correct” religion (because clearly those Muslims and Jews and Buddhists, etc are simply misguided…), there would be a greater degree of religious tolerance and acceptance among Christians. Why are people in the U.S., even now, unable to distinguish between Islam and the radical form of Islam that terrorists use to justify their hate? Because we’re taught from an early age not that there are different religions and we can choose to believe what we want, but that Christianity is right, everything else is wrong, and we should try to convert everyone.
I agree that there is a freedom of speech issue here, but don’t you think the government would have reacted the same way, if not more harshly, if the soldier had shot up a New Testament?
To answer your question, Storm:
I can’t imagine the President of the United States would have issued a statement of “deep concern” over one soldier on the other side of the world shooting up a Bible. The issue would have been dealt with lower on the chain of command long before any news outlet decided to pick it up, and there wouldn’t have been a story.
I think commanders have made such a show of apologizing because the US presence is already perceived by many Iraqis as anti-Islamic, and they’re trying to remedy this, while stifling worldwide backlash like that resultant from the Danish Mohammed cartoons and false reports of Quran flushing at Guantanamo.
I’m not sure who you mean to be “advertis[ing]” Christianity as the “true” religion. I implied no such thing in my post. Furthermore, Muslims also advertise Islam as the One True Faith—every religion does, except for Unitarian Universalism and some liberal dharmic believers.
I don’t think that the most offensive speech needs to be tolerated in order to have true “freedom of speech”–unless you only mean tolerated by the government. I think an apology was definitely in line one way or the other–perhaps the soldier shouldn’t have been removed from duty, but still, some reaction to his action was in order.
Also, I feel like the notion of free speech used in political dialogue these days has run rampant from its original intention. The first amendment doesn’t grant people the ability to say anything, but rather, it was intended to protect individuals from governmental interference in matters of communicating information, ideas, news, etc. Somehow, I think it’s a really slippery slope to say that all “free speech” and “expression” must be tolerated. Some criteria needs to be met. I mean, we do have limits already on our free speech. You can just as well say that the “freedom of speech” being enacted by the dissemination of the Muslim holy book was not being tolerated when the soldier decided to fire a shot into it.
The thing is, in Iraq, desecration of a Quran is political speech. Chapter I, Article II of the Iraqi constitution establishes:
“(1)Islam [as] the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation.
(A) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.
Article (2): — This constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and the full religious rights for all individuals and the freedom of creed and religious practices.
Article (3): Iraq is a multiethnic, multi-religious and multi-sect country. It is part of the Islamic world and its Arab people are part of the Arab nation.”
Voicing of the most offensive sincerely held opinions is necessary to preserve freedom of speech and the health of democratic government. The only way to get the most illiberal, offensive persons—say, Holocaust denying skinheads—to shut up is to allow them into the marketplace of ideas, to be humiliated in debate and be taken apart, premise by premise, claim by claim, in scholarly or journalistic critiques. Forcing them to keep silent in their blasphemies affects no good, for they have no opportunity for refutation, and untruths might pass down for hateful generations.
But I acknowledge and accept some limits on free speech. First, there is obscenity, depictions of sexual or bodily functions, or extreme violence, offensive to “community standards” with no redeeming cultural, artistic, or scientific value. However, these criteria are highly subjective, so much so that the only media to meet the definition is photographic depiction of activities that are illegal in of themselves (e.g. child pornography, snuff films, etc.).
Besides that, classified documentation whose secrecy is essential to security, incitements to violence against an identified group or speech causal of an immediate panic (e.g. “Fire!” in a crowded theater) are the only restrictions to speech that have been successfully upheld [in the US]. To all these restrictions I lend my support.
Finally, I should have made my point clearer; an apology was the best course of action the US could take, but that doesn’t make it a good one. Ideally, it should have come from the soldier himself—which it couldn’t have, for security reasons—and have been sincere—which I doubt it would have been, given his choice to desecrate the book in the first place. Barring that, apology by a superior would be best, though I’d imagine its dampening of backlash will be minimal, and the US’s image will suffer. I really can’t imagine any desirable end to this incident, unless it were kept secret. But, as Ben Franklin said, “Three may keep a secret, if two them are dead.” Once it got out, I’m not sure there was a mutually satisfying conclusion.
Bento -
My apologies, I didn’t mean to imply that YOU had made reference to Christianity as “the” religion. I merely meant it as more of the tone of our Western culture. Perhaps it was being at a Catholic school, perhaps it was my openness about my beliefs, but I have always felt very judged by others not because of my sexuality or my feminism, but because of my athiesm. It’s the one thing that makes people turn their noses up at me and makes them question my moral upbringing. Then I tell them that I long considered converting to Judaism, and they turn their noses up to that as well. It seems as though I can’t please anyone unless I decide to go Vatican crazy (which I wouldn’t do because it would compromise both my sexuality and my feminism.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, I wasn’t directing my comments at you in my previous post. They were general.
Storm:
I’ve found that disparaging of atheists is one of the last acceptable predjudices, and some people see the sectarian identity of the school an excuse to run with it. It can be heartbreaking; there really isn’t any sort of spiritual counsel most atheists would be comfortable turning to, because their belief scheme in of itself would be viewed as a “spiritual crisis,” and distracting from the actual issue they want addressed in concrete, pragmatic terms.
Most of my friends at MU—including some people in fairly visible positions—I learned were also irreligious after the fact; I seem to gravitate towards them. Most of them kept rather quiet about it, especially those involved in campus policy or activism, not wanting to loose gravitas with the Catholic administration and populace.
One of my biggest pet peeves with the school is its ignoring of nonreligious students. According to the 2005 Freshman Profile, 359 incoming students—that’s 20 percent, or the second largest demographic after 1,107 Catholics (62 percent)—marked “Other/None” for their religious identification. Granted, the survey only lists three identifiable categories options (“Other Christian,” “Muslim,” “Jewish”), so the “Other” includes all the practitioners of less visible faiths like Sikhism and Hinduism, and those religious who just didn’t fill out that one section of their application. But an undeniably significant body of students doesn’t go for that whole “faith” bit of the mission statement. It can be infuriating when the powers that be simply don’t grasp this.
(The full 2005 Freshman Profile is avaliable here: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/Freshmen_2005.pdf)
(Sorry I don’t have any more recent statistics.)
Bento –
There may not be more recent statistics because perhaps the “other/none” group has gotten larger and they don’t want people to know?
Probably not the case, but food for thought nonetheless. Reminds me of when it was discovered that the University was inflating average ACT scores on its recruitment materials to make it seem like our standards were higher. Walk past Renee Row at midnight on a Saturday night and tell me how high our standards are…