Last Entry: Finances Stop Tour

Five universities visited so far and no incidents, no attempt to silence the discussion, no personal threats.

The main objective of the tour was to insist upon the right to speak freely and to discuss all the issues relevant to our concerns with respect to Islam. It seems that this objective has been met in aces. For, even though two universities did make unreasonable demands for security measures (SMU and MU), still the Moslems in attendance at the lectures have been consistently polite and very welcoming. I'm invited to supper, to the mosque, to meet and discuss the issues late into the night and even at Concordia, arguably the most politically active campus in Canada, everyone was very cordial and a group of Muslims (both male and female) argued the issues with me late into the night at a local coffee house.

So, the objective has been met: I wanted to test free speech in Canada and Canada passed the test with flying colors. True, I only visited the eastern universities, but there seems no reason to think that I would be any less welcome in the West. In fact, I have had numerous contacts with the media in the West of Canada and they seem to view what I'm doing positively.

Unfortunately I am now out of money: all lines of credit are exhausted. So, unless a source of funding comes forward, the effort has to stop ... for the moment. Perhaps my university will come up with the requisite travel moneys.

In any case it's been money well-spent: academic freedom is alive and well in Canada.

Cheers,

Peter March

Diary Nov. 24 At Concordia University

Nov. 21 was the date of the lecture at Concordia. I shall append the lecture to this diary as it represents a new tack on the various issues. The discussion was vigorous but never rude or unpleasant. About sixty people in attendance, at least. After the lecture and discussion I went with a group of Moslem women and another student to the local coffeee house and we talked and argued cheerfully until 2:30 AM

The lecture was publicized widely by Beryl Wajsman through his radio show at AM940 Montreal which you can enjoy on the web. Beryl is the director of the Institute for Public Affairs in Montreal and he worked untiringly facilitating the lecture. Many, many thanks to Beryl and the wonderful institute which he directs. You can hear his radio show at

http:// www.iapm.ca/media/lastangryman6.mp3


I did not charge admission and paid for all the arrangements myself. However we had our first donor and it was enough to pay for the gas from Montreal home to Halifax. Many thanks to Mrs. Zimmerman for her generous donation.

Here's the presentation in full. It needs a bit of editing but will serve to give a pretty clear idea of what was said.Talk to Concordia:

Islam: Honor and Insult

This is the fifth lecture on Islam and Democracy. I've called this lecture "Islam: Honor and Insult"

Distinguish first between Islamic culture and the religion of Islam. Not everyone who's culture is Islamic believes in Allah and follows the Koran. Similarly, the culture within which I live is recognizably Christian but I am not a Christian. A Jew living in Canada lives in a typically Christian culture but may have also adopted more or less compatible parts of the Jewish culture. When I talk of Islamic culture I am therefore not committed to talking about someone who is committed to Allah, or to any particular view of Islam the religion.

A few givens: in an Islamic culture the males of the family enjoy a status higher than that of females. This status is part of the characteristic code of honor functioning inside such cultures. Very often this code of honor is appealed to in justifying the punishment of female members of the family with punishments ranging from verbal discipline to death. Every Moslem woman knows that if she violates the male code she may be punished severely. There is no strong guarantee of a woman's safety other than obedience to the male code of honor: a woman obeys or fears for her life. This condition reduces women to the condition of slaves.

More particularly, the honor code requires that women dress modestly even to the point of covering themselves completely. This requirement works deeply against the interest of women in finding a suitable partner who respects them, respects their children and who encourages equality in the partnership. If a woman can not show herself publicly, show her sexual attractions, her intelligence, her personality then she can not compete for the best partners in an open market. Unable to compete she has no opportunity to escape from the control of a single male no matter how badly he behaves, and certainly has no opportunity to express her sexual preferences. A woman who is kept from society, as she is in Islamic cultures, is denied the means to her freedom and personal development and, in particular, denied the opportunity to select a mate according to her changing needs and preferences.

I will add that many traditional Islamic cultures allow men take many wives thus having the crucial right to select new mates during marriage. They can, in some cultures, rent a wife for a specified period. Such men can, if they wish, be on the constant 'look out' for a partner they would like to have by contrast to the women who can not - given the honor code. This gender inequality is often justified by the claim that it is women who seduce men and hence must be covered up to minimize the predations of the men. There is no justice in this claim, of course, women are just as likely to be affected by men as men are by women. The truth is that women in Islamic cultures are caged. They never have an opportunity to develop the skills which will allow them to find a suitable partner on their own.

Another major consideration arguing against the continuation of the honor code is that young males are being taught that men should dominate women and this is clearly undesirable in a free and equal society. Children need to be brought up with the example of fathers and mothers who are equal in every way feasible.

It is worth saying that nothing in the Koran actually says that women are slaves. Some passages suggest that the woman must allow her husband to have sex with her whenever he wishes, others that she should obey her husband and these passages could easily be used to justify the cultural norms mentioned above. Some clearly suggest the use of violence against women, including scourging. Considering the matter from a modern European or American feminist perspective, woman in Islamic culture is a sexual and domestic slave.

The objections to this view of Islamic culture are not supported by evidence:

1) Please read the testimony of the many women who have written on this topic having been brought up and lived in the I.C.. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's The Caged Virgin is a good start. Irshad Mangi's The Problem with Islam Today, Souad's Burned Alive

2) Further evidence lies in the fact that almost all the honor killings happening in various parts of the world are of women, not men. These killings and forced suicides are now appearing in Europe and will soon appear more and more in North America. My colleague Malin Enstrom makes it her duty to uncover these cases as part of her research.

Finally, see the recent (Nov 10, 2006) response of the Canadian Supreme Court.
The National Post carried the story:

The Supreme Court of Canada declined an invitation on Thursday to consider whether Muslim cultural and religious beliefs in ''family honour'' should be taken into account as justification for receiving a lighter sentence for killing an unfaithful wife.
The court refused to hear the appeal of Adi Abdul Humaid, a devout Muslim from the United Arab Emirates, who admitted to stabbing Aysar Abbas to death with a steak knife on a visit to Ottawa in 1999.
In an application filed in the Supreme Court, Humaid's lawyer, Richard Bosada, argued Humaid was provoked by his wife's claim she cheated on him, an insult so severe in the Muslim faith it deprived him of self-control.
The concept of ''family honour'' in the Muslim culture means a man is disgraced if his wife has an affair, said the application. ...
Humaid contends his Muslim beliefs should be a factor because he killed his wife after she hinted she was having an affair with a business associate.
Abbas was 46 years old when she died of 23 stab wounds to the throat in the fall of 1999, while she and her husband were visiting their son at the University of Ottawa.

Under these circumstances, men in Islamic culture come to view themselves as above the law of the nation in which they reside and to owe allegiance first to the word of Allah - as set out in the Koran and the Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and to the familiar practices of Islamic culture which they were taught as children. These are texts, let us note, considered contradictory or paradoxical by many who read them. Despite this, the texts are seen to justify disobedience of the local law. Islam, in Islamic culture, is generally taken to be the highest law available and the law which even law-makers must obey.

This role played by Islam in Islamic culture means that democracy is not viable inside such a culture. As in the case of Xianity, Islam has to Reformed if it is to become compatible with democratic values. To a considerable extent this reform has already been proven possible by the example of Turkey and while there is a long way to go, there are grounds for hoping that the process can be completed to the extent that an adequate democracy becomes possible inside an Islamic culture. Turkey is an example worth studying.

Now, leaving honor for the moment, I want to briefly consider the role of insults inside such cultures. A typical view of Moslems is that they are charged, by their religion, with the defense of their women and the faith. They must fight those who call the faith into question either by word or deed. Posting certain cartoons is a recent example of alleged insults. Or consider the case of a person wishing to leave the faith in Afghanistan, the case of Abhdul Rahman. Rahman was questioned, by a judge, in court this way:

Question "Do you confess that you have apostacized from Islam?"
He responded, "No, I am not an apostate, I believe in God."
Question: "Do you believe in the Koran?"
His Response: "I believe in the Injil (New Testament) and love Jesus Christ. "

And there are more obvious incidents such as making disparaging remarks about Muhammad, Allah, or cases of insult in which a copy of the Koran was treated 'disrespectfully' as in instances occurring in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.
This responsibility to defend the faith, particularly from insult, becomes a yet greater responsibility when it is accepted as meaning that any military attack on an geographical area having predominantly Islamic culture, whether the attack is provoked or not, is an attack on the faith and one which demands that Muslim believers must join in the defense. This second commitment to the avoidance of 'insult' thus enslaves the Moslem man restricting his freedom of action and speech with overwhelming implications. Despite any Canadian interest or an other humanitarian interest, a Muslim man may be called upon to defend the faith even in far off places - at least by making suitable financial contributions.

Just as women in Islamic Culture are generally sexual and domestic slaves to the men, so too the men are slaves to the perceived commands of Allah through their Imam - to defend the faith with violence, if necessary. Of course the faithful need guidance in these matters - given the difficulties involved in interpreting the Koran, so the control rests ultimately on the Imams of each community. Now, the imams are said to be chosen by the community, of course, but they must be chosen according to their faithfulness to the Koranic teachings. Such faithfulness is a matter of checking their views against those accepted historically inside the enormous corpus of Islamic theology. This means that Moslem men are, practically speaking, slaves to the Imams throughout large areas of their lives.
I take this as enough to justify thinking of Islamic culture today is usefully thought of as a slave culture. Such a culture can not have its way in a culture such as ours which considers women equal to men, in which citizens are expected to offer first loyalty to Canada. It is certainly the responsibility - particularly of Canadian women - to work actively to change the lives of Moslem women in Canada.

Reformation

The reformation of Islam as it enters Canada may well follow that of the Xians except that the process will be accellerated - seven hundred years will be compressed into a few years - a generation at most, I expect.

I say seven hundred years because the Xian reformation took that long. Christians were at their height by the 14th century. By that time they had garnered control of governments, of the courts, the education and the science of the time. From that point on, for seven hundred years we see Christianity slowly being pushed out of all these vital institution of Christendom. I should say, of course, that if you control government, the courts, the education and the science of a culture then you have virtually complete control of that culture. In Islamic culture, Islam is certainly expects to control the first three, and science, the last, has largely fallen into disrepute in the wider Islamic culture.

How was the Christian reformation beginning in the fifteenth century achieved? Certain events are more important than others. First, the monasteries became interested in knowledge generally and the church slowly allowed others to come and study at these monasteries. These centers became the proto-univerisites and knowledge, critical skills, rational thought came to be valued in the culture generally. It was an extremely slow process which only ended at my university in the last thirty years.

A second deep influence which allowed for reform was the fact that the Xian text, the Bible, particularly the New Testament, says virtually nothing of a practical nature in specifying forms of worship, patterns of living, diet etc.. The Testament's assigned duties of Christians to fight are minimal to non-existent, and the rights of women seem to be generally respected in the New Testament. Many have thought of Christ as a pacifist. The Koran, by contrast is notoriously rigorous in everything from diets to death settlements.

Accordingly , while the Christian reformation, though it did certainly produce an enormous amount of violence in the process, this violence was not easily justified in the key text. Unfortunately, Mohammed can not be mistaken for a pacifist.

So, in some ways the Reformation of Islam is going to be a good deal more challenging - though perfectly feasible - if one considers the present realities of Islamic cultures. And the suppression of Islam to match the complete suppression of Christianity is something which we will see in North America certainly within two generations.

To understand how this will happen we need to force a distinction between what we can call religious freedom and its mere shadow freedom of worship. Freedom of worship is what is available in the West, that is, citizens are free to go to a place of worship and perform certain cermonies - as they wish - consistent with local law about intoxicants, etc.. The worship can include wearing religious symbols although even that is obviously under attack. The right to be religious is not thus protected except in so far as one can go to a Church, Mosque, Synagogue, Temple. But laws now restrict any religious ceremonies in the area of public education and ceremonies have been restricted in places associated with government and have been removed from the legal system almost entirely. Thus in the vital social institutions including all the functions of government including the army and police, religion is banned, or all religions are treated equally. And, religion has been banished from science.

This freedom of worship is a mere shadow of true religious freedom which was exmplified by the church in the fourteenth century.

This justified taking the view that true religious freedom is not on offer in Canada. True religious freedom would consist in the right to follow one's religious texts either as interpreted by the individual citizen, or as interpreted by suitable authorities. In the case of Islam this would involve that the citizen would fight (perhaps with violence) for the dominance of government by straight forward theocrats, it would involve that education public and private have the responsibility to produce children as good believers in Allah and His precepts. It could well involve the imposition of an Islamic morality, and much else. Suffice to say such freedom to dominate government, courts, education and possibly science itself is not going to wash in Canada.

So what we have in Canada is freedom of worship only, not, as it suggests in our constitution, freedom of religion. The slow but unstoppable history of Western society involves the suppression of all religion to the extent that religion is now excluded from all the key institutions of society.

This reality means that as Islamic culture moves into the West she too will be suppressed. How this will happen is not far to seek. Begin with the fact that we do not limit access to universities and that they are generally affordable. Predictably we will see that the education of Muslim women in a a Western cultural milieu will soon mean that many women will get job training, acquire job skills, an independent income, and will then choose not to become slaves to any man. They will free themselves from the yoke of the honor code as imposed by Muslim men. Remember that in the Koran the dominance of men is predicated on the fact that men support the women materially. This justification will disappear when women are properly educated and trained . Once men no longer can conceptualize themselves as the guardians of the virginity and purity of Moslem women they will be severely affected by a deep loss of personal identity. Their central role in the family as guardians will be decimated. This may sound brutal but one should not mourn the passing of slavery even if it leaves the slavers with an identity crisis.

Once the Muslim man is sheared of his power in the family he too will have to find new identity either in yet more devout efforts in the mosque, or else by changing to become one of the millions of Canadians who see their career and hobbies as the main business of life. Their role in the family will no longer involve dominance of the women, their income will provide only a part of the support for the family, ands they will share divided authority with a partner who may have little sympathy for the more aggressive values of Islamic culture. It may be a hard sell to convince a well educated wife that some of the family money should go towards tomorrow's jihad.

The education of Canadian Muslim women will quickly result in the Reformation of Islam in Canada. So it is a crucial responsibility of all Canadian institutions - governments, courts, well-fare support system, women's shelters and all the rest, to get Moslem women into schools, universities and job training as one of the highest priorities. With respect to immigration policy. Preference should be given to women with small children. Male immigration from areas dominated by Islamic cultures should be seen as a much higher risk activity. Every effort has to be made to offer Islamic women the chance to recover from their condition as domestic and sexual slaves.

The only good methods for promoting the required reform of Islamic culture are those of the free and democratic society, yet there is every reason to believe that this effort will not present a great challenge. In Iran itself the majority of students in the universities are now women - including in the sciences. Could there be a more significant fact? These women will soon have their own income and demand the freedom to spend that which is rightfully theirs - among the most important freedoms available in a modern economy.

Democracy:

Turning now to the deeper issues of what is involved in our democratic form of life, it should go without saying that one can't achieve a democratic form of life simply by introducing the formal institutions of democracy like voting, the rule of the majority, representative government. One has to form citizens with certain characteristic conceptions of themselves as persons, certain ideas of the meaning of their existence, of the legitimate basis for a healthy self-concept. These can vary across the democracies no less than Islam varies across the Islamic world but certain elements are uniformly present.
1) One requires the conception that all persons are equal as to their rights. This is not just a legal requirement, it is a deep conception that both men and women should be accommodated by the social arrangements so as to be able to pursue their own personal goals where these goals are not defined in a sexist fashion. Honor codes are out of the question. And all this has to be granted absolutely independently of the person's religious preference.
2) Deference to authority has to be severely restricted. An obvious example is that we don't want citizens to accept being told by anyone how they should vote. Less obviously, professors and teachers can not be allowed to teach on the basis of authority and the minds of children must not be developed in such a way to leave them unable to think critically about religion - otherwise a religion like the old Xianity, or some forms of modern day Islam, will be able to swamp our democracy.
3) Most important of all is the question of morality. When someone comes to a Western democracy, stepping out of an Islamic culture and confronted within hours by the secular society, the shock is enormous. My own father was shocked by Canada as he found it in the late fifties - so much so that he literally seemed to despise Canada and its people for fully ten years. The likely truth is that anger, a terribled sense of loss, and perhaps a disgust at local culture, is fairly common among Canadian immigrants from significantly different cultures - though it is not proper to say so.

The immigrant must feel that our culture is devoid of religion and therefore devoid of all morality. This is natural if the immigrant has come from a culture where it is assumed that morality comes from a religion, their one True religion. It is a huge leap for such a person to see that morality does not require a religious or spiritual basis. Therefore the predictable intuition, the natural intuition, is that local Canadians, since the fail to show any sign of serious religion, are really just a bunch of reprobates seeking the almighty dollar, sex and drunkeness. The women will seem like whores - dressed for sex - the men as superficial, unprincipled (presumably - do they ever pray?). The children are seen to be growing up untended by proper parents, largely unguided and undisciplined.

Indeed, not only the immigrant who can feel this way. Someone peering at Canada from inside a tightly knit Islamic ghetto - even if they are a long term resident of Canada - may continue to feel this way long after they have become citizens of Canada.

Despite all this, it is obviously true that morality and principles lives do not disappear when religion leaves the stage. There must therefore be saome system whereby some concensus is reached as to how ethical issues are settled and how morality is discovered and evolves. In Islamic cultures the presumption, of course, is that the Koran and the Sayings of Mohammed are the proper source of morality. Many Christian fundamentalist have similar beliefs about Christ and the Bible.

However morality shapes up in a democracy, one thing is clear. In a democracy it has to be accepted first that one's morality, while it is a guide of the deepest kind in the life of an individual, still it does not trump the law. A Christian fundamentalist may not kill the abortionist even if the abortionist is a murderer. And one may not kill one's wife or daughter for exercising their right to sexual freedom. Adultery is not a crime in Canada and is, arguably, an important part of women's rights.

This, however, does not begin to answer the question how public morality is to be discovered and modified. In the democracies this has to be settled by a discussion of the consequences of various competing courses of action. That is, since there is no general agreement as to what is right, citizens are forced to become consequentialists, that is, they a restricted to persuading the other person to go along with or resist a proposed moral standard only by appeal to the consequences of our adopting that standard - the actual or likely practical consequences. And it is essential that, in a democracy, the individual must be left to judge which consequence is a pro and which a con. This judgment is made in the privacy of a person's conscience and is best left secret. If the matter is very important, it can be offered as proposed law and settled by voting for parties or individuals who support or do not support the proposed standard. In this way, a secular society grows independently of the ambient religions. The key is that the public discussion be reserved to a study of practical consequesnces and that each person is then left free to judge these consequences privately.

This simple solution to the origin of morality is very hard to accept even for mature secular thinkers. It seems like a hollow system which leaves the whole project of human life to an uncertain fate. Why, after all, should the collective intuitions of ordinary people be allowed to form the rules whereby we all are pressured to live? What is the guarantee of virtue in such an arrangement?

But the fact remains that in a democracy arguments about what is right must be converted into arguments about consequences and the individual has to be left the ultimate judge, judging in the secrecy of his or her own conscience, how the pros and cons stack up. In this way each individual helps shape public morality by expressing his or her preference and by the way he/she behaves. The possibility of democracy thus requires that we trust the ability of the individual to judge and settle questions of morality.

So the possibility of this moral activity is at the heart of the democratic dialogue. It means that a strict protective boundary must be drawn around the individual so that his/her conscience can operate freely and independently. It is not appropriate in a democracy to hound the individual in an ethical discussion, hounding them to reveal the deep springs of their moral judgments. What this means is that whatever may be the source of the moral intuition, be it religion, or political principles, or simply upbringing, still the individual's conscience must be respected. This respect is an essential element in the development of personal values and it is an essential condition for the free development of one's moral conscience. Freedom, ultimately involves freedom of conscience, freedom to make up one's mind in peace.

The democratic dialogue on which everything depends thus requires a form of quiet, patient, discussion - no matter what the other discussant says. The skill involved in managing and taking part in such a discussion is not bought cheaply and is not, at the moment, a notable feature of Islamic culture - though it was at one time, it is said. One might say that anger is certainly more obvious in such cultures. That is what one would expect of an authoritarian culture: anger is simply the threat of hurt, an imposition of power. Happily it is a learned strategy and it can be unlearned. All can learn to take part in the democratic conversation.

Of course, it is primarily the business of schools and universities to teach this complex form of speech, a form of speech which requires tactful restraint on both sides, particularly when the question is painful or controversial. This is what we must teach to Moslem women and children as a first priority - the key being that in moral discussion one restricts oneself to the practical consequences of a particular course of action and one does not intrude into the sanctum of another person's moral conscience: you make your practical points and then you back off leaving the individual free to decide the issue at their leisure - and then to vote and to act as they they see fit.

This then is the answer to the riddle of morality in a secular society and provides the reason for not seeing Canadians as evil, unprinicipled, sexually insane, etc.. There is morality in Canada but it's not, or not necessarily a religious matter. Today it is probalbly not generally a religious matter.

Where is the guarantee that this process will provide a desirable outcome? Well, what happens in Canada is that parents and teachers teach and stimulate each student's ability to care for the other person, an ability which is indistinguishable from the raw fact that homo sapiens is a social animal. For, each student, each child, finds that he/she shares a need to have others around, finds that he/she has to live with others, to have some support from others. This instinct and its development in the hands of good parents and skilled teachers is then the source of human morality. We can be encouraged to search for a way to live peacefully together, and we can be affected by such efforts. We learn to live, in this way, without hurting and harming each other. Our moral discussions must then have to do with trying to minimize the pain of others and we appeal to each individual's social nature to help us find ways of living together with a minimum of pain.
That, in practice, is the source of morality in a secular society. It does not exclude religion, far from it, but neither does it not need religion.


END

There was 90 minutes of discussion after this was read and we only left when 'security' said the building was closing.

I'm hoping that the next venue will be in Calgary before the end of term but plans are not yet firm.

Oct. 30 Fredericton Again

Returned to Fredericton to give a paper at ARPA (Atlantic Region Philosopher's Conference)entitled "Free Speech and the Infamous Cartoons". I'll add this on to the end of this diary.
At the reading of the paper the most interesting point of the discussion concerned the use in Islamic cultures of the concept of 'insult' and 'honor'. One questioner asked what point there was in insulting him by showing the cartoons. The reply was that this concept of insult needs to be abandoned if we are to have a viable democracy: we must be able to discuss things closest to our hearts, we need to be able to discuss our fears, and humor just is our way of breaking the ice about something which we fear. Humor is a useful precursor to serious discussion.

Here, in any case, is the paper I read - it needs some editing but I don't have time at the moment to pretty it up.



Free Speech and Those Infamous Cartoons. Peter March ’06 Fredericton.

Now, all the traditional arguments for free speech are ineffective, in my view. I will argue that free speech is one of the things which is fundamental to our political system so it can’t be justified and it is a big mistake to try to justify it. The point of our system is to provide a number of things and free speech just is one of them.

Of course, because the system also intends to provide truth, peace, prosperity, security etc. we are sorely tempted to spill ink showing how each of these contributes to the others but, the truth of the matter is simple. All of them are deeply, profoundly desired in their own right and none of them need supporting arguments. Maybe we could get richer is we suppressed free speech, maybe, but that’s not what we want. Thank you very much but we just don’t want a rich, closed society, we we really want is a rich open society, and sometimes we have to compromise a bit.

And when I say ‘desired’ I don’t mean that these are things which are morally good, all I mean is that so many of us mortals, the crowd, just do want them that we have the power to insist on them, and we won’t give them up. Heck, we’ll fight for free speech.

Mill argues that free speech has its uses and is crucial for a democracy as the only way of guaranteeing that truth will out. Well, I would reply that that’s nice but we’d want free speech even just for the joy of some good old gossip, a nice argument, words of love, religious talk, etc. Not much truth there. I don’t want to deny that free speech is somehow entangled with the search for the best solutions to political problems, I just think it all goes a hell of a lot deeper. We want it for it’s own sake. We revel in, bleed for freedom: we suffocate without chatter, and there it is. I’m sure the love of truth feeds our desire and ability to speak, but that does not justify our love of truth.

Enough already: we want free speech and that’s that. Fundamental.

On the other side you could list off the terrible problems ‘created’ by free speech. Yes indeed you could. Well, despite those problems we want it unless our life is at stake - as in times of war. At such times then, if our life is at stake, then maybe, for a while, we’ll shut up, or be shut up. But a life in the long run without free speech, no, we’ll fight for it if the long run kicks in. We won’t go without a fight on this one.

“So is it more important than life?” No, life is one of the things we desperately want too. We mustn’t get into the ‘prioritizing’ game. To explain the obvious: sometimes our most basic desires clash. If we can’t have both in the face of a Hitler, then, yes, we’ll have to risk a punch up. That just proves how much we value free-speech. Because if we ourselves can’t have life and free speech then we settle for the second best, that is, making bloody sure our kids do get both! - even though it might cost us our lives. We gamble everything in the hope of our kids getting the good life, a life in which they will enjoy both life and freedom. Our own life we think, is a worthy price.

Would I sacrifice free-speech for life? Of course, that’s what we do when we gird ourselves for war. My free speech is well sacrificed if it secures a good life for my children and yours. Don’t play priorities with fundamental values. We fight for the whole lot collectively. We fight for a way of life.

Now I’ll cut to the chase.


“What about other people’s feelings? Would you run rough-shod over their feelings?” Yes. Can I justify that? Yes. You see, Feelings aren’t FUNDAMENTAL and you can check that. We don’t offer our lives to spare your feelings, or even the feelings of our kids. We think that would be ‘silly’ We can’t think why we would ever choose to die to spare feelings. ‘Ornery, maybe, but give us credit, we can also be charming.

Will we sacrifice feelings to defend life and liberty? Yes we will and that tells you everything. What’s fundamental? What you are willing to die for! Are you willing to die to spare someone’s feelings? NO. So free speech trumps feelings.

This tells us that feelings have to be sacrificed all the time for more important things. Feeling aren’t even near being fundamental, not if you know us..

“Would you ride rough-shod over the self-respect of others, undermine their self-image, devalue their religion, etc. just so you get your vaunted free speech?” Ask me later.

This first. We are a social animal, yes we are. So, yes, we care for the well-being of others. Especially our kids, kids in general, and especially the weak. And you had better prioritize those because if you don’t you don’t understand us.

And I want my kids alive and free to speak their minds. So, I’m sorry, freedom it is - even if someone has adopted a religion or a way of life which my words do thus so deeply offend.

“But humiliation is worse than death!” (See the Qu’ran) Wrong. You can’t get over death.

“Surely humiliation is worse than you having to keep silent, having to be sensitive, having to respect others’ feelings. Surely your silence is a small price to pay for someone’s being able to feel respected.”

No, in a democracy speech is free with very rare exceptions. Therefore everyone in a democracy must develop a thick skin and the ability to defend their ideas and reputation. My silence would only weaken other's ability to live in a democracy. You get a thick skin, courage, by weathering criticism. It's doable.

Ask me now. Would I ride rough-shod over whatever psychological states you care to mention? Yes. And my guess is I hold trumps: I’ve spoken for the crowd.

Well, this crowd, my crowd. Those who follow the Koran at least (there may be others) have something in their holy book which says that ‘oppression’ is worse than death. Translate as ‘Losing your honor is worse than death.’ The message is clear: go out and slay your oppressors (those who would rob you of honour).

What does this mean? The sense that one has lost one’s ‘honor’ is now best understood as a psychological state and they will kill even their own to protect ‘honor’ – think of the honour killings of sisters. So that crowd really does ‘respect’ certain feelings (those associated with ‘honor’) and that crowd really does often care more for their feelings than for (Earthly) life. Well, at least their men do. But not us, and it’s a difference which matters.

I would argue even more firmly that if you make psychological states fundamental then you’d better prepare to see your young people dying. The mechanism is not far to seek. Feelings are hurt all over the place in complex societies, people are being really hurt all the time, so if you make hurt feelings a matter of honour and honour a matter of life and death, then you’ve just made feelings a pretext for killing. Consider how often feelings are hurt, and then prepare for the corresponding level of violence.

The Middle East is a culture suffused with honor codes (read ‘sensitive feelings’ associated with the male ego) and it is no wonder they therefore have deeply violent societies. I think that societies which condone the killing of pregnant unwed daughters by burning them and who give as the only reason for such burnings ‘family honor’, I think it fair to say of such societies that they are deeply violent. They are deeply violent because they make feelings (usually male ego feelings) a matter of life and death.

This then is the heart of the matter when it comes to freedom of speech in the case before us: shall we limit my speech according as it hurts feelings? To do so, I suggest, is to desire a particularly violent society.

Again, the reasoning is this. Freedom of speech is a fundamental value in our social arrangements, to limit it by reference to feelings is to raise feelings on a par with fundamental values. Now, fundamental values are things for which we are willing to give up our life, and this means lives will then be lost in the defense of feelings.

Making feelings a fundamental value is therefore a tragic error.

But it is an understandable error because it is natural to think WRONGLY that respecting each other’s feelings will produce a gentler society, a more accommodating one, one in which people are respected and treated as persons. This is the mistake of the 'sensitivity' gang.

How can this intuition be wrong, one asks? Well, it comes down to who holds the power. If the power holders are men, if they are the superior and privileged members of society – as is recommended by the Koran (and in other religious texts of various religions) - then we must expect that in a toss up between the feelings of men and those of women and children, the men will have their feelings protected. That much is clear, surely. Second, if the dominant group is men and they don’t value women highly, and if the men are the part of their life when they seems designed to go to war and kill, then, when their feelings are hurt we can expect them to go about killing whomever they perceive as having harmed their honor. The result is killing. The result of valuing feelings highly is killing over feelings – typically, of course, women and young people.

Another way to put it is this. The intuition that it is better to respect each other’s feelings even at the cost of free speech is dependent upon the intuition that other people’s powers are equal – when evidently they are not, particularly if we are talking about North African and Middle Eastern cultures. In cultures where men are strongly dominant their feelings take precedence and the result is a disaster for women and children.

Finally, of course, in any culture, even a culture where powers have evolved to some kind of equilibrium, it is a reality that the taking of positions on ‘sensitive topics’ (topics about which we are called upon to be sensitive) is bound to engender anger. It must therefore be very clear that this anger can not be allowed to convert into action since anger driven action is very likely to disturb the peace. This, in effect, is to take the view that free-speech on sensitive issues must be protected – protected from those who would ban it in the defense of feelings. The alternative is that we avoid the discussion of sensitive issues all together.

End

Diary Oct. 19

A quarter of the Tour has passed - four universities done - and the first lesson has sunk in to my thick skull. It is this:

People who come from societies permeated with religion come to associate values, principles, and morality with religion. Religion, for them is where values originate. When they enter a country (like ours) and discover that it is secular they then naturally slide into the belief that this country, because it has no religion , has no values, principles, morality - that people here do not care for the higher things in life.

Muslims I talk to often think of Canadians as being only interested in cars, houses, sex and status. They slide easily into thinking this because in finding that there is no visible religion here, they jump to the conclusion that Cnadians have no values, no principles, have no morality, no concern for the higher things in life. It is tempting for such people from 'religious societies' to see our secular lives as low, meaningless, lost, wasted.

So the first job must be to try to explain to them that values can come from sources other than religion. A simple and familiar lesson in the philosophy of value.

In truth we have family values, we value our children, parents and grandparents. We value family life and we value our communities. We accept collective responsibility for the poor, the sick, the unemployed. We value peace, education, we value those whom we love, have come to love. What else is on the list? Surely we value, we need, a meaningful life which for us means having a useful role to play in our family and community. We value art, self-expression, on and on. And we have political values: equality of women and men, rule of law, etc.. These values come from the Renaissance (pre-Christian), the Great Revolutions (in England, France), the Reform movements of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Are any of these values distinctly Christian? I'd like to hear about that because, frankly, at the moment, I doubt it. Muslims and Hindus both emphasize charity, forgiving, etc. so the case has to be made, if there is a case to make.

That we have values other than materialism, sex and power is obvious to me but is not likely to be even plausible to those who have only ever lived with religious values. In these people's experience, values come from religion. To people from religious cultures, we are value barren. To them our 'secular' society is a society without values. For them subtract religion and you subtract values.

I think we can show them that this is bad math. Secular society, we have to show them, is not the same as a society without values. How to make this case, now that's the next question.

This will be the new thrust of my presentations in Montreal in the next weeks.

Next week I'm heading off again for Fredericton (to give a paper on Free Speech) and then, after that, it's points West.

Diary Oct. 16 University of New Brunswick

In Fredericton, at the University of New Brunswick:

Discussion at UNB: Many in the audience seemed particularly interested in the history of religion in the West. I had the sense that, as is the case with our own students, this history is not familiar stuff to the Muslims in attendance. In particular, in the long conversation after the presentation, it became clear to me that they were not familiar with the fact that Christianity has been repressed in the West - since about the 14th Century, I argued. They seemed interested in the fact that our society is consciously secular: that we consciously chose the separation of Church and State, a judiciary free from religious influence, education free of religious involvement, science free from any religious constraints. I think it made a difference for them that we are deliberately secular and are not so just by indifference or moral laziness.

It seems to me that this history has great significance for new arrivals in Canada and even for those whose home communities, though Canadian, do not understand the painful birth and the painful development of secular society and hence may not fully understand how Canada came to be the way she is.

What I'm hearing is that Canada presents herself as a 'Godless' society to many and that by giving a history of Canadian secular society we can dispel some of the negative perceptions triggered by this impression.

The history shows new and prospective citizens that we struggled to achieve a secular form of life and that we do have values consistent with this choice. Because without the knowledge and understanding of our secularism, Canada does tend to present herself as motivated only by base values - greed, unrestrained sexuality, materialism. Understanding secular values such as collective responsibility for the weak, peace and good order, rule of law, etc. one begins to address the terrible sense which many Muslims have of Canada as a moral wasteland.

I see this as offering an important opportunity to build a bridge between (Canadian) secularism and Islamic philosophy and theology.

Business: Expenses were: under fifty for the room, fifty dollars of gas and 45 for the printing and distribution of posters. We tried 'voluntary contributions' and made 45 from an audience of thirty to forty. Ah, also must include the insurance which was not asked for in this case, 150! So, costs are still coming down. Room in residence was 48 dollars.

The session at UNB passed as quietly as did all the previous but with a much higher attendance of Muslims - perhaps eight or ten were present, despite Ramadan. They encouraged me to come back and I will in two weeks time. I asked if they would take me to their mosque and to try to arrange for me to make a presentation there.

At the University of New brunswick I made a presentation similar to that given in Newfoundland but encountered none of the requests for security costs from the Administration. The auditorium charge was under fifty dollars and there seems to be no further charges for security.

The Philosophy department was most welcoming and took me to dinner. I have to thank Dr. Robert Larmer (Chair) for his kind support.

Peter

Diary Oct. 9

This evening I sent the following comment to the Glove and Mail. The Globe published an editorial arguing that there could not be free speech if we are not allowed to hurt other people's feelings. Along the way the editorial described the way threats from Muslims has had the effect of stifiling free speech critical of Islam. My own view is that one simply has to face down those threats and continue speaking as free people. If the fear of Islam does succeed in stifling free speech that will also have been our fault, we shall have lacked courage. Here's the text sent to the Globe:

" Here's a not so subtle way of stifling comment on the issues relating to Ilam and Democracy. When I spoke recently at Saint Mary's University they, the University, forced me to pay $ 901 for 'security' for the two hour session. Dalhousie charged me half as much to make the same presentation on Islam And Democracy. After flying to Newfoundland, Memorial University tried to charge me an additional $ 400 for security on the eve of the lecture otherwise, they said, I could "take my show off campus". This demand came one day before my presentation and after they had been offered the text of my presentation and after the two previous presentations had passed without incident.
That's how the Universities stifle free-speech and enforce political correctness. Was my presentation incendiary? It can be read at http://islamanddemocracy.org .
I am going to make similar presentations across the country at 15 universities and I hope to prove that in Canada one really can speak freely about the issues surrounding Islam, even speak critically of Islam and calling for specific reforms.

Diary Oct. 6 Muhammed Cartoon in the Globe And Mail!

Muhammed Cartoons in the Globe And Mail?

There is was, surrounded by an opinion piece, a Muhammed cartoon in the Globe and Mail! Yes, on the Op. Ed. page, today, a cartoon of Muhammed spilling paint over the words "Freedom of Speech" and waving his little scimitar. Well, it looked as much like Muhammed as any of the Muhammeds in the notorious cartoons ...

But in any case it was O.K., of course, because the opinion piece was written by an Oxford don ( no mere Canadian), and his stylish endorsement made all the difference.

Well, my friends, first the Pope, now the Editor of the Globe and Mail!

Freedom of speech just busting out everywhere.