If a non-Muslim defending free speech -- offensive and vulgar as may be -- is called a Muslim hater, what do you call a Muslim who vigorously does so? Muslim Self-hater? This is the best commentary on Charlie Hebdo I have read, better than many written by more famous scholars. No proviso, no footnotes, no balancing act. Farouk A. Peru -- whom I have the privilege to be his Facebook friend -- hits it right at the point: freedom to offend as a subset of free speech and humans autonomy in dealing with attempts of insult. Of all the human endeavours in life, religion is the one towards which we should expect the most irreverence. Why? Because its very fundamental manoeuvre is to sell something intangible. It promises salvation if you believe and practise. Yet this salvation isn’t visible. So how can religionists expect submission and docility from those who disagree with them? Judging from the past cartoons Charlie Hebdo published about Prophet Muhammad, they aimed to offend the Muslims. Of course they did. But who really determines if they succeed or otherwise? We do. The Muslims themselves. We have a choice of whether to take offence or not. I choose not to. Those cartoons do not represent Prophet Muhammad to me so why on earth would I be offended? Instead, Muslims should take these cartoons and any other form of criticism towards Islam, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad as a challenge to their faith. Why should we have the privilege of being shielded from criticism? What gives us the special right to be exempt when we ourselves criticise other faiths and ideologies? If we would be truly just, we would have to censor the Quran itself because it denigrates the status of Jesus – thought to be God and/or son of God by Christians – to a mere Prophet. Why is it all right for us to criticise a major religious figure yet we expect sanctity from the rest of the world towards our founder?We should take any form of criticism, even mockery and satire to be a test of our faith. Ask ourselves, why would these critics and satirists publish their work? Is there any truth to what they say? Oftentimes, their mockery has some loose relations with elements in our tradition. We should also ask, why did they interpret Islam in that way? Has it something to do with us and the way we ourselves practise the faith? If we practised Islam in the right way, should any person have the moral right to insult us? These are all pertinent questions to ask. Lets not pretend as if they are impossible to fathom. This is why I support the freedom to offend me. It is a freedom, not a necessity. The people who seek that freedom may have legitimate grievances with my beliefs. If so, I should investigate these grievances to see whether or not they have a point and if so, is it perhaps my interpretation which is at fault. If not, then they are not forcing me to swallow their fruits of expression. I have every right and prerogative to simply not buy their newspaper, open the webpage or listen to them. I copied 80% of the words here because every word of it is worth printing on million of papers. The world would be much more peaceful if this article is read by school children in their formative age.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 02:45:18 +0000
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