While checking out Reddit, I came across this post:
‘I’m planning on telling my parents that I’m an atheist. I live in a Muslim country, so you can guess that they’re Muslim. I need help with some points though. Things said in the Quran that are definitely wrong, like that Noah talked to ants (ants do not talk, they use chemicals to communicate.) and such. The more you know the better. I need to know things that Islam got wrong. Muslims say that Muslim women have tons of rights, and I want to prove them wrong. Help a guy out will you.’
All the comments – at least, when I read it, I’m sure more will be posted soon – advised against this,if the young writer wants to live…
At last, people are finally understanding that in Muslim countries, there is no ‘freedom from religion’. It’s a first step, but an important one and I am glad to see that people do know this and understand that the existential danger to atheists in Muslim countries is very, very real.
I don’t know how to help this one individual.
But, I do realize that if we do not stop the stealthy creeping of Sharia into our societies, we, too, may face this fate.
Many people think that it is a reasonable limitation on the freedom of free speech to prohibit someone from yelling ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theatre – provided, that is, that there is no fire.
That little caveat – provided that there is no fire – is often forgotten by those who wold consider this to be a reasonable limitation of free speech. This, indeed, is not surprising – failure to recognize real warnings of danger and simply treating unpopular statements equally, whether they are true or not, is symptomatic of the individuals who most loudly profess that this limitation on the freedom of speech is somehow ‘reasonable’.
According to these people, giving a warning of a real ad present peril (like, say, a fire in a crowded theatre) is worse than letting everyone sit complacently until they burn to death.
I must admit, there was a time when I was persuaded that if there indeed were no fire, then shouting a warning of it ought not happen. OK, I still think that it ought not happen – but not because there are laws against it.
To explain my change of mind, I have to digress a little bit to some examples on utilitarian morality from philosophy. Not that I am particularly versed in philosophy – my ideas are mostly self-reasoned, but a little education has made me widen the scope of my reasoning.
There is that classical moral dilema question: if you see an uncontrollable train going down some tracks where it will hit six people, but there is a lever you can pull that will divert that train onto another set of tracks, where it will only kill one person, should you pull the lever?
Most ‘utilitarians’ will say that yes, you should, because one death is less tragic than 6 deaths.
I don’t think this is anywhere near as clear cut.
If the train stays on its original track, you (presuming the uncontrollable-ness of the train is not your fault to start off with) are not responsible for the deaths of those 6 people.
If, however, you do pull the lever, you will be the direct cause of the death of that 1 person.
People are not cogs, interchangeable for each other. We are individuals. And, if you pull that lever, you will indeed be guilty of causing the death of that individual. What is more, since you have had time to consider it, that constitutes premeditation. You would therefore be commiting murder.
This means that the question itself is improperly formulated.
Rather, it ought to ask if you could pull that lever and save the 6 people – but in the process murder 1 person, with all the legal consequences this carries, should you still pull that lever?
Because that is the real question: is saving the lives of 6 people worth murdering someone – and, perhaps, spending the rest of your life in prison as a result! After all, real actions have real consequences…
Similarly, the person who shouts ‘FIRE!” in a crowded theatre has not actually killed anyone.
It is the people who act before checking whether their actions are based on fact or not, and those who put their lives above others by trampling them to death to save themselves, who are guilty of, well, the trampling. Not the person who – rightly or wrongly – shouts ‘Fire!’
It is always the tramplers who are the ones guilty of the trampling.
But, because there are many of them, and our moral compass has for too long been corrupted by the profoundly immoral Judeo-Christian doctrine of ‘scapegoating’, of ‘vicarious redemption’, that we are willing to put the blame of the many ‘tramplers’ onto the one who may not, indeed, have done any ‘trampling’ at all!
It is precisely this predisposition we have of shifting the blame for the actions of the individuals who actually carry them out onto a scapegoat who is said to have ’caused’ their bad or immoral behaviour that is going to be the downfall of our society!
It is precisely this scapegoating which is at the heart of political correctness and the erosion of the freedoms which we ought to be able to exercise unfettered.
How have we improved our lot if we have liberated ourselves from Christian religious dogmas, if we permit its worst shackles to still imprison our morality, albeit under the new name of ‘political correctnes’?
So, now, I agree with Christopher Hitchens on this point:
I may be a little more pro-free-market than 99.9% of the pro-free-market people ‘out there’. I do not recognize the authority of governments to forbid the free exchange of goods and services – regardless of the goods and services being exchanged. If both parties agree without coersion, then the government has no right interfering.
On a good day, perhaps, I could be talked into agreeing that, perhaps, a government has a role in consumer protection – but only in as much as they make it possible to prosecute false advertizing/insufficient warning.
Perhaps…
However, you don’t need to be as pro-freedom as I in order to find the ‘Bucky Balls’ situation appalling:
Yes, this lecture series is a little long – but very, very informative.
If you have read the Koran and the Hadith, and if you are familiar with Shariah, you will be impressed by the depth of Stephen Coughlin’s background knowledge – but there is still a lot of new material there for you because he draws the connections between the beliefs rooted (rightly or wrongly, but demonstrably held by the majority of pro-Sharia Muslims worldwide) in these and the decision-making and behaviour of Islamic political entities.
For example, he is one of the few people to have predicted the ‘Arab Spring’ months before it happened and accurately described it as a Muslim Brotherhood-driven action. He also accurately predicted other events many had considered ‘unpredictible’ – and in this lecture series, he walks us through the steps that made the events predictable.
If you are unfamiliar with the underlying doctrine, Stephen Coughlin provides an accurate grounding in their belief system and demonstrates its doctrinal roots. He also explains the very different concepts meant by Islamic political bodies when they use terms we consider familiar: words like ‘human rights’ (Sharia), ‘terrorism’ (killing of a Muslim without Sharia approval), and ‘freedom’ (freedom from ‘the laws of man’ in favour of the laws from Allah alone), ‘religion’ (Islam and Islam alone as Muhammad’s revelations abrogated all other religions) and more.
What is quite appalling, however, is his description of the depth of willful ignorance of all this by the politically correct decisionmakers who are directing the ‘war on terror’… His frustration is plainly visible and his Cassandra complex and the accompanying frustration are, at times, palpable.
Yet, it is precisely this willful ignorance among our decisionmakers and intellectual elites poses a clear and present danger to protecting our culture, our society and our very basic human rights.
Stephen Coughlin, Part 1: Lectures on National Security & Counterterror Analysis (Introduction)
Stephen Coughlin, Part 2: Understanding the War on Terror Through Islamic Law
Stephen Coughlin, Part 3: Abrogation & the ‘Milestones’ Process
Stephen Coughlin, Part 4: Muslim Brotherhood, Arab Spring & the ‘Milestones’ Process
Stephen Coughlin, Part 5: The Role of the OIC in Enforcing Islamic Law
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