Offender of the faiths

The Baroda University article was very thought provoking. My initial response was a flashback to the Pissed Christ controversy in the 1990s that left me wondering at the lack of respect the artist had for the world's Christian community. The same feelings came upon me once again as I read Atre Yee Gupta's article. As a liberal thinker but also mindful and respectful of the religious beliefs of others this article has raised some interesting questions in my mind.

The following article in Saturday's The Age A2 Supplement confronts this issue head on and I would be interested in my fellow students thoughts on the following:

Where does a society draw the line between free speech and a healthy respect for the religious beliefs of others?

Does free speech include the right to offend?

What do you think of the statement in Button's article "If one thing worries him, it is that the West's secular, liberal tradition is under threat". This makes me consider the following - Are we looking with a Westerner's gaze upon the events at Baroda University, if so, should we not be mindful of the cultural and religious differences of a society far different from our own and leave well enough alone or is it our 'duty' to intervene on behalf of the rights of the individual?

The following is the article in question -

Date: September 1 2007James Button
AFTER A DANISH newspaper published 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed last year, leading to riots and up to 100 deaths across the Muslim world, European media divided about whether to republish the images. Much of the French press reprinted them or ran new cartoons defending free speech, whereas - vive la difference! - no British newspaper did so. Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary, called the Europeans' decision "disrespectful" and said freedom of speech did not mean "open season" on religious taboos.
But a few thinkers dissented from the standard British, and Australian, view. One was the British philosopher, Anthony - usually known as A.C. - Grayling. He believes the press should have published the cartoons. First, given the tumult the images caused, the public had a right to see them and make up its own mind, he says. But there was a bigger reason to publish. Free speech is not a secondary issue but "the fundamental right, from which all other rights flow. Without it, you cannot elect a free parliament or defend yourself in a court of law."
Does it include the freedom to offend? Emphatically yes, he says. If political views cannot be protected from a cartoonist's pen, why should religious views? "It's the rent that has to be paid in a free society. This is a lesson Muslims have got to learn."
The lesson, he says, is that mocking a belief is quite different from mocking an individual. "Many Muslims take it personally. But it's not about them personally." Unlike skin colour or gender, which are part of an individual's essence, religion or ideology are beliefs, freely chosen and therefore fair game for criticism.
What's more, "Our effort to accommodate Muslim sensitivities has to be met by an equal effort (from Muslims) to accommodate ours. A lot of Westerners are deeply offended by the sight of a woman in a burqa."
In the Anglo-Saxon world these are unusual positions for someone who places himself on the left. What's more, Grayling is a member of the World Economic Forum's Council for Western-Muslim Understanding.
But if one idea runs through his 27 books, many articles - notably in The Guardian - television appearances and a life as a prominent public intellectual, it is the importance of liberty and free speech.
If one thing worries him, it is that the West's secular, liberal tradition is under threat. Grayling believes the main danger comes from within: from governments exploiting the war on terrorism to suppress vital legal and political rights. But he sees religion as another enemy, from the Catholic Church's efforts to crush the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century to those who say they would kill cartoonists today.
The subject rouses this normally moderate writer to some unqualified, even scornful, positions. Religion, he contends, is the "lunatic fringe of human thought." Islam "is the contemporary example of how religion - in its unthought form - infantilises people, making them childish and violent and unthinking. Look at the mobs calling for the death of Salman Rushdie. It is not peculiar to Islam."
Rather, the culprit is belief itself. "To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect," he writes in Against All Gods, published this year.
Such views put him in elevated company these days. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and American philosopher Daniel Dennett have all recently written polemics against religion. Why? Is the secular, enlightenment tradition really at risk? How does one square Grayling, militant offender of the faith, with the amiable man who greets me in his south London home?
With his mane of grey hair and round-rimmed glasses, the 58-year old looks a little like a 19th century composer or a benevolent lion in a children's book. He has been seen in a cravat. Married to the writer Katie Hickman, he has an eight-year-old daughter and two adult children from a previous marriage.
He is a good talker, who in one breath can convey the excitement of Socrates' dialogue with Charmides - which he says he read at the age of 12 and decided then that he wanted to be a philosopher - and in the next explain why Pride and Prejudice is a work of philosophy: why Elizabeth and Darcy's struggle to see each other truly shows hard intellectual labour. His students at the University of London's Birkbeck College, where he is professor of philosophy, are no doubt fortunate.
His writing is also clear: his book, Among The Dead Cities, is a measured and largely persuasive account - which fairly considers the opposing arguments - of why the blanket bombing of German cities in World War II was a war crime. Grayling even asks whether Allied airmen should have refused such missions and concludes that in a "hypothetical ideal world," they should have.
He was already an established academic when, 20 years ago, he conceived a wish to escape the humanities' "tendency toward introverted discussions in exclusive jargon" and to write for a wider public.
"It sounds frightfully earnest but it's a passion for me to challenge people to think more, although sometimes it's like getting rid of mountains by dripping water on them. Without thinking, people take off the shelf a package, such as Islam or conservatism, based more on prejudice and tradition."
In his words, Grayling wants to get philosophy into the papers. He provided legal advice on the right to die of Diane Pretty, a motor neurone disease sufferer who lost a high-profile case to allow her husband to help her commit suicide. He publicly supports the new Council of ex-Muslims of Britain, a body that promotes freedom of thought. "They're tremendously brave," he says. "In countries ruled by Islamic law one can be killed for apostasy."
His hostility to religion began in a childhood among the white elite of the then British colony of Rhodesia, where his father was a banker. At secondary college he read a bunch of religious books given to him by the chaplain, then demanded: "Do you really believe this stuff?"
He maintains that religions' demand for a special place in public life must be resisted and that they should be accorded no more respect or rights than any other interest group, proportional to the (low) size of their membership.
Yet given the world's problems, I ask him, is this a top-order issue in countries such as Britain and Australia? Surely a larger concern is the pervasive feeling that the consumer society is empty, devoid of values? "Ah, now you are on 99 per cent of the issue, this is something very dear to me," Grayling says.
In November he will publish The Choice of Hercules, which will show how humanism long predates Christianity, stretching back to the ancient Greeks, Buddhism and Confucianism. But before book 29 (Grayling is a publishing machine) comes Into the Light: the story of the struggles for liberty and rights that made the modern West, published this month. This is his other passion: how a group of brave thinkers over more than 400 years won the rights that make "every ordinary Western citizen the equal of a 16th-century aristocrat" - and how in the war against terrorism we risk losing them, through lack of vigilance.
Grayling says he does not minimise the terrorist risk but he compares it to threats in the past. "In 1940, Britain had several hundred thousand enemy troops massing near its borders. What is the worst-case scenario today? A dirty nuclear bomb in Oxford Street, killing several tens of thousands of people, God forbid - if there were a God. It would change our way of life. But it is not going to defeat the UK. The best way to respond to terrorism is to keep on living normally."
James Button is the Herald's European correspondent.A.C. Grayling appears this weekend at the Melbourne Writers' Festival.