Pastorius has posted it in IBA with a very good comment.
This is the type of things that make me feel really bad. Are really the Afghans and in general, the people of the Muslim countries prepared to know and to want democracy and human rights? Reading people as Sandmonkey (who has started a new blog outside blogger) or Freedom for Egytians or Eteraz -now one of my colleagues at IBA-, even if sometimes we don’t agree , I believe it. Because they recognise that the rest can have another ideas and opinions, and that is the base of democracy. I mean, only if you think that all people are equal, and as a result, can have an opinion just as valid as yours, democracy can function. If not, when you just position yourself above the rest, just judging as “commoners” all people that surrounds you and then thinking you above them all, the problems begin, and much more when that is not a personal problem BUT the problem of people who thinks of themselves as an elite. Precisely the equality in front of the law, the free press and the freedom of expression only were born in Europe when the classes, as compartimental groups which cannot be penetrated, dissappeared. The reason is obvious: if there are people in society which are above the rest, this people also cannot be critisized, and then the press cannot be free and the citizens cannot say freely what they think.
But when you see news like this -or the one that I just posted here only days ago about the Taliban’s justice-, I just doubt it. Because this people are only grounding their points of view in a religious book, and the religion, although lived in community with people of your same faith, is a personal election, and so cannot be elevated to the category of principle that should determine the aplicable law to a citizen.
I think Ronald Dworkin says it better than me, speaking about the Danish cartoons (HT: Pia Causa):
This is the type of things that make me feel really bad. Are really the Afghans and in general, the people of the Muslim countries prepared to know and to want democracy and human rights? Reading people as Sandmonkey (who has started a new blog outside blogger) or Freedom for Egytians or Eteraz -now one of my colleagues at IBA-, even if sometimes we don’t agree , I believe it. Because they recognise that the rest can have another ideas and opinions, and that is the base of democracy. I mean, only if you think that all people are equal, and as a result, can have an opinion just as valid as yours, democracy can function. If not, when you just position yourself above the rest, just judging as “commoners” all people that surrounds you and then thinking you above them all, the problems begin, and much more when that is not a personal problem BUT the problem of people who thinks of themselves as an elite. Precisely the equality in front of the law, the free press and the freedom of expression only were born in Europe when the classes, as compartimental groups which cannot be penetrated, dissappeared. The reason is obvious: if there are people in society which are above the rest, this people also cannot be critisized, and then the press cannot be free and the citizens cannot say freely what they think.
But when you see news like this -or the one that I just posted here only days ago about the Taliban’s justice-, I just doubt it. Because this people are only grounding their points of view in a religious book, and the religion, although lived in community with people of your same faith, is a personal election, and so cannot be elevated to the category of principle that should determine the aplicable law to a citizen.
I think Ronald Dworkin says it better than me, speaking about the Danish cartoons (HT: Pia Causa):
But religion must observe the principles of democracy, not the other way around. No religion can be permitted to legislate for everyone about what can or cannot be drawn any more than it can legislate about what may or may not be eaten. No one’s religious convictions can be thought to trump the freedom that makes democracy possible.”
3 Comments
March 22, 2006 at 11:55 am
[...] 22nd March 2006 Y viva la tolerancia religiosa -para continuar con lo relacionado con el converso al cristianismo en Afganistán que puede ser condenado a muerte- [...]
March 22, 2006 at 12:15 pm
[...] Enclaves to practise Islam in the West And this happens, when an Afghan is surely condemned to death beacuse of his conversion to Christianity and in Argelia a new law has been issued to condemn to prison and to fine the people who intend to convert a Muslim (that is, anyone that speaks about other religions -mainly Christianism-) and is obliging them to only practise their religion in appointed places. Well, as I said before: reciprocity is a NEED to protect this kind of people in countries where there is no freedom of religion, no matter who says the contrary. The Islamist Challenge to the U.S. Constitution – Middle East Quarterly – Spring 2006 First in Europe and now in the United States, Muslim groups have petitioned to establish enclaves in which they can uphold and enforce greater compliance to Islamic law. While the U.S. Constitution enshrines the right to religious freedom and the prohibition against a state religion, when it comes to the rights of religious enclaves to impose communal rules, the dividing line is more nebulous. Can U.S. enclaves, homeowner associations, and other groups enforce Islamic law? Such questions are no longer theoretical. While Muslim organizations first established enclaves in Europe,[1] the trend is now crossing the Atlantic. Some Islamist community leaders in the United States are challenging the principles of assimilation and equality once central to the civil rights movement, seeking instead to live according to a separate but equal philosophy. The Gwynnoaks Muslim Residential Development group, for example, has established an informal enclave in Baltimore because, according to John Yahya Cason, director of the Islamic Education and Community Development Initiative, a Baltimore-based Muslim advocacy group, “there was no community in the U.S. that showed the totality of the essential components of Muslim social, economic, and political structure.”[2]Baltimore is not alone. In August 2004, a local planning commission in Little Rock, Arkansas, granted The Islamic Center for Human Excellence authorization to build an internal Islamic enclave to include a mosque, a school, and twenty-two homes.[3] While the imam, Aquil Hamidullah, says his goal is to create “a clean community, free of alcohol, drugs, and free of gangs,”[4] the implications for U.S. jurisprudence of this and other internal enclaves are greater: while the Little Rock enclave might prevent the sale of alcohol, can it punish possession and in what manner? Can it force all women, be they residents or visitors, to don Islamic hijab (headscarf)? Such enclaves raise the fundamental questions of when, how, and to what extent religious practice may supersede the U.S. Constitution.The internal Muslim enclave proposed by the Islamic Center for Human Excellence in Arkansas represents a new direction for Islam in the United States. The group seeks to transform a loosely organized Muslim population into a tangible community presence. The group has foreign financial support: it falls under the umbrella of a much larger Islamic group, “Islam 4 the World,” an organization sponsored by Sharjah, one of the constituent emirates of the United Arab Emirates.[5] While the Islamic Center for Human Excellence has yet to articulate detailed plans for its Little Rock enclave, the group’s reliance on foreign funding is troublesome. Past investments by the United Arab Emirates’ rulers and institutions have promoted radical interpretations of Islam. [6]The Islamic Center for Human Excellence may seek to segregate schools and offices by gender. The enclave might also exercise broad control upon commerce within its boundaries—provided the economic restrictions did not discriminate against out-of-state interests or create an undue burden upon interstate commerce. But most critically, the enclave could promulgate every internal law—from enforcing strict religious dress codes to banning alcohol possession and music; it could even enforce limits upon religious and political tolerance. Although such concepts are antithetical to a free society, U.S. democracy allows the internal enclave to function beyond the established boundaries of our constitutional framework. At the very least, the permissible parameters of an Islamist enclave are ill defined. [...]
March 22, 2006 at 11:03 pm
[...] There are a lot of people writing about Abdul Rahman, that man who can be another martyr in the 21st century. A man that, knowing what was going to happen to him, acknowledge his faith in Christ. A man whose own family denounced to a Shari’a tribunal for the very grave crime of converting to Christianity. I have written yet on the subject, but there are more news, and as a result I am going to make a summary of the posts I have read throughout the blogosphere, underlining that the difference between the cartoons and this case is that in here the life of a peaceful, valuable and good human being can be destroyed because of the intolerance of a country and its President Hamid Karzai, who has decided not to intervene to save his life. [...]