Sweden doesn’t have a race problem

When I originally talked about Geert Wilders, the racist fuckhead who is on trial for being a racist fuckhead (which, while extremely objectionable, should not be a crime), I made a passing comment about Scandinavian socialist utopias. While it is undeniable that the quality of life is much better in those countries – due in no small part to the wide variety of the social programs available to the citizenry – they are not immune to the same brand of racist bullshit that is a problem everywhere else in the world:

Swedish police fear a lone gunman may be behind a spate of racially-motivated shootings in the southern city of Malmo. Detectives say they are linking up to 15 gun attacks in the city over the past year that have targeted people of immigrant background. The investigation comes amid growing tension in Sweden over immigration.

It appears as though Sweden is caught in the same fear-grip that allowed an asshole like Geert Wilders to gain political power in The Netherlands. And of course once you stoke fear to  a fevered level, and move the entire zeitgeist toward an anti-immigrant sentiment, eventually the nuts who were at the far right before find themselves embraced in the mainstream. With mainstream acceptance for stupid ideas comes a new re-drawing of where the fringe is. All of sudden, picking up a rifle and picking off a few members of the feared group no longer seems like such an unreasonable idea?

Don’t believe me? Ask Byron Williams, the so-called “progressive hunter“, who drew his inspiration to murder employees of an environmentalist philanthropic group from the implicit support of Fox News. When you stoke the fires of fear in the populace under the guise of “just asking questions”, you invite people to draw their own conclusions based on shitty evidence and innuendo. Invariably, people come to believe that they alone have pierced the veil of secrecy, and that violence is the only answer. That’s undoubtedly what’s happening in Sweden, a country that I otherwise have positive feelings about.

I have no such feelings about the Czech Republic, another country that clearly doesn’t have a race problem:

Four right-wing extremists in the Czech Republic have been jailed for an arson attack on a Roma family. The court in the eastern city of Ostrava handed down sentences of up to 22 years for racially motivated attempted murder. Three people were hurt when three Molotov cocktails were thrown into a Roma house in Vitkov on 19 April, 2009. One of the victims was a toddler who barely survived, suffering 80% burns on her body.

When we allow racist ideologies to take hold in our society, we pave the way for atrocities like this. When we soothe ourselves with the lie that racism isn’t a problem anymore, and that anti-racists are just whining about nothing, we lend tacit acceptance to those who think that there needs to be some kind of reprisal against racial minorities. The world has a race problem, and the longer we pretend it doesn’t, the worse it will get.

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More good news for free speech in Asia

…which is a title I find myself shocked to be writing.

I’m not so young that I don’t remember the Sri Lankan “civil war” under President Suharto. The entire region was destabilized by sectarian violence that was a combination of ethnic and religious conflicts crystallizing in violence. I am, however, far too young to remember (or to have been alive for) Suharto’s decision to ban books that were considered a “threat to public order.” This decision has recently been struck down by the courts, 50 years later:

Rights groups in Indonesia are hailing a decision by Indonesia’s constitutional court to strike down a controversial book banning law. During the regime of former president Suharto, it was regularly used to clamp down on books and publications that were deemed dangerous by the government.

This is an interesting development, not just because it’s good news for free speech, but because there is currently a fomenting dictatorship in Sri Lanka, one that will not take well the idea that it no longer can enforce a stranglehold on what ideas its people are allowed access to. Well, at least not as overtly:

Activists say the constitutional court’s decision is a step in the right direction, but warn the government still has the means to ban books if it wants to. They say that officials could use Indonesia’s anti-pornography law and a 1966 regulation banning communist material as a way to outlaw sensitive material.

It is stories like this that make me more comfortable with the stance I took yesterday on Bolivia’s racism law. Restrictions on free speech are too tempting and convenient for those in power to use whenever they wish to stifle legitimate criticism. Nobody likes being criticized, myself included. As much as I might proselytize about evaluating people separately from their ideas, or claim to like being proved wrong, those are ideal-case arguments.

The fact is that nobody likes to be told they’re wrong. It’s how we react to those statements that are important. Do we debate, allowing those who disagree to voice their criticisms? Do we react and adapt to those criticisms? Obviously it’s hard to do that right away, but can we at least accept that the other side has a point (if they actually do)? Or do we shut down those who disagree, and cripple anyone’s ability to even bring up ideas?

Governments are no different from people – petty, protectionist, irrational, emotional – the difference is that we can create societies that ensure that governments don’t have to be different from people. We don’t have to pretend as though power is wielded by starry-eyed altruists who always have our best interests in mind. We can pass good laws that put limits on power, or strike down bad laws that give too much. This is one of those cases, and it’s a surprising piece of good news from a country that I was sure was about to spiral into oblivion.

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Another interesting development in China

It’s a major understatement to say that I’m far from an expert on Chinese culture (Major Understatement *salute*). However, the bits and pieces I do know suggest to me that their is a tradition that gives far more credibility and respect to elders than we do here in North America. That is why I find this story so interesting:

A group of 23 Communist Party elders in China has written a letter calling for an end to the country’s restrictions on freedom of speech. The letter says freedom of expression is promised in the Chinese constitution but not allowed in practice. They want people to be able to freely express themselves on the internet and want more respect for journalists. The authors of the letter describe China’s current censorship system as a scandal and an embarrassment.

The BBC insinuates that the imprisonment and subsequent Nobel Peace Prize award to dissident author Liu Xiaobo might have had something to do with this development, but CBC has a different take on it:

Wang Yongcheng, a retired professor at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University who signed the letter, said it had been inspired by the recent arrest of a journalist who wrote about corruption in the resettlement of farmers for a dam project. “We want to spur action toward governing the country according to law,” Wang said in a telephone interview. “If the constitution is violated, the government will lack legitimacy. The people must assert and exercise their legitimate rights,” he said.

Coming on top of Liu’s Nobel Prize, the letter further spotlights China’s tight restrictions on freedom of speech and other civil rights, although Wang said the two events were not directly related. Work on the letter began several days before the prize was awarded, and drafters decided against including a reference to Liu out of concern the government would block its circulation.

Whatever the reason, this is a pretty significant event. This is no longer a group of dissident bloggers and journalists sniping from outside the government, this is a group of influential people from inside the political system itself. The government cannot afford to persecute and imprison these men, as doing so would be a shocking loss of face in the eyes of its people.

The other part I like is that far from being just a bitch session, the letter outlines 8 concrete steps to improve the climate of free speech:

  • Dismantle system where media organisations are all tied to higher authorities
  • Respect journalists, accept their social status
  • Revoke ban on cross-province supervision by public opinion
  • Abolish cyber-police; control Web administrators’ ability to delete/post items at will
  • Confirm citizens’ right to know crimes and mistakes committed by ruling party
  • Launch pilot projects to support citizen-owned media organisations
  • Allow media and publications from Hong Kong and Macau to be openly distributed
  • Change the mission of propaganda authorities, from preventing the leak of information to facilitating its accurate and timely spread

Much like my issues with vague apologies, criticisms that come without suggestions don’t carry much weight with me. Simply identifying a problem shouldn’t be confused with solving it. This letter however addresses real issues and areas for improvement. The ideas may not be new, but the people providing them is definitely an interesting step that is worth keeping an eye on.

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Bolivia doesn’t have a race problem

Okay, now I’m stretching the point a bit…

Bolivia actually has a long history of racial problems. Much of Central and South America is still reeling from Spanish colonial rule. With only a handful of exceptions, the economic and political power in these countries are held by people of Spanish descent. Bolivian President Evo Morales is one of those exceptions, and has an aggressive pro-aboriginal agenda. Some of you may know that I spent 3 weeks in Bolivia a few years ago, and even in my short time there I was aware of the serious racial divides; the lack of aboriginal language instruction except in remote areas, the simultaneous resentment/envy of light-skinned people (the hallmark of colonialization), the disparagement of black people. Bolivia has a long history and contemporary reality of racial struggle.

In his zeal to correct the racial bias against aboriginal Bolivians, President Morales has made what I think is a tragic misstep:

Several major newspapers in Bolivia have made a joint protest against a proposed anti-racism law which they say threatens press freedom. The law would give the government the power to shut down media outlets it finds guilty of racism. President Evo Morales says it will help reverse centuries of discrimination against Bolivia’s indigenous majority. [The papers] say articles which let the government punish journalists and fine or shut media that publish what it considers to be “racist and discriminatory ideas” could be misused to stifle political criticism.

It’s issues like this that give me the greatest amount of personal struggle. On the one hand, I abhor racism, and I know that preserving the status quo of systemic discrimination against a racial minority (a minority, incidentally, that is a statistical majority) will result in a deeper entrenchment of that kind of prejudice. Changing the dialogue and introducing anti-racist ideas to the population at large is the best way to make strides against racism. However, banning free speech is a mistake for so many reasons, not the least of which being that it can be abused to stifle legitimate anti-governmental speech.

This is the problem of living in a non-ideal world – our choices are not always between what is good and what is bad. Sometimes we have to choose between the greater of two ‘goods’. In this particular case, knowing that hate speech laws and government interference with press freedom are too tempting and too easy not to abuse, I am comfortable adding my voice to the opposition to the provisions. Even though I might like Evo Morales, laws do not apply only to one president, and are very rarely used only in the rosy, optimistic way that might be envisioned by those who create them. While optimism is a good thing, any law that only works properly if people are inherently good and moral is destined to fail.

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Free speech vs… itself?

I hope y’all aren’t getting bored with these “Free speech vs.” stories, because I plan to keep writing them.

In the other installments in this “series” (which really isn’t a series so much as an ad-hoc grouping under a recurring theme), I identified a number of potential threats to free speech: religious authority, state authority (both abroad and here at home), and the Wild West of the internet. Each of these represents an external threat by some authority or group to stifle the legitimate free expression of people (well, except terrorists I suppose). But sometimes the threat to freedom of speech is the content of the speech itself:

Dutch MP on trial for hate speech:

Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders appealed for freedom of expression Monday as he went on trial for alleged hate speech at a time when his popularity and influence in the Netherlands are near all-time highs. Prosecutors say Wilders has incited hate against Muslims, pointing to a litany of quotes and remarks he has made in recent years. In one opinion piece, he wrote “I’ve had enough of Islam in the Netherlands; let not one more Muslim immigrate,” adding “I’ve had enough of the Qur’an in the Netherlands: Forbid that fascist book.”

Geert Wilders is the head of a far-right political party that is based largely on anti-immigrant themes. Anyone who had a picture of the Netherlands (or any of the Scandinavian socialist utopias) as happy places full of peaceful hippies has not been paying attention. Tension with non-native groups is escalating, particularly in the face of the economic crisis. Mr. Wilders has put a voice and a face to this simmering resentment, and has managed to parlay it into real political power. Ordinarily I would be in support of anyone who openly criticizes the advance of any religion in public life, but not when it’s like this:

“I am a suspect here because I have expressed my opinion as a representative of the people,” Wilders told judges at the start of the trial. The trial was adjourned until Tuesday shortly after Wilders’s opening remarks, when he declined to answer any questions from the three judges, invoking his right to remain silent.

This disgusts me. You don’t get to have it both ways – you can’t hide behind free speech protections and then refuse to answer questions. If you have an opinion and you demand the right to express it, then you ought to express it. Hiding behind the principle of free speech to defend your bigotry – and Mr. Wilders is nothing but a bigot, to be clear – is a perversion of the idea of free speech. The whole point of a free speech law is to defend people’s right to engage in legitimate discussion and criticism, not as a skirt to hide behind like a frightened bully whose victim stands up for itself.

While I am not in favour of legal proceedings against hate speech, I am far less in favour of cowardice being wrapped up in the principle in which I believe most strongly.

Westboro Baptist Church at Supreme Court:

The U.S. Supreme Court is to hear arguments Wednesday in a case that pits a dead marine’s grieving father against the Westboro Baptist Church, an obscure Kansas church that protests at soldiers’ funerals. The marine was not gay. However, the members of the church, who gained notoriety for using the same tactics at funerals for AIDS victims and who also oppose abortion, claimed his death was God’s “punishment” for the United States’ tolerance of homosexuality.

Ah yes, Freddie Phelps again. Once again, while ordinarily I would be in support of a group’s right to free speech (even when I absolutely 100% deplore the content of that speech, and would bitch-slap Fred Phelps to death if given the opportunity), this is another case where the right is being abused to serve a perverted end. Westboro Baptist isn’t protesting against a corrupt system, or leveling legitimate criticism, or contributing anything worthwhile to a discussion. Instead, they are hiding behind the Constitution to disrupt the lives of grieving parents for no reason other than to hurt people and gain publicity for their disgusting medieval pseudo-religion. Worst of all, Phelps is deputizing and corrupting children to further his own feeble-minded dictatorial agenda.

While I maintain my distaste for prosecuting hate speech, I bemoan the fact that this stance allows slime like Geert Wilders and Fred Phelps a platform to spread their brainless hateful nonsense. Free speech is supposed to defend unpopular ideas that have a legitimate purpose, a purpose that can be articulated and defended. The greatest threat to free speech therefore isn’t oppressive governments, religious authorities, or the New World Order on teh intarwebz; it’s those scumbags that abuse and debase the principle and undermine the public’s appetite to defend it from these more apparent threats.

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Liu Xiaobo sticks it to the Chinese government

This morning I told you about the Chinese threat against Norway, if the Nobel committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo. I am happy to report that Norway doesn’t appear to give a flying fuck about what China thinks is best for world peace, and has awarded him the prize anyway:

Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Liu is a 54-year-old literary critic and democracy activist who was awarded the prize for “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Friday. The Chinese government reacted angrily to Liu’s win. News of the prize was blacked out by Chinese state-owned media, and government censors blocked prize reports from the internet.

This is good news for pretty much everyone except Mr. Liu’s family, who are now facing a lot of unwanted attention from the Chinese government. There are many people who support the Chinese government. I’m sure there are millions of Chinese citizens who think it’s doing a bang-up job, and feel that the criticisms leveled against it are unfair. That’s a perfectly reasonable position to hold, particularly when you are the recipient of the benefits of socialist rule. However, when your freedoms are won at the price of the human rights of other people, then it is entirely reasonable to criticize the actions of the government. When the response to criticism is to jail or otherwise silence the critics, you can no longer claim that the government is acting in the best interests of its citizens – it’s acting in the best interest of itself.

And that’s exactly what’s happened:

Meanwhile, Chinese media was instructed by the censors that messages containing Liu’s name were to be blocked and China Mobile users were already complaining that text messages with his name couldn’t be sent. Censors instructed microblogs China-wide to set “sensitive word filters” to block Liu’s names and stop all interactive online forums where people could leave comments about him.

It’s one thing to say that Mr. Liu’s writings are not in the best interest of China’s stability. It’s entirely reasonable to point out that he is in violation of Chinese law, and that his actions do not reflect the position of the government or the Chinese people. However, when the response is to prevent anyone from even learning about the award. If, for example, some organization awarded Paul Bernardo a humanitarian prize, do you imagine that such an award wouldn’t make the news? The outcry from Canadians would be overwhelming, and the award would be roundly condemned. The government wouldn’t need to shield us from the news by censoring its announcement.

I love the reason given for the award as well:

[Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern] Jagland, reading the citation, said China’s new status in the world “must entail increased responsibility. China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights.” Mr Jagland said that, in practice, freedoms enshrined in China’s constitution had “proved to be distinctly curtailed for China’s citizens”.

The gauntlet has been thrown down, China. When you cut yourself off from the international community, you were free to govern as you saw fit. However, when you become a player on the world stage, you can no longer continue to control the conversation as rigorously as you once did. The sooner that the government (any government, because these kinds of tactics are not unique to China) realizes this, the better off will be its citizens.

Shutting down the opposition: the next step of tyranny

A couple weeks ago, I pointed out a few stories that seemed to support my conjecture that free speech is the bedrock of a free society – that if you want to impose a tyrannical agenda on people, the first step should be to shut down their right of free speech. However, it’s not enough to simply trample the rights of individuals, you also have to shut down any dissenting political voices as well. The next step in establishing your iron-fisted rule must be to shut down any political opposition.

For evidence of this, we turn to Sri Lanka:

The main opposition Sri Lankan United National Party (UNP) has accused the authorities of undermining democracy by intimidating parliamentarians. It says that Mangala Samaraweera, the first foreign minister under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency, has been unfairly questioned for hours by the police. Mr Samaraweera has admitted responsibility for printing a poster depicting the president as a dictator.

Sri Lanka has been a consistent feature on this blog since they granted wide additional powers to their president, as I see it as a perfect example of how a tyrannical state begins. First, a titularly-democratic nation invests power in a single person or political party. It shreds any checks and balances that allow the leader to be overthrown (by anything other than military force), or that places reasonable limits on the powers of the government. The next step is to use its newly-expanded power to shut down the rights of individuals to speak freely or hear ideas that are not state-sanctioned. And now, the government is literally jailing people for criticizing its actions. While sometimes hyperbole is uncouth in political discussion, I don’t think it’s unfair to call president Rajapaksa a dictator; I think in this case it’s a legitimate criticism. Legitimate or not, putting someone in jail for calling you dictatorial is… well… dictatorial.

And of course we can’t talk about the abuse of state power without bringing up China:

China has warned the Nobel Peace Prize committee not to award the prize to well-known dissident Liu Xiaobo. The Chinese foreign ministry said giving him the prize would be against Nobel principles. Mr Liu is serving a long prison sentence for calling for democracy and human rights in China… It would run contrary to the aims of its founder to promote peace between peoples, and to promote international friendship and disarmament, [a spokeswoman] added.

Did you catch the implicit threat there? Honouring someone who promotes democracy will endanger peace and disarmament… how? Well, obviously, by provoking the Chinese government into endangering peace and disarmament. The causal relationship here, however, does not start with Mr. Liu; it starts and ends with the Chinese. They could choose to ignore the results of a foreign private consortium. They could do what so many Americans did when president Obama won the peace prize last year – deride the selection criteria and committee. However, when you use the peace prize as justification for undermining world peace, you expose your willingness to shut down opposition in favour of your own agenda, rather than dealing with legitimate criticism.

Again, the source of this next story is as obvious as picking on the Chinese:

An Iranian court has banned two leading reformist parties, judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie has said. The Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mujahideen Organisation were “dissolved”, he said. Both supported opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last year’s disputed election. Members of both parties were jailed during the government’s efforts to stifle the mass protests that followed.

The Iranian regime, in doing this, completely undermines any credibility they have been trying to garner as a stable democratic nation in the eyes of the international community. It is a dictatorial theocracy that views dissent as treason. While I am constantly aware of the spin that news organizations use in their reporting of stories, the repeated actions of this government (indeed, all of these governments) are clear signs to me that their explanations and rationalization are thin and poorly-constructed lies.

So while I would very much like to see our current government ousted in favour of one that actually uses its brain, I would be among the first on the protest lines to defend them against any over-reaching attempt by a Liberal or NDP government to outlaw the Conservative party. A healthy opposition is vital to the existence of a stable democratic state, and any attempt to shut down such opposition is not only tyrannical, but a betrayal of the citizens of that state.

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Free speech vs… the Internet

I’ve periodically waxed poetic about my love affair with the internet. I view it as a new version of the printing press, giving unprecedented access to both information and speech to millions of people who would otherwise never even glimpse the leaps and bounds made in the last 100 years. This level of access will ultimately have a stabilizing effect on the world, as ideas will spread, and issues will no longer be bound by physical or political borders.

However, this level of access has negative repercussions as well:

The sharp growth in extremist websites is making recruitment much easier for al-Qaeda, according to Interpol head Ronald Noble. “The threat is global, it is virtual and it is on our doorsteps,” he said. Mr Noble told a conference of police chiefs in Paris there were 12 sites in 1998 and 4,500 by 2006.

This is the ugly side of free speech. Allowing all people access to a tool like the internet means that everyone will, eventually, use it. Sadly, the reality is that ‘everyone’ includes a bunch of assholes who think that violence is a reasonable and justifiable way of spreading ideas.

So what are lawful societies supposed to do? Block the information? They may pursue that, but thanks to teh G00gle, they may not be able to do it with impunity any longer:

Earlier this year, Google released details about how often countries around the world ask it to hand over user data or to censor information. The new map and tools follows on from that and allows users to click an individual country to see how many removal requests were fully or partially complied with, as well as which Google services were affected.

Of course, this is only one server (albeit a major one), but it may point in the direction of what will happen to freedom of information in the future. There will be a struggle between civilian governments and large corporations over who has access to and control over the series of tubes that make up the internet. The tool is really not altogether that useful yet. I was able to learn that Canada has fewer than 10 requests to remove Google-based data (YouTube, Blogger, etc.) Somewhat encouraging, I suppose.

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Free speech vs… the state

I’ve talked about how religion steps on free speech to serve its own ends in society, but that’s not an entirely fair charge. It is not only religion that does this. As I mentioned a couple weeks back, sometimes a non-religious agency will do the same thing. It seems to be the nature of those in power to try and shut out any dissenting voices. The societies that are the most stable are those where honest disagreement is allowed, and that the excesses of the governing party can be exposed to the public. This serves the dual simultaneous purpose of forcing the leaders to be less corrupt, and of informing the populace so that corrupt leaders can be democratically removed.

Any time free speech is abrogated, you can pretty much guarantee that there’s some shady shit going down behind the scenes. It is for this reason that I am afraid of China:

A Surrey-based reporter says China’s Ministry of State Security is threatening his family, life and livelihood for his critical coverage of the Chinese government… some of [Tao Wang’s] reports have been critical of the Chinese government and its practices. NTDTV is one of the few networks with dissenting views that broadcasts in the Communist nation. He said the threatening phone calls began a month ago and have become increasingly harsh, escalating to the point of death threats.

Mr. Tao reports for the Falun Gong station NTDTV. For those of you who don’t know, Falun Gong is a pseudo-religious group in China that has been the subject of a targeted government crackdown. The Chinese government has identified practitioners as cult members whose activities undermine the social and economic progress of China. The idea of punishing someone for their beliefs should be immediately chilling to those of us in the secular movement, as it is precisely the same activity taken by theocratic fascist regimes against those who do not believe. Religious heterodoxy is a crime in China, which completely invalidates any claims it might make to being a progressive secular state.

So while I am not a fan of religion, I stand by my commitments that any country that wishes to model long-term secular values has to guarantee freedom of thought and expression to all people. We can neither favour nor be prejudiced against people based on their belief.

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Free speech vs… Islam

There’s much hooting and hollering happening in the United States right now about whether or not it should be considered a “Christian country.” The facts are, of course, arrayed in multitude that it is absolutely not founded on Christianity. Facts are, however, of limited use when you’re talking to the religious. There may be some confusion among the less faith-headed over why there is such opposition to the idea of a Christian country. After all, Christianity is a religion of peace, right? Religious values built this country, didn’t it? Why would anyone resist the idea of a religion-based country?

Somali militants who have seized a radio and TV station say it will now broadcast only Islamic messages. Hassan Dahir Aweys, who leads the Hizbul Islam group, said he wanted the broadcasts to serve Islam.

Muslim scholars and moderates maintain vehemently that Islam is a religion of peace too. Those who use violence in the name of Islam are said to be “not really following” the religion. The whole thing about religious belief is that there is no “true version” of it. History has shown us that fractions inevitably occur within a group that is, at least titularly, following the same doctrine. Within Christianity there’s a wide swath from Unitarian or Anglican churches, wherein most of the specific religious rules are ignored in favour of a fuzzy kind of belief, to the Westboro Baptist Church, which is ultra-conservative and strict. Neither one of these is the “right” version of Christianity – members of both churches consider themselves True Christians.

This is the same phenomenon happening in Somalia. Fuzzy moderate Muslims in Canada probably don’t recognize their beliefs reflected in the actions of these paramilitary thugs who would torture and beat journalists in the name of Islam. However, the thugs themselves probably don’t recognize any True Muslims who would tolerate blasphemy against Allah or Muhammad, or go to schools with people of other faiths. Both groups can mine the Qu’ran to find justification for their respective beliefs. It is clearly not to the benefit of the people in these societies:

Radio stations provide a vital source of information for residents of Mogadishu who, because of the ongoing violence, need to be constantly updated on which areas are unsafe. But in the face of ongoing attacks, it is virtually impossible for them to carry out their work.

It is for this reason that secular humanists like myself are immediately wary of anyone who wants special recognition for religion – any religion – enshrined by law. History has shown again and again that when religion gains worldly power, it takes away civil freedoms by degrees, all in the name of the betterment of society (by which it means the church). This ‘better society’, instead of being based on observable, agreed-upon, verifiable evidence (such as vaccination campaigns, public health care, welfare programs, pension programs, etc.) is based on fundamentally unprovable promises of effects that can only be seen after death. I might not like paying taxes, but I can see the benefits of social programs now, requiring no faith on my part.

Luckily, there appears to be some pushback against these actions:

Somali journalists have walked out of a radio station recently seized by Islamists in the capital, Mogadishu. The staff at GBC said they refused to take orders from Hizbul Islam militants… The journalists from GBC, which was popular for its broadcasts of international football matches, said they had been ordered to refer to the government as “apostate”. “We defied because we do not want to lose our impartiality,” one of the reporters said, asking not to be named for security reasons.

But I don’t expect these gunmen to be particularly happy about it, or to say “well that’s your right to do it.”

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