Freedom to Enslave...

Paul continues to provide thoughtful critique:

Tom,

Don't forget, in the free societies in which we live, people have a right to be wrong (from your perspective) about their religion. And they have a right to let their moral compass guide them.

Yet, as you stated earlier, head hunters aren't allowed, because their moral absolutes don't mesh with most other peoples morals.

So, I guess what puzzles me, and now confronts the Australian court system is how do free people decide which moral code to adopt?

I have spent several days considering a reply to this, and I don't think I really have an answer. However, I will make a few points.

What this comes down to is the right that has variously been called freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and others. Keep in mind that freedom of religion as it is in Western culture was not originally intended as freedom for any religion, but freedom for any Christian religion. It was a reaction to the European tendency for a state to select a church denomination and persecute anyone not in it. In England Catholics (and non-conformist protestants) were repressed, in France protestants (ie. non-conformist Catholics ;-) were repressed, etc etc. It is only since then that it has been extended to, at least in principle, include all religions.

But in practise no-one actually practices freedom of religion. The US will claim that it does, but this is laughable. It is trivial to disprove it by this example: Osama bin Laden's views are primarily theological (ie religious). No freedom of religion is extended to him.

Now, it is easy to say, and many do say so, that bin Laden misrepresents Islam for his own purposes. But that is the very height of arrogance. What you are then doing is deciding for yourself what the content of Islam is, and then imposing that definition on others. This is exactly what the framers of the US Constitution were trying to prevent; then it was Christianity they wanted freedom to interpret, now its Islam you are denying freedom to interpret. To deny bin Laden the right to his religion is unconstitutional and extremely hypocritical.

How does anyone get away with it then? Basically, our society has tacitly agreed that some things are beyond the pale, and we won't tolerate them, even if our constitution says we should. So there are some people's views which we will classify as terrorist ideologies instead of religions and ban them. The difference is often completely artificial, but we'll play along, because otherwise we actually have to think about things, and realise that perhaps freedom of religion isn't always quite so great.

Usually the media is the arbiter of what is a terrorist ideology and what is a religion. The procedure for determining what is what goes like this:

1. Find someone who uses violence to further their ideas.
2. Do we feel sorry for them?
3. If so, their ideas are religious in nature, and their use of violence is a brave fight for freedom.
4. If not, their ideas are a terrorist ideology and they are a menace to free society.
5. If anyone tries to suggest that we got it wrong, and that people we thought were a menace to free society are actually engaged in a brave fight for freedom, then we howl them down.
6. If we can't howl them down, then we jump on the bandwagon and pretend that we always thought that they were engaged in a brave fight for freedom.
7. If, on the other hand, someone tries to suggest that we got it wrong, and that people we thought were engaged in a brave fight for freedom are actually a menace to free society, then we write long editorials about how the poor are always oppressed in our society, and never get any help in their brave fight for freedom.
   

If you want an example or two, consider Osama bin Laden and Irish Catholics. The Irish Catholics are engaged in a brave fight for freedom from the British oppressors, so we are on their side, no matter how many bombs they plant or people they shoot, basically because we feel sorry for them. Osama bin Laden uses the same methods for roughly the same ends, but we don't feel sorry for him, so he must be, you guessed it, a menace to free society.

I am not suggesting that Osama bin Laden is in the right, by the way; I am just pointing out that his ideology is a theology in a very similar way to many other theologies that are accepted around the world. To reject his religion simply because it involves violence is hypocritical, since that is just using your own moral standard to judge someone else's moral standard, and your constitution says that's not on.

Rather than sticking our heads in the sand and letting everyone believe whatever they like, we should critically examine religious claims in the same way we examine any other claim, and discard those that are found to be false.

So in the end I suspect freedom of religion doesn't really work, and in practice no-one implements it.