“It’s blasphemy, or heresy, or something…”

NewsBlaze, via Slashdot:

Freedom House condemns the UN Human Rights Council for undermining the universal right to freedom of expression by once again passing a resolution that urges members to adopt laws outlawing criticism of religions.

The “defamation of religions” resolution, introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), passed today by a vote of 23-11, with 13 abstentions. Muslim nations have been introducing similar resolutions since 1999, arguing that Islam-the only religion specifically cited in the text-must be shielded from unfair associations with terrorism and human rights abuses.

A Slashdot commenter:

“Actually this is covered by conventional media, even FOX news (Google News links). The absentees weren’t there because they boycotted the proposal.”

A friend of mine is a Zen Buddhist. He is such a Zen Buddhist that he actually went to Khatmandu to look something up in a library there.

Zen Buddhists are nice people, but, like dolphins, they have this disconcerting habit of smiling all the time in a knowing sort of way, as though they were in sole possession of next week’s share prices (or lottery numbers, or winning horses). Despite this they do not seem to be an unduly persecuted group.

Nor do they ever demand special treatment, or protection from persecution.

My belief is that this is because they are nice. Testing this hypothesis, we find that other more or less nice religions (the Quakers, for example) seem to share this policy. Despite the Quakers having been persecuted in the past (their exclusion from ‘business’ led to their fine record of innovation and philanthropy during the Industrial Revolution) they never seem to make a fuss about it now, nor have I ever seen them demanding to be legally protected from criticism.

Nor, it seems, do Zoroastrians, of whom there are now relatively few, and whose harmless but peculiar practices, particularly the funerary ones, might well be perceived by others as being in somewhat poor taste.

Another feature of these religions is that they do not proselytise. Zen Buddhists are happy to lend one copies of the Buddha’s teachings, but always accept that one’s going with the flow may lead one into an wholly different spiritual path. Quakers meet in semi-secret, and how one might set about becoming one seems to have been made deliberately mysterious. As for Zoroastrians, it would be difficult enough to find one, of any kind, to initiate one into the faith, let alone a properly qualified priest of Ahura Mazda.

In the red corner, however, we have a different group of religions, typified by Catholicism, Northern Irish Protestantism, Islam and American Christian fundamentalism.

All these religions proselytise. All demand converts. All compete with one another for these converts. All have hierarchical command structures, in some cases demanding absolute obedience to the spoken word of a single individual. All are prepared to use violence in support of their purposes.

And all demand, in one way or another, that national laws be changed, either to force unbelievers to act according to the wishes of the congregation (e.g. abortion and contraception, and the use of Sharia law) or to protect these usually large and wealthy organisations from ‘persecution’ and ‘criticism’.

I see a pattern emerging here and wonder whether it is time to discriminate firmly between ‘faith’, being an utterly private and personal relationship between the sovereign individual and the mystical divine, in whatever form, and ‘religion’, being merely a power-over structure of the perfectly conventional and therefore highly undesirable kind, only run by priests instead of politicians.

I am of the view that ‘faith’ is probably good. It doesn’t matter what ‘faith’ it is. If individuals believe that being a decent person will bring them closer to their chosen deity, or principle, or whatever, then they will probably tend to be decent people. Provided that they keep this ‘faith’ to themselves, and do not attempt to force it upon others, I would be inclined to view it as generally beneficial.

‘Religion’, on the other hand, as was noticed by the Roman poets, if not their predecessors, seems to have little to offer its adherents apart from tithes, intolerance, arbitrary proscriptions, holy wars, schisms, pre-mediaeval standards of civilisation, inquisitions, beheadings and burnings at the stake.

If they make it illegal (as they probably will) to criticise specified religions, then we shall be obliged merely to criticise the practice and imposition of ‘religion’ in general. In doing this it would be convenient to distinguish ‘religion’ clearly from ‘faith’, which is in my view perhaps part of the solution rather than part of the problem.