According to "Jordan writer in blasphemy case Nahid Hattar killed" (2016), although the Jordanian government has officially condemned his killing, supporters of murdered writer Nahid Hattar, an atheist, blame the government for his murder by a devout religious leader because he was arrested under the country's blasphemy laws when he posted on a Facebook an image that made fun of "radical Islamists' view of heaven."
_______________________________________
My response
This sad story is a bit more serious than my post about the marital difficulties that the Pitts are experiencing. The Brangelina story is still in the news, although I haven't read any more on that: the titles and pictures are enough.
First, I have to say that religion commits far too many crimes, and those crimes are often violent, like the murder here. People always say that their religion is about love, or about caring, or about good morals. But what we see in practice is religion being an excuse to commit great evil. Everyone knows that Islam is a source of teaching that inspires terrorism, and the sort of killing we see here. But I agree with the murdered man's supporters: the Jordanian government has also made morally wrong laws to protect religion. Arresting people and putting them in prison because they say a religion is false or silly or a cause of terrorism and other evils is unjust law. Rule of law that violates the right to free speech of citizens is morally wrong and is against basic democratic principles. Such bad laws also support exactly the same sort of thinking that religious believers use as an excuse when they kill or commit terrorism.
And it is not only Islam that causes such evil. If we look at history, it is not difficult to find examples of other religions also being sources not of good morals but of very bad morals. Christians have a long history of going to war to kill for their god. And Christians until very recently persuaded governments of many countries to make up laws against blasphemy to protect themselves from critical examination. Catholic popes liked to throw people into prison, to torture and to kill them if they disagreed with the official teachings of the popes. Their victims were often scientists and other great thinkers whose work suggested, as the murdered writer Nahid Hattar did, that some religious belief is false or worse. Buddhist teaching seems much less supportive of violence than the teachings of the Middle Eastern religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, but as we see in Myanmar, even Buddhism can be turned into something truly immoral and blood thirsty as radical Buddhists seek to harm non-Buddhists using unjust rule of law.
In a class in academic English, any violation of free speech should worry us because it is not only against democratic principle and against good morals, but such violations of free speech are against the critical thinking that is an important aspect of all academic work in every field, from art history to physics. Our textbook, Skillful Reading and Writing, recognises the importance of critical thinking with exercises in every unit. As aspiring academics, we care about what is true and how we know that it is true, or why we believe that it might be true: rule of law that violates free speech makes informed, critical opinion a criminal offence; such law prefers ignorance to knowledge, which is of course why religions love laws against free speech. They are terrified that healthy, critical investigation will show many of their beliefs to be false or worse, so they want the government to make up laws to protect them from honest truth seeking.
Religion often inspires great good and is a source of comfort to many people, but healthy, moral societies do not give it any special legal protection. Good religions and healthy beliefs do not need such protection under the law.
_______________________________________
Reference
What I found in the news section = 65 words in one sentence.
ReplyDeleteI copied and pasted the "article title" and I copied and pasted one group of words from my source = "radical Islamists' view of heaven."
The My response section = 585 words in five paragraphs. Again, one idea led to another, and what I ended up discussing was not my first idea. This is not a problem in a our response writing here.
The Reference section has the one expected reference citation for my chosen article in the news. It follows the rules for writing a reference citation.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCrimes have been committed by those fanatics who are not into the gist of their religions' being. The ultimate purpose of each religion is indisputably to make people behave in merit and in harmony.
ReplyDeleteThe murdered claimed himself to be an atheist but so are most of buddhists. In my opinion, it is innocuous to have such a belief; the disrespect is not. Everyone inherited the freedom of faith and we should not judge the others by what they have their faith in.
In my point of view, the irreconcilability between christian and islam is an enigma. Their origin are the same and they also share their moral principles. They have yet to agree to one another. This might be a legacy of the greed of the past rulers. They tried to influent larger and larger area and subsequently triggered wars that last centuries after centuries. Perhaps it is wise to act with the present, by the present, for the present.
I like Den's thoughtful response, especially his explanation for why religion is so often associated with violence. I tend to agree in the case of Buddhism, but I'm less sure for the Judeo-Christian religions, including Islam, which do not have the brotherly love for each other, or even for the different groups within in each religion, that you would expect. Martin Luther's Reformation in Europe put one group of Christians at war and hatred with competing groups of Christians, all claiming their god on their side. Did the sex obsessed King Henry VIII of England break with the pope in Rome and start his own version of Christianity, the Church of England, just so he could get rid of one wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry a new one, Ann Boleyn? And what does the Christian Bible really say about all of this?
DeleteAnd then there are the modern opponents of same-sex marriage, of rights for women, of safe, legal abortion and so on. Most of these people give reasons based on religion to oppose moral progress in their society.
As Den's constructive comments suggests, there are a lot of issues to think about her.
Religion is quite sensitive topic in Thailand. But, What is the purpose of it? Some might say to keep peace and harmony(that is proven wrong in this post), some might say it is for people to answer question that we can't answer such as where we came from and what is meaning of life and some might say it is a form of control(my friend has read this blog post and find it quite interesting), to use belief to control people's mind to get the advantage of them. Some people use religion in order to favor themselves. Some people belief religion because they will feel good.Or some may believe that there is an easy way to heaven.
ReplyDelete