videos, religion, and picking fights

Protests erupted in several Islamic countries this week, the anniverary of 9/11, mostly in reaction to a video denigrating Islam, and especially the prophet Muhammad.  The movie was made by an American citizen. This anti-Islamic movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” is said to portray the Prophet Muhammad as a drunken torturer of women and children.  It's been around on Youtube for two months, but it was recently dubbed into Arabic, and the trailer swept around the world on Youtube.  Suddenly, on Wednesday, four American diplomatic personel were dead because of rioting at the Libyan embassy. 

There are several angles to take, but on this blog, we focus on a Christian approach to people of other faiths. Some might ask why the violent reaction to such a video?  They might say to themselves that they would never react like that, even if someone from another culture or religion made fun of or denigrated theirs.  People should just learn to deal with the humiliation and anger they feel when offended by someone else's bigotted free speech.

But that humiliation is a big factor in driving the hot reactons to incendiary acts that sometimes come out of Western cultures.  That humilation comes out of the reality of an inequality, economically and socio-politically, between largely Muslim societies and Western ones.  So the casualness, the wanton ease with which the offending material is created in the West, and then shared and tolerated, heaps up the humiliation already present. 

On a radio program called "the Takeaway", Dr.Vijay Preshad, chair of South Asian history and director of the international studies department at Trinity College and author of "Arab Spring, Libyan Winter", explained that humiliation among Muslims in the Middle East is running high (it has for decades), even after the changes of the Arab Spring.  This is mostly because, despite the significant political changes in many countries, the vast majority of their citizens still feel disenfranchized and voiceless.  Many feel they have changed out dictators for Western educated bureaucrats, and have been shut out of the democratic processes that they expected would be open to them now. No matter what the more gentile members of the ruling class say, the political underclass feel the need to assert their voices and vent their feelings.  (Actually, there are some reports that the size of the protests around the world this week have been very small, disproportiate to the media furor they've caused.  So the political underclass is certainly more diverse than we might think.)

Some might say that this talk of Muslim humiliation only serves to justify the violence and fails to hold such people accountable.  But Preshad insists that there is a difference between taking an objective view toward gaining a better understanding, and making excuses for peoples reactions.

The question I keep coming back to is this; what does it take to stir up in people a wise forebearance and a fitting hesitancy to denigrate the religious sentiments of other people?  This is not about the laws that protect the right to free speech.  They are there.  But for people of faith, the question is the ethical use of "free speech."   I want to keep in the front of my own mind what values I bring to the decisions I have with regard to free speech.  Do I enjoy freedom of speech?  Yes.  Is it respectful or loving to use free speech in ways that just plain offend other people.  No.  It may be tempting to get stuck in a thought loop that just bemoans the actions of those we wish would calm down.  But people of faith need to reaffirm, with conviction, that regardless of what we could say as citizens protected by national laws, we are not "free" in our Christian consciences to use speech to hurt, demean, dehumanize or slander other people and the things they hold sacred.