Best article part 2
FYI ... #2
2) No God, no good. When it comes to intolerance, America's a match for Afghanistan
Peter McKnight
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, April 01, 2006
"It does me no injury for my neighbour to say that there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
-- Thomas Jefferson
With apologies to Mohandas Gandhi, one can measure the greatness and moral progress of a nation not only by how it treats its animals, but how it treats its infidels.
If this is so, if a culture's treatment of those who reject its prevailing ideology is a barometer of its moral progress, then Afghanistan is a moral backwater indeed.
But it isn't the only one -- the persecution of infidels, it turns out, occurs in countries much closer to home.
As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the embarrassing case of Abdul Rahman appears to be over. Rahman, the Afghan who converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working for a Christian aid organization in Pakistan, was originally facing trial and a possible death sentence for forsaking Islam.
That changed quickly however, after international uproar, including pressure from the leaders of Canada, the United States, Germany and Italy, convinced Afghan President Hamid Karzai that it was better to privately bury the case than to publicly bury Rahman.
And bury it they did. Prosecutors first surmised that Rahman "could be mad" -- thereby sending the not so subtle message that you'd have to be crazy to convert to Christianity, which I suppose is true if you live in Afghanistan -- and if so, he'd have to be forgiven, since Islam is a "religion of tolerance," blah, blah, blah.
This is an odd strategy since the defence, rather than the prosecution, normally introduces evidence of insanity.
But then, everything about this case was odd -- the case was ultimately dropped not because Rahman is mad, but because prosecutors couldn't meet the time limit for bringing him to trial. Ah, the statute of limitations, the friend of defence counsel everywhere and, apparently, of prosecutors in Afghanistan.
So Karzai dodged a bullet, but Rahman's life was still on the line. Concerned by statements by some Afghan clerics and citizens that the people would "cut him into pieces," Rahman sought asylum and now is in Italy.
Rahman's freedom of religion is therefore more illusory than real, and that goes equally for anyone else who would dare to challenge Afghanistan's religion of tolerance. Even those Afghans who have always been Christian, as opposed to those who have converted, know better than to advertise their religion, preferring instead to conduct surreptitious ceremonies.
This is so despite the fact that the new Afghan Constitution, which was written and rewritten and rewritten again, guarantees that non-Muslims "are free to exercise their faith," and affirms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which ensures the right to freedom of religion, including the "freedom to change [one's] religion."
However, the Constitution also states that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam." Given that Karzai has ceded control of the judiciary to Islamic conservatives, that provision is inevitably interpreted as mandating death for apostates.
Afghanistan's freedom of religion, and with it its moral progress, is therefore in doubt. But before we get too sanctimonious about the treatment of infidels on the other side of the world, it's worth looking at the persecution of non-believers right here in North America.
People in Canada and the U.S. are free to convert to any religion they want, including some really far out ones. But unlike Afghanistan, the West only considers people infidels if they reject all religion and all belief in the supernatural. And those who do so are in for a rough ride, especially in the U.S., the country that ostensibly liberated Afghanistan.
According to a University of Minnesota survey in the April issue of the American Sociological Review, atheists are the least trusted minority in the U.S., less trusted than Muslims, recent immigrants and gays and lesbians.
The survey suggests that many Americans still associate atheism with immorality, an association motivated by the old canard that ethics necessarily depends on religion, that you can't be good without God.
This is patently false: In addition to the existence of many morally upstanding atheists, American sociologist Phil Zuckerman notes that highly atheistic societies are much more likely to support education and gender equality and less likely to be plagued by poverty and violent crime.
Nevertheless, the belief persists, and survey author Penny Edgell concludes that "today's atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and Communists have played in the past -- they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society."
This belief evidently permeates the highest echelon of American society given that George Bush the Elder said in 1987 that atheists shouldn't be considered patriots or citizens.
People, including presidential candidates, are, of course, free to believe whatever they want. But the deep distrust of infidels in American society has resulted in atheists receiving some very unequal treatment in law.
Perhaps most egregiously, atheists (and their children) have suffered at the hands of family courts. In an essay that will appear in the May issue of the New York University Law Review, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh provides evidence that courts have discriminated against atheists in custody disputes.
Volokh, who also runs the insightful weblog The Volokh Conspiracy, documents examples of anti-atheist discrimination in 17 states (including New York, Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and many southern states) and the District of Columbia.
In each case, the courts considered religious instruction to be in the best interests of the children, and consequently the parent providing the more religious upbringing was granted custody of the children. By that standard, atheists, who provide no religious instruction, don't stand a chance.
The laws of several U.S. states, including the home states of the last three presidents -- Arkansas and Texas -- also maintain provisions that ban atheists from holding public office. These provisions, which are more offensive than anything in the Constitution of Afghanistan, undoubtedly violate the U.S. Constitution, but they remain on the books.
Canada has, mercifully, been more accommodating toward those with no religion (according to Zuckerman, between 19 and 30 per cent of Canadians are atheist, compared with just three per cent of Americans.) But we're not entirely without anti-atheist sentiments.
Canadian family courts have also accepted that religious instruction is in the best interests of children, and high school kids who attempt to start atheist groups have faced opposition from school boards.
Atheist associations have also typically had a much harder time obtaining tax-exempt status than religious organizations, including the far-out ones. For example, the Humanist Association of Toronto, which educates people about secular humanism and also provides non-religious weddings and funeral services for members, did not receive tax-exempt status until 2004, after a lengthy battle with the federal government.
Now I'm not a big fan of granting tax-exempt status to any organization, but there's little reason to treat theistic and atheistic groups unequally.
On the contrary, by offering atheists less protection of the law, we diminish our respect for the principle of freedom of religion, or, more broadly construed, freedom of conscience.
Such freedoms exist, not just to protect institutionalized religions, but to protect individual beliefs concerning, as Douglas Adams had it, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.
Upon exercising this freedom, people will conclude that the answer is one god, or 20 gods, or no gods. Those who choose no gods might earn the wrath of a religious society, but that's all the more reason to ensure that their freedom is protected, since those whose beliefs are supported by society are in no need of protection.
Our commitment to religious freedom can therefore be measured by our willingness to guarantee protection for atheists. And given the importance of freedom of religion, without which all other rights and freedoms become meaningless, the greatness and moral progress of a nation can truly be measured by how it treats its infidels.
pmcknight@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
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