Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Monday, September 03, 2007
Sunday, September 02, 2007
The Taboo on Islamic Apostasy in the Netherlands:
The Ex-Muslim Committee under attack
By Floris van den Berg
A new act in the tragedy of Islam and the open society is now playing in Europe. In several European countries Ex-Muslim Committees are being or have been founded. There is a lot of resistance from both Muslims and non-Muslim naivists. In Germany, Mina Ahadi (www.minaahadi.com) takes the lead in the Ex-Muslim Committee (www.ex-mulime.de). Because of death threats, she is now in hiding. On September 11, 2007, the Committee of Ex-Muslims will be founded in the Netherlands. Though the Committee has not yet been established officially, a clash has already taken place. Ehsan Jami, a twenty-one-year-old member of the Dutch Labor Party (PvdA), publicly stated that he is an apostate (though not an atheist), and he criticized Islam and Mohammed. “Allah is a cruel and tyrannical god,” says Jami. Since he made these public statements, he has been threatened and recently has been molested by three young Muslims. Now Jami is in hiding under police protection. Jami and the Ex-Muslim Committee are being supported by the same intellectuals who backed Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh, foremost apostate Afshin Ellian (Fellow of CFI/Low Countries). And the same public figures oppose this initiative who earlier criticized Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh. They attack Jami with the same argument: it is the tone of the debate that they criticize because, these critics say, the tone of the statements against Islam is what angers Muslims. There is a strong plea for self-censorship not to criticize Islam. It is perfectly accepted by these critics to bash Christianity, but criticizing Islam is taboo. So, these public intellectuals side with the fundamentalists. They should realize that if the fundamentalists were to gain power, these naivists will also be their enemies. If the Netherlands were to become an Islamic theocracy—liberal Muslims, naivists, liberals and humanists all—would be severely restrained in their freedom. While the naivists clearly see the evils of Christianity, they are blind to the dark side of Islam. This reminds me of Sartre who claimed to be a humanist and an advocate of individual freedom and criticized religion and paternalism in France, but was blind for the evils of communism in the Soviet Union and China. The Dutch public intellectuals all know about Sartre, but apparently they have not learned his lesson.
What is much worse than this plea for self-censorship is that some of these relativistic, malicious naivists go so far as to say that Jami himself is to blame. It is a variant of the mini-skirt fallacy: “The woman who was raped was wearing a mini skirt, therefore she asked for it!” The public debate is turbid because, when the media ask (Dutch) Muslims about apostasy, the answer usually is that it is a private and individual choice. No Muslim says in public that apostasy should be punished with capital punishment. The same is said about homosexuality and Islam. Though publicly Muslims do not advocate violence against homosexuals, the number of incidents of homosexuals being molested by Muslims is rising rapidly. However, Jami did receive numerous (death) threats from Muslims because of his public statement of apostasy and his critique on Islam. Islam is a prison: if you happen to be born in it, you cannot escape. Being Muslim is a life-long sentence. Not a well-informed, autonomous, rational choice. Only if you are religiously naïve can you manage to neglect that there is a problem with leaving Islam even in a society as open as the Netherlands. Jami is a new voice in the choir of critics of Islam: Van Gogh was murdered, Hirsi Ali has left for the United States, Jami is in hiding.
Dutch freethought association De Vrije Gedachte has publicly backed the Ex-Muslim Committee. Even the less outspoken Humanistisch Verbond has welcomed the Ex-Muslim Committee. We humanists should hope that ex-Muslims will find their way to the freethinkers and humanists.
*Floris van den Berg is a philosopher and Executive Director of CFI Low Countries. He can be e-mailed at florisvandenberg@dds.nl.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
* Republicans, Go To ...
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Michael Shermer, publisher of SKEPTIC on The Colbert Report
"Being interviewed (if that’s what you can call it) by the inimitable Stephen Colbert was one of the wilder experiences of my career. I would imagine by now that most readers of eSKEPTIC know that Comedy Central’s hit series The Colbert Report features the comedian Stephen Colbert playing a role that is largely a parody of Bill O’Reilly and The O’Reilly Factor. Exaggerating the extremes of the conservative position on nearly everything, Colbert gets in his hilarious digs by arguing against liberals and liberalism. Well, words don’t do the show justice. You just have to see it. Anyway, I was on last Tuesday night. The show is taped in New York. Stephen was good enough to come by the green room (they’re never green, by the way) to introduce himself and explain, “You know, I play a complete idiot on the show, so just try to debunk me like you would any idiot.” (This introduction was very unusual. I’ve been on Larry King, Bill Maher, Oprah, and Dennis Miller, all several times each, and never once have any of them ever spoken to me before or after the show. The funniest was the first time I was on Dennis Miller’s show — I didn’t see him in person until they plopped me in the chair next to him during a commercial break, and when the cameras started rolling he turned to me and said “Sherms! How you doin’?”, like we were old pals going way back.) After Stephen left, the producer came in to review about a dozen questions that Stephen might ask, emphasizing that he might not ask any of them, or that he might start with the first one and then just wing it. That’s exactly what happened. The first question asked me to prove that I was the publisher of Skeptic magazine, and we were off and running from there, as you’ll see in this clip. It was also one of the more difficult interviews I’ve done as he is quite verbally facile, aggressive, and so damn funny that it was hard to stop laughing and try to get in just a couple of points. At least I didn’t throw water on him, which Richard Branson did the next night, another clip well worth watching (they are available on Comedy Central’s web page.)"
Stephen Colbert's Website
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