Freedom Of Speech Must Not Protect Religious Intolerance

In response to our post about the Anglican Church's opposition to Britains's pending Racial and Religious Hate Bill, a reader from Canada writes:

We share the reader's concern for protecting freedom of speech in the UK, and we wish we'd done a better job distinguishing Eurochristianism from its more benign, Puritan-influenced, North American cousin.

Having said that, half a century after Europe's last and most massive genocide of Jews, and on the threshold of a Muslim onslaught, it should be apparent that the Europeans will not be able to preserve freedom of worship without setting limits on freedom of speech - particularly religious speech.

While it's frequently observed that America was founded on the principal of individual equality while blacks still suffered under slavery, it's less often noted that Europe tried something similar, based on the same Enlightenment principals (including freedom of worship), while Jews still suffered under the yoke of religious persecution. While Americans eventually acquiesced to the extention of freedom to blacks (thus arguably completing their passage to modernity), Europeans remained mired in Christianist Jew-hatred and eventually acquiesced to Jew-slaughter.

History has a way of repeating itself, and this time the Europeans are looking more like prey than predator. Enter the British bill, which promises to outlaw religious hate speech and could well serve as a model for a blood-soaked continent that still aspires to modernity. But if the bill is to be effective its definition of hate speech must include those ancient and retrograde portions of Islamic and Christian scripture that promote the hatred of non-believers. Problematic as this may be for traditionalists, Europe's alternative is embodied in the following quotes and picture:

“I don’t feel your pain. I don’t have any sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you’re a non-believer.”
-Mohammed Bouyen, murderer of Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh, to the victim's mother in court.

"First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt... And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity in order that God may see that we are Christians, and that we have not willingly tolerated or approved of such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of His Son and His Christians... Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. For they perpetrate the same things that they do in their synagogues. For this reason they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable... Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayerbooks and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more... God’s rage is so great against them that they only become worse and worse... To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden - the Jews."
-Martin Luther, from "On The Jews And Their Lies" (1543)

Children subjected to medical experiments in Auschwitz. Source: The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, Edited by Yitzhak Arad, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1990.

Home . Posted by Editor at November 7, 2005 04:49 PM . DFME's new internet address is www.dfme.org

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