The Stick

Tolerance is a stick with two ends

Majority of population in Western countries are disillusioned by the fact that Muslim population living in their country are mostly secular, peaceful people who do not harm others. Being a minority minding their business, they gain natural sympathy of the majority. This is acceptable and nothing is wrong with that, however it reflects a partial truth.

When numbers are reversed, and muslims become majority, they become part of political power granted by their religion. One good example to support this argument is Turkey. In the past decade or so the Islamist political party in power started to challenge and erode secularism, established a police state with biased judiciary and began to jail or intimidate seculars. Islam is a political ideology as well as a religion, therefore this shouldn't surprise us.

However this view also explains why non-religious populations, who were trapped in those countries are worried. Lets be clear, we cannot call this Islamophobia, as this is not an irrational fear we can mock.

If you are a non-religious person, living in a religious country is demoralising and degrading to say the least, because you will be oppressed one way or another if you choose to express yourself.

If you express your disinterest in religion and don’t abide by its restrictions in ways to draw attention, you can be intimidated or punished by mobs, you could even be prosecuted for that. This is true for countries such as Sauidi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. Penalties are different but principles are the same.

Majority in religious countries show less tolerance to you than we show to them in the West where they are in minority. Numbers matter.

Ultimately this is the bit Western liberals are missing, they have partial perspective because either they don't have first hand experience of living in a religious society or they lack deeper knowledge on history and on the nature of religions, or they don't push their intellectual capacity hard enough to see the big picture, because they focus on their lives in the West.

Liberty In The Age of Terror

In his book, Liberty In the Age of Terror, “Our societies are under attack”, says A.C. Grayling, “not only from the threat of terrorism, but also from our governments’ attempts to fight that threat by reducing freedom in our own societies- think the 42-day detention controversy, CCTV surveillance, increasing invasion of privacy, ID Cards, …”

Freedom to criticise or ridicule religions remains in governments’ or media’s watch list.

In the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo massacre, many news outlets shy away from publishing the controversial images of the paper’s satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Joining the bandwagon, we see progressive apologists, some of them being non-religious, claiming religion based terror is nothing to do with religions, but caused by “environment”, “discrimination” or “mind loss” therefore we should continue to respect religions.

Any criticism against religions, particularly Islam, is sneered upon with “Islamophobia” or “hate speech” suspicion. The issue has almost become a taboo, and the architect of this taboo is nobody but us.

We became victims of our own fears, in the end we let hard-won liberties our ancestors built with centuries long struggle demolished. Is this really who we are?

I hope Humanity regains its sanity and remembers the idea that matters most, freedom of expression. Loosing that would mean loosing everything.

Now grab your pen, and show the world, people who sacrificed their lives for Liberty mattered.

Je Suis Charlie

Fairness

In 2002, My bother and I, in a hotel room in Canberra, were listening to Turkish radio. The commentator announced “land-slide victory” of Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) winning the Turkish general elections. I cannot forget that grim expression on my brother’s face, he said “This is the End”.

Further back, I migrated to Australia in 1989, quarter a century ago, not because I had fascination with its natural beauties, and welcoming people, which are undoubtedly true, but because I felt I had irreconcilable and painful differences between my philosophy and the one imposed by the mainstream Turkish culture I had grown up with.

Regardless, I continued to admire Turkish people who shared similar values with me and who are sufficiently educated and wise to follow a more tolerant and humanistic life view, through which a strong sense of “fairness” remained the common denominator.

There is a beach in Gündoğan Bodrum, one my favorite spots in Turkey. It has a picturesque mosque standing next to beaches, and cafes, where waves of gentle Aegean Sea, caressing its white walls.

I like that mosque. It is tiny, loveable, simple, rural and unpretentious. But it is more than a mosque. Surrounded by beaches where tourists sunbath, and cafes where you have a beer to enjoy the sunset, for me, this area is the Nirvana of Humanity.

A pious Muslim praying inside, and I am, being an Atheist,  sipping my beer in a neighbouring café, without bothering each other. Sharing the same air, being fair to each other. This was the Turkey I would never have left behind.

This Sunday there are local elections in Turkey. These elections are critical, a moment of truth, a great reckoning.

Either my compatriots will re-elect a corrupt, vicious, incompetent, intolerant, arrogant, divisive dictator or they say “enough is enough”, crash open the iron gate they let built twelve years ago, and rediscover their centuries old virtues, tolerance and fairness.

It is in this perspective I am with virtuous people of Turkish land, religious or not. So long as we remain faithful to “fairness”, a much better future will be ours and our children’s.

As always, there may be something to learn from bad dreams. But nightmares are nightmares. Life is real and meant to be beautiful.

Say NO to Indoctrination

Please don't indoctrinate me with religion. Teach me to think for myself.

I would like to draw your attention to the word indoctrinate. Indoctrination is filling a child’s mind with one-sided subjective opinions that do not rely on facts. I guess we may reach an agreement to qualify those opinions and where they originate from as non-factual, mystical, spiritual or supernatural. I don’t mean necessarily they are bad or evil please note.

Influencing someone with non-factual opinions may not always be harmful. If someone believes fairies that glow at night in their backyard, or they believe star signs, or they believe a soul, or a spirit to grant everlasting life these seem pretty harmless and we should tolerate them.

Also if someone takes only peaceful messages from a religion and ignores the evil parts such as disrespecting or killing others, then perhaps pains religions inflicted in human beings throughout history may be set aside; we then may consider such benign realisations as cultural nuances, embrace those individuals, say “good for you”, and move on.

But it is one thing that a child believes in Santa Claus, it is another thing if you teach them other religions are evil and he should one day blow himself up and kill as many as possible from the other side for reserving a good seat in heaven.

Or it is one thing to teach peaceful attributes of a religion and respect for others and it is another thing to inflict hostility in the heart of an innocent child by labelling all other religions as fake and their believers inferior.

Or it could be another thing to teach a child all religions and atheism in the context of ethics and objective history along with science and theory of evolution, and eventually let them decide whichever religion to believe or not to believe anything at all.

The issue here is not about legislating how parents should raise their kids but whether world nations should any longer endorse religious indoctrination through publicly or privately funded faith schools.

In Britain recently the UK Government passed a law to abolish public funding of faith schools. This is an important step if we want to build peaceful democratic societies.

This is also a clear message from a Western government on the dangers of sponsoring faiths schools, which often singlehandedly indoctrinate kids with hatred and cause painful segregation inside the larger civil society they breed within.

Hence this is in my opinion the way the message on the billboard should be read.

Children are pillars of our future. Can we afford to let them be raised in intolerance?

Put another way do we need to tolerate the intolerant?

Just as we don’t indoctrinate children with racism and holocaust denial we should not indoctrinate them with subjective one-sided religious thinking, fear mongering, bigotry and hatred for others.

It is wrong.

I think anyone with common sense, religious or non-religious alike, would see merits of these arguments.

Global Citizens

in Google+ Nick Bauman wrote:

"About 2500 years ago in a smaller seaport town in the eastern Mediterranean, a proposal was submitted to the city council by a man, a lesser noble, in a citystate which was facing its greatest existential threat. His name was Themistocles and he was worried about the impending invasion of his country by the great Persian army led by Xerxes. This plan was a plan of community self-sacrifice where the state would sponsor a project joined by all his countrymen to fight the Persians. They would use the silver from a collectively held mine to build a fleet of warships to challenge Persia at sea. The effort ended up being a great leveling of Athenian society, leading to what we recognize as the first democratic state in the world. The wealthy gave up some of their own wealth, too, to fund the project. The citizens gave up their very homes to fight. By the end, while the Persians were sent packing, Athens was besieged and the wealthy members of the city opened their stores to feed and shelter many of the displaced citizen army."

One of the positive effects of the GFC is, it brought us, “Global Citizens” together. We are living in an era of “Global Citizenship”. National Citizenship is dying.

We no longer should talk about “American-way”, “Australian way”. These memes are static stereotypes that lost meaning. Arrogant, racist, empty and irrelevant, they impose limitations in our thinking, they wrap heavy chains around our intellectual freedom. 

We should instead talk about “human values”, values that made us, like wisdom,  justice, care for environment and compassion; these are universal and limitless human values.

First and foremost the revolution ignited by “occupy” foot-soldiers made us to face a new reality. It is ‘us’ Global Citizens, and only up to us to create a better world. We now all have a shared responsibility in this. The moment has come and it is not something we should or can avoid, but something to embrace and work on.

We need to see that our survival does not necessarily depend on “fitness” criteria defined by individualism. Perhaps after all it is no longer “survival of the fittest” but it ought to be “survival of the wisest”. History brought us to face a new level of reality check.

We are New Athenians and the New Athens is the Globe.

Dublin Declaration on Secularism and the Place of Religion in Public Life

By MICHAEL NUGENT


On Sunday 5 June 2011, the World Atheist Convention in Dublin discussed and adopted the following declaration on secularism and the place of religion in public life. Please discuss and promote it with your friends and colleagues, and if you are a a member of an atheist, humanist or secular group, please discuss and promote it with your fellow members, and with the media and politicians.

1. Personal Freedoms
(a) Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are private and unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others.
(b) All people should be free to participate equally in the democratic process.
(c) Freedom of expression should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others. There should be no right ‘not to be offended’ in law. All blasphemy laws, whether explicit or implicit, should be repealed and should not be enacted.

2. Secular Democracy
(a) The sovereignty of the State is derived from the people and not from any god or gods.
(b) The only reference in the constitution to religion should be an assertion that the State is secular.
(c) The State should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason, and not religious faith, to evidence.
(d) Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion and its absence, favouring none and discriminating against none.
(e) Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.
(f) Membership of a religion should not be a basis for appointing a person to any State position.
(g) The law should neither grant nor refuse any right, privilege, power or immunity, on the basis of faith or religion or the absence of either.

3. Secular Education
(a) State education should be secular. Religious education, if it happens, should be limited to education about religion and its absence.
(b) Children should be taught about the diversity of religious and nonreligious philosophical beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
(c) Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.

4. One Law For All
(a) There should be one secular law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
(b) The law should not criminalise private conduct because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral, if that private conduct respects the rights and freedoms of others.
(c) Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question.

Reference:
Dublin Declaration on Secularism and the Place of Religion in Public Life

Arab uprise

What does democracy mean to ordinary Egyptians?

As mobs fall into each other’s throat, looters ransack shops and houses; democracy and freedom resonate in the air. Sure, get rid of Mubarak the dictator yes, but then what?

Neither Egypt nor any other Arab state has democratic traditions. Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party movement has governed most, a degenerated socialist club established in the Soviet era that quickly turned into ugly and corrupt dictatorships, anything but socialist. Of course they had to start one way another you would think, a democratic process just like French did in 1789.

Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party emblem

But there is one crucial difference between French revolution and the Arab uprise. Powerful secular elite designed political process and drove the French Revolution by enormous intellectual vigour despite turmoil and violence. Evolving towards democracy wasn’t easy as they suffered the eras of Terror and Napoleonic Dictatorship but in the end intellectual throttle paid off.

Whereas today’s Arab uprise in the Middle East lacks genuinely pluralistic and sufficiently organised democratic ideas backed by a powerful yet non-existent middle class. They simply don’t have it. The only organised political power watching and waiting on its prey seems to be radical Islam, and therefore radical Islam will have the greatest chance to seize power subject to US intervention.

US, the architect state of ‘moderate Islam’ policy against radicalism is now caught aghast in premature timing of events and unprecedented ripple effect of Arab uprising. The chaos opens a large window of opportunity for radical Islam to exploit. After Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, why not Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? It is no longer a distant prospect. An enormous power vacuum is rapidly sweeping the region that surely enough traditionally sound, legitimate yet feeble democratic institutions will not be able to fill.

Economic downturn, endless war in Afghanistan, endless violence in Iraq, rise of fundamentalism in Pakistan, nuclear-ambitious Iran, and now the Arab uprise. The West and US in particular is in real trouble in terms of their crippled capacity to intervene not to mention even if they do given their track record it would unlikely produce results. Yet now that oil reserves are at greater risk and Israeli-Arab peace deal in jeopardy they simply can’t ignore the turmoil. The West needs to get on top of the situation despite their limited ability to engage.

Drinks

This is a warning for secular friends who still think there is such a thing called 'moderate Islam' and therefore Islamic lifestyle can be tolerated in a modern democratic society.

Saturday night.

We watched “Black Swan” in the Dendy cinema theatre near Opera House. Then we walked up to harbour banks where Opera Bar stands.

This is probably one of the best places on Earth to have a drink in late afternoon or at night. Lean your back casually on inclined stone chairs, facing the Sydney City skyline, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Harbour Bridge, or the Opera House in opposite direction.

http://www.operabar.com.au/

Beautiful women and men at almost any age, tourists, hundreds of people enjoying their drinks, gently rocking, dancing, laughing, chatting. Nobody is disturbing anyone, no one feels intimidated, a pleasant, peaceful atmosphere.

My eyes caught a couple, a semi bearded man and a woman wearing a headscarf watching the bubbly crowd below from a terrace with expressionless dim eyes.

What were they thinking? 

Islam bans drinking alcohol and restricts women to express their sexual identity. To them the crowd must be committing a mortal sin punishable by burning in Hell. 

During the last decade or so Turkey, the country I was born has been under the rule of pro-Islamic governments formed by AKP (The Justice and Development Party). Since they came to power in 2002 AKP partizans have been busy gradually transforming country’s secular traditions towards an Islamic lifestyle.

AKP and followers call themselves ‘moderate Islamist’. 

Recently the AKP government declared that they are going to ban alcoholic beverages served in restaurants or in social gatherings such as art exhibitions, wedding ceremonies and so forth. A person until the age of 24 will not be entitled to buy or drink alcohol, and if such a person is present in a social occasion, for instance in a wedding ceremony no one in that gathering will be able to drink regardless of their age. Yes you heard that right, no one.

And they call this ‘moderate Islam’, leaving a tiny window of freedom and tolerance for secular lifestyle (ie. you can still buy or drink alcohol on your own if you are older than 24, at least for now), whereas religious lifestyle is promoted and allowed in its full right.

For the record Islam by definition cannot be moderate (ironically this is the only point I agree with Islamic fundamentalists). Islam is a collection of static unchangeable decrees descendent from God. You are not allowed to alter them or apply them conditionally. 

So in a secular democracy Islam either needs to be kept in people’s personal spheres strictly outside of politics, or else it may gradually evolve towards forming medieval-style theocratic governances like in Iran, Afghanistan.

Anything in between is sheer hypocrisy, a painful, discriminatory and blunt lie. But evidence suggests that AKP has an agenda. Instead of an abrupt Islamic revolution like Iranians did, they would gradually transform the country towards a totalitarian religious regime. 

To a great majority of people living in Australia or In the West where Islamists are a tiny minority 'moderate Islam' myth might seem like a plausible argument. 

The presumption of 'we shall respect them' and in return 'they shall respect us'. 

Well it all depends on numbers.

Hate Speech

Until recently the following provocative banner was kept on the web site of Sarah Palin, the infamous pro-gun, bigoted extreme right wing US politician.

click to enlarge

"Don't retreat, instead RELOAD!" was Palin's battle-cry, asking voters to do away with Democrat congress persons.(1)

"Today the United States Democrat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords survived a gunshot to the head after a gunman opened fire at an event she was hosting outside a Tucson, Ariz., grocery store. As of this moment, 6 out of the 18 (or 19) wounded have died, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge."(2)

"The problem of hate speech seems to set two fundamental commitments of liberal democracies against each other. While it seems obvious that we should condemn speech that conveys or worse incites hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender or some other shared characteristic, our commitment to freedom of expression seems to ask us to put up with it.

In the United States the courts are applying a guarantee found in a constitutional bill of rights: the American guarantee of 'freedom of speech' found in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Very little escapes the protection of the First Amendment altogether. There are only a few categories that First Amendment law recognises to be 'unprotected' or of very low value. The 'unprotected' categories have traditionally encompassed 'true threats', defamation (though that has since been qualified') and abusive language (or 'fighting words').

The First Amendment exception for 'fighting words' turns on the likelihood of violent response and the exception for 'threats' applies only to 'true threats' and not to 'political hyperbole'.

Hate speech laws have existed in various forms in Australia for well over a decade. Unlike other countries, such as the United States and Canada, they have not faced constitutional hurdles to their existence. The general acceptance of hate speech laws in Australia opens intellectual space for the exploration of a range of interesting questions regarding the laws' operation, the underlying values they pursue and the context within which hate speech is occurring."(3)

In my view hate speech should not be protected if it inflicted violent behaviour, and such restrictions should cover entire spectrum of political and civil organisations such as religious organisations, faith schools, associations, societies, and political parties. Hate speakers should be fully held accountable before Law which should decree sufficient penalties for the damage speakers inflicted upon the society.

References:
(1) Sarah Palin prays for peace and justice; for congresswoman she ordered the assassination of
(2) The shooting of a Congresswoman
(3) Hate Speech and Freedom of Speech in Australia
(4) FDL firedoglake

Orhan Pamuk and his oriental melancholia

Turkish author Orhan Pamuk wrote an article in the New York Review of Books named The Fading Dream of Europe.

This is what I posted in response:

Historical events should be evaluated in their circumstantial context in order to understand their true nature and intent, only then we might be able to make a fair judgement about their implications. Pamuk’s article unfortunately lacks that, it is a one-sided, narrow, cynical and grossly melancholic interpretation of history partly influenced by his Orientalist views we are familiar to see in his novels and partly his resentment towards the backlash of an alleged Nationalist plot against his political views.

I don’t agree that Turkish people were called upon to embrace and even imitate a rosy-pink European dream just for the purpose of legitimizing Atatürk’s reforms. Such a limited view demands us to believe that these reforms were hollow imitations, lacking substance and vigor, however nothing can be further than the truth.

Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 on the wrecks of Ottoman Empire and Atatürk’s reforms were derived from the newly born state’s secular constitution. At the centre of these reforms we see Secularism as its core value and a desire to establish an egalitarian society in which women and men have equal rights including the right to vote and the right for being elected as representatives of the state.

It didn't matter whether the Secularism was born in Europe or elsewhere. Whereas the circumstances in which it was born and its context mattered for Atatürk.

Secularism is a product of the Age of Enlightenment in which reason was advocated as the primary source of legitimacy and authority. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, and a strong reliance in rationality and science.

Enlightenment had been a natural movement evolved in the dialectical context of European history, it didn’t drop from the sky like a meteoroid. You can not point to a single historical event as its sole source. French Revolution happened to be its most dramatic and well know realization.

The central issue Pamuk is circumventing is the clash of Islam and Secularism we see today. Islam contradicts Enlightenment values by proposing a political, social and judicial ideology of its own relying solely on divine authority as opposed to reason.

To a large extent Muslim migrant populations in Europe while enjoying and taking advantage of freedom and tolerance European democracies provide, don’t show similar levels of tolerance or respect to the values of greater society they live in.

In the name of multiculturalism most Muslims continue to live within enclosed ghettos. Their realisation of truth is determined by Imams who teach them intolerance towards views who oppose or don’t share their absolute divine rhetoric written in the Koran.

Religious rhetoric dictates men use their power to suppress women and undermine their role they could otherwise play in the society. Such gender power imbalance had been centerpiece of Atatürk’s reforms to confront.

Atatürk and liberated women of the secular Turkish Republic

The irony of Liberty is letting intolerance to breed despite not endorsing it. This is the puzzle the West has to solve without undermining core values of Enlightenment.

For the past eight years the Turkish Republic is governed by a pro-Islamic populist political party (AKP) who concealed their true intent behind a ‘Moderate Islam’ mask, slowly but surely marching towards their ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic presidential state. There are strong indications that this is the case. The AKP Government now controls judiciary system, put intellectuals, journalist, and politicians who oppose them in prison for three years without sufficient evidence to prosecute them.

Unfortunately what Pamuk is saying here is not so different to populist and anti-secular rhetoric of AKP.

I advise Mr. Pamuk to return to what he does, writing novels.

Revolution series

I am working on a series of digital drawings and paintings about 'revolution'.

This painting uses 'tricolor' theme from French Revolution, blood stains symbolises 'no pain, no gain' then we see uneasy incompleteness and miscalculation.

Tragedy of chaos, blood stains and unfinished wall slogan 'R' of 'revolution', the drama of a young revolutionary whose life was taken during Paris riots.

Graffiti of Revolution, shows vitality and enthusiasm of revolutionaries..

Power of a painting

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.

Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace.

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. Commissioned in 1955 by Nelson Rockefeller, and placed on loan to the United Nations by the Rockefeller estate in 1985,[18] the tapestry is less monochromatic than the original, and uses several shades of brown.

On February 5, 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations.

On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers.

Some diplomats, however, in talks with journalists claimed that the Bush Administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq.

compiled from Wikipedia