Charlie Hebdo, a Beheaded Teacher and the Abuse of Free Speech

Could we possibly imagine a serious ethical and moral concept that would justify the killing of a person who, under the title of artistic creativity or political freedom of expression, albeit degrading to specific individuals or groups of people, expressed his conviction? Of course not. The cruel beheading of the teacher must be condemned. There are causal explanations, but there is no excuse.

However, the outrageous act that led to the teacher's death must not conceal the fact that the teacher has done wrong. Instead of using the blasphemous Muslim Muhammad cartoons of Charlie Hebdo as an example for the violation and abuse of the freedom of expression, he used them to justify and exemplify free speech, thereby triggering a misguided radical commit a political-religiously motivated murder.

The reactions to the French teacher's beheading by an Islamic fanatic prove once again, with a few exceptions, how inadequately educated even the "educated" people are among us and to what extent they lack the capacity for critical thinking.

It should be every educator's task to convey that freedom of expression is not absolute and, therefore, not unlimited. As in all other areas of human activity, free speech must be limited by the demands for the responsible exercise of human freedom. Elsewhere https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/03/the-crisis-of-morality.html I have outlined the connection between freedom and responsibility and have indeed made clear that both are only two sides of the same coin. We cannot think of freedom without responsibility, and responsibility is null and void if someone is not free to act. The liberty of man is thus about responsible freedom. Irresponsible freedom – arbitrariness, that is, to do what one will, manifesting itself in unrestricted ego-centrism – gives only the illusion of freedom. Whoever is a prisoner of his impulses and indifferent selfishness is not free; instead, he is taken hostage by his own morally deficient personality. 

 

From my essay on the Crisis of Morality: "True human freedom is finite freedom, limited by the conditions of social coexistence and the legitimate aspirations of all other individuals. We must not mistake freedom as independence from everything, but rather has to be considered as a choice to something."

From this quotation, it becomes clear that our responsibility as human beings extends to all other human beings and living organisms in every social and political context, as they acquire relevance regarding our actions. The boundary between our freedom and the freedom of every other person, expressed in a formal and universally applicable way, is what we commonly refer to as justice. 

 

Injustice is, therefore, the extension of one's freedom beyond the bounds of justice into the realm of the freedom of another, preventing them from making use of their choice. If we meet the demands of justice by our own will, we exercise ethical and moral righteousness. This declaration also lays down the legislature's enduring task to determine at any time and any place the legitimate claims for freedom of everyone in relevant existential contexts and to lay them down as statutes of law. The application of justice is dynamic since it must consider the development of human coexistence and the respective contexts, but the idea of justice is timeless and immutable. This truth also explains why positive legislation that loses sight of this normative principle can embody wrong - as has happened so often in history. 

 

Consequently, it becomes clear how completely irresponsible and thus (morally) unjustified any form of blasphemy is, since it affects the religious practitioner in his legitimate claim to freedom, without any justification for this interference. Even if a legal stipulation (either immoral or ill-conceived) would allow and thus lawfully condone blasphemy; it is never ethically justified to mock or ridicule other people's faith. Provoking Muslims by making fun of their Prophet Muhammad is just about as out of place as provoking Christians by mocking Jesus Christ in works of satire and art. In Paris, Charlie Hebdo was misguided and irresponsible when he taunted Islam's religious figures in his satirical magazine, as was Ms. Pamela Geller in her cartoon contest "Draw Muhammad" in Garland, Texas. In both cases, the agitators hid behind misinterpretations of the principle of free expression, whether in a misguided understanding of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or in neglect of the moral-philosophical ideal that dictates responsible action.

Genuinely free and entirely responsible people have long understood that responsible behavior is never merely exhausted by complying with the law. They comprehended that the legal provision lays down, first and foremost, the conditions that someone does not have to suffer, while moral responsibility determines what we must do and how we should act.

 

 

Can A Muslim Be President? Why Dr. Ben Carson Was Right

Dr. Ben Carson got caught off guard when he stated in an interview that he couldn't possibly envisage a Muslim exercising the office of the president of the U.S. Yet, in principle, his answer was right on. The outcry in American-Muslim and progressive quarters demonstrates once again the want for proper erudition on significant subject matters of political and cultural affairs in this country. 

Islam's limited appeal to open and democratic societies stem from the absence of a dogma separating religion from State. What is still missing in the Muslim creed is something similar to the two-swords or two-kingdoms doctrine that Christendom has articulated, reaching back to St. Augustine and his De Civitate Dei. 

When Augustine distinguished the Civitas Dei, the City of God, and the Civitas Terrena, the City of Men, or the Earthly City, he laid the foundation for the separation of Church and State.  By separating the heavenly and spiritual realm from the temporal earthly domain, Augustine paved the way for developing the dualist Christian doctrine that sees the Church control the spiritual kingdom, whereas, in contrast, the State is in charge of worldly affairs. While the spiritual realm stands hierarchically higher and allows the Church to influence politics and societal matters, the doctrine excludes the City of God's enforcement upon the City of Men. In other words, a Christian theocracy would collide with the dogmatic principles of the religion itself.  The wisdom of this corresponds with Jesus' sayings, "My kingdom is not of this world" (as stated in John 18:36) and "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21). On the basic tenet that the Kingdom of God awaits the Christian believer in a different world, one of divine and spiritual nature, it is proper and suitable to establish and submit to earthly authorities in Man's worldly existence. In the vein of this accepted wisdom of western thinking, the concept of the nation-state evolved and spread across the globe, with its original idea of a separation of powers and monopolization of force by secular political entities.
 
Unlike Christianity, Islam does not separate religion from politics. Attempts to reconcile Islamic tenets with secular governance are barely visible. Sharia law is prevalent, which means, strictly speaking, that divine law imposes upon earthly conditions. Jurisprudence in Islam is merely the expansion and application of Sharia onto worldly circumstances. In other words, in its most serious interpretation, Islam is a religion that aims to manifest God's kingdom in the realm of men. The objective is to establish the Ummah, the community of the true believers, of all Muslim people, sharing the same ideology, culture, and beliefs, dictated and held together by (divine) Sharia law. 

Islam must provide a straightforward solution to the separation of Church and State, religion and politics, a division between the ecclesiastical and civil sphere, and the divine and secular realms. Until accomplished, any representative of this religion will unavoidably be in collision with either his/her Muslim belief system or the political environment of a Christian-based society in which he/she wants to live. 

This circumstance does not impair or curtail religious freedom that Christian societies usually grant other faiths by allowing them the free exercise of their religion. As shown, the restriction to hold individual political offices emerges from the dogma of Islam's religion itself. 

However, particularly concerning the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the discussed aspect highlights the general problem of equal treatment of all religions in a political system based on Christianity's intellectual, cultural, and social heritage.  The question is how this heritage, as it reflects itself in the customs, laws, and cultural configurations of this very society, be upheld if religions whose traditions and spiritual principles are in many respects irreconcilable with the Christian host environment are considered equal? 

The question directed at Dr. Ben Carson could ensue consequences and entail a public debate that might lead far beyond the aspect of whether or not a Muslim could become president of the United States of America. It brings to the fore a weakness in the First Amendment that the founders didn't foresee when they adopted this amendment on December 15, 1791. 

We have to assume that in those early years of the new republic, the legislators could not have possibly anticipated that the Christian roots of this new nation would ever be discredited or put in doubt. And neither that somebody could seriously raise a question of the kind directed at Dr. Carson.