Image of Giles Corey being crushed to death by rocks September 19, 1692 at Salem Witch Trials. Others were hanged. Rock execution image can be found at Lane Memorial Library site at http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/biog/pooroldgoodycole.htm
Photo of Three Stooges from The Alaska Standard website, photo from early 1930s, Columbia films.
Once again, Islam needs reformation. You should have no doubt this is necessary immediately for the sake of Islam’s modern populations. The world outside can’t do this for Islam in a meaningful way.
Let’s start with The American First Amendment, what it is not and what it is. Islam does not allow the concepts therein. Islam has a hard time with liberal ideas in general. We could use examples other than the American First Amendment, but let’s stick with that for the sake of argument.
Sometimes, when trying to imagine Islam with respect to The First Amendment, I feel I am watching an old episode of The Three Stooges with Larry, Curly and Moe. With Islam, I imagine, Larry is Freedom of Religion, Curly is Freedom of Speech, and Moe is the Right to Peacefully Assemble to Petition Government for a Redress of Grievances.
Using this imaginary scene, it’s easy to see why freedoms are not catching on for Islam yet.
Each freedom is poking the other in the eye, knocking the next senseless, or pushing neighbors down the nearest stairwell. This isn’t too far from the truth, if you ask me,
Using this imagery to think, in fact, I kind of feel sorry for Islamic populations. They have plenty to pray, complain and gather about, but they just can’t get a break from one another. They keep blaming the rest of the world, but they have themselves to blame over and over and over again.
On that same note, incidentally, Islamic academics and students are increasingly, in 2010, trying to change the history of free expression, as the West understands and learns it. I was shocked when seeing the entry for Wikipedia here, where you should examine the footnotes and references quite closely. Notice the paper noted in #13:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins_and_academic_freedom
Seems history is being rewritten a bit, no?
So, regarding the American rights to free expression, the First Amendment considers not just public media, but also other means by which people tend to express themselves. That is, through protest and religion. This goes back considerably in Amercian history, well before the founding of the U.S.
I poked around the colonial writers of the American east. I found the 1702 work of Cotton Mather, who was then living in a society which practiced slavery and burned accused witches. He is today known, among other things, for supporting the Salem Witch Trials.
In one of his works, "Wonders of the Invisible World," which was published in 1693, he supported the trials, attended and recorded them. Here is one section of his writing from the scene:
"The Court being sensible, that the Testimonies of the Parties Bewitched use to have a Room among the Suspicions or Presumptions, brought in against one Indicted for Witchcraft, there were now heard the Testimonies of several Persons, who were most notoriously Bewitched, and every day Tortured by Invisible Hands, and these now all charged the Spectres of G. B. to have a share in their Torments. At the Examination of this G. B. the Bewitched People were grievously harassed with Preternatural Mischiefs, which could not possibly be Dissembled; and they still ascribed it unto the Endeavours of G. B. to kill them..." http://etext.lib.virginia.edu
I use this small section only to show that Mr. Mather was not what we could call a progressive man back then, or today. He thinks he is describing works of evil spirits, the devil. In the world he walked, there was enough freedom of speech to let him write the above buffoonery, but it was not solid enough a right to protect the accused. Who believes evil witches, anyway?
Many of the accused were hanged, one guy crushed to death by the weight of large rocks. He refused to confess to a crime.
The reason I bring this up is, first, such societies almost never encourage freedom of expression. They are ready to believe rumors and conspiracy theories, as was Mr. Mather. We today tend to view him and his paranoid neighbors, though, as products of the late 1600s. Mather was one of the more intelligent writers of the day, mind you. At least two in the Mather family were students at Harvard and Yale, as the colleges existed then.
Second, backward as they were in these witchhunts, Mr. Mather shocked me by criticizing Islam, as he then perceived it:
"Having arrived thus far, I will here make a Pause, and acknowledge the shine of Heaven on our Parts of the Earth, and in the Improvements of our modern Philosophy.
To render us the more sensible hereof, we will propose a few Points of the Mahometan Philosophy, or Secrets reveal'd unto Mahomet, which none of his Followers, who cover so much of the Earth at this Day, may dare to question.
The Winds; 'tis an Angel moving his Wings that raises them...The thick-skull'd Prophet sets another Angel at work for Earthquakes; he is to hold so many Ropes tied unto every Quarter of the Globe: and if a City, or Mountain, or Tower, is to be overturned, then he tugs harder at the Pulley...
May our Devotion exceed the Mahometan as much as our Philosophy!"
(Colonial American Writing, edited by Roy Harvey Pearce, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, June of 1964.)
I don't want to make too, too much of these passages, because they are from a relatively unenlightened age. It was before the founding of the U.S., before the Civil War, before the end of slavery. Battles with Indian tribes were still common.
However, Mather here is satirizing Islam. He seemed to understand he was discussing something far outside his realm. He calls Islam here a philosophy, not, in this quote, a religion, per se.
My point is that, even then, at least some observers did not think they were observing a mere religion with Islam, and said so without hesitation. It was something outside religion to some in the 1600s.
How is it Mather, without even our First Amendment yet, felt comfortable in writing this while, in 2010, the world's Moslems fear such speech within their own societies? Such freedom of expression would likely get them killed within Islam and their actions against one another remind us of this constantly.
Here in the United States, I've met many from Islamic countries who have left Islam, but still fear it highly. Now outside the grip of Islam, they display some of the most violent hatred of it that one will ever see of any ideology in the United States.
It's a larger hatred of religion than many of us understand. It's the hatred of former Moslems for Islam. I am almost more afraid of the rebels than I am of the multitudes of terrorists; the rebels won't hide forever. Today's Islamic apologists will eventually have to face them in some respect.
Given free expression, I want to include more documentation from Islam's rebels. I know, Free Speech does not cure all ills, but we can continue the discussion.
By Lurene Gisee
October 2, 2010
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