by Jay Hyun Kim

Divine intervention: some people see it as interference in their affairs, others as intercession on their behalf. Even a modern man unyielding in his rational perspective of the universe and dismissive of the irrationality of divinity in antiquity cannot ignore the perennial question that has always captivated mankind: the existence of god. The relationship between gods and men has defined what it means to be human. Every philosophy, religion or study of life has dealt with this issue in one way or another. In particular, Buddhism and Stoicism present not only a fascinating contrast but also a remarkable overlap in their respective approaches in reclaiming life. The Buddhists regard the so-called ‘fate’ as a common misconception of what is perfectly logical, the law of causality. Simply put, a cause brings about an effect; an action produces a reaction. Therefore, in actuality, we are in control of our lives. There is no need to fear unpredictable outcome based on divine intervention or capricious interference from fate. On the other hand, the Stoics acknowledge the presence of Fate or Fortune (Fortuna) in mortal lives. However, they teach the student how to overcome it through the power of philosophy.

The gift of human intellect to contemplate on the divine elements and extrapolate the meaning of human existence from them has been utilized by only a handful of men, most of them philosophers. This is precisely the reason why Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations cherishes the sublime experience of the one investigating the divine realm:

“To men immersed in day and night in these meditations comes understanding of the truth pronounced by the god at Delphi, that the mind should know itself; and there comes also the perception of its union with the divine mind, the source of its inexhaustible joy. For contemplation of the power and nature of the gods spontaneously kindles in human beings a passion to attain immortality like theirs; the soul, when it discerns how all things in the universe are linked one with another by a chain of interlocked destined causes, a process which is governed by reason and intelligence and renews itself to all eternity, begins to nourish the conviction that it could not be true that its own life is just limited to this brief span upon earth.”

One of the most pressing questions to philosophers from the antiquity was: “Are human affairs inherently subject to divine intervention?” By studying the universe and its operation under divine supervision, philosophers hoped to learn more about human nature grounded on a firm belief that human nature was a part of universe as a whole . Naturally, understanding the divine role in mortal lives is essential to happiness. People cannot predict whether the gods will be favorable to them or not. This uncertainty engenders a constant fear in their lives. As a result, countless cults and religious institutions were established in antiquity to provide some assurance to people that they can win divine favor, however whimsical it maybe .

On the other hand, various philosophers endeavored to liberate people from the fear of the unknown which is directly linked to the fear of death. This line of thought gradually leads to a psychological habit of mankind to attribute anything illogical or inexplicable to the divine sphere. In defining human life in the universal framework, men naturally give birth to the concept of Fate, a divine, mysterious force that shapes and determines the course of mortal lives. Then, we blame all our undesirable events as ‘misfortunes’ dispensed by an evil and cruel God. Some of us fall into despair and surrender to this irresistible and unfathomable entity. But on the other hand, we have an unquenchable thirst for favorable divine intervention. We pray, we hope, we believe, and we expect that some supernatural force will mend things and bring us closer to ultimate happiness. To realize this sincere wish, we engage in various activities that occupy our lives (religion, philosophy, poetry, art, music, sports, love, friendship, family, wealth, honor, prestige, power, etc.) In the end, human happiness cannot be found without making sense of the divine intervention in human affairs.

The Buddhist understanding of life teaches us that the universal principle to which all living beings are subject can be most aptly described as the law of causality (karma). It explains that a cause simply brings about an effect, and this principle applies to all human affairs regardless of time and place. Therefore, what one has done brings about what one is now (past to present); what one does now brings about what one will be (present to future). Thus, so called ‘divine intervention’ or ‘Fate’ is simply a mechanism through which the law of causality operates. Buddhist thought admits that for most people it is difficult to trace this chain of events in their lives to understand the present, past, and future. Hence, such ignorance induces them to subscribe to the notion of divine intervention and suffering arises from the inescapable idea that human affairs are out of one’s control. Therefore, Buddhist spiritual cultivation focuses on nurturing one’s ability to generate good karma through thought, speech, and action. Once the practitioner has purified his bad karma and is steadfast in performing good deeds, he contemplates on the universal truth that even the vicious cycle of suffering (samsara) can be transcended. The cycle of samsara is the ceaseless suffering one undergoes when he is still subject to the law of causality (karma). However, when he has fully realized through his non-dualistic lens that there is no discrimination between good and bad, he is freed from the cycle of samsara and thus is liberated from suffering. Buddhism through logical reasoning demonstrates that what we in our ignorance see as fate or divine intervention is in reality a consequence of our own actions. Once we realize that our lives simply operate under the universal law of causality, we are resolved from the fear of death and no longer view ourselves as powerless in control of our lives. Instead, we become responsible for our own actions, and happiness becomes something that is a product of our own behavior.

In Stoic thought, human beings are integral members of the universe (cosmos), and human nature is a part of the nature of the universe. Furthermore, human happiness is living according to nature. Now , the most characteristic feature of human nature is virtue. It is the perfect quality of the mind. Since the mind perceives everything and its impression dictates all human emotions and opinions, the mind is the seat of human happiness. Virtue is the perfect quality of the mind. Philosophy is a cultivation of virtue. Therefore, a man of virtue is happy. The Stoics also concede that many things which we pursue in life with passion are properties of Fortune. It also follows that they are subject to her whim, and therefore the Stoics label them as ‘preferred indifferences’ and instead focus on virtue which is the only true possession of men. The Stoic understanding of human nature is directly correlated to Stoic ethics which always encourages its students to strive for what is actually in their control. The Stoic sage is a truly happy man because he has withdrawn himself from all the distractions and indifferences which haunt other men and has cultivated virtue, the only prerequisite for happiness. Seneca, in his dialogue portraying the ideal Stoic sage, emphasizes the power of philosophy in making a firm stance against the ceaseless onslaughts of Fortune:

“The wise man is not subject to injury. Therefore, it does not matter how many weapons are thrown at him since none can pierce him. Just as certain stones are so hard they are impervious to iron, and adamant cannot be cut or split or worn away, but actually blunts whatever impinges on it; just as some things cannot be consumed by fire, but even when engulfed by flames retain their shape and hardness; just as certain cliffs, jutting into the sea, break the force of the waves, and though battered for untold ages show no signs of their fury; so the mind of the wise man is unyielding, and has acquired such a degree of power as to make it as safe from injury as the things I have mentioned.”

To the Stoics, Fortune (i.e. divine intervention) was not so much a perpetual enemy of mankind as a worthy opponent who puts the philosopher’s virtue and strength of character to test . The relationship between virtue and fortune in the Stoic system of thought reflects the conventional theology at the time in Greece and Rome where gods were worshipped based on the common belief that divine beings constantly intervened in human affairs. In a way, the Stoics were trying to transcend the divine intervention and through philosophy transform themselves into gods. For , Seneca proudly proclaims that a true Stoic sage rivals the gods and differs from them only that he is limited in time. Stoicism, unlike Buddhism, recognizes the role of Fate (Fortuna) in human affairs but reminds us that we can overcome divine intervention through cultivation of virtue and ethical life style. Philosophy as a whole becomes the antidote for fear of death.

What is strikingly similar in these two schools of thought is the emphasis on mental fortitude in face of Fortune (i.e. divine intervention): the Buddhists call it spiritual cultivation, the Stoics call it virtue. Either way, only the true master of his mind can call himself happy. Of course, Buddhism and Stoicism are part of a perennial tradition of humanity that seeks an escape from divine intervention. Whether one spends his lifetime constructing a shelter from fate built on wealth, power, and prestige or cultivates invulnerability of the mind from the blows of fortune, he is a fugitive of fate. Some have tried to win the favor of the gods through worship while others have tried to make a bold stance against them, but they both realize that human life is inevitably inseparable from the gods: our lives are defined by the relationship with the divine. With the divine looming in the background, we all seek refuge from suffering and search for a haven called happiness.

by Jamila Barra

Schools, the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire argues, all too often function like banks; at these institutions, the teacher is understood as the holder of something valuable – knowledge – which she deposits into the account of the student’s mind. In this pervasive model of pedagogy, the teacher is the only active agent, while the student remains a passive receptacle. The information transmitted from teacher to student is fixed and, in a sense, dead: just as a banking transaction doesn’t fundamentally change the bank account, the money deposited or the account holder, so the teacher, student and knowledge transmitted, in this model, remain the same as before the teaching.

But this isn’t the only way that teaching and learning can take place. In fact, one alternative exists on our own campus, in the form of the Writing Center program at Barnard. Here, we can see what an “education as the practice of freedom” (in Freire’s words) could look like in concrete daily experience. At its best, this program represents a revolutionary and liberating practice in academia, and a true intervention both in the writing of the students who use the Writing Center and in the lives of the Writing Fellows.

Writing Fellows characterize themselves as working peer-to-peer, collaboratively and non-directively. And, perhaps most importantly, their work is fundamentally based on questions. What does that mean and what does it look like? To work peer-to-peer and collaboratively means that there is no hierarchy between the fellow and the writer. The program assumes that the fellow doesn’t know anything more than the writer; in fact, often the fellow knows much less, since fellows are not assigned based on their academic field. It is true that the fellow generally has been recruited as a very strong writer herself, and has had some serious training to become a fellow. But we believe that none of this puts the fellow in any position to tell the writer anything. This surprises many first-time visitors to the Writing Center. Fellows are constantly asked, “How should I do this? What should I write?” but no fellow will ever tell her writer what they should do. We assume no authority. Instead, when asked a question like the two above, most fellows will find a question to throw right back.

Some students are initially frustrated with this response. What’s the use of going to the Writing Center if they won’t tell you anything about your writing, or writing in general? The poignant point is of course that the fellows won’t tell you because you don’t need to be told. It goes without saying that the fellow should never willfully keep useful knowledge from the writer or obstruct her access to resources that she needs, such as good explanations of grammar rules. However, fellows do base their work on the assumption that they don’t know any better answer to the writer’s assignment than the writer does. We can give them no directions; that’s why fellowing is non-directional.

There is another even more fundamental sense of non-directionality at work in the Writing Fellows program: the non-directionality of certain questions. Since Writing Fellows don’t tell or direct, their main tool is the question – think of Socrates: “I do not teach, I question.” The alternative to the Banking Model of education lies in the kind of question that Writing Fellows ask and in the attitude that must accompany those questions. They make fellowing a revolutionary practice, a genuine intervention in academia. Further, the question-based attitude that a fellow must adopt towards the writer in order to be able to ask these questions is valuable and applicable in all of life.

To explain the kind of question that Writing Fellows use, let me draw on some examples. A common problem at the Writing Center is that it’s simply unclear what a writer’s paper is about. If we were following a directive strategy, we would tell the writer that she needs a thesis statement and that she needs to tie all her arguments to that statement in a logical manner. The non-directive strategy is to ask, “What do you really want to express in this essay?” This question allows the writer to consider her paper as something that springs from her own motivation, something she has ownership of.

Sometimes this question doesn’t lead anywhere, because students have become convinced that their professor doesn’t care about what they care about and that their grades will suffer from that disparity. They’re looking for the “right” answer. When a writer and I get stuck here, I ask hypothetical questions: “If you weren’t writing for your professor, what would you write?” This is an intervention in authority; authority concerning the writer’s writing is shifted from the professor to the writer. Often, hypothetically exploring an argument leads the writer to realize that her thoughts are, in fact, relevant to the prompt and might very well be acceptable to the professor. The hypothetical question frees writers from boundaries that they have learned from the conventional hierarchical structures of education. For example, I could ask a writer, “What if you did use ‘I’ in your paper? How would that change it?”, which communicates that their own conscious decisions determine what their paper will look like, not some fixed rules about writing or some innate quality of being a good or bad writer.

Fellows ask open-ended questions: they never have a yes-or-no answer. The most productive questions are open but specific, take the writer seriously as the author of their paper, do not point towards any one answer and are able to adapt to the writer’s way of understanding the questions. It’s difficult for fellows and yet absolutely necessary to desist from their own opinions and from assuming authority. When a conference feels like it’s getting stuck, it becomes tempting to offer the writer a way out if we see it: an obvious way to bring her arguments to a central point. But the most rewarding conferences happen when the fellow resists that temptation, fully trusts in the knowledge and ability of the writer, and helps the writer reach conclusions that the fellow could never have thought of. It’s fundamental in peer-to-peer work to allow someone else’s logic the same validity as our own.

Because we assume that the writer does have a proper logic and is a reasonable agent in their writing, the mistakes she makes must also have a logic behind them. For example, rather than tell a writer that the “logical connectors” in her writing (words like “therefore”, “thus”, “however”) are confusing and don’t make sense, I ask her why she’s using them. It turns out someone told her years ago that she shouldn’t write the way she speaks, but should try to sound professional, which fed her insecurity about writing and about being taken seriously academically. Especially for women and students of color, whose identity is bogged down with stereotypes about academic performance, these insecurities can negatively affect their performance in very concrete ways. In this case, the writer and I reflected on the quality of her spoken expression, which was clear and articulate compared to that of her writing, which in this particular paper was muddled and confusing. The writer came to the conclusion that she liked the way she spoke and that she had all the resources to identify “unprofessional” expressions in her writing.

For the fellow, asking questions like these and asking them exactly when they are necessary takes a great amount of concentration, sensitivity and attention to the writer. Essentially, the goal in any conference is for the fellow’s interest in the writer to be louder and more persistent than their internal critic. When the writer brings up something that doesn’t seem relevant or interesting at first glance, we ask: “Why is this important?” Neither do we tell them that it’s not important enough, nor do we ask, “Why is this important to you?” We ask, “Why is it important?” because the basic premise is that whatever the writer chooses to write about is important: not personally or relatively important, but plainly and simply important and worthy of consideration in the academic discourse.

This attitude is fundamentally different from the Banking Model, in which the teacher is the ultimate arbiter of what content is worthwhile in the academic setting. The importance that the fellow presumes in the writer’s work allows the writer to understand themselves as full and empowered participants in an academic community and to write to the very best of their abilities. Perhaps ironically, this revolutionary pedagogical approach often translates into success by the standards of mainstream academia. When the writer is invested in a paper, she can effectively make its importance clear to the professor, and receives higher grades than papers that the writer feels no control over.

The attitude that fellows practice in formulating their questions and the work they do through those questions is a real-life example of what Freire calls an education of liberation. As such, it is a revolutionary practice. While Writing Fellows have no power over the syllabi and grading standards set by teachers, much less the general structure of education, they do have the power to help writers take ownership of their education and to understand it as fundamentally different from a transaction of teachers handing knowledge to passive students. In the Writing Fellows Program, this liberating, subversive practice has actually found an institutionalized foothold in academia. Fellows and writers work together to construct, within the traditional academic structure, an education that is based on the immediate interaction of one person with another about something that is important.

And here we see that the significance of the work that the Writing Fellows program does extends far beyond writing and even education. The Writing Fellow attitude of sincerely believing in the importance and validity of another person’s thought, and of directing our full attention towards the development of that thought — isn’t that the attitude we want to have all the time? We experience human relationships as mere transactions not just in our classrooms, but throughout our daily lives. By analyzing the way in which Writing Fellows’ questions create and enforce positive and empowering relationships between people, we learn to intervene in our transactional way of living and actively practice the attitudes necessary for a freer, more collaborative world.

by Sam Ballantyne

The recent film The Innocence of  Muslims incited a series of mob attacks on US embassies across the Muslim world; on this continent and on our campus, the movie sparked numerous lectures and academic talks.  Many in the West drew a connection between those various European laws which restrict denial of the Holocaust or display of swastikas to those Muslim blasphemy laws, which prohibit movies like The Innocence of Muslims.  Our own Dean Peter Awn, in an eloquent lecture reflecting on the events of those weeks, cited the French Gayssot law and noted that state restrictions on speech were hardly ‘a Muslim thing.’

This essay thus began as an exploration of relation between the Muslim prohibition of blasphemy and those European laws that ban denial of the holocaust – but, finding no useful equivalence, set out to define the principle which separates them.

A few notes. First, the comparison of the protests to laws is unfair. Though blasphemy is banned in every Muslim-majority country, the violent protests and attacks were illegal – and unpopular, as crowds made clear the next day. Laws can only be fairly compared to other laws, so a more accurate comparison would have been between the French Gayssot law and Egyptian blasphemy law: I’ll return to this later.

In the course of this, I’ll look at some of the relevant laws in Europe and the Muslim world. I’ll look at the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the two tests that it sets up to determine when freedom of speech can be restricted. I’ll argue that only one of these two tests is sound, and that the other restricts some of the most necessary and reasoned speech. Fleshing out applications of that sound test, I’ll argue that European hate speech laws pass the test and Muslim blasphemy laws don’t.

France, Gayssot
Let us begin with the French. The Gayssot law, passed in 1990, criminalizes Holocaust denial in a round-about way: it makes it an offense to question the existence or size of the category of crimes against humanity as defined by the London Charter of 1945. In essence, it protects the findings of the Nuremberg tribunal from challenge. At the time, anti-racism legislation was proving insufficient to combat the rising tide of anti-semitism (manifested mostly in pamphlets, journal articles and interviews wherein louts voiced their skepticism over the ‘official’ account of the holocaust).

The most significant legal challenge came from Robert Faurisson, a professor of literature at the University of Lyon, who was removed from his post as a result of his public writings on the Holocaust: exemplified by “The Diary of Anne Frank: Is It Authentic?” His trials with this law have been such that he was awarded a medal of courage by noted human-rights advocate and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Faurisson brought his case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which reviewed it under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. He went armed with a single, strong argument: the French law elevated the Nuremberg findings to ‘dogma,’ when in fact it was demonstrably flawed. True enough, certain Nuremberg conclusions have turned out to be flawed. Russia, to cite one example, had in the aftermath of the war effectively pinned the Katyn massacre on Germany.

This defense is telling. Faurisson was not prosecuted for scholarship relating to the Katyn massacre: he was not defending his right to blame the Russians, but rather something else. For in fact, France does not prosecute academics for examining the record on Katyn – nor for that matter, nearly any of the seemingly bottomless quantity of Holocaust scholarship that goes on year after year.

The French government’s case was equally simple. Every time racism was allowed to express itself publicly, the public order was immediately and severely threatened. The argument runs something like this:

The holocaust was a massive, state-lead genocide, in which the elected French government was massively collusive: majority rule, rather than minority right, had been absolute. In the wake of this, a check needed to be put in place against anti-semites winning democratic elections again. For what if they were to win again? Would they be allowed to take power? Would the Republic fall? Or would we wait to see how it played out? It is easy to see how public order was threatened by public anti-semitism: it exposed the government’s tenuous respect for individual rights.

This argument is grounded in history, and it casts hate-speech laws as a restriction on the state. Yet this set-up of Faurisson as a dangerous radical whose ideas threaten France is ridiculous. The French government actually had and has very little skin in the game. Faurisson is no Zola. Freedom of speech laws were designed to restrain government against its critics: Faurisson is not in any useful sense a dissident. (Had the French government allowed him to blabber on in his bilious way, his ire would have remained focused exclusively on the Jews and their defenders).

The Faurisson case at the UNRHC makes for a frustrating read. If the establishment of internationally recognized human rights – how to articulate them – was the challenge and triumph of the mid-20th century, the question of our time is no doubt to articulate with equal clarity the limits of those rights. Not because the rights themselves are truly dangerous, but because without a clear limiting rule, states will limit rights when they see fit.

Thus, 1996 saw a missed opportunity to settle this question once and for all. Rather than argue their cases directly, both sides argued sideways to their true positions: Faurisson argued for the right to some speech – namely, historical investigation of the war crimes committed in WWII – was limited by the same law which persecuted him, and that the law should be abolished. (This notwithstanding the fact that he himself was clearly uninterested in real historical scholarship.) France had to argue that this sad shadow of a man, reviled where not ignored, posed a serious threat to public order. Both arguments are transparently daft.

In the end France won her argument. The commission, noting that it was not in a position to criticize French law in the abstract, rejected Faurisson’s argument. His fine was 21,000 francs (€3,200).

Germany and Volksverhetzung
My colleague focuses most of his ire on German law. Having devoted so much time to French law, I will only note a few items in comparison, for I will later hold that both the French and German laws are reasonable by a very simple – and internationally recognized – test.

It almost goes without saying that if such a law is reasonable in France, it is reasonable in Germany. The latter, after all, had elected history’s most famous fanatic, which then perpetrated history’s most famous genocide. It was Germany who had twice brought the world to industrial war.

The most relevant German law, Volksverhetzung (hate crime law), is too long to quote in full. Section 130.1 is representative:

Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace:
1.  incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or                                                                                                 arbitrary measures against them; or
2.  assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or    defaming segments of the population

 In a community that feels threatened by the majority, a relatively limited number of crimes can have an outsized effect, as members of that community feel scared to participate in the public marketplace of economy and ideas – something in which the state has a vital interest. One murder which takes place in a climate of fear can be stultifying. It took relatively little violence, for example, to suppress the American gay rights movement throughout the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s.

Thus: the German law. Those Jews who returned to live in Germany after WWII faced an entirely rational fear of the society at large. Those masses who but years before had engineered their annihilation were now once again the builders, bakers, politicians, and teachers of the new Germany.  It would not take much to make going outdoors feel dangerous and participation in the public forum out of the question.

Britain
We have seen that France and Germany both have typical examples of hate-speech laws on their books. But what of the redcoats and their benign, venerable theocracy?

Indeed, it is in Britain and her former colonies where we can find true Western blasphemy laws. Though Britain repealed hers in 2008, Canada, New Zealand and others still have laws on the books, which make it an offense to publish a blasphemous libel. This libel was understood to mean against the Christian God and prosecutions were uniquely in this vein.

These laws were largely forgotten in the course of the 20th century. But not entirely. And as multiculturalism took root in Britain in the second half of the 20th century, this lead to some ugly double standards. The government was petitioned to prosecute Salman Rushdie for blasphemy in 1989 – it declined, politely, arguing that the blasphemy laws were a historical relic, meant only to protect Anglican beliefs. Indeed, in 1977, the British government had prosecuted a travel writer who publicly read The Love that Dares to Speak its Name, a poem from the point of view of one of (apparently gay) Jesus’ persecutors. Critical lines include:

As they took him from the cross
I, the centurion, took him in my arms-
the tough lean body
of a man no longer young,
beardless, breathless,
but well hung.

The original recitation, on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, led to the prosecution and near-imprisonment of the poet and publisher. Yet, the case was a controversial one, and it was clear that the public will to prosecute such harmless speech was waning. In 2002, the reading was repeated and the poem republished. Lo: there were no prosecutions.

Britain was, at least within her family of nations, the last to abandon such stupid laws. Canada last prosecuted a citizen under these laws in 1935; Australia in 1919; New Zealand in 1922; America in 1838. While the absence of political will to expunge them is of some interest, the unenforced blasphemy laws themselves cannot be considered a part of the states’ protections of religion.

Indeed, one may look at the ongoing despotism of the Anglican church and the rising atheism of Great Britain and conclude that Kipling had it right a century ago:

By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
So: why the British exception? In an era of European integration, is Britain an outlier, liberalizing its speech laws as Europeans restrict theirs? Not really.

It is high time I elucidated the principle which divides these two sets of laws. First, as you have no doubt caught on, we’ve been discussing two sorts of laws: Holocaust-denial laws (now understood as a category of hate-speech laws) and blasphemy laws.

As I mentioned earlier, there are two provisions in the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which outline the legitimate restrictions on freedom of speech. Article 5.1, which is general to the entire covenant:

Nothing in the present Covenant may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognized herein or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for in the present Covenant.

Thus, states may restrict rights and freedoms when they are aimed at the destruction of other rights and freedom. And article 19.3, which is directed specifically at speech:

The exercise of the rights… carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:

         (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;

         (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

The difference between these passages! The first is so clear, so simple, so sound. The second, so vague: speech must respect the reputations of other? I suspect most of my speech fails to meet this criteria: how often do I defame city transportation employees? How often Crack Del?

We can see now how article 5.1 of the Covenant, which allows the restriction of any right or freedom aimed at the destruction of any other right or freedom, clearly supports the European Holocaust-denial laws. In certain circumstances, where minorities communities feel threatened by the majority and are right to do so, hate speech limits the extent to which they can participate in public life. This is a fundamental freedom, and the destruction of it – which is the intent and effect of hate speech – is not protected. These hate speech laws are also very narrowly drawn – it isn’t enough for instance, to simply express hate: the statements must come out of a context of violence.

Furthermore, there is a condition, which has to be met for this definition to be relevant. The community in question must have reason to fear the society in which it lives – indeed, this should be established as a matter of judicial fact. This notion is thus fundamentally grounded in historical reality.

It’s long been understood that my faith, or lack thereof, is not threatened by yours, and vice-versa. Indeed, whether you think Mohamed a prophet or a fraud, Jesus a king or a queen, it has no bearing on my right to free exercise. Those benighted souls who take it upon themselves to remind subway-goers about the late Savior do not impede my atheism. Nor, apparently, does my atheism have any effect on them. Indeed, it is substantively inadequate to the task of destroying the rights and freedoms of others.

I’ve outlined a moment where it is appropriate to place restrictions on speech: when it is aimed at the destruction of others’ rights and freedoms. I’ve noted that denials of historically factual genocides, in a context of recent violence and widespread anti-semitism, constitute an obvious threat to the ability of Jews to take part in the public forum. It should go without saying that this principle is not similarly applicable to the protection of a majority community. This is overwhelmingly the case in the Islamic world, where countries like Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco combine majority rule with majority right.

Islamic Blasphemy Laws: an overview
The states that make up the Muslim world are nearly all theocracies. Had I more patience for this sort of thing, I would refer to them throughout this paper by their full names: the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Arab countries are different – People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, or the Arab Republic of Egypt – but “Republic” only in name, as nearly all note early in their constitutions that Islam (not just Allah) is the source from which these law are derived. Turkey is a shining exception; and the former governments of Syria and Iraq were both Baathists who aspired to some sort of secular socialism, however terribly.

This combination of religious authority with state authority is obviously pestilent. A state founded on one religion cannot be truly tolerant of those who do not share its assumptions. Omar Khayyam, writing in Persia in the 12th century, felt as much:

And do you think that unto such as you;
 A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:
 God gave the secret, and denied it me?–
 Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.

Muslim states pursue blasphemy through either Sharia law – that heady blend of Quranic interpretation, scholastic consensus and medieval logic – or legislation. Nearly every Muslim majority country has laws on the books which make it a crime to criticize, ridicule, or defame Islam. Though there is too much relevant legislation to quote here, we have instead a plethora of actual cases – prosecutions based on these laws. It is to these which I will refer.

The extreme example is, as is so often the case, Pakistan, which punishes blasphemy by death, and which frequently celebrates those thugs, who take this brutish bit of nonsense to heart.

In 2005, Mohammad Younus Shaikh was fined and sentenced to life in prison for a book, which claimed that the Quran did not mention stoning as a punishment for adultery. As of writing, Asia Noreen Bibi, a Christian woman, awaits execution for blasphemy. Rimsha Masih, a Christian girl, awaits trial.

Nor are these laws or the prosecutions they engender unpopular. A cursory read of the Pakistani headlines following Malala Yousafzai indicated that the debate was not whether campaigning for women’s rights was acceptable, but rather whether it was so unacceptable that it justified her assault and murder. The Pakistani public polls routinely as the most thuggish in the Muslim world. According to a study by the Pew Research Forum, only 63% consider free elections important to a democracy. Uncensored media is considered important by a mere 28%. Witness also the celebrated murders of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, politicians who bravely challenged the blasphemy law.

Iran is no different. Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi was arrested in 2006 for advocating separation of religion and state. In 2007, eight students were arrested for claiming that no humans, including Mohammed, are infallible. In 2009, a blogger convicted of criticism of religious leaders died in prison.

Egypt’s law actually protects all three monotheist faiths from ridicule, though the law is applied only in Islam’s defense. Coptics and Ahmadiyya – a reformist branch of Islam – are the most often targeted.

The most striking pattern to emerge here is the use of the blasphemy law to oppress minorities and dissidents. Reformists across the Muslim world are time and again accused of blasphemy against Islam – the exception being Malaysia, where opponents of the government are accused of sodomy. Where it is minorities being oppressed rather than dissidents, the charges are often taken up by politicians as an ethnic or religious wedge.

Conclusion
So we see here why section 5.1 of the ICCPR is so overwhelmingly superior to section 19.3 and the difference between Western and Islamic censorship. European states have the intention of protecting minorities, and the argument of preserving public order. Islamic states have the intention of preserving public order and the argument of protecting Islam.

The preservation of public order, when it is read to mean the legitimation of the present government, is an aim that has justified the repression of many of history’s most crucial thinkers. Socrates would not have passed muster.  Nor, indeed, Mohammed. It should thus be cast aside as a test for speech.

Documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights were triumphs of modern liberalism.  It is always curious to see liberals – among whom I count myself, on Sundays and in the days leading up to American elections – back away from these towards relativism. They should have no illusions about the thuggery that lies behind these blasphemy laws. Not for nothing do Western secular countries speak of minority right and majority rule. Religious and ethnic majorities do not need protection from minorities, and governments do not need protection from critics.

The maintenance of public order and the reputations of others only require protection from the most extreme assaults: public incitement to violence, or libelous fraud. These protections all flow from the simplest principle, that we have certain rights and freedoms except when we aim them against the rights and freedoms of others. No further principle is required.

Self-evident, almost.

by Russell Parker

Following the recent attacks on the American embassy in Benghazi leaving a U.S ambassador dead, hate speech and blasphemy laws have been hot button issues on the international stage. News junkies and close followers of the “religious wars” know too well that these recent flare-ups follow in a long line of conflicts from the last two decades. The publishing of Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, Salman Rushdie’s 1988 Satanic Verses and even South Park’s playful teasing at religious figures of all kinds have given rise to an international discussion regarding state intervention into speech and expression rights.

Serious discussion about today’s speech issues has to be prefaced with the relevant historical cases. Germany’s strict speech laws, produced in the wake of World War II, are some of the most contentious in the West, and for good reason. For context, here are some of the strictest excerpts from the German criminal code: Section 130 reads, Hate speech may be punishable if against segments of the population and in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace including racist agitation and anti-Semitism. Subsection 3 makes Holocaust denial illegal. Section 86 forbids association with the Nazi party, and section 86a does the same for the use of the swastika and other banned symbols punishable with jail time.

The rationale, in brief, behind such strict laws is that they look to protect holocaust survivors. The Nazi party committed genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and initiated a war of aggression that encompassed the globe and took the lives of millions of young men and women. It is acceptable then to punish anyone who expresses support for such a movement, or wishes to see its membership rise again. Roused by Nazi rallies and propaganda, German lawmakers often argue that these laws protect the wellbeing of Holocaust survivors and their children who suffer from the memory of genocide.

The atrocities committed by the Nazis in World War II are unforgivable and anyone who feels a deep sense of revulsion for Nazi sympathizers is justified. The crimes committed in Germany were, at the time, sanctioned by the Nazi state. Laws and legal procedure could change on a whim to further the political goals of the party’s ethnic cleansing. Although it would be ridiculous to accuse today’s German government of disrespecting the rule of law to that same extent, the heavy handed anti-Nazi legislation sets a precedent for restricting political rights and bending the law to satisfy expedient political goals. Maybe these laws were the best short-term remedy for a people torn apart by ruthless genocide, but looking forward, to a time when the suffering of those who lived through World War II is no longer a factor, the justification for laws violating political rights falls apart. Even with the best of intentions, sacrificing both rights and the rule of law for the sake of sensitivity may prove to have done more harm than good. If a self-proclaimed member of the Nazi party violates Germany’s libel laws, which apply to every member of every creed, then they should be tried. There need not exist a second crime linked to the association with a mostly bygone hated political party.

For the most part, criticisms of Germany’s hate-speech laws focus on the fact that they are a rolling back of political rights for the body politic simply to punish and suppress a political group with an extremist ideology. Seventy years after World War II, the laws themselves undermine their own intention, to heal, unify, and strengthen the German people.  A nation needing to make these kind of special exceptions in their legal code will only sit back and watch their legal system slowly buckle under the hypocrisy of upholding political liberty and restricting it all the same.  The stringent limitations on political rights created by the Nazi laws weaken the German law’s ability to protect German citizens from political abuses and runs counter to the international democratic argument that is so important in today’s global world.

The Nuremburg trials, the international effort that set that set about punishing the Nazi war criminals will help shed light on the contemporary legal issue. Charles E. Wyzanski, legal scholar and philosopher of law, made a name for himself by criticizing the Nuremburg trials. He noted that ex-post facto law created to punish the Nazi’s, and the trial set up to carry out its faux justice, threatened the very idea of the rule of law. Wyzanski argued, the belief that law could repair the damage done by the Nazis was a mirage. There existed no precedent in international law to try the Nazis, no extant statutes on genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. It was all made up for the trial and applied as though it was legitimate law. The tribunal system was also a gross misapplication of due process and although the tribunal achieved the much-needed punishment the Nazi’s deserved, it may also have had unintended consequences for domestic legal systems. Wyzanski suggested that rather than pursuing justice by legal means it would have been more honest to execute the Nazis by executive order or some other political means. It would have been clear that this was a political solution and not a legal one.

In hindsight, the Nuremburg trials lay the foundation for the International Criminal Court and the tribunals at Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, but their unintended damaging effects may be evident in today’s German hate speech laws.

Law created to deter certain kinds of political thought not only is an assault on the freedom of thought, it robs the law of political neutrality. Supporting violent action or genuine hate-speech should fall under the scope of the law, as it does with libel and slander, but support for a political movement is not a simple affirmation of such views just as support for abortion isn’t necessarily supporting the murder of doctors. The law shouldn’t bend to political will so easily, and that is what makes the rule of law so powerful. If the law starts playing politics, it becomes just as fickle as politicians.

Not only is preserving the integrity of law central to the protections of citizens at home, but hypocritical laws like those in Germany also weaken the national image abroad. Countries like Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia, which are struggling with their own democratic identities, see legal hypocrisies like those in Germany and find reason to clamp down on speech in their own countries. After the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, leaders from around the world convened to deliver speeches at the annual U.N General assembly meeting. Notably, Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt, called for stricter speech restrictions around the world with particular sensitivity to religious sentiment. Although this call for stricter freedom of speech may differ from Western values, the discussion of rights and freedoms is on the table. If the West wishes to have its opinion respected, it must have a viably consistent position reflected by the national laws of nations like Germany, France and the U.S. The Nazi laws on the books in Germany weaken the argument for true democratic reforms that the West can push for in places like Egypt and Libya.

Generations after the Second World War has ended, Germany should show to the world that it has emerged stronger, more independent and unharmed by the musings of the delusional and psychopathic. At the same general assembly to which Morsi gave his address calling for stricter speech laws, President Obama explained why Americans fight and die for American-style freedoms of speech: “We [fight] because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities. We do so because, given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech — the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.”

by Izzy Gliksberg

One space spreads through all creatures equally
inner-world-space. Birds quietly flying go
flying through us. Oh, I that want to grow,
the tree I look outside at grows in me!

(R. M. Rilke)

The history of human thought, filled with its connections running between thinkers and their thoughts, reveals something about the study of philosophy. On the one hand, revealing these connection illuminates the fact that (after all) we live on the same planet, and some questions keep popping up throughout history. On the other hand, these similarities emphasize the differences between ideas and the unique environments that gave rise to them. It enables us to see the various standpoints that we developed towards these questions. In this spirit, I turn to a mystical Jewish text and the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl.

Introduction

Jewish mysticism, known as Kabbalah, contains a recurring notion that the world was created with letters. This concept appears in many Kabbalistic writings, but its most concrete and detailed form can be found in the Book of Creation, one of the oldest books of Jewish mysticism. Current scholars date the final formation of this text, which is traditionally attributed to Abraham, to between 300 and 700 AD. This mysterious and poetic book, whose meaning has been debated for centuries, deals almost exclusively with the strange notion of the universe created by letters.

Precisely how we should understand this theoretical position is unclear. Even most people who study Jewish mysticism do not take these declarations literally; rather, the idea is taken either as a socio-intellectual anecdote or, more often, as a symbolic statement of some sort.

One “soft” interpretation of the idea is that our perception of the world is determined by our language. Many 20th century philosophers have argued that languages—words used to describe the world to ourselves and others—have a significant impact on how we perceive and act. But the ideas in the Book of Creation are more radical. They are laid out in such a detailed manner that it seems unlikely they were meant as a symbolic statement or as an allegory. It is just as misleading to interpret this text as merely attributing God the power of literary creation, assigning him the position of the “author” of existence. Instead, the creation of the world through words is presented as literally true. The Book of Creation, then, resists softer interpretations; it seems to say instead that words must have true creative power.

In trying to understand this mystical position, we might be able to find assistance from an unlikely source: Edmund Husserl, the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. To see how, we must first understand a little about Husserl’s thought.

Back to the present: Edmund Husserl

One of the main points of departure for Husserl’s philosophy is Cartesian doubt. Descartes starts philosophizing by doubting everything, including the very existence of the world around him. This brings him to the only thing he can be sure of: the existence of his own consciousness. Hence the famous dictum “cogito ergo sum”—I think, therefore I am.

Husserl tries to overcome Descartes’ doubts and to build a solid philosophy by evading the question of the existence of the outside world. To achieve this, Husserl uses what he calls epoché, or transcendental reduction. In this act, the thinker must forget the factual existence of the world and instead engage in revealing the inner (or “transcendental”) qualities of our perception. This act is supposed to establish the “outside” world in our consciousness.

For example, if I practice epoché while I am looking at an apple, I do not focus on its factual existence – I do not ask “Am I imagining the apple or is it really there?” Instead, I focus on the practical experience of the apple and on the inner structure of my perception of it. The act of consciousness—becoming aware of an object—and constituting it is called intentionality. This allows the thinker to override Descartes’ doubts: although I can never be sure if the apple I am seeing is real, I can be sure that my experience of an apple did occur.

Time is another interesting topic for phenomenological investigation. We think of objective time (i.e. that measured in hours and minutes) as something that exists outside us, and we tend to think of our inner feeling of time as something secondary to objective time. Husserl, in his book A Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, shows that objective time is constituted by our subjective perception and our memory. In other words, our subjective sense of time, a highly complicated phenomenon, is actually more “real,” insofar as it is the basis of objective time. In other words, objective time is merely a shadow of our inner perception of time.

This example is important because it demonstrates how we can use a phenomenological approach to deal with the most fundamental concepts of our worldview.

Husserl shifts philosophical investigation from the naive thought that the world is outside us, to clarifying the ways in which reality manifests itself in our consciousness and is constituted by our consciousness’ intentionality. He effectively turns our normal view of the world inside out. This change of view, which follows from his new method of thought, has an enormous effect on the way we perceive the world. It shows that our simple conception of the world as a physical or mental entity which we observe is completely false. His investigations demonstrate that many of the qualities we attribute to the world outside us (for example, time, space and the concept of numbers), are actually properties of our perception rather than “the world.” Although it seems simple to understand these ideas on a logical-intellectual level, it is very difficult to fully grasp this idea in practical life. It is hard to believe that space and time do not really exist in the world outside us and that they are merely a projection of our perception during the process of intentionality.

To demonstrate what Husserl is trying to say, let us consider four elements:

Stage 1- Naive
A man, standing on earth, looks at an apple.
Rays of light  bounce back from the apple to the man’s eyes and he experiences the apple.