We've tended to be extremely permissive, and that does make us very different from other countries. It's actually a problem when people elsewhere actually think, including reasonable people, that the United States government must be complicit in something like the anti-Muslim film because we haven't prohibited it.I wish he and many others would repeat that as often as they can. The distinction is huge: in the US, the free rights we have are not because the US government has not prohibited them, but because the Constitution has made sure we will have those rights. These rights are not granted to us by the government for it to take them away, but these are our inalienable rights. We voluntarily empower the government.
Such an understanding of rights might be, understandably, incomprehensible in societies where a dictator, or an authoritarian government, might decide what is permissible and what is not. Similar to the old joke about the USSR: whatever was not banned was prohibited! (Though, of course, the recent Pussy Riot controversy makes it clear that rights are severely constrained in Putin's Russia.)
Thus, with every act of free speech, especially the (ir)religious ones, that offend somebody somewhere else, the suspicion that the US government is in on it deepens. That this offensive speech is somehow state-certified.
Making things worse are the maniacal arguments that this country was founded as a Christian nation and that the ills are because we have moved away from religion in government. It is not difficult to imagine that already enraged people in Pakistan or Libya would get even more pissed off when they come to know that Governor Rick Perry said this even as the anti-American violence was escalating in many countries:
“Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and what have you and one of the untruths out there that is driven is that people of faith should not be involved in the public arena,” Perry said during the call on Tuesday, organized by the Rev. Rick Scarborough.Satan causing the separation of church and state? God's truth in the public space? The only good thing here is that Perry is not the GOP's presidential candidate!
Perry said the separation of religious and civic institutions in the U.S. began with a “narrative” that first took root in the 1960s.
“Somehow or another there’s this, ya know, steel wall, this iron curtain or whatever you want to call it between the church and people of faith and this separation of church and state is just false on its face,” the governor said. “We have a biblical responsibility to be involved in the public arena proclaiming God’s truth.”
Quite a few years ago, Bernard Lewis wrote that the fundamentalist Islam didn't worry much about the godless USSR but, in fact, gladly embraced the Soviet Union as a check against the US. Quite a contradiction it seems like at the surface, but there is a deep reason: the fundamentalists were confident that their people won't get swayed by the godless commies. The US is viewed as threat because from its founding, it continues to be a symbol and a real driver of the two profound changes that have characterized recent history:
Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit, and there is by now a whole literature denouncing secularism as an evil neo-pagan force in the modern world and attributing it variously to the Jews, the West, and the United States. The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.If not convinced yet that it this struggle that fuels that rage against the US, Lewis explained:
There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equalled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country—even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion—to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions.
The instinct of the masses is not false in locating the ultimate source of these cataclysmic changes in the West and in attributing the disruption of their old way of life to the impact of Western domination, Western influence, or Western precept and example. And since the United States is the legitimate heir of European civilization and the recognized and unchallenged leader of the West, the United States has inherited the resulting grievances and become the focus for the pent-up hate and anger.Governor Perry, and all those folks who think that the separation of church and state is satanic are then clearly attempting to make this struggle in the Islamic world a modern day version of the crusades! If only somebody could force them to read the following concluding points from Lewis:
To this end we must strive to achieve a better appreciation of other religious and political cultures, through the study of their history, their literature, and their achievements. At the same time, we may hope that they will try to achieve a better understanding of ours, and especially that they will understand and respect, even if they do not choose to adopt for themselves, our Western perception of the proper relationship between religion and politics. To describe this perception I shall end as I began, with a quotation from an American President, this time not the justly celebrated Thomas Jefferson but the somewhat unjustly neglected John Tyler, who, in a letter dated July 10, 1843, gave eloquent and indeed prophetic expression to the principle of religious freedom:It is a shame that from the likes of Jefferson and Tyler we have come down to the likes of Perry!
The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent—that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgement. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgement of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mahommedan, if he will to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political Institutions.... The Hebrew persecuted and down trodden in other regions takes up his abode among us with none to make him afraid.... and the Aegis of the Government is over him to defend and protect him. Such is the great experiment which we have tried, and such are the happy fruits which have resulted from it; our system of free government would be imperfect without it.
The body may be oppressed and manacled and yet survive; but if the mind of man be fettered, its energies and faculties perish, and what remains is of the earth, earthly. Mind should be free as the light or as the air.
