First the qualifiers. I think most of my friends know my views on religion and society. Despite, having a Catholic education and a church attending parent, I have remained agnostic at the best of times and downright atheist at the worst. In preparing to write this post, I spent the better past of this week researching the issue at hand and these views of course will reflect the qualifiers above.
Egyptian Newspaper
What has happened in France has of course sent shockwaves across the Western world. France, compared to the other Western country has a relatively high Muslim population and has for at least the past decade, had a very strong separation of secularism and state. France, whose national anthem is from revolution, who's chant of Viva libertie and viva la France, has always represented the ideals of freedom. Now, in the 21st century, it feels like the Western world is increasingly being forced to choose between freedom of speech and freedom of religion. (I understand these are vast generlaisations but lets roll with it.) Even France, with all its ideals set in freedom, is facing the same problem. From here, I feel #Jnic# in his last post more than adequately set the context for this post.
Rally at Paris
In Australia, Tony Abbot's government approval rating has polled at appallingly low numbers. Yet for whatever reason, he and his party was chosen by the majority of Australians in the last election. If we believe in what we are taught from day one, that democracy is the best political system that is on offer, then we at some point need to trust democracy. To do so we need to trust the government that we choose. When they believe that some invasion of privacy is necessary for the safety of the country, we can't just plug our ears and ignore the facts.
Which isn't to say, we shouldn't criticise and demand something different but when there's no viable alternatives on the table then I don't see the point in complaining. At the end of the day, both Sydney and the latest massacre happen within a month of each other. Not half year before that, the same thing happened in Canada. It may be alarmist of me, but doing nothing seems to be downright negligent.
If the government was to decide, that they need metadata to ensure my safety then so be it. Because at the end of the day, the metadata which our government are taking from us, I trust, will be used for the right reasons.
Increasingly, we are worried about the erosion of our freedom and privacy. I feel what has been overlooked in many cases is how many more ways we now have to express our freedom. With the advent of social media, the internet and the ability to reach potentially millions of people, we have been given more freedom than any of forefathers could have imagined. Whilst some of that may have been taken away we need to understand, this generation, in the here and now, has more 'freedom' than any other generation before us.
"I am a Muslim and I love Jews", "I am a Jew and I love Muslims" at Paris rally
They say that knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable. Wisdom is knowing that it doesn't matter; it still makes a good vegetable soup. Freedom, gives us the right to say what we want. However, we need to recognise that a lot of things that we say, could be conceived as extremely offensive to large groups of people who are willing to act on it. Whilst we cannot let extremist, change what we do, we need to think more critically on the effects of what we say. It is in this light, I don't understand why the magazine which was targeted chose to publish their latest edition and why it has been so popular. I honestly hope that it has been popular to support victim's families, rather than just proving a point. Surely there are better ways than to express our freedom of speech.
Religious freedom however, is a completely different beast entirely.
In VCE English, we were taught that there's no right way to analyse a text. In primary school, we were taught that we are allowed to choose to believe and follow in whatever religion we chose to. So what happens, when people use religion to justify horrendous actions, such as the ones we've seen in the past couple of months.
There are ways to contrive anything to become something that it originally was not intended to be. I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on the Islamic faith, but at some level, we need to make judgement as to what a group of people represent or at the very least, intended to represent. Fundamentally, from all the values that I was taught, from the people I have met and my own life experience, I believe that (many) religion are a ideal which provides a lot of positive guidance for people lives and that it has a hugely positive influence on society.
So when, extremist group, use the ideals of Islam (or any other religion) to justify their actions I feel more than justified in saying, their interpretation is wrong.
I heavily frown upon using the populace argument, but in this case I'm going to. At its very core, religion is shaped by its followers. The belief of a religion should evolve and change over time, directed by its leaders. It should follow that, the belief that the majority of a religion is the belief of the majority of its followers. Following that, when the majority of Muslim would rather not associate themselves in the same light as ISIL followers, than again, I can justify myself when I say their interpretations as wrong.
More state power, not free speech, the likeliest we-are-Charlie result
Reddit user raises an often understated point.
Odd World Leaders at the march
~TastyJacks~
No comments:
Post a Comment