this article is from issue 184, Spring 2013 >

hings are always changing; yet some things remain the same. Carl Dow is no longer editing this magazine. Starting with this issue, the responsibility for the publication of Humanist Perspectives is in the hands of an Editorial Board which, currently, includes Madeline Weld, Richard Young and myself. We are still looking for a fourth member (a Humanist with editing experience) so that each of us will edit one issue each year.

The new strategy is actually a return to the old practice way back in the halcyon days of Humanist in Canada. It achieves two objectives: firstly, it lightens the burden of putting out an issue, punctually and professionally, every three months, a labour we perform pro bono; secondly, it makes for real team work, offering more variety of perspectives and reflecting our commitment to the community.

What has not and will not change is the quality of our magazine. We remain committed to bringing you the best, most closely reasoned arguments, based on the best available information about the burning issues of our time, all from a Humanist point of view, i.e. with the objective of contributing to a free, socially just and equitable, emotionally satisfying and rationally responsible, peaceful secular society. At the same time, we want to provide an open forum for the Humanist community to discuss their concerns in today’s tumultuous world freely, honestly and rationally.

One of the disadvantages of a rotating editorship is that the previous editor may, unintentionally, force one’s hand. When it became evident that I would be editing this spring issue, I decided to follow up my four CounterAttack essays (HP #180, 181, 182, 183) on reclaiming democratic government, with a closer look at some of the obstacles on the path to achieving true self-rule. Because I see the self-serving manipulations of financial institutions and wealthy individuals as the prime obstruction to social justice, I chose Morgan Duchesney’s insightful “Canada’s Banking System: Reality and Alternatives” as the feature article in this spring issue. And I was going to write about the obscene relationships between money and government.

But, unexpectedly, Tim Murray’s “Islamic Tipping Point” in the last issue of Humanist Perspectives redirected my thoughts. The article seems to have troubled some of our readers sufficiently to produce four letters of protest, all of which I decided to print in full in the “Letters to the Editor” section. They express the opinions of respectable Humanists and must be taken seriously.

In fairness, I asked Tim Murray to respond to their criticism – which he has done succinctly, intelligently and without rancor. I also invited Madeline Weld to discuss the issues that were raised because she has lived in a Muslim country and has looked deeply into both the teachings of Islam and its practices. To round off the debate, two students of Islam, Jackson Doughart and Faisal Saced al-Mutar, generously agreed to elaborate for us a well informed piece on “Rethinking Islamophobia”. All of which has made for a thoughtful forum on the issues the current spread of Islam in Western nations has raised.

I’m not sorry that my original intentions were sidetracked by circumstances. An editor must be flexible and respond to important issues as they arise. And the issues the debate about Islam raises are indeed important. First of all, there is the question of propriety. Murray in his article has stated his case more provocatively than, say, Weld has, but the substance of the argument is the same: the rising political militancy of Islam which is based on an interpretation of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.

I too have read the Koran, and I too am appalled by the perpetual indictment of the infidels (to say nothing of the denigration of women who, it would appear, are worth only about half a man). Page after page, we are told that those not willing to worship Mohammad’s Allah are the enemy of all that is good and true in the world. Infidels, i.e. Humanists, skeptics, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and those who believe in a different set of religious doctrines, are condemned to eternal pain in hell in the (putative) afterlife. In this world too, they are to be punished, unless they convert, because they are the instruments of evil, and members of the Muslim faith are enjoined to engage in a holy war against them.

Such teachings must be exposed for what they are – serious threats to the freedom of conscience and belief that we enjoy in Canada. As events in the Middle East show, they are also increasingly becoming a threat to the peace of the world. We cannot afford to remain silent on the dangers inherent in religious dogmatism.

The Koran is not alone in this intolerant, bigoted condemnation of those who refuse to join the fraternity. The Bible too is riddled with the same repressive and discriminatory teachings. Especially the Old Testament is imbued with an obscene appetite for genocide. Time and again, Jehovah exhorts “the children of Israel” to pillage and murder the members of other tribes mercilessly. It is easy to see where Mohammad got his inspiration.

The New Testament is somewhat different. According to the evangelists, keeping in mind that they wrote their accounts decades after he died, Jesus Christ was a man of peace who asked his followers to love even their enemies. He never used the sword to spread his gospel, while Mohammad was a warrior prophet and promised the highest rewards of paradise to those who died fighting jihad. Nor did Jesus ever encourage his followers to assassinate people who mocked him, while the poets Abu Afak and Asma bint Marwan, asleep with her suckling infant, were killed at the behest of Mohammad for satirizing his prophetic verses. Since most Christians today identify with the teachings of Jesus in the NT, their approach to the world is significantly different from those who take the bellicose Mohammad for their model.

Fortunately, religious dogma, despite claims to the contrary, also evolves, along with everything else. Just as Christianity, over the centuries, has splintered into numerous sects, so Islam too has split into different factions who distinguish themselves by different readings of the Koran. It would be a serious mistake to lump all Muslims together with the militant totalitarians who are determined to impose their convictions on everyone else. I have Muslim friends who are as enlightened and liberal as the best of my friends. Opposition to the fanatics of the Islamic faith must not become a form of racism.

However, it is important that the teachings of Islam, along with all other claims to knowledge of truth, be subjected to critical analysis and debate. This too is one of the cherished achievements of our civilization: freedom of expression, and it is nowhere more essential than in examining supernatural claims, especially when they purport to have divine authority. We shall not allow any religion to claim immunity from criticism, because that road leads to tyranny. I have read Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton (Random House, New York, 2012), his account of the years he spent in hiding, never without a police task force guarding him day and night, and, for all its vainglorious reporting, it is a moving story of fear and terror – a man’s fear of assassination for his views and the terror of a religion that will not tolerate dissent. This state of affairs must never come to pass in Canada because it would bring civilized life to an end.

That’s why I say: Long live critical thinking and the courage to act upon it! Don Hatch has provided us with an exciting portrait of one of the pioneers of freethinking, Jean Meslier, a French priest, who straddled the seventeenth and eighteenth century. He exposed Christianity as a fraud in his Testament, when even the freethinking Voltaire couldn’t quite let go of the idea of God. It’s been a long and bloody battle to combat superstition, and the struggle for a tolerant, liberal, secular world is far from over.

– Henry Beissel