Religious Sensitivity and the First Amendment

The Norman Transcript

April 05, 2007 01:23 am

— Transcript Staff Writer
"How many Texans does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
This is how Imam Zaid Shakir started his speech on religious sensitivity and the first amendment last Thursday night at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History.
It was his attempt to "win over the audience" by telling a joke about Texans, as well as inserting some humor into what he called a "very touch situation."
"Growing up in America I was taught there are two things you don't talk about, religion and politics ... and the task before us is to talk about both religion and politics," Shakir said.
Shakir was the keynote speaker for the Islamic Alliance for Justice's (IAJ) "Religious Sensitivities and The First Amendment" program. The program was birthed in November of 2006, when inflammatory cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper, causing an uproar in the Islamic world.
"Muslims were justified in their distress over the matter in seeing their beloved Prophet degraded," wrote Adeel Khan in a letter to the audience, "but the ungainly response of misguided riots and indiscriminate violence did little to help resolve the issue and in fact only further deteriorate between the Islamic world and West." Khan, an OU student is the president and founder of IAJ.
The IAJ is a predominantly Muslim student organization that aims to raise awareness and coordinate effective response to issues of global, social, economic, and political justice. The goal of the program is to "hold productive and intellectually-stimulating responses to confrontational situations and materials ... with an interfaith spirit which fosters the harmony so needed in today's divided world."
Along with the Religious Studies Program, The Muslim Students Association and The Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Islamic Alliance for Justice brought Imam Zaid Shakir "as a voice for Oklahoma's group of thoughtful individuals, both Muslim and non-Muslim, seeking to build bridges across islands of strained relations," Khan wrote.
Shakir is among the most respected and influential Islamic scholars in the West. Born in Berkeley, Calif., he became a Muslim at the age of 20, while serving the United States Air Force. He received a bachelor's degree in international relations at American University in Washington, D.C., and later earned a master's degree in political science at Rutgers University. In 2001, he graduated from Syria's prestigious Abu Noor University and he currently teaches Arabic, Islamic law, history and Islamic spirituality at Zaytuna Institute in California.
Organizers hoped bringing Shakir to OU would help create the necessary "dialogue that is critical to justice and peace and harmony, which all of us ? every human being ? wants," said Barbara Boyd, director of outreach for the Religious Studies Program. She said she could not imagine a more difficult topic that is "near and dear to our humanity."
The first amendment in the U.S. Constitution provides many freedoms, which we as Americans hold at a high importance. The two freedoms focused on during the program were the freedom of speech and freedom of press. The first amendment is a "bedrock for journalists," Joe Foote, dean and Edward L. Gaylord chair at OU's college of journalism and mass communication said in his opening remarks. Having a free press is essential for journalists, but "in order to have a free press, you must have a fair press, inherent that you are sensitive to your audience."
In November, the IAJ and its partners, brought in Doug Marlette, an award-winning American cartoonist and writer, currently working for the Tulsa World. In his address, also addressing the Danish comics and their effect and implications on society, Marlette said, "A cartoonist is someone who is supposed to be insensitive ... you're going to make someone mad, daily," since your job is to make fun of people and situations.
Foote said that Marlette's speech is what started the discourse, and Shakir would now speak in response to that, presenting the other side.
While he concedes that maintaining personal liberty is important, Shakir also says that a liberal interpretation of the first amendment as "absolute freedom" is what leads to chaos and disaster. Going back to Plato, Hobbs, and even Marx and Mussolini, Shakir said our tradition and past has supported the need for a balance between personal liberty and rules/order. Whether it is the state or the agreed upon social contract that provides that balance, one is always needed.
He gave the example of a person yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. While this can be considered freedom of speech, since doing so can lead to the danger and harm of many people, one would probably get arrested for doing so.
"You're rights are restricted in that situation," he said.
This logic is used in many situations, he said, even at the Danish paper that published the comics of Muhammad ? The same paper, with the same editor, made the decision not to publish a similar series of comics lampooning Jesus because their readership was most Christian; yet, they published cartoons lampooning Muhammad on the basis of "free speech" and "freedom of the press."
While they tried to use logic that is normally well-founded, Shakir said that the double standard undermines the first amendment and freedom since it only applies in certain situations.
"This sort of double standard ... conveys the message that a Muslim has no right that we are bound to respect," he said.
He then placed a challenge before Marlette: "I challenge him in the name of 'free speech' and the 'literal interpretation' of absolute freedom in the first amendment to put forth a cartoon with an African-looking figure caricatured with big lips and a huge slice of watermelon."
"This double standard leads to a deep hypocrisy that is ... harmful to the integrity of this country and how we're seen across the world," Shakir said. "(It) will destroy our democracy as we know it. Cause it will open the door for demagogues who will erode our freedom for their own agenda."
When it comes to religion, it is important for journalists to be sensitive, even under the first amendment because there are two universal ideals in this world, Shakir said, Islam and democracy.
"The universality is based on the best of their traditions," he said. "That universality, on both accounts today, are threatened by the attempt to limit and to narrow (them)."
While democracy can have different results world-wide, Islam is just as diverse world-wide; to make them fit a "status quo" is what leads to discrimination and violence, he said.
"If this type of thinking grows, this planet is in trouble," Shakir said.
In order to keep the planet from chaos that is sure to erupt, he said we must focus on two traditions both democracy and Islam promote:
Openness that welcomed "the other," instead of the xenophobic attitudes the world has been developing.
Fairness. "Be upright for fairness and justice ... Be just, that is closer to righteousness," Shakir said quoting the Quran.
"So the challenge for us, Muslims and America, is to embody the best of our respective traditions," Shakir said.