You might have heard that Richard Dawkins' website has been blocked in Turkey because of that moron Harun Yahya (H/T Thabet). Here's the justification:
His press assistant, Seda Aral, said: "We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people. We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed. We have used all the legal means to stop this site. We asked them to remove the comments but they did not."
This isn't that strange of a claim; contemporary Anglo-American and to a lesser extent Continental European (to a greater extent Scandinavia, to a lesser extent France and Germany) attitudes toward free speech and expression are alien to most of the world. They would have been alien to the pre-modern West. They're still alien to the nature of most people even in places like the United States. To some extent outrage at indecent transgressions against norms is species typical and probably adaptive. Overriding this tendency are various institutional structures, intellectual movements, and something called the frontal cortex. I've gotten into arguments with people who are not fully assimilated to the Anglo-American way who simply don't grokk on any deep level that speech should always be given the extreme benefit of the doubt. More prosaically the little childhood ditty about "sticks & stones" is obviously not something that is imaginable in much of the world where people routinely kill each other over non-existent deities (granted, the West engaged in this sort of behavior until about 1700). Being raised in a subculture with primitive folkways naturally leads to primitive (that is, species typical) instincts on these topics and to some extent dialogue is rendered impossible because of the lack common normative referents. But another issue to bring up here is the relatively primitive state of the Muslim world when it comes to basic freedoms we take for granted in the civilized world. I've pointed out before that Turkey, purportedly a shining beacon of religious liberalization in the Muslim world, is actually at least as religious as the United States (with a greater number of Creationists proportionally than the United States by a large margin). In Europe America is routinely perceived to be a nation of religious loons, but they're entertaining the idea of allowing Turkey into their EU???^1Richard Dawkins and Usama Hasan both assert that Creationism is dominant in the United Kingdom among Muslims. Who wants tens of millions of more of these types flooding the EU? In the USA the Muslims are relatively civilized because of immigration which skew toward those with industry and education, which naturally means inculcation in many disciplines which presuppose a Western outlook. Nevertheless,
I have pointed out that by the data the average American Muslim has views in line with the average Evangelical more than the typical religious person.
On a pan-religious distribution of traits in many ways moderate Muslims and conservative Christians are isomorphic. There are Muslims who might be the equivalent to liberal Christians, but their numbers proportionally small even in a relatively assimilated and integrated community such as American Muslims. I only bring this up because many American secularists are in the habit of mocking and attacking the "American Taliban" and the primitive knuckle-dragging predispositions of Bible-believing white Evangelicals. On the other hand, to a great extent they treat Muslims like they treat black Christians; with benign neglect. This makes sense to some extent, Muslim politics today resembles that of black Americans; roughly, relatively fiscally liberal and socially & religiously conservative, and strongly Democratic. Muslim and black Americans are not perceived to be a threat to abortion rights, for example, despite their avowed opposition to the practice, because they support a political party which generally supports the maintenance of Roe vs. Wade. In contrast, large numbers of white religious conservatives are mobilized around this issue. The social conservatism of Muslims and black Americans is directed inwardly, against deviants and misfits within their own communities, and so to a large extent invisible to the anti-religious progressives who are allied with these communities politically. But context matters. Turkey is not the United States, it is a 99% Muslim country where religious conservatives flex their muscle in a manner very reminiscent of American religious conservatives, except to a far greater magnitude of medievalism. For example, the stalled attempt to criminalize adultery. Across the Muslim world heterodox men and women exist under an oppressive traditionalism which would put small town Mississippi to shame. Of course despite any universal avowal of human rights there is only so much that one can practicably do. Here in the United States gay rights activists usefully turn their attention to religious conservatives as their primary opponents despite the much greater repression of open homosexuality in most of the world, especially the Muslim world. It is to some extent a matter of bang-for-your-buck, and also an issue of concerns near which are realized in our day to day life vs. abstractions of justice and fairness on the grand scope. I'm a admitted "appeaser" when it comes to religion in comparison to someone like Sam Harris. In all honesty, though I find Harris' rhetoric sometimes amusing, mostly he seems a dull fellow whose brilliance only shines because of the accolades showered upon him by the choir. Nevertheless, despite what I perceive to be the modesty of Harris' cognitive endowments he has some definite boldness. I appreciate his forthright accusation that many Western liberals are hamstrung in their critique of Islam by white guilt. I don't think this is the only issue, as I said above the misery of people in dusty poor countries is not a primary concern for most in the modern world. Even in places like Europe there are instances where neglect of women oppressed by minority subcultures occurs, but their residence in Europe is a matter of technical geographical detail, not a state of mind. They are in Europe, not of it. That's reality. But with all that, I admit that I put a special focus on Islamic Creationism and all the myriad medieval panoply associate with "moderate" Islam because there will come a day when matters of practicality mean that the self-identified children of the Enlightenment have to confront the most unreconstructed sect of the One True God, Inshallah. Note: For corraboration for most of my claims please see the US Religious Landscape Survey. Unfortunately its Web 2.0 architecture renders linking difficult.... 1 - Thank god that it seems like this is only for show, and that nations like France will always veto Turkish admission no matter what they say in public.
