On free speech, Islamophobia, and that movie (Or: Part of why I love the US)

You want free speech? 

Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, 

who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs 

that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. 

- The American President

I've been a little disturbed by the number of my facebook friends suggesting the makers of the Islamophobic film "Innocence of Muslims" are to blame for the violent attacks around the world. One suggested that an attack by a female suicide bomber in Kabul, Afghanistan, was the consequence of "so-called freedom" of speech. The movie was called an "abuse" of freedom. 

This doesn't really make sense to me. A probably-Afghan, definitely Muslim woman blows up Afghan, probably-Muslim citizens, including children, as a way to "protest" a film that wasn't made by Afghans and is insulting to Islam?  And that is the consequence of protesting freedom of speech in the US?  I think not. If that is your concept of "protest" you really don't understand the word.  Because where I'm from, that's called murder and it doesn't fall under protected speech, protected protest, or protected assembly.

I was therefore grateful to see a headline come up on CNN declaring "Sunni Islam leader calls for peace, urges Muslims to have 'patience and wisdom'. In it, Egypt's Grand Mufti, an active member of the Coexist Foundation (which I generally love!) denounces the violence. But the article continues in a trend that I have found disturbing:

Egypt's grand mufti questioned whether in the United States, for example, the inflammatory film "Innocence of Muslims" was not illegal under laws prohibiting the spread of hatred. And he also challenged if laws protecting freedom of speech were applicable.

"This is not freedom of speech, this is an attack on humanity, (an) attack on religions, and (an) attack on human rights," he said.

This is the refrain I want to discuss: that the movie attacks human rights and religions and does or should violate free speech. That it should fall under some special categorization of speech - "defamation of religion" - that the international community should now recognize as violating human rights.
 
I haven't watched the film all the way through but I did glimpsed through a few seconds so I would sort of know what the fuss was about it. Is it insulting? Yes. It is repugnant? Yes. Is it some of the worst acting and worst filmography ever? Absolutely. Was it made specifically to insult Muslims? Probably - I mean, you really couldn't come up with worse dialogue and worse acting if you tried, so there's really no other reason to make the film than to insult others' belief systems.

But, does it violate free speech?  In Europe, perhaps. In the US, no.

The US has some of the most extreme free speech laws in the world. Unless your speech is actually calling on people to engage in violence and you can anticipate they will do so - in response to your call, not as a consequence of hating what you say - it's protected in the US. Unless it falls in that very narrow category of speech intended to, and likely to, incite violence, or unless you're selling a product that is chemically harmful to the human body, you can pretty much make any statement you want in the US. I want to make "your momma" jokes all day long? Protected. I want to burn a flag? Protected. I want to walk down the street singing "kum ba ya"? Protected. And if I want to tell you that you are genetically or intellectually inferior because of your race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, or just because I think you're ugly? Protected.


There are limits as to where and when you can say things, but not really what you can say. So the government might say you can't sing "kum ba ya" at 3:30am in a residential area, but they can't prevent you from singing kum ba ya at all. A school can ban a student from wearing a t-shirt to class, but the government can't ban that child from leaving the classroom, stepping off school grounds, and changing right into that very same t-shirt. And while the law doesn't protect your right to go into an black church in the South in the middle of a worship service to say blacks are genetically inferior to whites, if you want to stand outside of the Town Hall on publicly-owned property during the middle of the day and do it, it becomes protected speech. And if you want to burn a flag in the middle of that rant, it is also protected.

Because it's not just people in other countries that burn our flags; sometimes it's Americans themselves. Even though it's a flag that many hold dear and sacred, burning it in protest is a recognized right.

From:  http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/05/316658.shtml

 
I know this is extreme for people from other countries. In most countries in the world, there is some prohibition on speech aimed at speech that incites religious and ethnic hatred. It's an obligation in international treaties - for which the US has reservations saying (essentially) it will not abide.  Suggesting otherwise - suggesting the government has a right or a place in defining what is acceptable speech and what isn't sends a message that the US government could but isn't willing to do something about the video.

The exact opposite is true: the government may want to, but it does not have the authority or power to do so. This is a fundamentally important point because if you suggest that the video could violate free speech laws in the US, you are suggesting the government has a role and responsibility to intervene. But if you understand that the US law protects this speech absolutely - because, to my knowledge, it never includes a direct call to violence that could be interpreted as trying to and obviously leading to such violence - then you have to understand why it is not and cannot do more to stop such speech.

Living in a land of extreme speech has its drawbacks. We're currently at a stage where our democracy is threatened not by religious fundamentalism but by ideological fervor that encourages people to think it's acceptable to lie about pretty much anything in order to win an election. It's dangerous. But it's also protected.

And I like that about my homeland.  Good and bad, I like that when some idiot makes a film, (a) the majority of Americans won't actually watch it (seriously, no one would have watched it but for the outcry), but (b) it falls not on the government to regulate it and say it's inappropriate, but on the citizens to do so.  Hated speech - and hateful speech - cannot result in a prison sentence that intensifies someone's martyrdom, but it can result in social ostracism, which only strengthens the cultural understanding of what's acceptable and what is not.  If that determination of acceptability comes from the government, rather than from friends, family, and community members, it never takes a firm root in the hearts and minds of those targeted, or those observing.

That's not to say that the guys who made this film, or the likes of Terry Jones, will ever be persuaded by the response of thousands of other Christians in the US who have protested their acts, but those responses do impact societal understandings of their underlying messages.  As a young child, I remember someone standing up to racism.  It wasn't some big bad way of handling it - there was no violence, there was no punching. It was a simple statement: "That's racist."  And when the offender continued to protest that it wasn't, the response remained the same: "No. That's racist and it's unacceptable. Here's why..." with a brief explanation of the premise it was built on.  I honestly don't know who the person was who stood up in that way - I can see their face briefly in my memory, but I was young and short so mostly I remember their hands as they talked.  But that memory - that willingness to call someone out when the speech they were advocating was both insulting and based on premises that were fundamentally racist... that has stayed with me.

I don't always handle racism that well, but I want to. I've always wanted to.  Because in that moment, there was a societal recognition of those around that someone had just stepped beyond the bounds of social acceptability. There were no police to enforce this, there were no arrests made. But, I, as a young child, learned what was right and wrong in that moment.

As I got older, I heard blatantly racist things a lot less, but as more people were willing to call out the blatantly racist things, the multi-cultural community I grew up in found it's own code words to hide the racism. You would hear a white man at a table over from you say, "Well, when they - you know, they - moved in ..." And you wouldn't be certain that he was talking about a whole community - the black population in our community - or if he was referring to a specific neighbour, who may or may not be black (which is possible because everyone in my city is pretty much related to each other so lots of people don't use names when they're in public).  That kind of racism is much harder to call out.  Had he just said, "Well, when the black people moved in ..." I could casually lean over and tell him what he just said was insulting, not just to black people but to me. When he says, "they" and I can't tell who "they" are, it's much harder to casually point out to someone that they're not actually the good person t hey pretend to be, but they are actually racist whether they want to admit that word or not.

And that's the thing about racism and religious bigotry: it doesn't go away simply because it is prohibited. It just goes underground.  But while I can't call people at a table over out for their underground speech (unless I hear the whole conversation), when I'm at a party and someone uses the code words around me, I can - and have - called them out for it.  That kind of rebuke is, I think, more powerful than government pronouncements, arrests and denunciations.  It may not give full satisfaction to everyone who is insulted by the speech, but it does alter the discourse in the community and it does encourage the speaker to actually reconsider what they just said, even if that doesn't occur in the immediate period but only later.

The international community has already debated the defamation of religion concept and decided it was an inappropriate impingement on human rights. To revive that debate again is to move backwards in our understanding of human rights.  Human rights necessarily cause friction with one another, and that is no more more prominent than in the four freedoms found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, articles 18, 19, 21 and 22:  freedom of religion, expression, assembly and association.

The freedom of religion includes the right to change one's religion. This suggests an opportunity to both share and receive information about your religion.  And yet, the very idea that someone would change their religion violates the underlying belief systems of the religions; it is, by many religious standards, the leaving of God's word. It threatens the tenets of faith of many. And if it requires the ability to share and receive information about religion, it means that my right to retain my religion comes into direct conflict with the right of others to share about their religion.

This is what human rights is; it's the recognition that we are not all fundamentally entitled to everything we individually want, but that we live in a community whose goal and obligation is to realize the inherent dignity of every person. Sometimes that will mean that our rights come into conflict, and we have to learn to balance them appropriately.

The freedom of speech means the right to say things that others despise.  And sometimes, we need to have those conversations. If we were to denounce and ban every speech deemed insulting to a religion, we really would still believe the Sun revolved around the Earth. Because for a very long time, Catholics (back when all Christians were Catholics) found that to be a denigration of their religious beliefs.  It turned out to be truth and the entirety of Christianity now accepts that as a reality and not contradictory to the Bible, but for a while it was deemed to not just be sacrilegious but to be an attack on the foundation of religious belief.

Someone - I think a commenter to an al Jazeera article - said that Christians in the US would never stand for this kind of insult to their own religion. My response? Bullshit.

The first time I watched The Life of Brian I wasn't a Christian. I thought it was hilarious.  The second time I watched it, I was not only a practicing Christian but one who taught Sunday school and lead Bible Studies.  I was shocked at my younger self for embracing such a sacrilegious movie. It is, in many ways, fundamentally insulting to the Christian faith. It suggests that Christians are kind of stupid and wish-washy and Christ may or may not be who he claimed to be. But, as I have watched it again (yes, despite being scandalized the first time), I've found that it engages in questions I, as a Christian, need to be able to address. What is it that I think makes Christ unique? Why am I willing to follow Him wherever He calls me (and He's called me to go to places I really didn't want to go to, like Cincinnati, Ohio)?  Why do I think He is who He claimed to be?

These are fundamentally important question. They are questions I need to be able to answer if I profess to have a faith in Christ.  Was that the motive behind the movie - to call me to a closer relationship with God?  Doubtful.  But how I respond to the movie is not determined by the motive of the movie-maker; it's determined by my relationship with God.

The Life of Brian isn't the only movie that has scandalized Christians in the the US.  We also have The Last Temptation of Christ on our Blockbuster bookshelves; we had an artist dip a crucifix in urine at a performance in New York; and the movie Dogma is based on the premise that God can make mistakes. And yes, our Bibles have been burned at times. These all directly attack central foundations of Christianity and do so intentionally.

And, for that matter, so does Islam to an extent, as Christianity attacks the foundations of Judaism. For Christianity to be true, then portions of Jewish teaching must be false. There was be a denouncing of it - the idea that the Savior is still to come; the idea that Jewish people retain a special covenant with God. For Islam to be true, then portions of Christianity (and Judaism!) must be false. We (Christians) believe that Jesus was the Son of God, the Saviour, who died and was resurrected. Islam suggests that Jesus was a prophet, which is axiomatic to the fundamental tenants of Christian doctrine. The very suggestion is a grievous offense to Christians, not that substantially different than The Last Temptation of Christ, The Life of Brian, or Dogma.  And Christianity rejects the concept of Mohammad being a Prophet.  Yet, under Islamic teaching I am a protected person of the Book, despite my rejection of Mohammad as the greatest Prophet.

The point is that we cannot outlaw speech simply because they offend someone's religious sensibilities.  Sometimes, those offenses are necessary as we develop in our scientific and cultural understandings. Sometimes they must be protected in order to respect the religious rights of others. And sometimes there is no greater good that comes of them other than the protection of speech itself and the benefit that comes from free and robust dialogue.

It is this premise that is behind the robust protection of free speech.  It is not easy to live responsibly with such freedom - it takes commitment and a willingness to stand in front of someone to protect their right to say the very things you have fought against your entire life.  But there is a deep and real benefit to that level of freedom, and it is one that is misunderstood and under-appreciated by those who would blame the response and violence on the freedom of speech recognized in the US.

I don't like the video or the distributors' intentions. I think they're disgusting. They're manipulative. And they're outrageous. But the way you fight that is not through government intervention (or through rioting and suicide bombings).  It is through a dialogue that educates those around you.  It is through using the very freedom of speech you see them using and it is through standing and screaming at the top of your lungs against the very thing they would scream at the top of their lungs to defend.

That is what freedom looks like. And that is worth fighting to preserve.

Israeli Settlements and the Plight of Palestinian Christians

The Israeli news agency Hareetz is carrying a story today about the door of a Christian monastery being lit on fire. Some of my friends would expect this to be from Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Egypt.  It's not.  It's from Latrun on the border of Israel and Palestine, land claimed by Israel as a result of the '67 war between it and most of its neighbors.

The arsonists left "graffiti tags" - markings similar to what a gang does - linking the attack and the recent eviction of an illegal Israeli settlement in Migron, West Bank. In essence, those tags were used to indicate to the community that breaking down illegal Israeli settlements will end up in retribution to the civilian society.

According to Hareetz, the settlement was "established through deceit, without a permit, and on privately-owned Palestinian land," without the owner's permission, "dispossess[ing] the land's rightful owners for more than a decade." The tags can be seen below and Hareetz says they translate to "Jesus is a pig" and "Migron."

From AFP at Hareetz

The government of Israel apparently went through a period of dissociative identity disorder (sometimes called multiple personalities) where the justice branch ordered the eviction and restoration of rights for about a decade while the executive branch provided "generous assistance" to the settlers.

For Migron, it took intervention by an Israeli NGO, Peace Now, to help restore the rights of the landowners.

The graffiti alone might not be enough to tie Migron to the attacks on the Latrun Monastery - Google maps tells me Latrun is about 25.5km to the west of Jerusalem while The National tells me Migron is 15km north of Jerusalem, but thankfully there's an asshat who was willing to tie it all together. According to the Hareetz article on the attack, "Baruch Marzel, a right-wing activist, connected the attack to the evacuation of Migron. 'We said that evacuating Migron could fan the flames. There’s an entire community that feels very bitter,' said Marzel."

It's not the first "price tag" attack against Christian churches, either. "‎'In February, similar anti-Christian graffiti was found sprayed on the walls of the Greek church at a monastery in Jerusalem’s Valley of the Cross, and a Baptist Church in central Jerusalem. In both incidents, the graffiti included phrases such as 'Jesus is dead,' 'Death to Christians,' 'Mary is a prostitute,' and 'price tag.'"

Yes, in response to being forced to comply with the law, the response has apparently been to threaten death to Christians.  It's been to desecrate the walls of Christian holy sites and to set them on fire. As I said on facebook when I first saw this story, "I know Jesus would forgive but I just want to say f*** off."  I know it's not very Christian of me, but sometimes my not-very-Christian self wins. But, I'll get back to the Christian-ness of it all in a second. I'm going to handle the legal part first. 

In response to the Migron eviction, Bejanmin Netanyahu echoed these multiple personalities of the Israeli government for the last ten years: "We are committed to respecting the rule of law and we are committed to strengthening the settlement enterprise."

To which I have to ask: how can you be committed to the rule of law and simultaneously committed to perpetuating illegal actions?

Now I tend to tread carefully when I wade into Israel-Palestine publicly because experience tells me that no matter what I say I can simultaneously be labelled pro-Israel and anti-Semitic, pro-Palestine and anti-Arab. Let's be clear: criticizing the government policies of Israel is not anti-Semitic.  If I can be pro-American (and I am; I love my homeland) and criticize both the Bush and Obama administrations, I can criticize the Israeli government without being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic (and I do disagree with MLK, Jr., as to whether being anti-Israel is the same thing as being anti-Semitic; as it happens, I'm neither, but I don't think the two are tied as much as people like to make them). But, literally having one conversation and being called both anti-Palestinian and anti-Semitic can sting a person - particularly a white American woman who likes to be culturally sensitive - almost into submission.

But I know that's what they want - and by "they" I mean everyone who has a stake in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.  This includes leaders and religious / nationalistic zealots on both sides of the line.  So, I'm going to wade anyhow.

The Israeli settlements in the OPT are illegal.  There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.  Israel (as a government) likes to play a little international law loophole-ing - think G. W. Bush administration's classification of waterboarding as something other than torture - and claim that since the OPT did not have a "sovereign" before the 1967 conflict, then it's not actual "occupation" and therefore the settlements aren't illegal.

To explain a little further, international law forbids an occupying force from establishing settlements, permanently altering the borders or permanently taking land from the occupied territory.  There are a slew of other protections for those in occupations, mostly contained in the Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a party. But, the definition of occupied land is land that previously belonged to another state.  As Israel is fond of pointing out, Palestine was never a state. It was a territory of the British government, who in the half-assed manner in which they left countries during their "decolonization period,"  left Palestine when the 1948 agreement became too complicated.  In doing so, they had followed through on the establishment of Israel but not on the establishment of the other state, Palestine. So, in the Israeli government's reasoning, no previous sovereign = no occupation = no illegality to the settlements.

Except here's the rub, Israel. It doesn't really matter if the OPT had a previous sovereign.  Successive UN Security Council resolutions have, in various ways, ordered Israel to stop building the settlements. Those resolutions are often invoked in subsequent resolutions and it's pretty much settled by the UN Security Council that settlements are illegal and must stop.  That they violate the 4th Geneva Convention, even taking into account Israel's legal arguments. As a member of the UN, Israel has "agree[d] to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter" (article 25).  That means even the ones they don't like.

More importantly - and thankfully something the Hareetz editorial on this issue points out - Israel itself has agreed to stop the settlements through the '93 Oslo Accords. Yes, it's true that the question of Israeli settlements - meaning those already established in 1993 - was to be decided by subsequent agreement. But, Israel recognized the right of Palestine to self-governance over the OPT. It agreed to withdraw its troops and to cede jurisdiction over the area.  In recognizing sovereignty and self-government of OPT, it means that Israel has no further justification or legal claim to establishing settlements without the agreement of the Palestinian government. None.  And, of course, Migron was, along with 23 other settlements, established after Sharon's election in 2001, well after the '93 accords.

Of course, Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down by a fanatic, and the Second Intifada started, and Oslo fell out of favor with both Palestinians and Israelis. but falling out of favor is not the same thing as the government repudiating or suspending the agreements.  You don't get to say "we're not abiding by the law" just because it's unpopular.  Otherwise, there's no point to having a law.

So, Netanyahu cannot simultaneously be committed to settlements and to the rule of law.  He has to choose one or the other.

Now, turning back to that Monastery in Latrun... It appears those responsible decided that since they were criminals (or supporting criminals), they'd go ahead and take it a step further and become terrorists. And yes, I intentionally used the word because that's what it is: terrorism.  It's the intentional targeting of a civilian place of worship in an attempt to manipulate the government or society into doing what you want through intimidation and fear. It's terrorism. Plain and simple.

And Baruch Marzel, the right-wing guy Hareetz quoted, is encouraging that terrorism.  He is, quite literally, a terrorist-lover (as opposed to those of us who think even terrorists get the right not to be tortured, which I think is being a law-lover, not a terrorist-lover).

I do feel the need here to put in an aside pointing out that I know many Israelis who do not condone these acts, and others who do not condone the settlements at all. Just like Christians and Muslims have terrorists who claim to be acting on behalf of the faith but are really acting on behalf of their own egos and political aspirations, so does Judaism and these are is.  Not all Israelis and not all Jews should be considered responsible for these acts.  But Baruch Marzel and his ilk should be.
 And this is what drives me insane about the evangelical movement in the US (let me say that I am a born-again, evangelical Christian so it's not an indictment of all evangelical Christians; just the movement as a movement).  For some unexplainable reason - which, according to multiple news reports about 5 years ago is actually explainable in that people think they're helping the Second Coming of Christ (as if someone who is omnipotent and all-powerful needs that kind of assistance) - the evangelical Christian community in the US regularly supports the concept of Israeli settlements.

They take little trips once a year with 20 people on a bus and go and visit an Israeli "outpost" and learn about the religiousness of the settlers and about the plight they have (i.e., having to fight off mean, scary Arabs who want their land back and want to push them from the land God Himself offered the settlers. And live without malls or entertainment venues. I don't know why but every time I see settlements discussed on US TV and by US evangelicals, the distance between the settlement and the nearest shopping / entertainment venue is discussed. It's really bizarre.).

They go to the church at Bethlehem to pray and maybe they meet a single Palestinian there, but mostly they just shuffle on and shuffle off their tourist buses. They don't really meet Palestinians and they definitely don't meet the Palestinian landowners who were dispossessed from their land for the settlements. In doing so, they miss out on actually meeting their Christian brothers and sisters who are harmed by the occupation and the settlements.

Yet, Christian Palestinians do suffer from the occupation, and not just as a consequence of other disputes, like the retribution at Latrun or the threat to kill Christians left at the Greek and bapitist churches and the Valley of the Cross monastery.

Christians do not have a "right of return" to Israel.  Neither do Palestinians. Only Jewish people have a "right of return" to Israel. This is a legal reality. So the Christians present in Israel and Palestine are those who predate 1948. There are likely also Christian converts, but this appears to make up a small percentage of Christians present in the two areas.

Principally, Palestinian Christians are of Arab ethnicity and face the same restraints and problems as other Palestinians. This means, amongst other things, that their travel is limited, and as a result many Christians in the area can't visit Jerusalem to see the holy sites there.  So if you're an American Christian, you have greater rights of pilgrimage to visit a site thousands of miles away than if that of a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem. Think about it: from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, it is 5983 miles (9626.65 km). From my friend's hometown of Bethlehem to Jerusalem it is only 5 miles (8.05 km). Yet, I am more entitled - and somewhat more likely! - to celebrate Easter at a holy site in Jerusalem than my brothers and sisters from Bethlehem.

60 Minutes recently highlighted this on a news segment (I've only read the transcript of the segment; I haven't watched it).  But the 60 Minutes story was a bit naive and factually wrong.  It claimed:

Christianity may have been born in the Middle East, but Arab Christians have never had it easy there, especially not today. In Iraq and Egypt, scores of churches have been attacked, hundreds murdered. In Syria, revolution seriously threatens Christian communities. The one place where Christians are not suffering from violence is the Holy Land: but Palestinian Christians have been leaving in large numbers for years.

Christians aren't immune from the violence being perpetrated in Israel and Palestine.  And Palestinian Christians aren't immune from the violence being directed at their Palestinian Muslim neighbors. Their land is being taken for settlement. They are being detained, tortured and killed for protesting the occupation or settlements. They suffer for the same reason: their claimed nationality and ethnicity. And, apparently, when someone wants to lash out at the Palestinians, it's easy to go ahead and burn the door of a Monastery in response.

Even with a rather light touch on the problems of Palestinian Christians, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the 60 Minutes' piece was a hatchet job, without having ever seen it because he made the complaint before it even aired! Subsequent to his complaint - and still before the story aired - he was interviewed and said something I still don't understand:

It seemed to me outrageous. Completely incomprehensible that at a time when these communities, Christian communities throughout the Middle East are being oppressed and massacred, when churches are being burnt, when one of the great stories in history is unfolding? I think it's-- I think it's-- I think you got me a little bit mystified.

So, the argument is that since churches are being threatened and burned in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere we should care about a little discrimination against our brothers and sisters in Palestine?  Do we get to care now that the Monastery at Latrun was burned?

The truth is our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ are being discriminated against. They suffer every day under the occupation, while those in the US who claim to know and love Christ - who claim to feel a special connection to Bethlehem every year at Christmas - ignore their suffering.  We praise the Israeli government for actions we should be condemning, and we encourage settlements that simply thrust our brothers and sisters into poverty and physical harm.

I don't think we should cherish one human being over another simply because of their religion, but Christians are admonished to pray for the persecuted in our faith. We are supposed to love them and support them and encourage their faith and their development. Instead, too many evangelical Christians in the US unthinkingly support the occupation and Israel's expansion into the territory, which is not just causing individual harm to individual Christians, but it's actually forcing Christians to flee the area, diminishing the Church's presence in its very holiest of lands.

It makes me sick and angry.



Now, I have to say this, which is a bit unrelated: I learned of this incident because I am very fortunate to be friends with Ziya Meral, a Turkish writer and researcher based in London, who fills my newsfeed up every day with stories like this. Much like how I let Jon Stewart find interesting and under-discussed US news for me, and then supplement the Daily Show with online newspapers, I pretty much do the same thing on the Middle East and freedom of religion issues by following Ziya's tweets and then supplementing that.

If you're interested in the Middle East - its politics, its people, its stories - or in issues relating to freedom of religion ("FOR"), I highly encourage you to like Ziya on facebook and follow him on twitter (yes, I linked to his twitter again in case you were too lazy to go back!).  He also shares up sometimes hilarious, non-Mid-East / FOR stuff, too, so if you don't care about the Middle East / FOR, you may still want to follow him.

On Obama's "Socialist" Healthcare

A friend asked me on facebook if I could name a single "socialist" enterprise that functioned. Technically he "defied any liberal" to name a single time socialism has worked.  I'm a liberal, though, and it was on one of my wall posts, so, I took it as a personal challenge.

He was, like many GOP-ers, lambasting "Obamacare" and equating it with socialism.

Of course, I could actually name socialist things that worked: health care in Sweden, Germany, France and Japan, for starters.   The US doesn't like to talk about those examples of strong, robust, respected and appreciated forms of universal health care because the GOP would prefer to have Americans believe the only places with universal health care are Castro's Cuba, Hitler's Germany, and Stalin's Russia.  They like to equate universal health care and communism, so no one wants to discuss the fact that the US is the last industrialized country to adopt a universal system and most of the other industrialized countries are capitalistic democracies. 

So even though I could have gone on and on about socialist enterprises in the world that do actually function, I realized I don't actually need to.  Because the Affordable Care Act - or "Obamacare" - is no more socialistic in nature than the Ohio-GOP led bill that requires all car owners to have car insurance. 

We recognize at times that privileges come with responsibilities.  That's why the Ohio car insurance obligation was never assailed as "communism" - it's a privilege to drive and that privilege requires responsibility.  It's way my parents' were able to impose an 10:00pm curfew on me at 16 years old that could only be broken with advanced permission.  It was a privilege to stay out that late; it was a privilege to stay out even later; and with both of those privileges it was a responsibility to call home.  They weren't being socialists.  It's a privilege to get treated at America's health centres, even when you don't have health insurance, because you need the treatment.  With that comes the responsibility to participate in the system that pays for that privilege when you can (there are poverty exemptions, of course, because contrary to the GOP mantra, Obama isn't actually heartless.  His doctor even says his heart is normal and fit.).

Socialism isn't about forcing people to purchase things they don't think they want.  Socialism is about collecting the ownership of assets into the hands of the state.  And Obamacare does anything but that.  The concept that you would call something that requires you to purchase health insurance from a private company in a capitalist market a socialist endeavor suggests you don't actually understand the word - or care enough about the American public to have an honest conversation about it.

Now, I don't fault my friend - he works in politics.  He's a GOP party man and attended the RNC.  He might even believe that Obamacare is a socialist endeavor.  But it's not.  The assets of health care are not in the hands of the state - they remain, now and for the foreseeable future - in the hands of private individuals.  First, you as an individual buying, and then your health insurance or as a (legal, fictional) individual selling.  You can say many things about that, but you can't call it socialism.

Photo by Huji

Some photos

A few friends have said I need a picture or two on the page.  I don't want to add my own picture, though - at least not yet - so I'm adding Pearl Buck's instead.  She's pretty freaking awesome and is one of my newest heroines (I only really learned of her recently).  Buck was a Nobel Laureate for her body of literature and the picture is from the Nobel Prize Committee's website.

And I figured I'd add a few pictures of my travels in Istanbul:

 So... there are some pictures to satisfy my friends. I'm not sure this is what they had in mind, but ...

Why the "rape exception" is not about "punishing the child"

This week, I listened to the GOP - and my GOP friends - defend a prohibition on abortion even in cases of rape or incest (and some, even in the case of threat to the life or health of the mother). Often, this defense involves, "Why would you punish the child just because of how it was conceived?"  I want to respond to that here, publicly, because it says a lot about the worldviews of people when it comes to abortion.

The reason people believe there should be exception in the case of rape - even if you outlaw (most) other abortions - has nothing to do with the child.  It has everything to do with the mother. And this is where the worldview comes in.  If you believe that a woman's life and health and viability all become irrelevant at the time of pregnancy - that it all must become secondary to the needs and desires of a child - then of course you think that abortion shouldn't be allowed in the case of rape.

But if you believe that women are autonomous human beings who are in the best position to understand their own physical and mental health, then you have to recognize an exception for rape and incest. The reason for a rape or incest exception is because of the toll that can be had on a woman who has to carry a fetus to term.  It is about recognizing that the woman is in the best place to understand that toll on her and about ensuring she gets to control and decide what is necessary to help her recover from the rape.

I don't think a lot of men really understand the mental or physical consequences of rape. It's clear that people like Todd Akin don't, but even other men who think of themselves as compassionate and understanding don't really fully understand it.  So, I want to explain some of the consequences that I've seen in people I've known.

Below are the consequences I have found most common amongst my friends, colleagues and mentorees who have confided in me - sometimes immediately after, sometimes years after. They were not true for every one of my friends, but they were the ones that were most frequently true.  To respect their privacy, I am not using identifying details and I won't use any details that were discussed by only one rape victims; these are the details that have been consistent in their stories.

I want to be clear that while people may want to make gradations of what constitutes a 'serious' mental or physical reaction and what doesn't, such attempts are simultaneously useless and insulting.  There's no such thing as an 'easy' trigger reaction to PTSD. We would never tell a soldier the PTSD from war is "easy" because we think we should get to 'rate' PTSD responses.  Women respond differently to rape and sexual assaults, and each reaction from a woman is "normal" and severe.  There is help available for women around the world (various links are for various countries based on where my most frequent traffic comes from, with general links at 'for' 'women' and 'world'), but it is a process.

• Nightly replaying of the rape while they sleep. I can't call it a nightmare because that suggests something your mind has created or conjured up; this isn't their brain playing tricks on them. This is their brain reliving the actual rape. For months, they don't sleep soundly.  The sleep deprivation clouds their brains, and that makes them feel more crazy.
• Unlike a nightmare, which you can shake off within minutes of waking up, the nightly replaying of a real-life rape stays with the victim throughout the day. It plays in your head throughout the day. You end up not feeling safe and on edge. The entire day.  Then you go to sleep, and it happens again.
• When you see someone from across the street that resembles the man who raped you, you react.  This reaction can vary depending on the person, and even with a single person depending on the day. There's no "degree" of acceptability to these reactions, and all are equally bad even if from an external perspective there seem to be degrees. It is a trigger. It is the long-lasting presence of the rape that no one on the outside can see but that you can feel each time you see someone with a similar build, a similar haircut, a similar skin tone, a similar eye color. It can involve freezing while your heart quickens and you have difficulty breathing while you wait to know it's not him, or it can involve freezing and being unable to move even long after you know it's not him. It can render you speechless or it can result in screaming. You can regain your composure somewhat quickly, or you can end up crying hysterically in a bathroom, calling me to calm you down, or to come get you. It's not physical and mental strength you need. That's not what's preventing you from continuing your walk down the street, from breathing normally, or from getting up and leaving the bathroom. What you need is for the fear to stop. It's for you to know that you can continue on your day and not face a man who will again throw you against a wall, or a bed, or the floor, and violate your bodily integrity without your consent. It's to know you won't have to come face to face with him and have him act like everything's normal.
• You sit through a movie with your friends not knowing there's a rape scene coming up, or sit through a comedy show not knowing rape would be laughed at.  You're in shock listening to details you feel come from your most shameful**, horrific moment of your life while everyone else finds it entertainment. You fake not feeling well, excuse yourself, go home and lie on the floor in the fetal position.  You decide whether you need to call off work for the next day. Maybe you do; maybe you don't, but that night will be another sleepless one. (**Please note this this is a feeling and not a reality. If you are the victim of rape, you do not need to feel shame. Your attacker(s) is the one who should be ashamed.)
• The first time you go on a date with a guy you like, you are fine and having fun until he touches something on your face or your hand.  It triggers a memory - because it is PTSD you're suffering from - and you suddenly look at your would-be boyfriend or lover and realize you're pretty sure he's a rapist.  Not because of anything he's done but because you're pretty sure most men are rapist. Or maybe you realize in the intellectual side of your brain that that's not true, but you also realize you don't trust any man anymore.  You don't have normal relationships with them and you suspect they are all simply assholes.
• You might not tell anyone at first.  Particularly if you know - or are fairly certain - that telling will result in negative attention and reactions at work, in your classroom, or by your friends and family.  Yet, by not telling, you are forced to interact with your rapist - your boss, your teacher, your colleague / coworker / classmate - every day.  Each time he looks at you, you know what he's thinking and you feel the power he has exercised over you.  And he acts so naturally that you start to think you might be crazy - or maybe it really was your fault.  Because how could he act so normally around you after what he did to you? You shrink and he stands taller. 
• If - if - you tell the police, or the doctors and nurses, or a psychologist, you get a sympathetic ear. It gives you hope that others will be understanding. Until you meet with the prosecutor who will handle the case. He tells you there's nothing that can be done; it's your word against his and no jury will convict. He's very sorry, but your pain isn't real enough to warrant the effort. What was the most horrific crime you could imagine won't be recognized by anyone. And you feel embarrassed that you hoped someone would believe you. You feel ashamed because they didn't. And then you start to doubt yourself again.  Maybe you are crazy?  Maybe you should "just get over it"?  But how do you "just get over it" when the person who did this to you is still out there?  Still threatening to do this to other women?
• If - if - you've told people, only some will understand. Many - even your close friends and family - will question what you did to "cause" it. Many women - even your close friends and family - will assume it couldn't have happened to them, and therefore they feel safe and smug. They expect you to take responsibility for something you know somewhere inside of you you are not responsible for.  But that expectation seeps into your brain and you are starting to wonder what were you responsible for?
• If - if - you've told people, most will understand your shock and its effects for about a week to a month, maybe two.  At two months, people stop understanding the PTSD.  They stop understanding the fear.  They stop understanding the nightmares, or the way in which you discuss the issue.  You are left feeling alone, misunderstood, and at times you are made to feel crazy that this is still an issue.  Let me be clear: if this is something you're going through, you are not crazy.
• And most of these reactions leave you feeling a little less of yourself, if not a growing hatred of yourself.

How long those symptoms lasted depended for my friends. Some only suffered for a few weeks or months; some suffered for years.  The constant fear, the constant PTSD, the constant crying, the depression, and the feelings that you are crazy. The self-loathing and hatred that comes when you think maybe you were responsible, and then afterwards again for ever thinking that maybe you were responsible.  There's no real way to put into words what it really feels like.  I've described above symptoms of a deeper trauma.  That trauma is significant and real and long-term.

Now add to that trauma a daily physical consequence and it becomes so much more.  I tried to think of an equivalency for a war PTSD victim, but I can't.  The closest I could come up with is having a war victim with a lost limb and then telling them you're not willing to give them a prosthesis for almost a year later because you don't feel their entitled to it.  It's not a perfect analogy though, and that's because there really isn't an analogy to rape.  It's a unique form of torture (and it is actually used as torture around the world).

The reason for a rape / incest exception has nothing to do with punishment; it has everything to do with empowering the victim to choose for herself what she can handle mentally and physically, what she is able to deal with on a daily basis as the consequence of her rape.  Those who would suggest women can just give the baby up for adoption at the end don't understand that those 9 months of pregnancy may cause an irreparable delay in the woman's healing process.  It may cause more psychological damage as she faces each day the consequences, and with each kick of the baby remembers what his hands felt like on her skin.

Whether a woman is in a place to psychologically and physically handle the stress of pregnancy - and the minute-by-minute reminder of what happened to her - is a personal issue. It's a singular experience and cannot be the subject of a blanket determination. It is not for someone else to decide whether she's "mentally healthy" enough to deal with this repercussion.  It is not for a bureaucrat, or even her doctor, to say what she can and should handle as a consequence of her rape.

People who talk about abortions in the case of rape and incest as an issue of "punishing the child" don't fully understand what rape does to a woman, or the need for women to regain a semblance of control over their own autonomy and personal dignity.

Perhaps those individuals who oppose a rape exception will never understand the reality of rape victims, and I don't fault them for not understanding what it means. I fault them for assuming they understand what it means, and for assuming that simply because carrying a baby to term is right for one rape victim, then it should be right for all rape victims.

I don't usually screen my posts before putting them up, but on this one I did ask a few friends for their thoughts on an earlier draft.  Since I'm not a rape victim, I wanted to give a voice for others, not a voice to them, so I asked friends who either were survivors or who I knew were sensitive to the issues to comment. One of my friends wrote back and agreed to let me include the following from her email: 

"Forget the 9 months (not really, but for the purpose of my point) - If every time I see someone who resembles him I freak out, I would be terrified to see him in my child and whether I'd be able to handle that. I'm sure I'd love the child, but I'd be so scared that seeing the child would cause flashbacks and fear. I'd be terrified he would find out about the child and want to have contact - thus, meaning contact with me. I'd be terrified of how I and my child would feel if I didn't let him meet his child and was therefore taking my child's "father" away."

My friend will, insha'allah, one day make a wonderful mother, but I can't imagine the pain and dread, the long-term psychological toll, that would have played out had her rape resulted in a pregnancy. She doesn't believe in having an abortion otherwise, but said she would likely have one in this case because of the toll that such a pregnancy would have on her.  It's not about the child - it's not a punishment to the child - it's about her.  It's about what she could and could not handle.

There is no "right" way to handle this for a rape victim.  Some rape victims would find the idea of aborting a fetus conceived through rape repugnant. Some would find the idea of carrying to term too damaging. Both are acceptable decisions if they are the decisions of the rape victim, and that victim understands her decision is appropriate for her and her alone. Because ultimately, that's why people support an exception for rape and incest: it's an attempt to give a little power back to the woman to make decisions that are best for her mental and physical health.  It's a recognition of a woman as an autonomous individual entitled to human dignity, including mental health, and the right to control, influence and make medical decisions for herself.

Suggesting that abortion following a rape is about punishment - of anyone, father or baby - rather than about a woman making the best choices for herself in the face of unimaginable pain... that's cruel. It's inhuman.  It's degrading. 

And it shows you have no respect for a woman as an autonomous human being; you only respect her for what she carries in her womb.