Free Karim!
Karim, a blogger from Egpyt, took a brave stand after the Copts underwent a new wave of persecution in 2005. He now faces 10 years in prison (after already being thrown out of his university) for "spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country’s reputation", "incitement to hate Islam" and "defaming the President of the Republic". Amnesty international has more here.
Karim's blog is here, but it is all in Arabic...however, he has links to a variety of intriguing organizations fighting for basic civil rights in the Middle East, such as HAMSA.
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Comments
I guess it just seems like common sense to me - and hopefully others - that people like Karim should be able to speak their minds without threat of incarceration or violence. Are you seriously defending Egypt's "right" to do this?
Not that I brought it up, but: Are you really trying to compare the United States civil rights record with that of ANY Mid east country? Of course we have kinks to work out, but we also have a means by which that is remotely possible. I wonder if you are unfamiliar with how medieval the ME human rights record is?
Not sure what this has to do with Israel.
If you are fine with Karim going to prison or women being buried up to their necks and being stoned for adultery, well then what can I say? For my part I would prefer a society generally unwilling to die for their respective religions than one that is willing and ALSO includes killing, maiming, and imprisoning for their religion.
- Steve Knowlton
And our sense of freedom and civil rights is exactly what islamists decry. In a cunning fashion, they point to excesses of our material and freedom-loving culture, most of which you and I don't participate in. The point is that they are countering the deep envy of normal Arab people for stable, fair, and free institutions of civil society.
So I just don't agree that we're engaging in some standardless debate. The Arab World bought into our western standards 100 years ago, but the consequences of that choice is painful, much as it has been for every country that has gone through it. Think of Russia's and China's slow, painful exodus from barbaric tyranny to something more humane.
I'm not at all for dictating how others should live, but the islamic nation-states are inviting more scrutiny because their inner chaos is spreading outwards, and negatively affecting others.
And finally, practically speaking, where would most of our Orthodox old world churches be had not the Russian Crown, much as James is doing here, insisted over and over again in the course of its relations with the Islamic world, that Turkey treat its religious minorities with greater humanity? Doesn't the "Church of Antioch" owe its existence precisely to this imposition of western standards on the Ottomans?
Where in the Fathers do we read "one soul at a time," in response to imperial designs? We're not quietists. We need to participate in the serious questions of the day.
- Steve Knowlton
Slavery in the western world did not die out because of Thomas Paine, it died out - sometimes with massive bloodshed - because very slowly people's perceptions began to change. By the same token, slavery in the Middle East which met it's demise (at least technically and legally) in the mid 20th century...so clearly change is possible.
Secondly, Christ's teachings are old, but the OT teachings are older. yet it was Christ who illumined us so that it is no longer an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
And the rights I am speaking of here is not about being un-American, it's about being human in the truest Orthodox sense of the word. God himself allowed satan freedom of conscience (of at least some sort) to rebel. If we wish to argue from this perspective, I would offer that much of what we take to be "western secular human rights/values" are derived not from secularism but the teachings of Jesus Christ Himself - whether or not Amnesty International would like to recognize it. To that degree I would gladly stand next to an atheist and defend his rights to disbelieve than to stand with a religious zealot and join him in stoning a blasphemer of Islam. Neither would I cut off the hand and tongue of someone I thought was teaching Christian heresy, though surely we Orthodox have done so in the past. Hence, aged practices are not wholesome for the sake of their years of being practiced.
I believe it is a sickness akin to our own sin that would condone and/or participate in honor killings of profaned daughters, that would behead people for insulting the prophet, or would imprison someone for speaking their mind. It IS inhuman. Anyone that believes otherwise are spiritually and intellectually deluded.
Again, it's not about western values - as I see it - but HUMAN values. Christian values that YES we should all share and we should do all that we can to enlighten people to. One at a time through evangelism for sure, but also on a larger - even, gasp, a political scale. Many of these groups that Kamir links to are home grown in the Middle East.
As you likely know, in MOST ME nations Christian evangelism is illegal. And it is illegal for many muslims to convert.
Thus I am all for international pressure (economic and social) to encourage an updating of laws in the ME. And in encouraging groups that work right now to effect change there. Oddly enough, this would actually make for good foreign policy. Not unlike the abolitionist movement of the American 19th century that might have seen an end to slavery without the awful war. But even still, without the abolitionist movement (again, representing a fairly profound moral shift and a conscience effort to work for that change) Lincoln would not have had the political capital to start and then continue a war that for the first couple years looked to be a pretty ugly mess.
I should have added: ...for the Union.
I'll put the question back to you: why do Iran, Iraq, Syria have sham legislatures? Our congress is not sham by any degree; our parties might be dysfunctional, but there is nothing "sham" at all about the institution. Otherwise, why would we have such a hardfought election push in which the Democratic victory seemed so sweet (to them) and so bitter (to their opponents)? In places like Iraq and Syria, the winning party usually gets 99.9% of the vote, and the opposition is jailed. Which means to say that winning office is a meaningless exercise. Surely we don't have that here. So why do they have it? Why don't they enthrone a caliph?
As to your allergy regarding american military strength, I just rely on my Orthodox prayer book: "grant the christ-loving armies victory over their enemies." It was good enough for Byzantium and Moscow; it works fine for me. Orthodox countries and churches aren't (weren't) nearly as timid about these matters.
- Steve