Author Archives: Editors

Freedom Of Speech, Freedom To Offend & Pluralism

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Does freedom of speech mean one is free to offend at any cost? Below is a challenging and thought provoking article by Kenan Malik, a London based writer, lecturer and a broadcaster on BBC radio. His article “Pleasures Of pluralism-Pain of Offence” is worth reading. I think one is free to express his /her opinion even if it offends some individuals or community. But the writer should at least try to express the opinion in least offensive way possible. If the writer deliberately uses the most offensive way, then the motive becomes mainly to offend and less to express the opinion. Mr. Kenan thinks otherwise. There is a question of role of publications’ freedom to edit and reject the articles. I am posting some excerpts from the Article and my back and forth conversation/comments on the above topic with Mr. Kenan. ( F. Sheikh) 

“At the heart of the argument for restrictions on offensive speech is the belief that while free speech may be a good, it must necessarily be less free in a plural society. For diverse societies to function and to be fair, so the argument runs, we need to show respect not just for individuals but also for the cultures and beliefs in which those individuals are embedded and which helps give them a sense of identity and being. This requires that we police public discourse about those cultures and beliefs, both to minimise friction between antagonistic groups and to protect the dignity of those individuals embedded in them. As the sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, that ‘If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism.’ One of the ironies of living in a plural society, it seems, is that the preservation of diversity requires us to leave less room for a diversity of views.

It is an argument that seems to me fundamentally to misunderstand the nature both of diversity and of free speech.  When we say that we live in a diverse society, what we mean is that it is a messy world out there, full of clashes and conflict. And that is all for the good, for it is out of such clashes and conflicts that cultural and political engagement emerges. Diversity is important because it allows us to break out of our culture-bound boxes, to expand our horizons, to compare and contrast different values, beliefs and lifestyles, make judgements upon them, and decide which may be better and which may be worse. It is important, in other words, because it allows us to engage in political dialogue and debate that can held create a more universal language of citizenship.

Of course, most critics who argue for restraint on the matter of offensiveness would have no problem with political or social or cultural criticism. What is unacceptable, they would argue, is when such criticism crosses the line and becomes abuse or obscenity.  There is all the difference, as the philosopher Shabir Akhtar put it at the height of the controversy over The Satanic Verses, between ‘sound historical criticism’ and ‘scurrilously imaginative writing’. Akhtar, who became a spokesman for the Bradford Council of Mosques in the wake of the infamous book-burning demonstration in January 1989, suggested that he real debate was not about ‘freedom of speech versus censorship’ but about ‘legitimate criticism versus obscenity and slander’.

Exactly the same point has been made by every opponent of offensive talk.  By the Sikh protestors, for instance, who in 2004 shut down Behzti, a play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, which the Birmingham Rep pulled after demonstrations by Sikh activists. Or by the Christian protestors who would have liked to have prevented the broadcasting of Jerry Springer: The Opera.

To defend the right to give offence, in other words, is not merely to defend free speech. It is also to defend diversity in its true sense. If we want the pleasures of pluralism, we have to accept the pain of being offended.

Comments;

By Fayyaz

By your standard of freedom of speech, I guess then Mr. Khomenei has every right to issue fatwa against Salman Rushdie-after all it is his opinion and it is just a speech even if it incites violence ? What if I write a full paragraph of pornographic insults against this article in this space ? will it be ok? Who is to judge this freedom of speech?
Every publication has the right set its policies, the writer can write whatever he/she wishes, but publication has the freedom to edit it or deny publication.

What you are talking about is abuse of freedom of speech to shock and get the attestation and not responsible discussion of difference of opinions. Offending just for the sake of offending does not advance the cause of freedom of speech, it just gives cover to bigots and racists like Cartoonist you mentioned.

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Reply by Kenan Malik

June 20, 2013 at 08:09

No, by my standards, the line between the legal and illegal should be the incitement to violence. There is, however, a big difference between the giving of offence and the inciting of violence, a difference you seem to gloss over. Of course, every publication has ‘the right set its policies’; I have never suggested otherwise. That does not mean that I cannot criticize a publication (or a museum or a theatre or a broadcaster) for the decision it takes, for what it deems to be acceptable or unacceptable, or to insist that the refusal to offend is an undermining of free speech.

You ask ‘Who is to judge freedom of speech?’. That was precisely the question I asked. Who decides what is ‘abuse of freedom of speech to shock’ and what is ‘responsible discussion of difference of opinions’? The Dutch politician Geert Wilders wants to ban the Qur’an on the grounds that it promotes hatred. By your standard of freedom of speech, I assume that you think he is right to do so? If you think otherwise, why should we rely on your judgment as to what is acceptable and unacceptable, rather than Wilders’? Shabir Akhtar insisted that The Satanic Verses was ‘hate speech’? Do you agree with him? If not, why not?

As for free speech providing ‘cover’ for racists and bigots, I wrote in my comment to AT above, that I think it ‘morally incumbent on those who argue for free speech to stand up to bigotry’ and that ‘to argue for free speech but not to utilize it to challenge obnoxious, odious and hateful views seems to me immoral’. Don’t confuse what should be allowed with what is morally right.

 

  • AT ( comments by an other participant)

June 20, 2013 at 12:52

What is your definition of “incitement to violence”, Kenan?

It seems to be a key line in the sand, so I think if I understood how it would be enforced in a non-discriminatory manner, I would be much more comfortable with your overall argument. ( AT)

June 21, 2013 at 08:04

AT, my definition is what it says on the tin – the direct incitement to commit an act of violence. There has to be both a direct link between speech and action and intent on the part of the speaker that that particular act of violence be carried out. In ordinary criminal cases, incitement is, rightly, very difficult legally to prove. The burden of proof should not be loosened just because hate speech may be involved.

  • Comments by Fayyaz

June 21, 2013 at 02:33

I think Salman Rushdie is a great intellectual. He has the ability and intellectual capacity to write an intellectually challenging critical analysis of Islam, but instead he chose a crude and vulgar method to offend Muslims and wrote Satanic Verses. His objective was to offend Muslims-and he chose intellectually lazy and easy way out by writing Satanic Verses.

I do not know whether Satanic verses was a hate speech, but it was to offend Muslims just for the sake of offending and get cheap publicity- under the cover of freedom of speech. In my judgment such abuse of freedom of speech is also immoral.

Fayyaz

June 21, 2013 at 07:47

Fayyaz, your view provides a very good reason as to why perceptions of offence should not be the basis for censorship.

Comments By Fayyaz;

  • Your these comments.

“Fayyaz, your view provides a very good reason as to why perceptions of offence should not be the basis for censorship.”

I am not in favor of censorship either. I think If someone has to make a point or express an opinion , one should do so even if it is offensive to others. But I think one has the responsibility to express oneself in the least offensive way possible. If one deliberately chooses the most offensive way possible, then motive is to offend and not express an opinion. I think the writer/ speaker has the personal responsibility, not outside body, to make a judgement. Similarly the publication has to make a judgment whether the material is to express an opinion or mainly to offend others.

Fayyaz

Reply by Kenan Malik

June 22, 2013 at 08:38

Sure, there is a distinction between the right to free speech and the wisdom of exercising such a right in a particular fashion, a point The I have made many times. Take, for instance, The Innocence of Muslims, the visibly crude and bigoted anti-Muslim video that provoked so much controversy and violence last year. I would defend the right of such a film to be made, but I would also question the wisdom of making it, and would strongly challenge the sentiments expressed in it. It makes little sense, however, to view the distinction between the right to speech and the wisdom of exercising such a right in a particular fashion in terms of ‘expressing oneself in the least offensive way possible’. It is, as I have suggested, often important that people offend others. To say that something is offensive is often another way of saying that certain ideas, beliefs and forms of power that people do not wish to be challenged are being challenged. To demand that one should always minimize the giving of offence is to demand that one should always minimize the challenge to such ideas, beliefs and forms of power. In the case of, say, The Satanic Verses, the problem lay not in Salman Rushdie causing offence but in people taking offence. That is true in most such cases.


  • Comments by Fayyaz

June 26, 2013 at 19:12

Your comment ” The Satanic Verses, the problem lay not in Salman Rushdie causing offence but in people taking offence.”

I think you are laying lot of omen and gag order on the victim of offence and giving a free ride to the writer. The victim of an offence, actual or perceived, has the right to protest, it is not a ” problem””but right.
No one has the right to resort to violence,but everyone has the right to protest against offence.

Words has power, influence and consequences-both positive and negative-otherwise why write?They can cut like a knife and sooth like a balm. Freedom of speech comes with responsibility.Most of distinctions you mentioned are to some extent arbitrary used by some writers to escape responsibility. See following comments by Zoe Heller on Salman Rushdie:

“More troubling, however, than his exaggerated claim to naiveté is the case that Rushdie seems to be making for fiction’s immunity from political or religious anger. In a departure from the standard, liberal notion that literature must be free to offend, he proposes that literature, properly understood, cannot offend. Muslims who were insulted by The Satanic Verses were guilty of a category error: just like Anis Rushdie, in his “unsophisticated” reading of Midnight’s Children, they had confused fiction with other sorts of speech:

In his famous essay “Outside the Whale,” written five years before the fatwa, Rushdie attacked various books and films for propagating imperialist myths about the nature of Indo-British relations during the Raj. (He argued, for example, that the rape plot at the center of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet endorsed a racist fantasy about the sexual threat posed to white colonial women by “lust-crazed wogs.”) Novels, he claimed, could not be excused from criticism of this sort on grounds that they were “just” fiction: all art, in as much as it ventured to assert “what is the case, what is truth and what untruth,” was inescapably political, and part of “the unceasing storm, the continual quarrel, the dialectic of history.”

Fayyaz

June 27, 2013 at 00:44

1. Sure, people can people can feel offended about what they will. And they have the right to protest, even in the most offensive terms if they so wish. What they don’t have is the right not to be offended.

2. It is true that words are important and have power, but they do not ‘cut like a knife’ except in a metaphorical sense. Part of the problem in this whole debate is the confusion of the metaphorical and the real.

3. There are many responsibilities we may wish to place upon writers – the responsibility, for instance, to speak the truth, to fight injustice, to challenged conventional views, etc. But the last thing we should do is place responsibility upon writers not to give offence. In fact were writers to take that as their starting point, it would be an abrogation of their responsibilities as writers. It is also a notion of ‘responsibility’ with which most authoritaran regimes would every happy; indeed it is a notion of responsibility that many continually use to shut down debate.

4. You are right that when it comes to free speech, literature does not, and should not, occupy a privileged place. You are right, too, that fiction, like any piece of writing, cannot in any way be protected from criticism. But to criticize a piece of writing, whether The Satanic Verses or the Raj Quartets, is not the same as saying that it should not have been written, or that the author must take responsibility for people being offended by it.

Click link to read full article;

http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/the-pleasures-of-pluralism-the-pain-of-offence/

(Posted By F. Sheikh)

Charity- An Other Tool Of Enslavement By The Rich & Powerful ?

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The book review below on Rock Star, Bono, raises the old question-Is Charity and Philanthropy an other tool of Rich and Powerful, who control most of the resources, to enslave the masses?

Irish musician Bono arrives at 10 Downin

” The Frontman; Bono ( In the name of Power) By Harry Browne-Review”

Bono the philanthropist is nothing but a crony of bankers and neocons, argues Terry Eagleton. Some excerpts from article;

Bono belongs to the new, cool, post-political Ireland; but by turning back to the old, hungry, strife-torn nation, now rebaptised as Africa, he could bridge the gap between the two. Even so, he has not been greatly honoured in his own notoriously begrudging country, or elsewhere. Harry Browne recounts the (perhaps apocryphal) tale of the singer standing on stage clapping while declaring: “Every time I clap my hands, a child dies.” “Then stop fucking doing it!” yelled a voice from the crowd.

n fact, as Browne points out, he has cosied up to racists such as Jesse Helms, whitewashed architects of the Iraqi adventure such as Tony Blair and Paul Wolfowitz, and discovered a soulmate in the shock-doctrine economist Jeffrey Sachs. He has also brownnosed the Queen, sucked up to the Israelis, grovelled at the feet of corporate bullies and allied himself with rightwing anti-condom US evangelicals in Africa. The man who seems to flash a peace sign every four seconds apparently has no problem with the sponsorship of the arms corporation BAE. His consistent mistake has been to regard these powers as essentially benign, and to see no fundamental conflict of interests between their own priorities and the needs of the poor. They just need to be sweet-talked by a charmingly bestubbled Celt. Though he has undoubtedly done some good in the world, as this book readily acknowledges, a fair bit of it has been as much pro-Bono as pro bono republico.

If Bono really knew the history of his own people, he would be aware that the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s was not the result of a food shortage. Famines rarely are. There were plenty of crops in the country, but they had to be exported to pay the landlords’ rents. There was also enough food in Britain at the time to feed Ireland several times over. What turned a crisis into a catastrophe was the free market doctrine for which the U2 front man is so ardent an apologist. Widespread hunger is the result of predatory social systems, a fact that Bono’s depoliticising language of humanitarianism serves to conceal. Click link for full article;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/26/frontman-bono-harry-browne-review

( Posted By F. Sheikh )

Snowden, Through The Eyes Of A Spy Novelist

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Alex Berenson in NYT;

“We have treated a whistle-blower like a traitor — and thus made him a traitor. Great job!”

“What Mr. Snowden at first seemed to want — and rightly — was to force our electronic spies to answer, in plain English, are you saving e-mails, Skype and other Internet communications? What about phone calls? For how long? Who can get access to this data, and is a warrant required in each case? How are calls between Americans treated? Et cetera. Despite many promises of disclosure from the White House, the answers to all those questions remain murky”.

“So Mr. Snowden seemed to have done the world a service. But in the last week both he and his former employers have misplayed their hands, and his story has become far trickier. Mr. Snowden did not start out as a spy, and calling him one bends the term past recognition. Spies don’t give their secrets to journalists for free.”

“Mr. Snowden has put himself in a terrible spot. Moscow will surely protect him for as long as it feels like irritating Washington. But by the time the Russians are finished sifting through his laptops, he’ll be their spy, whether or not he meant to be. Beijing may have already pulled the same trick; some intelligence officers believe that Chinese spy agencies copied Mr. Snowden’s hard drives during his Hong Kong stay.”

“We have treated a whistle-blower like a traitor — and thus made him a traitor. Great job. Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial? Maybe he would have gone with President Vladimir V. Putin anyway, but at least he would have had another option. The secret keepers would have won too: a Congressional hearing would have been a small price to bring Mr. Snowden and those precious hard drives back to American soil.” Click link for full article;

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/opinion/snowden-through-the-eyes-of-a-spy-novelist.html?hp

( Posted By F. Sheikh)

When Believers Go Bad!

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Shared by Azeem Farooki

When Believers Go Bad: One Muslims Answer To Religious Hate Crimes

Dr. David Liepert
After the horrible shootings in the Sikh Temple in suburban Milwaukee, I was struck that Wade Page talked about a “Racial Holy War”, highlighting that he felt his hate was religiously sanctioned. And looking around our world, although it’s frightening just how pervasive that feeling has become, it was even more frightening to me as a Muslim to realize that America’s initial response wasn’t as much to condemn religiously based violent slaughter as it was to correct his mistake confusing Sikhs for Muslims.

So what can I, as a Muslim do about it? Heaven knows al-Qaeda’s no better. And so far we don’t know much about Page’s religion: so far all we can say is he wasn’t Muslim, because if he were it would have led the news. But it doesn’t matter. Every religion there is has been used by some to justify hatred, something that’s well documented in Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great”, a book I very much enjoyed reading despite the controversial title. Because I thought he asked a very important question.

If God’s so Good, then what makes some believers so very bad?

Growing up as an evangelical Christian, I thought I knew what the answer was. I was pretty sure humankind was divided into eternal winners and eternal losers based on their religions, that I knew where the lines were drawn, and that they were drawn the same in this life and the next. But the more people I met who weren’t like me, and the more different religions I studied, the more I questioned whether I knew everything there was to know about getting to Heaven.

I ended up in Islam not because I rejected Jesus or anything that the Bible actually said, but because I learned how much religious marketing and populist interpretation had influenced what Christianity eventually became. I left it to explore my ongoing relationship with our shared Creator and ended up Muslim, despite the fact that I know the same thing has happened to Islam as well.

However, I’ve stayed here because despite Islamist and Islamophobic claims to the contrary, Islam itself explicitly condemns that “Winner Take All” approach to religion. In fact, the Quran says quite clearly in An-Nisa 4: 123-124,

Not your desires, nor those of the People of the Book (can prevail): whoever works evil, will be requited accordingly. Nor will he find, besides The Lord God, any protector or helper. If any do deeds of righteousness,- be they male or female – and have faith, they will enter Heaven, and not the least injustice will be done to them.

And in Al-Baqarah 2:145-148 God further explains,

Even if thou wert to bring to the people of the Book all the Signs (together), they would not follow thy direction; nor wilt thou follow their direction; nor indeed will they follow each other’s direction. If thou after the knowledge hath reached thee, Wert to follow their desires,-then thou wouldst indeed be in the wrong.

The Truth is from thy Lord; so be not at all in doubt. To each faith is a goal to which The Lord God turns them; then strive ye all together (as in a race) Towards all that is good. Where-so-ever ye are, The Lord God will bring you Together. For The Lord God Hath power over all things.

Seems simple enough, so what’s gone wrong? And how do we fix it? Well for starters, I think the single best thing Muslims can do for everyone, including Palestinians living under the Israeli Occupation is admit that the Jewish claim to the Holy Land is even stronger in the Holy Quran than it is in the Holy Bible.

Because the problem’s not with our religions: Instead, it’s with what we’ve done to them. Populist marketing, politics and self interest have warped all our faiths, and the best examples of how that process has victimized believers of every stripe lies in the way we interpret God’s Words to Abraham’s children about the Holy Land.

In the Quran, there is little doubt that God intends Israel to belong to the Children of Israel. It commands the people of Moses in Al-Maidah 5:21,

O my people, enter the Holy Land which The Lord God has assigned to you and do not turn back [from fighting in The Lord God’s cause] and [thus] become losers.

But that translation, which is consistent throughout virtually every English version of the Quran, and which is also consistent with the way Arabic scholars present the meaning of the verse to other Arabic speakers, is an excellent example of how far Islam has strayed from the Quran’s original intent. Because KatabAllahu, the word translated as “assigned”, actually means something much closer to “Ordained by God Most High”: a much stronger association than “assigned” would otherwise imply.

So if the land’s eternally ordained to their stewardship, how can anyone claim the Quran isn’t OK with both Judaism and the Jews? In fact, rather than condemning them, it confirms God’s covenant relationship with the Jewish people repeatedly, and only condemns those who aren’t living up to their end of the bargain just like many Old Testament prophets, like Jeremiah. Repeatedly.

And those bargains include the Covenant of Circumcision, which grants them the lands of Canaan. None of those Covenants are abrogated in the Quran, and nowhere does it or Muhammad even imply that Muslims were intended to replace the Jews within them. In fact, since Muhammad wasn’t circumcised on his 8th day—and since him no Muslim has been either—we couldn’t. An 8th day circumcision is what that Covenant explicitly requires.

However that Covenant is actually one that Judaism’s not living up to, and an example of how that religion’s been subverted as well. Because there’s a precondition that makes Jewish sovereignty in Israel good news for everyone, Palestinians included. As Genesis 18 explains, to make it all come out right for everyone, God requires that Israel govern the land righteously, according to God’s principles of equality and justice for all his descendents, regardless of their religion.

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.

So justice is a prerequisite, and there’s no mention of one religion reigning supreme anywhere in there either: Abraham wanted what’s best for ALL his children, Jew and non-Jew alike. In fact the word translated as “nation” and “nations” is goy and goyim, which today’s Jewish people generally think means “non-Jew”.

It also sounds like God expects that “Good for everyone world” to begin in His Holy Land. And for that to come about, the Covenant requires Tzedakah, “God’s Benevolent Justice for All” to begin there. And that sounds like something best achieved with a totally free, egalitarian, constitutional democracy—at least if they give one vote to everyone—to me.

So why does so much of the evangelical Christian world agree with radical Islamists and Zionists alike that there needs to be a war between Muslims and Jews over Israel? Frankly, it’s because they’ve been interpreting Jewish prophecy without asking any Jews. If they’d done so, any Jew familiar with Daniel’s prophecies would have told them we have at least two hundred years to go.

And according to Jewish, Muslim and Christian prophecy, if you examine them all together, those two hundred years are going to be very different from what many Christians, Muslims and Jews expect. For example, among other things, it will include Muslims who are also Jews (the lost tribes of Khurasan/Afghanistan) marching in and defending Israel, and a second coming where Christ leaves us all with nothing more to fight with each other over. And that’s one thing I know is going to happen, because God’s plan promises peace for us all.

I think much of the current confusion likely derives from the lack of Jewish input regarding the way Christians interpret John’s Revelation. Because in Revelation 12 God’s perfect Israel is described this way:

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

And I certainly get how some Christians will think that carries an anti-Muslim message because the woman, whom many Christians consider Mother Mary, is standing, apparently quite disrespectfully, on Islam, symbolized by the moon.

Except the woman actually has nothing to do with Mary, and the moon actually has nothing to do with Islam.

Because this isn’t the first time in the Bible the sun, moon and stars come together. The first time the sun, moon and stars come together in the Old Testament; the time that defines what those symbols actually mean, is in the story of Joseph.

In a dream, before he’s kidnapped by his brothers and sold off to Egypt, he sees 11 stars (his brothers) bowing down to one star (him), in which his father Jacob/Israel (symbolized by the Sun) and mother Rachel (symbolized by the Moon) appear as well.

So that image can’t mean Christianity conquering Islam, because the moon would never be treated so disrespectfully: it symbolizes the woman who with her sister Leah became the Mothers of Israel itself.

But it’s why the moon is her symbol that makes for the inclusive happy ending, because it turns out that it’s because she was a proto-Palestinian! Holy-Land-Living, Monotheistic, non-Jewish Semitic Arabs have actually been part of the Bible’s narrative from the very beginning. Called the Ishmaelites (literally the “people of Ishmael”), or the Midianites (the family Moses married into), their Old Testament symbol was always the moon.

And that also means Israel’s crowning glory can’t be the 12 Jewish sons of Jacob/Israel because according to Orthodox Jewish law, they weren’t even Jewish. Although their daddy was, their mother wasn’t. And that makes Israel’s crowning glory not Jewish Israel alone, but instead Arab/Jewish unity, “clothed” by Israel, and supported by all the world’s Muslims: Islamic Zionism, the way it should be.

And today, we ignore the perception-warping effects of Christian Zionism and the effects of their attempts to bring about the end of the world on American politics at our own peril; literally, because the so-called “happy ending” of many—if not most—Christian Zionists currently requires a version of Armageddon resulting in the eradication of all the world’s Muslims, the death or conversion to Christianity of all the world’s Jews, and a rather painful eternity for the rest of you.

I know that all begs the question, “why did God make us different, if He intends to bring us together? Here’s what the Quran says, in Al-Hujurat 49:13.

O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of The Lord God is the most righteous of you. Indeed, The Lord God is All-Knowing and All-Acquainted.

God made us different from each-other so we would have to “know” each-other, and compare ourselves to each-other against God’s standards of “righteousness”. And the word translated as “know” is Lita’arafu, which implies a reciprocal and ongoing relationship, while the word translated as “righteous” is Atqakum, which the Quran says can only be attained by caring for others. That means the ones among us whom God appreciates the most are the ones who care for those we consider “different” among His diverse Creation the best.

You know, given all that I think what we really need to respond to religion’s capacity to promote conflict is the simple realization that among all our different religions we’ve got so many different sects, and among those many different sects we’ve got so many different individual believers who form their own personal accommodations with that sect’s beliefs, doctrines and dogmas, that in fact we’ve actually got over 6 billion different religions, one for every woman, child and man on earth. Faith’s not about religion, it’s about relationships.

Your faith, my faith, all our faiths are personal relationships between us and our God, who Knows us all as individuals, and we all know Him as individuals too.

And God wants us to look out for each other.

So what’s wrong with religion—all our religions—is simple: religion is supposed to be about learning to live in a way that’s right by both God and Creation, and so it’s supposed to be about learning to control ourselves. But all too often we allow others to use it to control us, or we try to use it to control others instead.

When we do that, we make Karl Marx right, when he said religion was the opiate for the masses. He thought in political terms, in terms of oppression and control, and religion used to that purpose is nothing more than a political tool.

But True Faith frees the believer from oppression, because it makes us all equals under the One God who Made us all. And for that reason, one of the signs of True Faith within yourself is that it makes you not just God’s servant, but everyone’s servant, so that it frees everyone else.

What’s missing from all our faiths and religions is the simple realization that God Loves everyone else too.

Dr. David Liepert Chairs the Calgary Shura Council, serves as VP and official spokesperson for the Faith of Life Network, co-Chairs the Abraham’s Tent Interfaith Dialogue and is a National Board member of the Canadian Islamic Chamber of Commerce. He has advised the Canadian Imams Council regarding Interfaith matters, and is also author of Muslim, Christian and Jew: Finding a Path to Peace Our Faiths Can Share.