American Fatwas ?

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

American Fatwas?

Presidential campaigns have a way of bringing out the worst in people!

As we approach the finish line we take up sides, get really testy about the “other candidate” and begin to believe, and even circulate outrageously wonderful things about the guy we prefer.

As I have said in this column before, perfectly nice people join in the demonization of the “other” presidential candidate, his family, his history and his performance.

By November every four years truth seems to just disappear in our political landscape.

Such an unfriendly atmosphere could cause people to withhold their thoughts. It could easily shut down the open discourse important to reaching decisions about leadership. Certainly, it makes many wary of taking any sort of public position.

I expect it is one of the reasons that voting is such a private affair. We ask you to leave home, go to a central place, prove you are whom you say you are, and then go into a small enclosed space and privately mark a paper, one without your signature or any other identifying mark, to make your choice for president.

And yet our current democracy, through public statements, newspaper reports, television interviews, telephone polls, arguments with neighbors and friends probably renders much of that “secrecy” ineffective. By November I know how almost all my friends and acquaintances and colleagues plan to vote. Of course some of them may surprise in the confines of the voting booth just as they probably do in the confines of the confessional but the majority might as well walk around with their choice tattooed on their heads.

So it seems to me that the secrecy involved in elections is not nearly as important as the freedom we enjoy stating openly what we think. With the exception of losing a few friends every four years, we do not get imprisoned for our publicly stated thoughts. No matter how ridiculous our arguments they are still heard in America. Regardless of how outrageous the statement made by a “talking head” on television, a humorous but extreme prognosticator, or a half-truth spouting columnist, free speech is alive and well here at home.

You may remember the famous case of the author Salman Rushdie. He wrote a book, a novel that ended up offending Muslims. For this he received a Fatwa. It was a death sentence. He received it on a Valentine’s Day and it was renewed each Valentine’s Day for over a decade. He had to hide. He had to hire protection. He was a target every day. His family fell apart and he his wife left.

All of this over a novel.

Recently, in an interview, Rushdie had this to say:

we need to have the courage of our convictions… we need to understand that we are privileged to live in one of the relatively few countries in the world where we get to say what we think. Yes, that means that some of those utterances will be unlikable, even objectionable, even insulting, because not everybody thinks well, not everybody’s a nice person. But if you’re going to have the good fortune of living in this kind of society, then you have to cherish it and defend it, that’s just full stop.

Reading this reminds me that our four year experiment in demonization, while unattractive and unpleasant, is yet another suggestion that we can not only think, but say, what we believe. We can fight for the candidate we choose. And most importantly, none of us will experience a Fatwa or any other horrible consequence for our free speech.

God Bless America.