Censorship

This blog was to start shortly after Osama Bin Laden began threatening the U.S. in January, 2006, but it is hazardous to talk about these issues. One hesitates... The pope recently quoted a 14th century emperor in an academic lecture on rationality and religious truth; Muslims responded with violent demonstrations, threatened the pope's life and shot a 70 year old nun in the back. A French columnist coined the phrase "a crime of opinion" to characterize the judgments of Muslims who make his life a living hell after writing frankly about his personal reactions to the violence of the Koran and modern Islamic behavior - Muslims determined, apparently, to prove his statements true. A Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the dangers of Islam; Muslims rioted and killed each other in their own countries; threatened the government and people of Denmark. Newspapers all over the world ran the story of the German opera house that canceled a staging of Mozart's Ideomeneo because they believe Muslims will respond to a visual metaphor on stage with riots and murder...

Apparently there is no Koranic equivalent of "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord". You get the impression that this deity is emotionally fragile - easily offended - demanding that peoples of other faiths abide by Muslim rules. Those who do not are to be penalized by death. There is no room here for the seeker who may rail against God while working to an understanding of the divine. No room for questioning in order to come to a sounder basis of faith... Apparently, any unquestioning believer is authorized to appoint him or herself judge and executioner. When Salmon Rushdie was the target, threats were leveled against the identified perpetrator. Now these acts are committed against people who have had no part in the percieved offence.

So there is a kind of censorship growing up even in free societies, before a word is spoken or written. It is the self-censorship practiced by the experienced mental health nurse who knows the futility of contradicting a paranoid, the parent in a communist society, longing to tell his children of his values but wary of being denounced, the silence of citizens under a Saddam, a caution and wariness like that of the abused wife - a submission, if you will, to the will of the random projected Islamist.

There is another kind of censorship. It is practiced by wives and husbands, parents and children, friends and relatives who know each other well - who know where a joke, even a truth would offend pointlessly. Diaries are often suppressed for decades until those who would be offended have died - out of prudence - other diaries never record such entries. Call that last act the censorship of love.

We cannot exercise this kind of censorship without knowing something of the other person, not just things about them. And we cannot get to know the person behind the veil, in the insular community - the person whose face is set toward revenge; whose body is girded by a bomb...