RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND THE RIGHT

Andy McCarthy makes a good point that we shouldn’t blame Isikoff for the murderous anger of Islamist mobs. It says something very wrong about contemporary Islam that its followers behave this way. Isikoff should be held responsible for relying on one wobbly, anonymous source – not for murder. At the same time, the point made by some that alleged flushing of the Koran, or peeing on it, or tearing it, is not much different than the artistic excesses of people like Theo van Gogh or Andres Serrano strikes me as flawed. The Gitmo allegations are different for a simple reason. The claim is that blasphemy was deliberately deployed by a government in order to extract information from detainees. This is a big difference. Blasphemy by free citizens is one thing in an open society; the deliberate deployment of blasphemy by government in order to place extreme psychological pressure on religious inmates is quite another. You’re an anti-Semite? In a free country, you are free to speak your mind. But if the government were to desecrate Jewish symbols in front of Jewish inmates (imprisoned without trial), or force them to eat pork, or burn a Torah as part of interrogation procedures, we’d be outraged. Wouldn’t we? Here’s what I don’t get about the religious right in this. They are rightly sensitive to possible government discrimination against sincere religious faith. But here there is a case of the most atrocious anti-religious discrimination imaginable. And what is their response? Do they say: “This is obviously untrue. If it were true, we’d be outraged. Our military would never behave this way.” No; their fear is that the evidence will not back them up on this. So they say, “Look at the liberal media, feeding unsourced stories to discredit America.” Is this a form of denial or mere avoidance? Maybe their defense of religious freedom doesn’t go as deep as it might. Maybe it depends on whose religion is under attack.