Protesting for Moral Freedom

BBC article

Muslims are up in arms about the French ban on head scarfs. Thomas Paine would be happy with their standing up for their rights.

I’m not.

Their opinion on the issue is correct. Banning them from wearing headscarfs is the same as telling women that they MUST go topless. It is grossly unfair. Their wearing a piece of clothing is not a crime.

Everyone then assumes, therefore, that they should redress their grivences. Martin Luther King did it with his March on Washington. We are celebrating his choices on Monday, so therefore we should also celebrate the Muslim protests. It is the same history in the making.

We should no more judge a man by the clothing she wears than by the color of his skin.

Making judgements is what all these conflicts are about. The French have judged clothing to be a criminal act.

The Muslims have been driven to the street not because of any act they committed, but by the lack of protection from their fellow countrymen. The Christians and the Jews and the Buddhists and the athiets all stood by and did nothing while an angry mob violated the rights of the innocent. It was decided legally and properly, but the mob exerted its will just the same. Those who feared more groundless conflict between citizens think they are protecting the peace by forcing the victim to amend its behavior.

Now the Muslims have become the mob on the street. They seek a new role, rather than being the victim, they want to be the victimizer. This is the same thing that occurred when we ran the Tories out of America. They were free to stay, as long as they did what we forced them to do. So they left.

Democracy has now spread around the world, but its primary characteristic is still mob rule. The only checks and balances on the mob is morality. But, it is morality that the Muslim women are trying to express. Instead of a separation of Church and State, we now have the government attacking the Muslim religion, which is a source of the morality that the democracy needs to maintain the balance of self-government. Because the rights of the Muslims have been abandoned by their countrymen, they find themselves on the street arguing for their rights, and in the same process, adding imbalance to the system that gave them the right to protest.

In other words, the wrong people are on the street. In the same way that the Freedom Riders went to the south to open up the polling places for the blacks, it is the non-muslims that should be protesting the ban on headscarfs. When individuals are forced to protect their own rights, then the system is failing.

A moral behavior is when you put the interests of another before your own. Democracy requires that we be responsible for each other, and expect less for ourself. The protest, as well as the complacency of the countrymen, are both the same problem. Both political choices are immoral.

For democracy to work, people must be willing to choose the narrow path of protecting others and not themselves. You have to have faith in the system. It is the same moral faith that one must have in God. The separation of Church and State is separation from organized religion, not from the Bible. Every religion claims the Bible as their own (blind pride), rather than living by the words found inside.

Democracy, when seen as the system of free choice and individual self-determination, is intellectual fraud. Democracy requires one to be bound to his duties and responsibilities. It is about our honor, and protecting the honor of others. Slavery, and the banning for women of their headscarfs, is the same act of stripping someone of their dignity. It dishonors not only the victim, but also the person who allowed it to happen.