“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

Anatole France, a 19th century writer and poet

I was born on the peak of the cold war in Bavaria, southern Germany. In my early childhood we lived next to a military airfield. Every day I saw fighter planes shooting through the sky, and their piercing noises filled the air. It felt quite a bit traumatizing. Now and then, when the enemy planes appeared on the radar screen, fighter plane scrambled to chase them off at the border.

When I was six years old, Dad showed me the death zone at the Czech border. There reigned an eerie silence along an empty stretch of land, far until the horizon, cutting through forests, meadows, and even villages. A poisoned stretch of earth, full with deadly explosives prevented the people in the east to obtain another vision of life. The area on our side of the border was strangely quiet, a dead end of depressed people, as if breathing slowly. We felt the vulnerability of our existence quite strongly.

Space is strong and vulnerable at the same time. So is intellectual space. Intruding enemies of the intellectual space need to be countered as well. A Danish provincial newspaper, that published cartons in Denmark for a Danish public is attacked almost in the entire Islamic world. The first reply to those who criticize should be: “We do in our intellectual space, what we think is right, and in accordance to the laws of our society.”

The recent events sound strange and tell a lot about the state of the world we’re living in. Intellectual space is becoming crowded, and there are no traffic lights. Failed governance, in combination with economic deadlock and pseudo-religious recipes has led millions of people into an impasse of no hope. Rien ne va plus.

Those who put fire on embassy buildings say it’s because of blasphemy. It may be so, indeed, to some extent. I can believe some people feel hurt. I also felt hurt (as a Buddhist) when I saw Buddha pictures being used for cigarette advertising – smoking being radically banned in the Buddhist religion. But feelings are always the property of the owner.

Is it acceptable, if people are saying: “I’m going to kill you, because you hurt my feelings?”

Be it as it may, nobody can attack God, Buddha, Jesus or any of the great saints and prophets. The great beings who have visited our planet cannot be hurt by any form of blasphemy, advertising or dirty cartoons. Let’s not mix religion and blind misguided feelings!

The big question is who decides what blasphemy is, or not. Religion has proved to be a treacherous ground for worldly business throughout history. As long as time exists, people have tampered with religion for political reasons. Contents of holy books, often called the word of God, were changed again and again – with the purpose of increasing or cementing worldly power.

Who wrote the stories of the Bible? We don’t know. How did the original Bible texts look like? We don’t know for sure, we only know that some priests promoted or executed changes. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Jewish Bible, reads different from Jewish Bibles issued a hundred years later. Only the translation, illuminating a glimpse of history, makes the changes visible. Some texts went in, others were erased. God and Jesus were understood quite differently in the times of Justinian of Alexandria, if compared to today. The concept of Trinity didn’t exist in the early centuries of Christianity, and sects like the Arians saw Jesus as a prophet, rather than the son of God. The last words of Christ read completely different in St. Luke’s and St. John’s Gospel. If there is such a spread of interpretation describing the most precious words and moments, how can one fully trust the remainder?

How did the original Koran read? We don’t know, because the many existing early versions apart from one version were destroyed at the time of the Caliph Othman. In brief: religious books can be as much re-shaped by man, as created by the word of God. We simply cannot solely put our faith into something that people tell us to believe – be it for their benevolent or perhaps other, more darker motives.

Religious texts can be twisted. It happened in the early 13th century- Christian beliefs were twisted up and down until they would provide a reason for holy wars called crusades, then.

Imagine this: someone takes the Koran and produces a slightly changed version, or interpretation. A version, that suggests the disrespect of Jews and Christians, compared to the older, ‘original’ version that promoted respect toward the ‘people of the book.’ Imagine, such a book being printed with Saudi oil $$$, and published throughout the world. If such a book were to be followed by the faithful masses, who could any longer tell them it’s wrong, without being murdered on the street?

Is it called fiction? No, some say it’s called reality.

Recently I sat in a plane next to a Christian lady living in Sweden, but originating from the island of Java, Indonesia. When I met her in the plane, she was just returning from Java, and I asked her about her feelings. “Life for my family is not good any longer,” she said. “When I was young, there was no talk about religion. We just lived peacefully together in the same village, and followed our faith in the way we wanted. These days, we live separated from the others. We greet them for the Hariraya, but the Muslims don’t wish us any longer a merry Christmas. Our Christian girls are ordered to wear headscarf in our Christian schools. Frankly, I don’t know what will happen. Someone is mentally poisoning the Muslims.”

There is no doubt, that multicultural societies require mutual respect and sensitivity. Without tolerance, our world won’t be able to function. But tolerance must never be a one-way road. It may never compromise the essentials. The freedom to view, examine, and to criticize is one of the greatest, if not the most prominent achievement in human history. It may be the only available antidote to prevent gradual mental poisoning.

Nobody should ever bow down to any kind of faith, just because someone tells ‘don’t touch, it’s holy to us.’ So be it. Surrendering the freedom of analysis and judgment to a temporarily practical arrangement is perhaps the biggest (if not fatal) mistake a liberal person or society can possibly commit.

Our mind is like the old rusty Chevy truck standing in the barn. It’s not new, and not running smoothly, but it’s the only car we got to drive the road of life. Our critical mind may have flaws, but it’s the only one we got, and we cannot replace it with any form of kitschy faith without compromising some of the most essential values of humanity. Being responsible means: to be thoughtful and independent; to be truthful, tolerant, and forgiving.

Equally important, so, is to embrace the essential values of a free society – a society that has the right to be free from ideology, taboos and faith. I hope this intellectual breathing space can, and will be defended with vigor and determination.

© 2006 by Franz L Kessler