versus free speech
By GUEST COMMENTARY BY LEONARD PEIKOFF
The Ayn Rand Institute has released this 1989 editorial — originally published as an advertisement in the New York Times — because the same essential issues underlie the Rushdie debacle and the current uproar over cartoons of Mohammad. In both cases, the ultimate target is not “blasphemy” but man’s faculty of reason and the principle of free speech — values our leaders are too gutless to defend as absolutes. In both cases, Islamic leaders have incited violence and issued death threats against Westerners — but have met with a pathetically appeasing response (Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie still stands, and has just been reaffirmed). And today as in 1989, the West’s craven response is motivated by the same fundamental cause: failure to combat such self-righteous barbarism invites further aggression — a lesson history continually teaches, but which Western leaders refuse to learn.
President George H.W. Bush has issued a limp condemnation coupled with the vague statement that Iran would be held “accountable” if American interests are harmed. But two California bookstores have already been bombed, a New York weekly newspaper has been demolished by firebombing, at least 178 threats of death or destruction have been received by booksellers nationwide, major American publishers (primarily Viking) are barricaded at ruinous cost behind an army of private security guards — and every American author, speaker and reader must wonder if and when he will become a target of armed Islamic fundamentalists with orders to kill heretics.
Has Bush become the new Jimmy Carter? Carter wrung his hands and did nothing while Iran held Americans hostage. This time Iran is attempting to hold our minds hostage.
A religious motive does not excuse murder; it makes the crime more dangerous. It took the West centuries to move from medieval mysticism to the Enlightenment, and thereby discover the only safeguard against endless, bloody, religious warfare: the recognition of man’s inalienable right to think and speak as he chooses. Civilization depends on reason. Freedom means the freedom to think, then act accordingly; the rights of free speech and a free press implement the sovereignty of reason over brute force. If civilized existence is to be possible, the right of the individual to exercise his rational faculty must be inviolable.
The ultimate target of the Ayatollah, as of all mystics, is not a particular “blasphemy,” but reason itself, along with its cultural and political expressions: science, the Industrial Revolution and the American Revolution. If the assault succeeds, the result will be an Age of Unreason — a new Dark Ages. As Ayn Rand wrote in Philosophy: Who Needs It, in her prescient 1960 essay “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World”: “The conflict of reason versus mysticism is the issue of life or death — or freedom or slavery — or progress or stagnant brutality... Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men. When men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding is possible.”
Many people have denounced the Ayatollah’s threats, but have then undercut their own stand by offering apologies to those whose “sensibilities” the book has “offended.” No apology is necessary. No creed, Islamic or otherwise, which leads to “holy terror” can demand respect from civilized men.
Whether Rushdie’s book in particular is good or evil, noble or depraved, is now irrelevant. Once death is threatened, there is only one issue to discuss and defend: an individual’s right to speak, whether anyone or everyone likes what he says or not. “Blasphemy” violates no one’s rights. Those who feel insulted do not have to listen to or read the insults. In defending religious liberty, Jefferson observed that “the operations of the mind” must not be made “subject to the coercion of the laws,” adding: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
If blasphemy is the issue, we submit that a religious dictator inciting murder is blasphemy against the sanctity of human life. It is said that Rushdie’s book impugns the faith of believers. So does science. It is said that the book is offensive to the values of the Ayatollah’s followers. So is the United States of America.
Why has the outrage felt by the American public not been translated into a call for action against Iran? The protests from both the right and the left in this country ring hollow because both groups have betrayed the philosophic ideas necessary to act.
Conservatives have become dominated by religionists, who openly base their views on mystical dogma and want the government to impose their dogmas by force, which is just what the Ayatollah is doing. Homegrown fundamentalists are in no position to lead a crusade for free thought. Can these groups maintain that it is wrong to ban Rushdie, but right to ban Darwin?
Terrorism unpunished is terrorism emboldened. The Ayatollah has already broadened his attacks. He is now threatening death to anyone who criticizes Islam. If he is not stopped, who can predict where the next threat to our publishers and bookstores will come from? (Leonard Peikoff is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 1, 2006. Read the original PDF.