Jim n says:

Thanks Phil. This follows well with a debate I watched tonight between Tariq Ramadan and Christopher Hitchens. Moderate Muslims wish us to see them as individuals in the sense that we are all readers and interpreters of the (a) text and as such individuals without an authority, even Christianity(s) has(have) a Pope, a Patriarch, and other leaders within their syncretic sects. No one person, court, or law speaks for all of Islam or Christianity, much less protestants, etc. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to generalize but nevertheless we at least have to consider a general behavior aside from the banal red herring of mankind is aggressive, political, self indulgent, etc. How does a text inspire or direct outward behavior? How figurative versus regulatory is it?

In this sense Muslims can speak of sharia and jihad within themselves just as Christians interpret Jesus bearing a sword as something within themselves. However, civil law is concerned with behavior towards others and to some degree ourselves. There are exceptions; we can smoke ourselves to death but suicide is illegal.

The question of Muslim groups spewing their belief in the streets is not different than the skinheads and punks I used to meet who loved to raise hell on the streets and yell at me to get out of their face when I foolishly glanced at them. Think of Westboro Church as well==how hideous an dhow hard to prevent them from the evil intrusion. The point is what kind of behavior do we allow on the street? We cannot touch someone unnecessarily such as more than a brush by when getting on the bus or subway but certainly not groping and lingering touches.

Free speech allows a lot of public communication on the streets such as guys talking like Jesus on soap boxes, scientologists interviewing, mormons asking if we have questions about god, jehovah’s witnesses passing out pamphlets, or what used to be the ubiquitous paper boy harking newspapers, and sandwich guys selling goods. The message you proffer is irrelevant to the style in which it is offered being appropriate.

In this sense the apologist who says the men patrolling are behaving more morally than the prostitutes and drinkers they are trying to eliminate is a pathetic excuse much like saying stealing is better than murder so it is OK to steal. That’s not how the law works. If the law says harassing is not allowed then the message of individual morality just doesn’t matter. You can’t steal money to give to the poor even if you think it’s OK, all love of Robin Hood aside. It becomes too subjective; which stealing and which poor? Who adjudicates? It’s also not specific enough. A person can trespass to stop a theft they see occurring but they cannot randomly trespass to stop a possible theft that hasn’t even been instigated.

I do get annoyed with the conflation of racism and bigotry. It used to be only Jews were called a race and now every religion is a race. I have occasionally done the same for rhetorical reasons but always feel uncomfortable about it; usually to slam multiculturalism as multiracism when it should by polybigotry; but everyone calls a culture a race now too. We should be careful to differentiate racism from bigotry if only to prevent the idea that one is born a Christian or Muslim or Atheist. Being a New Yorker or Texan or International (whatever that might mean) is not a race either. Atheists’s don’t like this as they wish to claim we are all born atheists but frankly people are born a-theist or agnostic but that’s probably putting too fine a point on it.

The only way we can allow diversity and individual lunacy is to regulate behavior regardless of intent. It just doesn’t matter what you believe, you have to limit your public engagement to legal civility within the community to which you belong.

Even Tariq said there are three L’s to citizenship; following the law, learning the language, and being loyal to the country. The Muslim that said his religion transcends state boundaries is utterly wrong. All our world views transcend boundaries and none of them are privileged. The only way to live in peace is to make them equal in the eyes of the law and regulate behavior towards each other. That’s the universal within a community.

The general annoyance of heavy street interaction is usually regulated by loitering, vagrancy, public nuisance, no soliciting, and trespass laws, and are community based.