Innaiah Narisetti
—– Forced Into Faith: How Religion Abuses Children’s Rights by Innaiah Narisetti (Prometheus Books)
In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, proclaiming elementary rights for children worldwide. Among other provisions, the Convention safeguards children’s religious freedom and their freedom of thought. But because child rearing is recognized as the primary responsibility of parents, the question of what children are raised to believe is left up to their mothers and fathers.
In this controversial critique of the UN Convention, humanist Innaiah Narisetti forcefully argues that children’s rights should include complete freedom from religious belief. Narisetti proposes that the choice of religious belief or nonbelief should be deferred till adulthood. Just as most societies recognize that marriage and civic responsibilities such as voting are adult prerogatives that children should not be allowed to exercise, so should the choice of a belief system wait till an individual is competent to exercise mature judgment.
Narisetti cites numerous examples of the ways in which early religious indoctrination leads to later negative attitudes such as intolerance, suspicion, and outright hostility directed toward those who believe differently. He also notes that religion provides a cloak for such obvious evils as sexual abuse, genital mutilation, and corporal punishment of children. While most societies are quick to condemn such abuses, Narisetti suggests that they should be willing to take the next logical step and look to the role of religion in such problems.
Including the complete text of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this candid, unflinching critique of childhood religious education will provoke much thoughtful discussion.
Innaiah Narisetti, Ph.D. (Hyderabad, India), is the chairman of the Center for Inquiry, India, the former general secretary of the Indian Radical Humanist Association, and the author of Let Sanity Prevail, M. N. Roy: Radical Humanist, and four other books.
Forced Into Faith: How Religion Abuses Children’s Rights
HSLDA behind denial of service attacks
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
The following news is popping up all over the Christian homeschool blog network. These people take pride in their ability to harass whatever government department or individual Farris sees as a target. Here is what one blogger wrote:
Michael Farris, HSLDA Chairman, asked the members to take action by calling the White House and their Congressional leaders, letting them know that they strongly oppose the “anti-family and anti-American treaty”. He also asked that calls be made to Ambassador Susan Rice’s office at the United Nations voicing these concerns.
A few hours after the initial E-lert from HSLDA, another email came through sharing this fantastic news: “The office of UN Ambassador Susan Rice has been inundated with calls! The first phone line we sent out has been completely shut down, and the voice mail system for all of their lines has been crashed.”
Dominionist zealot Farris has used the members of his lobbying group, HSLDA to harass state legislatures around the country and they fear him politically so they cave in when he launches a denial of service attack.
I believe in free speech and I believe in citizens talking to their government representatives, but this is just a bully acting out his power trip. There was absolutely nothing urgent about the activities Susan Rice was engaged in that a polite letter could not have communicated.
If you read the Christian home school blogs the level of bigotry and ignorance you encounter is breathtaking. Farris claims to have 80,000 members. I doubt if one percent of them could hold an intelligent phone conversation with Susan Rice if their life depended on it. But Demagogue Farris speaks to his lemmings in highly loaded emotional language and has all of them foaming at the mouth over the UN CRC ratification. Moreover, they are not calling to actually conduct business. The tactic is nothing more than intimidation.
Perhaps it is time to modify our phone system so that abuse like this cannot be aided by autodialers. Set some limits on the number of times a phone can be autodialed and spread the time out to several hours for each attempt.
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- UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Update) (dequalss.com)
Blasphe-ME Event Planned for Convention « No God Blog
Blasphe-ME Event Planned for Convention
American Atheists will stage a mass-blaspheming event at the American Atheists National Convention in direct defiance of the new BINDING UN Resolution restricting people from ridiculing religion, specifically Islam. Those who try to squelch criticism are the ones who fear it, and Islam has a LOT to fear when it comes to open and honest discussion.
UNITED NATIONS – Islamic countries… won United Nations backing for an anti-blasphemy measure Canada and other Western critics say risks being used to limit freedom of speech.Combating Defamation of Religions passed 85–50 with 42 abstentions in a key UN General Assembly committee, and will enter into the international record after an expected rubber stamp by the plenary later in the year.But while the draft’s sponsors say it and earlier similar measures are aimed at preventing violence against worshippers regardless of religion, religious tolerance advocates warn the resolutions are being accumulated for a more sinister goal.“ It provides international cover for domestic anti-blasphemy laws, and there are a number of people who are in prison today because they have been accused of committing blasphemy,” said Bennett Graham, international program director with the Becket Fund, a think tank aimed at promoting religious liberty.“Those arrests are made legitimate by the UN body’s (effective) stamp of approval.”
During this event, those who so choose will defy the UN’s demands that we keep quiet about the absurdity of religion in the name of political correctness. We will, en-masse, recite a statement ridiculing God, Allah, Muhammed, and any other mythological being or false prophet and openly plead guilty to the victimless “crime” of blasphemy. People will be given the opportunity to speak their personal views and give their names. We will then challenge the US to arrest us for this crime, or openly rebuke the UN’s resolution. In the words of President Obama, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers.” We all enjoy the right to openly criticize each other (as we often do), and we invite people of all religious and theological beliefs to join us in this effort by recording their own blasphe-ME event, or even a personal statement, and posting it on the Internet. Of course, those who believe in a deity are expected to blaspheme gods in which they do NOT believe, as is their right (unless/until the UN gets its way). This is one issue where every American of every religion should be on our side. The United States is a nation where freedom of religion, press, and speech are paramount. They are our First Amendment. We will not back down and bow to pressure from any governing body who seeks to take our freedoms away. We will not yield to terrorism cloaked in politics. I’ll go first: My name is David Silverman. I openly and freely state that religion is ridiculous, and all gods are fictional. I also state that Islam, specifically, is a barbaric religion, based on the teachings of a false prophet, that promotes ignorance, hate, and violence (including terrorism). I plead guilty to blasphemy and promise to do so in court if need be. I do this in direct violation of the UN resolution, and I personally challenge President Obama to rebuke this resolution, or order my arrest. United we stand.
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via Blasphe-ME Event Planned for Convention « No God Blog.
United Nations Wants To Regulate Free Speech Of Every Nation
Johann Hari: Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote – Johann Hari, Commentators – The Independent
Johann Hari: Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote
The answer to the problems of free speech is always more free speech
Friday, 13 February 2009
Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone – and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.
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* Editor arrested for ‘outraging Muslims’
* Johann Hari: Why should I respect these oppressive religions?
Here’s how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states has successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets.” Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.
I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists – of all stripes – have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be “respected” – by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of “adulterous” women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are “religious” issues, and it is “offensive” to talk about them.
This trend is not confined to the UN. It has spread deep into democratic countries. Whenever I have reported on immoral acts by religious fanatics – Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim – I am accused of “prejudice”, and I am not alone. But my only “prejudice” is in favour of individuals being able to choose to live their lives, their way, without intimidation. That means choosing religion, or rejecting it, as they wish, after hearing an honest, open argument.
A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence none of us can pass.
That’s why I wrote: “All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a “Prophet” who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him. I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand “respect”, you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.”
An Indian newspaper called The Statesman – one of the oldest and most venerable dailies in the country – thought this accorded with the rich Indian tradition of secularism, and reprinted the article. That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested – or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was “prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet” and I should be sent “to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech.”
Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged – in the world’s largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech – with “deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings”. I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.
What should an honest defender of free speech say in this position? Every word I wrote was true. I believe the right to openly discuss religion, and follow the facts wherever they lead us, is one of the most precious on earth – especially in a democracy of a billion people riven with streaks of fanaticism from a minority of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. So I cannot and will not apologize.
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