Pope John Paul's "Rights of Liberty" (and Islam's "Rights of Justice," as well)
Author: JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak Institute
Date: February 22, 2007
In the religious words and labels by which Islam defines itself, the terms "democracy" and "liberty" and "human rights" do not exist as such. All of these concepts do exist, however, under the umbrella of the powerful word "Justice" -- al Adl' in Arabic and in the Quran.
In this situation, it is necessary to find a common frame of reference within which both Judeo-Christian "Liberty" and Islamic "Justice" can be perceived by all three of the great Abrahamic religions as shared and common values, rather than as conflicting or contested ones -- not identical but at least relatively compatible.
To discover the roots of such an overlapping set of values, we must look back into the life and times of the late, great Pope John Paul who, among all recent pontiffs of the Roman Catholic Church, enjoyed a more positive interfaith relationship with Islam than any other.
What a fortunate coincidence it would be, therefore, if the late Pope's human rights antidote to the pseudo-religious Marxist-Leninist scam of "Liberation Theology" were to be adapted by authentic, Quranic Islam -- and to become its own counterattack on al Qaeda's pseudo-religious scam of so-called "Jihadi Martyrdom."
Looking Back to Lenin -- But First to Castro
As history reveals, the story centers strongly and even uniquely around the late Pope -- and around the current Pope Benedict, as well, who was for many years John Paul's alter ego on virtually all matters of papal significance.
In addition to the purely spiritual and moral qualities of this great man of God, the element most often cited as his legacy is his unfailing devotion to what he called the "Rights of Liberty" of each and every human being -- whether Christian, Jew, Muslim or otherwise.
That was certainly the central theme of his historic Papal visit to his native Poland in 1979. And it was the equally powerful theme of his January 25, 1998 homily to hundreds of thousands of cheering Cubans in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion -- in the uncomfortable presence of "Maximum Leader" Fidel Castro, who was then pretending a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church.
There, as he had proclaimed in Nicaragua several years earlier, John Paul spoke clearly and forcefully about "the inalienable rights of each individual" -- as opposed to the so-called "people's rights" always extolled by Fascist Fidel's "Socialism or Death" dictatorship.
Sprinkled through the Pontiff's carefully crafted messages in both of these venues and in many others all across the planet throughout his papacy were always such powerful words and frames of reference as liberty, solidarity, social justice, reconciliation, human rights, human dignity, Christian love and Divine Guidance.
In Cuba in particular, some of his rhetoric tilted appropriately toward the broader societal conditions faced by the Cubans as a people and as a distinctive culture. But other parts of his message focused far more strongly on the singularly personal rights and duties of each individual Cuban citizen and each "child of Christ."
In the final analysis, all these images were woven into the Pope's basic framework of "the inalienable (i.e., the God-given) rights of each individual" -- the same frame of reference which is one of the cornerstones of the American Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
In this context, the Pope quietly but unequivocally rejected the Marxist-inspired and plainly pseudo-religious movement called "Liberation Theology." This was a perverse 1970's and 80's collaboration (still alive but waning) between far-left Christian intellectuals -- and some clergy -- and militant Castroite and Sandinista ("Stalinista") revolutionaries.
Most of its adherents seemed, and still are, far more intent on promoting socio-economic class warfare in the name of a group-think "preferential option for the poor" than about an expansion of civil liberties and economic opportunity for individuals.
When the aging but supremely confident Pontiff opted strongly for the latter -- as he did in Havana, with an aging and increasingly isolated Fidel Castro sitting front row -- he forcefully proclaimed: "There can be no true liberation if, from the beginning, the rights of liberty [los derechos de Libertad] are not respected."
"Liberation" May Not Be Liberty -- "Jihad" May Not Be Holy
But the Pope missed the opportunity of applying to his bold human dignity and human rights initiative a lasting new label -- one with a rhetorical appeal equal to that of the Marxist-oriented "Theology of Liberation."
The appropriate new label for this Christ-oriented, civil-libertarian movement might be a "Theology of LIBERTY" -- or, to quote John Paul verbatim, a socio-political and socio-religious standard of mankind's God-given "Rights of Liberty."
Of course, the inherent difference between "liberation" and liberty is that the latter is a specific and certifiable condition. Either you have it or you do not -- while "liberation" is all too often an endless "process" which leads toward tyranny, instead.
In truth, hundreds of millions of poor souls (Russians, Chinese, Central Europeans, Cubans, Africans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Tibetans, and others) were brutally "liberated" not from slavery and oppression but from any prospect of true Liberty and, in most cases, from any prospect of national independence, as well.
Such so-called "wars of national liberation" and their attendant "Theology of Liberation" were nothing but a pseudo-religious scam -- very much in keeping with Vladimir Lenin's cynical observation (and deceitful tactic) almost a century ago that: "We find our greatest success to the extent that we inculcate Marxism as a kind of religion. Religious men and women are easy to convert and win, and will easily accept our thinking if we wrap it up in a kind of religious terminology."
Neo-Leninist Osama bin Ladenism
And so it is in the war against the neo-Leninist "bin Ladenism" -- which has just as cynically labeled its own pseudo-religious conspiracy of hatred, murder and mayhem as one of "Jihad (Holy War) Against America and the West."
Its Lenin-like labeling of "Holy War by holy warriors and martyrs destined for Paradise" is just as deceitful as was (and remains) the Communists' perfidious rhetoric of "liberators" and "progressives" leading mankind to the promised "social justice" of a Paradise-on-Earth "people's democracy."
Whether these two ungodly perversions -- bin Leninism and bin Ladenism -- are merely coincidental equivalents of a secular, temporal sort or should both be perceived as earthly manifestations of Satan himself remains to be determined.
Be that as it may, if Liberty is indeed a "specific and certifiable condition," as asserted above, it should be precisely defined by its many specific and certifiable component parts -- each of which should be in accord with the late great Pope's thinking and, presumably, on the approved human rights and civil liberties list of any true civil-libertarian, whether left- or right-of-center.
In fulfillment of this standard, displayed nearby are twenty-two very specific ingredients of this revolutionary "Theology of Liberty" -- forever "revolutionary" but hardly new -- with deep and everlasting roots in the Holy Bible, the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and (if ever it were to be enforced) the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the ongoing War on al Qaeda-style Terrorism and in contrast to Osama bin Laden's cult of irhabi (terrorist) murderdom such a "Rights of Justice" movement among Muslims should also be seen as entirely compatible with the Quran's blessed "99 Names of Allah" -- which define both Allah Himself and his religion in such terms as Peaceful, Compassionate, Beneficent, Merciful and Just.
Hopefully, this will serve not only as the West's language of "Liberty" and "Democracy" but will also be seen as compatible with the Muslim World's new cross-cultural "Rights of Justice," as well -- featuring most if not all of the twenty-two specific items of personal dignity and eternal worth enumerated below.
THE POPE'S SACRED "RIGHTS OF LIBERTY"
(and Islam's Similar "Rights of Justice")
"There can be no true liberation
if, from the beginning,
the rights of liberty are not
respected." ... Pope John Paul II
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religious dissemination
Freedom of religious education
Freedom of speech (personal, press, artistic, academic)
Freedom of voluntary unionism and right to strike
Freedom of peaceable assembly
Freedom of peaceable petition and protest
Freedom of access to an independent judiciary
Freedom to a speedy, fair and public trial
Freedom of habeas corpus (i.e., from illegal imprisonment)
Freedom of association, personal and cooperative
Freedom of travel, both domestic and external
Freedom from cruel or unusual punishment
Freedom of free, fair and regular multi-party elections
Freedom from discrimination (class, race, origin, age, sex)
Freedom from slavery and involuntary servitude
Freedom of information from government about the government
Freedom of privacy and from unreasonable searches, seizures
Freedom of reas. access to credit, contract, property ownership
Freedom of reas. access to food, shelter, education, healthcare
Freedom from abuse by "blind" or unregulated market forces
Freedom to be secure in one's own life and possessions
Finally, as a means of testing the acceptability of this list of human rights and civil liberties among individual faithful Muslims and in the Umma (the Muslim World) as a whole, we might pose the following question:
"For the rest of your life and the lives of your children, your grandchildren and your loved ones forever, would you regard the summary denial of ...[name the specific human right or civil liberty] ... a matter of Allah's eternal Justice or of Shaitan's eternal Injustice?"
To date, every single Muslim to whom I have posed this question has responded that it would be a terrible INJUSTICE to be forever deprived of any, much less all, of these self-evident and God-given "Rights of Justice."
The question now is whether the Muslim World, the Umma, will actually fight for the Godly "Justice" which individual Muslims want and so desperately need -- or will it permit itself to be terrified, brainwashed, humiliated, perverted and subsumed by the fascist-Left and satanic likes of bin Laden, al-Sadr and Ahmadinejad.
JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak Institute 703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com