Psyche, Science, and Society

Stephen -

Over the last week we’ve heard a lot from DFA members around the country asking for action to protect the rights of religious freedom for all Americans and I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t get upset much. I mean, I get ticked off at Republicans and Democrats (and at really bad customer service!), but that’s why I work with you at DFA. Because when we get upset, we don’t stew in it and hope it goes away. We do something about it.

The controversy around the building of a Muslim Community Center at 51 Park in New York City should upset all of us. It definitely upsets me. Shortly after the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks, much of this country came together. But there were a number of other, smaller tragedies occurring all over the country as a result of the attacks. People who “looked like terrorists” were victims of harassment, intimidation, and outright violence.

That includes me, and every member of my immediate family in different instances. My response was to protest the coming wars. My family did something different, though. They started going to Mosque. It did more than renew their faith — it provided a sense of community and safety during a very dark time for us. But for the last nine years, at least, people have been trying to block the construction of mosques all over the country.

Now, let’s be clear, the subject of the highest profile Muslim structure, 51 Park in New York City, will have a basketball court and a culinary school. Two floors will have a prayer room. The other eleven will host movie nights, performances, group dinners, etc — it’s basically a Muslim YMCA, open to everyone. These moderate Muslims are doing everything we could ask of them. They’re trying to build a bridge in the communities they live in, trying to show the world that Muslims are cool and interesting and diverse, and proving that being a Muslim does not equal being a terrorist.

But they’re being thrown under the bus by our elected leaders, egged on by some of the ugliest elements of the right-wing. Well-intentioned leaders of the Democratic Party are getting caught up in the fray as well, some of them seeking to find common ground with an implacable opposition. It’s not helping.

This isn’t just a Manhattan problem. Right now, there is opposition to mosques in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Southern California, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Illinois, and dozens of other locations across our nation. Where would they move? If public pressure can be brought to bear to take down the most high-profile Muslim community center in liberal NYC, then these other places don’t even have a chance, Ground Zero connection or not.

Frankly, this isn’t about Ground Zero. This is about America. This is about freedom. This is about people and there seems to be no place that Muslim people can go without being harassed.

The harassment has to stop, and that starts with you and me.

I think most people agree that Muslims have the right to worship. But these efforts to harass Muslims are based in fear, prejudice, and ignorance. Removing a community center doesn’t solve these problems. But talking about religious freedom — really engaging people — can open people’s minds, and blunt the prejudice.

I pledge to do it myself.

I pledge today to stand up for religious freedom right now. We cannot wait another day to defend the rights of all Americans to worship if they want, where they want, and when they want. I will not wait for the conversation to come to me; I will start the conversation now. Please join me in making the pledge to fight for our universal American values of acceptance and respect for religious freedom.

I need you, in your community, to have those challenging conversations with people you know.

Take the pledge right now.

It’s time to be pro-active in support of the values that define what we stand for and who we are as Americans. After you take the pledge, please follow up and share the conversations you’ve had. I think we’ll all find them inspiring to share.

-Arshad

Arshad Hasan, Executive Director
Democracy for America

A daring initiative for the good of humanity
Business must follow science in democratizing knowledge in the Internet age.

By Amalia Rosenblum

The ability to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease based on a spinal fluid test has made significant progress, media outlets around the world reported last week. This progress joins breakthrough studies after decades in which Alzheimer’s research hardly advanced and the disease could only be diagnosed conclusively by an autopsy.

Progress has been made possible by collaboration among scientists, universities, the U.S. administration and large pharmaceutical companies. They aim to disseminate the findings and discoveries immediately, free of charge, waiving scientists’ intellectual property rights. The project, incorporated under the name Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, was launched in 2003 and has cost some $100,000. In American terms, the price of one day of war has produced a generational leap in researching one of the most agonizing diseases known to mankind.

Such a low cost underlines the absurd way the race for money and prestige limits the development of critical tests and medicines. A number of factors combine to create a reality almost contradictory to the Hippocratic oath. The main ones are the U.S. administration’s restricted funding for university research and the Bayh-Dole Act, which since the 1980s has let drug companies finance university studies in exchange for exclusive control of the patents and influence over research objectives.

In view of this, the ethos of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative is inspiring. Instead of having small study groups keeping their knowledge secret until publication for fear of losing funds or prestige, scientists now dare to unite resources and information. The idea is seen as innovative in especially competitive areas of medical research. A similar study focusing on Parkinson’s disease was launched recently with $40 million in funding. Similar initiatives are underway in scleroderma (an autoimmune disease ), Huntington’s disease, asthma and heart failure among young women.

But in a wider cultural perspective, this may be seen not as an academic upheaval but an expansion of the new paradigm of know-how based on the Internet revolution – the Wiki or open-source concept. This concept is based on collaboration, transparency and availability of research and development. Entire computer systems are based, at least partially, on open-source software. This philosophy holds that private ownership of content does not serve humanity. Take it from the millions of people who turn to Wikipedia as their first step in seeking information – this idea is contagious.

The problem, of course, is that a similar trend has not yet occurred in the economy. In other words, no sound business model has been designed to accompany the democratization of knowledge or the immediacy and joy of spreading content on the Web.

Scientists, like pilots, teachers, artists and bus drivers, must make a living, of course. And drug companies cannot be expected to risk billions of dollars on experiments and research without making appropriate profits. But as the Alzheimer researchers’ initiative shows, the Internet revolution will spare no Old World monopoly – because nobody can write a patent on the human aspiration for knowledge and answers.

It is hard to imagine that anything has gone unsaid about the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but an important point seems to be missing.

The mosque should be built precisely because we don’t like the idea very much. We don’t need constitutional protections to be agreeable, after all.

This point surpasses even all the obvious reasons for allowing the mosque, principally that there’s no law against it. Precluding any such law, we let people worship when and where they please. That it hurts some people’s feelings is, well, irrelevant in a nation of laws. And, really, don’t we want to keep it that way?…

But the more compelling point is that mosque opponents may lose by winning. Radical Muslims have set cities afire because their feelings were hurt. When a Muslim murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, it was because his feelings were hurt. Ditto the Muslims who rioted about cartoons depicting the image of Muhammad and sent frightened doodlers into hiding.

The idea that one should never have one’s feelings hurt — and the violent means to which some will resort in the protection of their own self-regard — has done harm rivaling evil. It isn’t a stretch to say that the greatest threat to free speech is, in fact, “sensitivity.”

This is why plans for the mosque near Ground Zero should be allowed to proceed, if that’s what these Muslims want. We teach tolerance by being tolerant. We can’t insist that our freedom of speech allows us to draw cartoons or produce plays that Muslims find offensive and then demand that they be more sensitive to our feelings.

More to the point, the tolerance we urge the Muslim world to embrace as we exercise our right to free expression, and revel in the glory and the gift of irreverence, is the same we must embrace when Muslims seek to express themselves peacefully.

Nobody ever said freedom would be easy. We are challenged every day to reconcile what is allowable and what is acceptable. Compromise, though sometimes maddening, is part of the bargain. We let the Ku Klux Klan march, not because we agree with them but because they have a right to display their hideous ignorance.

Ultimately, when sensitivity becomes a cudgel against lawful expressions of speech or religious belief — or disbelief — we all lose.