It is easy to describe the recent fiery events involving multitudes of Muslims protesting against the publication of a series of third-rate cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed, as “an over-reaction” or “a cultural misunderstanding”. I, for one, was initially tempted to relegate the whole episode to yet another display of fundamentalist exuberance, which is always wrong, whichever part of the world religious spectrum it emanates from.

But when someone trys to insult, in this obvious and purposeful manner, anything or anyone that is held sacred by others he is bound to cause an unholy uproar. You just don’t mess with someone else’s religion – or lack of it. People are free to believe, or disbelieve, whatever they genuinely think they should or should not believe and in our part of the world this has been a long-standing and accepted way of life. It is not so however in some other parts, like India, certain areas of Israel and most of the Islamic world, where religion has regrettably maintained a precedence over things secular. But even in the volatile Arab States, there were times when a new, more conciliatory mentality attempted to creep in.

In the early seventies, for example, Arab socialism was making real headway in establishing a more secular approach to political administration*, even if Islam and Marxism could never possibly meet under the same roof. Nationalism, supported and abetted by extreme religious fervour, eventually and inevitably got in the way, which more or less explains the present scenario.

Most of the Western world has indeed long happily agreed to ensure that the separation of Church and State is maintained and kept well-defined, although there are still and will always be those “crusaders”, mostly on the right of the political arena, who militate against this evergreen, healthy and educated state of affairs. How else would one explain certain events that occur regularly in the rural backyards of the United States where people hug the Bible while they applaud the electrocution and lethal injection of their beloved brethren?

The furore over the Danish cartoons should also not in any way be interpreted as some demonstration of cultural deficiency. There have been journalists who simply attributed it (the decision to publish) to the exercise of the freedom of expression, therefore, according to them, Muslims everywhere in the world had no right to complain. Of course, they had no right to burn property and to threaten whole nations because of the infantile attitude of some of their citizens, but they had every right to complain.

It is the wide and open space that exists between respect for other people’s beliefs and fundamentalist attitudes and acts that is seemingly being missed by many who hurry to make proclamations of the sort we heard and read with such monotonous regularity in the past two weeks. Freedom of expression does not give anyone the right to insult others, and more so on such personal and intimate matters as religion.

Even the majority has no right to impose its morals on the rest. Serious, secular governments unlike any we have over here, for example, make sure their citizens have unhindered access to divorce and legal solutions, not out of spite to people’s beliefs, but with due recognition of an individual’s right not to act, in civil life, according to any religious strictures. After all, devout followers of the Church who insist on the indissolubility of marriage, such as the Catholic Church has so far in its history, would need to do only one thing – ignore the divorce laws and obediently avoid resorting to them, even if it means living in desperation and frustration for the rest of your life. Not that too many Catholics in the world have heeded such advice, as is the case with contraceptives.

In our very own midst, we find those who play the “majority” card to impose their own religious ideas, such as the recent e-mail and SMS campaign to have the Baptism of Christ image on the new Maltese ewro coin. Even more pathetic is the reason, electronically merchandised – to give Europe some sort of lesson over its refusal to refer to Christian values in its Constitution! And then, so many Maltese are often ever so prompt to project Muslims as firebrand fundamentalists who cannot be trusted alone with the steaming cake in the kitchen!

One of the most enduring experiences of my journalistic career is, and will always be, the lightning (15 minutes) visit a small group of UK journalist friends and I were allowed to pay to Salman Rushdie at Cambridge University in the early 1990s in a symbolic show of support for him as an author and a colleague, and to express our disgust for those who had been publicly threatening him after the publication of his book Satanic Verses. For all it’s worth, I had later recorded that small anti-Fatwa, anti-fundamentalist deed in a short poem.**

All too dangerous to humanity and civilisation, fundamentalism breeds fundamentalism of all sorts. You can even be an atheist fundamentalist, hollow as that may sound. It is why the world needs to fight and resist every fundamentalist movement, from Opus Dei and The Atheist League to Howling Hindus and Irate Muslims.

Is it not ironic that while most religions preach brotherhood, love and eternal bliss, so many wars have been waged and so many social and political divisions still take place in their name? While the benign face of secularism has been intentionally blunted over the years to suit personal and collective socio-political goals, we have seen the rise of pseudo-religious do-gooders in the role of presidents and prime ministers dictating to us what we should believe, do and accept in our lives – and to do so, of course, without being allowed to ask why or to demand explanations.

The imposition of religious procedures and the display of religious artefacts in secular environments like the Law Courts and State schools are tantamount to a form of extremism. A brave magistrate in Italy is at this moment in time being deprived of his livelihood simply because he refuses to hear cases if there is a crucifix hanging on the wall of his courtroom. My secularism says he is right. He has all sorts of people appearing before him and a good many of them are either non-believers or non-Christians. But he lives in a society – Western Europe, not the Middle East or Asia – that dictates its own religious values, so shut up and accept it. Is this the reasoning behind some people’s views of our so-called free society and “better” culture?

Back in the US, we have had Gospel-grasping cockerels preaching for the re-election of George W. Bush, who is responsible for the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, and a misjudging judge who did exactly the opposite of his Italian counterpart – he insisted on having a large copy of the Ten Commandments exhibited in his courtroom. The first one succeeded, and he is still pumping death and plunder in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and, possibly soon, Iran; the other was sensibly reduced to the fundamentalist joke that he really was.

* Arab Socialism by Abdel Moghny Said and M. Samir Ahmed (Blandford Press), 1972

** Mwieg by R. Mahoney & C. Flores (Palprint), 1994