Reverend Jerry Falwell epitomises the danger of religious extremism and we can draw some lessons from his excesses (see Dr M denounces pastor Falwell for labelling Prophet 'a terrorist').

In the early 1980s, the good reverend, claiming to champion the cause of the moral majority in America, reviled and campaigned actively against Hustler magazine as purveyor of pornographic filth and agent of moral decay in the American society.

In response, Hustler ran a parody of him in a Campari advertisement which involved celebrities describing their "first times" (in sex). Hustler caricatured and satirised a drunken Falwell confessing that his "first time" was an incestuous fling with his mother in an outhouse.

Falwell sued Hustler and its publisher Larry Flynt for US$45 million on grounds of libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Hustler defended on grounds of the first amendment, the freedom of speech, which included the right to free debate and unpopular speech, and the right to satirise and make fun of public figures so as to bring them down from their exaggerated level of pomposity, self-righteousness and hypocrisy.

The Jerry Falwell vs Hustler/Larry Flynt case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which decided in favour of Hustler that there was no libel because the first amendment protected even offensive and tasteless speech (like that made by Hustler) that "could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved".

Infliction of emotional distress on a public figure was not strong enough grounds to override the greater public interest served by upholding the freedom of speech, in part because emotional distress was easy to claim but impossible to prove or disprove which made it such a meaningless standard.

So Falwell has of late come back with a vengeance using the first amendment (as Hustler/Larry Flynt used against him earlier) as protection against inadvertent or possibly deliberate infliction of emotional distress against person(s) or class of person that, from his high pedestal of self-righteousness, he dislikes.

When the World Trade Centre (WTC) and the Pentagon were attacked on Sept 11 last year, the reverend suggested that homosexuals, abortion-rights supporters and liberal civil-rights activists were partially to blame, and thus caused them emotional distress.

As if that was not enough, he has now made a turnabout and called the Prophet "a terrorist" (perhaps by reason of the fact that the suicide bombers of WTC and the Pentagon were persons professing the Muslim faith), thereby inflicting grievous emotional distress on 1.2 billion Muslims throughout the world.

So what lessons can we learn from the good reverend Falwell?

There are a couple, depending from where one is coming from, for example:

  • If religious extremists were the ones who brought on the first catastrophe (of WTC and Pentagon) nobody needs another religious extremist of another religion to aggravate the situation by baseless incendiary remarks under the pretext of helping those who suffered to go through difficult times.

  • We should be very cautious of religious moralists and zealots (like Falwell) — this extends to others of whatever religions — because their self-righteous high-faluting moralising is often a cloak for bigotry, ignorance and hate. When they believe that their own religion is true and right, others not of the same faith are relegated to the margins, and in the extreme case, even branded as terrorists.

  • For those who seek to curb the freedom of speech, they will use Jerry Falwell's example to justify that it is precisely because of unbridled freedom of speech that extremists like the reverend have the liberty and immunity to utter incendiary remarks treading on religious sensitivities that would have catastrophic consequences for a multi-racial and multi-religious country like ours.

  • For the rest, Falwell's losing his case in the Supreme Court to Hustler is a lesson on the importance of freedom of speech and expression to foster a more open culture of public debate, including the right to criticise, satirise and ridicule public figures and the likes of Falwell (or his Malaysian equivalent) and bring them down from their bigotry, whether religious or racial.

    Our situation is in stark contrast: our press is presently not only manacled by the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA) but may even be sued for libel in causing "emotional distress" to a minister for mere misreporting that some backbenchers had left the function earlier!

    We cannot learn to be confident if we are afraid all the time of freewheeling debate that sometimes includes offensive and bigoted remarks causing emotional distress. We mature by rising above emotional distress and being combative in public debate and criticism against those like Falwell who make them.

    We use the means of freedom of speech to put such people in their place. There is no need for laws like the PPPA and Sedition Act to do so because that would stifle the very culture of combative debate necessary to expose bigotry and abuse of power to the benefit of the rakyat and the nation.