Introduction: What Is Shift The Script?
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/15
“No problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness that created it.” — Albert Einstein.
Work to increase the voices of the voiceless is always appreciated, especially work based on intellectual integrity and intellectual humility, to connect all of us. Individuals without much influence or power within their communities rely on the expression of beliefs and opinions by other people. An important effort to improve this world requires raising awareness for the ex-Muslim population.
Ex-Muslims are individuals overlooked for more than one thousand years, ignored by the mainstream conversation. These individuals in a diverse group have not only been pushed away from the centre of conversations on faith and non-faith, but also have their fundamental human rights ignored and violated, due to constant threats of violence and murder.
One organization pioneering the way for people to connect intends to create international evolutionary conversations online, and known as Shift The Script. The purpose of the organization is overcoming misunderstandings, prejudice and ignorance through a unique definition and exercise of what constitutes evolutionary conversations.
As with all change, it is founded on thoughts and words in a certain approach, to facilitate the refinement and exchange of thoughts and words via dialogue, discourse, and discussion. All this is necessary to create necessary re-evaluations of accepted paradigms, and truly create effectively honest conversations.
Why should we accept the premises of the culture handed to us? How can we remove ourselves from the mistakes and prejudices of discourses of the past? What is the basis for a true found effective dialogue? Shift The Script works on these questions, and starts by focusing on Ex-Muslims.
It is vital to start with the voiceless or the semi-unheard. The ex-Muslim population is a beleaguered population. These individuals chose to leave Islam, and many are instantly hit with deprivation of what constitutes fairness and respect for civil rights, punished for freedom of conscience while forced to experience fears of physical violence and multiple threats of murder: truly, the lowest form of conversation and the ‘last refuge of the incompetent.’
It is easy to posit this as an evolutionary shift in the conversation. But this could also be seen as affecting a fundamental change of consciousness. Think of the dialogue pertaining to sexual interactions now, or the right to vote or work for prior generations. All this contributes to an overall consciousness-raising effort around the world in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulating the right to freedom of belief, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion (including lack thereof).
These are important rights. They have existed for decades; and entirely new generations who understand these rights will protect and perpetuate an improved new era of ethics set by a prior generation. Shift The Script comprises an international effort to permit collaboration and problem-solving of the most fundamental form — to live free in a conceptual ecosystem respecting progressive societies for the sake of future generations, while protecting the individual’s journey to seek and embrace differences.
The servers, located in Iceland, provide a means by which ex-Muslims and Muslims can enjoy protection in anonymous freedom of speech, when writing or exchanging letters of support, or expressing feelings to heal pain and trauma and build bridges. Muslims and ex-Muslims can talk with one another in a friendly format, through a civil platform linked at shiftthescript.org.
The ability to humanize others requires seeing them as worthy of and capable of conversation. This is part of the “evolutionary shift” or the consciousness-raising efforts of the founders and activists of Shift The Script. The best part might be the grassroots nature inviting all of you to participate and shift scripts, to Shift The Script, not top-down.
Marginalised ex-Muslims may finally experience what too many have been deprived of, in an evolutionary conversation connecting Muslims, Ex-Muslims and non-Muslims. This evolutionary conversation is divided into two stages, and all stages are important.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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