No Exemptions
Polly Toynbee has a very good column in the Guardian today (thus incidentally showing that that newspaper is not always the evil spawn of Satan despite what my colleague may say). She says what I’ve been saying for months: that criticism of Islam (or any other religion) is not racism, and should not be called such or talked about as if it were such. She also says that worry about just exactly this equation has caused a lot of people to go all woolly about Islam. Ain’t it the truth.
Fear of offending the religious is gathering ground on all sides. It is getting harder to argue against the hijab and the Koran’s edict that a woman’s place is one step behind. It is beginning to be racist for teachers or social workers to object to autocratic patriarchy and submission of women within many Muslim communities. Islamic ideas that find the very notion of democracy incompatible with faith are beginning to be taken seriously by those who should defend liberal democracy.
‘It is getting harder to argue against the hijab’ – you can say that again! I spent a lot of time doing just that last winter, and was endlessly surprised at the absurd things people on the left were willing to say. It was kind of educational, in a way. The fatwa on Salman Rushdie was educational for a lot of people; the arguments over the hijab were educational for me. I learned that a lot of well-meaning leftists will stop at nothing to mollify Islam. Which is bizarre. Why in a conflict between Islam on the one hand and secularism and feminism on the other, people on the left feel compelled to choose Islam, is beyond me. Well not entirely beyond me; I realize it has to do with the fact that Muslims are the targets of anti-immigrant hatreds and racism; but puzzling all the same.
More alarming is the softening of the brain of liberals and progressives. They increasingly find it easier to go with the flow that wants to mollify Muslim sentiment, for fear of joining the anti-immigration thugs who want to drive them from the land.
Just so. It is alarming, because if liberals and progressives won’t stand up for women’s rights and against Sharia, the hijab, unequal divorce laws and the rest of it, who will? Who the hell will? Who will stand shoulder to shoulder with Homa Arjomand and Azam Kamguian and Maryam Namazie and Ibn Warraq? If liberals and progressives abandon secularists and feminists who have the dire misfortune to live in countries ruled by Islam, in favour of solidarity with a religion that codifies unequal treatment of women – then they are not liberals and progressives any more. They intend to be, but they’re not.
Consider this post at Crooked Timber for instance.
This is one problem that we can’t blame Bush for. For all of his faults, he has consistently urged respect for the Muslim faith and world, and I’m grateful for that.
Okay – why is respect for the Muslim ‘faith’ a good thing? And more than that, in fact the heart of the matter – why is it so taken for granted that it’s a good thing? That’s the part I don’t get. So often it appears to be just – well, a matter of faith, that Islam is automatically and necessarily a good and harmless thing. That it has to be. That it simply can’t not be – so there is no need for further investigation or even thought. It is just not even conceivable (apparently) that right-thinking people might believe and say that Islam itself – not extremist Islam, just Islam – might have some bad ideas right at its core. Christianity has some terrible ideas right at its core; why is it self-evident that Islam does not? Well we know why. Because it’s all mixed up with race and anti-racism, colonialism and postcolonialism, Orientalism and Occidentalism, that’s why. But that’s not a good reason.
It will be more important than ever to stand like Voltaire, ready to defend Muslims, their right to be here and to practise their beliefs against the growing swamped-by-aliens talk that Anas Altikriti warned against on these pages last week…Muslims must also accept the right of others to criticise religions without smearing any critic as a racist.
I’m like a broken record – but it can’t be helped: the wool is out there. Religions cannot and must not be beyond criticism. They’re the last human institutions that ought to have a free pass to go unexamined and unquestioned – and yet so often they are the first to get the magic exemption. Écrasez l’infame, etc.
Excellent post, OB-and as a secularist I appreciated the original link.
The assumption is downright explicit: religion is always a “good” that cannot be criticized.
Amen to that. Er, you know what I mean.
Hallelujah, brothers. Oh, wait –
Bollocks. For one thing, right-wingers are also no slouches when it comes to excess respect for religion. For another thing, not all of them are particularly worried about equality for women. For another thing, not all leftists suck up to totalitarians. For yet another thing, there are some totalitarians that right-wingers have been fond of – obviously. I can match your CambodiaCubaSovietUnion with Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, Il Duce, Chile, countless military coups, etc etc etc. So let’s not over-simplify, okay?
The other thing to remember with this Iran stuff is that Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was pretty horrendous (so, for example, SAVAK were notorious in the 1970s).
Also, Khomeini played a clever hand in the run up to the revolution. He did talk about Islamic identity, and so on, but he downplayed the whole theocracy thing; and he didn’t explicitly rule out a pluralistic approach.
OB, the problem with your point about Bush urging respect for Islam is brought out by yuor later line “Christianity has some terrible ideas right at its core; why is it self-evident that Islam does not?”
Because, for most Americans, and certainly Bush, Christianity does NOT have “some terrible ideas right at its core”. So, since they aren’t going to swallow the lefty (and correct) line that religions are all rubbish (because at least one, Christianity is not), they will only hear Islam is rubbish.
Actually, given the inherent contradiction between fervent belief in one religion and respect for any other religion, I think it’s possible to make the case that Bush’s call for respect represents a step in your direction.
Equal respect for all religions is not a big step away from equal disrespect for all religions, is the argument I’ve seen advanced. I don’t buy it, necessarily, but at the very least, respected religious diversity is an improvement over enforced religious homogeneity.
Not arguing for protection from criticism, or core identity, or anything like that. Just suggesting that public statements by important people which help avert genocidal holy wars aren’t something to dismiss out of hand.
While some bunches of fundamentalists really do think that all others are the spawn of Satan – see the current farce in Victoria caused by the ill-judged ‘religious hatred’ legislation – others appear to be keen to make alliances when it’s for their mutual secular benefit. God/Allah will understand, you see. I’m thinking about the UN Population Summit, where the Vatican and various fundie Islamist groups got together to co-ordinate an anti-contraception strategy.
For some religious people, it obviously is about religion, but for others, religion is just an handy peg to hang their conservatism on. The recent spat over the Bishop of Somewhere pointing out that “I vow to thee my country” isn’t particularly Christian showed the extent to which most British conservatives view the Anglican church as essentially their property.
The kinds of religious who gravitate towards local Councils of Faith are also prioritising political stance (in this case, liberalism) over theology. In practice, they tend not to be so offensive as the nationalists, but many find the idea of separation of church and state equally hard to grasp.
NB – I probably need to declare at this point that I may be a communist atheist, but I’m an _ex-Baptist_ communist athiest.
True, about the Shah. I had a hell of a hard time figuring out what I thought about the revolution for that very reason.
Also true that from Bush and Christian fundamentalists in general, respect for Islam is better than non-respect. Better in the sense of less dangerous. But to the extent that it’s respect on the basis of united anti-respect for non-theism…I’m suspicious of it.
I guess a recurring theme of the left is to feel compassion for a perceived underdog.
For instance, anyone who is attacked by the hard right automatically has the support of the left: an enemy of my enemy is my friend.
BTW, good posts OB.
It’s not quite as simple as that, Fryslan, at least in theory. The late SWP guru, Tony Cliff, nee Yigael Gluckstein in Palestine in 192somethin, was no friend of Zionists or of Orthodox parties.
Apocryphally, someone once asked him “What would you do if you saw a skinhead beating up a rabbi?”. His response: “First I’d beat up the skinhead. Then I’d beat up the rabbi.”
NB – this anecdote ought not to be taken at face value as representing the views of ‘the left’ (whatever that is – there’s actually a good post on SIAOW about this right now.) or of me.
OB – Ok, Toynbee’s article is excellent, and it has taken me two days to grudgingly to say so. She usually writes good stuff, and it’s a fair cop, as we say here. I might add though, a few pages on, George Monbiot then surpassed even himself in sillyness, with a particularly peevish rant evangelising Ralph Nader and demonising John Kerry. Anyone here who views Nader as a worthy underdog shoud know that he’s “directly responsible for installing the most reckless and incompetent president in US history”, at least according to Alex Doonsebury
Great paper, the Guardian…
‘he’s “directly responsible for installing the most reckless and incompetent president in US history”‘
Hmmm. I never understand that line of argument. I would say other people are a good deal more responsible for that installation than Nader is. I would also sharply question the apparent assumption that non-major party candidates have no right to run. I would also point out and ponder the mystery of the fact that one heard comparatively little of that sort of thing about Perot’s third-party candidacy in 1992. I would also say the name ‘Lincoln’ and then look casually off into the distance in an innocent manner.
I would also say, at risk of revealing that being a pro-rationalism leftist does not necessarily mean being a ‘moderate’ or centrist leftist, that I voted for Nader myself. I would then point out that there were and are good reasons, not merely narcissistic or self-indulgent or posturing reasons, for thinking the Democrats are just Not Good Enough. Their total failure to do anything about the endemic bribery in US politics being one – a major one.
Which is not to say that I’m going to vote for Nader this time. Just to say that I don’t think it’s mere loonyism to do so.
Jerry S:
“The other thing to remember with this Iran stuff is that Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was pretty horrendous (so, for example, SAVAK were notorious in the 1970s).”
Good point, and at least as far as I know, a somewhat neglected one.
Good column by Toynbee as well, except that I’m not so sure about her hailing of secular Turkey as a model – it was a secular society, sure, but for many decades not one you’d want to be a leftist or a Kurd in. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, much worse than Turkey ever was probably, are also secular societies, but hardly defensible ones.
As for Cathal Copeland’s point, I am afraid it’ll be up to segments of the left and segments of the libertarian right to recognize that there are secular and progressive forces within largely islamic society. Because the “multiculturalist” Left, in defining “islamic” societies as rather monolithic, primarily religious entities to be respected, meets the radical Christian right aching to bring upon the Apocalypse, in a similar way as “difference feminism” isn’t all that far from the twisted reactionary Victorian conception of women.
M.