Which Community?
I’ve just been chatting with my colleague on the phone, and along with other things we discussed, we agreed that this post is a lot of nonsense – and nonsense of a kind that leaves us shaking our heads (yes, both of them) in baffled amazement.
Islamaphobia is often defined as slanderous untruths. I think there is an excessively narrow definition of Islamophobia at play here. It is not right that simply stating ‘the truth’ is sufficient to clear one of Islamophobia…One must take the content in the whole. If the overall impact is intemperate and insinuating, the overall conclusion is that it is oppressively anti-pluralistic. One must also take into account the context. If ‘truth’ about a community is expressed intemperately and one-sidedly, and that community is already under a burden of suspicion and disadvantage, then one must conclude that this is a freedom of speech exercised in such a manner to oppress and marginalize the group.
Um – really? Always? Is that a good general rule? I suppose it depends (as it so often does) what you mean by ‘community’ – and that’s probably exactly why the word was used. Because of course we all know that communities are good things, warm fuzzy kind loving things, so obviously any community that is under ‘a burden of suspicion and disadvantage’ is being unfairly persecuted in some way. Stands to reason, doesn’t it. So even if one tells the truth about a community, if one does it the wrong way, then one is oppressing and marginalizing the group. ‘The group’ – that’s another one of those words. Kind of dodges the question, doesn’t it. Suppose the truth that is being told about this community/group is that it treats some of its members like dirt, that it not only oppresses and marginalizes them, it beats them and when angry enough, kills them. Then is one really oppressing and marginalizing the whole group by telling the truth even in an intemperate way? Or is one in fact ‘oppressing’ or rather exposing and with any luck stopping part of the group, to wit, the perpetrators?
Yes. The problem (one problem) with that whole absurd quotation is that not all communities are in fact good or benign or harmless, even to all of their own members. Is that really a big news flash? If they are engaged in oppressing and marginalizing, battering and murdering, coercing and depriving, people within that very community (or outside it) then the truth should be told about that. Yes, intemperately. And there are communities and groups like that in the world. So as a generalization that paragraph just won’t wash. (The rhetoric of ‘community’ and ‘group’ is yet another example of what Julian was talking about in that Bad Moves I commented on last week – language that is ‘the means by which question begging occurs.’)
But cultures must be respected as rounded expressions of full humanity, just as we expect our cultures to be treated so. By all means, condemn what one wishes in whatever culture, but liberals must remember that we are a world not of human atoms accorded rights defined by ahistorical reason, but organic and evolving communities deserving of respect by virtue of their framing of human existance. To serve liberalism by highlighting all that is wrong with Islam is to whip up prejudice and is thus unconscionable.
Well, again – what does ‘respected’ mean? And what on earth does ’rounded expressions of full humanity’ mean? Nothing, would be my guess – just a formula to elicit some kind of right-on emotion. But if it does mean anything – again, the question arises: what if these ‘cultures’ deprive some of their members – as some cultures certainly do – of the ability to develop their own expressions of full humanity? Must such cultures then be ‘respected’? If so, why?
Mullholland has a lot to say about the silly assumptions of ‘liberals’ but he makes some silly assumptions himself, such as the assumption that communities and groups are single entities that all feel and think alike, that all have the same interests, that all feel oppressed and marginalized as one by the truth-telling of outsiders. But communities aren’t like that. Even ‘groups’ of two people aren’t like that, not all the time, and whole communities certainly are not. Susan Moller Okin put it this way in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?:
Most cultures are suffused with practices and ideologies concerning gender. Suppose, then, that a culture endorses and facilitates the control of men over women in various ways (even if informally, in the private sphere of domestic life). Suppose, too, that there are fairly clear disparities of power between the sexes, such that the more powerful, male members are those who are generally in a position to determine and articulate the group’s beliefs, practices, and interests. Under such conditions, group rights are potentially, and in many cases actually, antifeminist. They substantially limit the capacities of women and girls of that culture to live with human dignity equal to that of men and boys, and to live as freely chosen lives as they can. Advocates of group rights for minorities within liberal states have not adequately addressed this simple critique of group rights, for at least two reasons. First, they tend to treat cultural groups as monoliths–to pay more attention to differences between and among groups than to differences within them.
You could say that.
And why exactly are things desevring of respect because of their “framing of human existance”, in fact, what does “framing of human existance” mean?
“And that attitude of contempt is not conducive to respectful engagement with the individuals who make up that group.”
Yup, I can just imagine you guys having a respectful engagement with the Taleban as they execute women in football stadia.
Grow up, Chris.
Ophelia
What gets me about the left-leaning intelligentsia is that their obsession with the requirement that we respect minorities, other cultures, etc., leads to the most appalling kind of moral relativism.
I wonder what they would have to say to the student I taught from Oman, who not only claimed that Jews were vermin – as she had been taught – but who couldn’t begin to understand that the rest of the class might think otherwise.
Or my Iranian student, who talked with pride about the fact that members of his village had stoned a gay person to death, cheered on by the local police.
Or my Indian students, who were plotting to put some guy in hospital, because he had dated their sister without the family’s permission.
Or my friend’s girlfriend, who was unable to secure an arranged marriage – she certainly wasn’t allowed to be with my friend – because she was “too light skinned”.
This stuff has got bugger all to do with race. It is only empirically to do with nationality. But it’s got everything to do with culture. One doesn’t defend liberal values in order to defend Western society, one defends liberal values because illiberalism is intolerable.
Big chunks of the Left are a disgrace.
“expressions of full humanity”
“framing of human existance”
Listen to the pretty words, don’t they sound nice. The writer is confusing a poetic turn of phrase with sensible analysis. Writers who use such terms should wherever possible be challenged to define them (and we can watch them sqirm as they try and do so).
“But it is unacceptable to demonise minorities, and it is treacherously insidious to do so by constructing rhetorical strategies that harp endlessly on Islamic fundamentalism, reactionary traditions that require purgation, and the selection of Islamic paragons to grant the liberal spurious inoculation against accusations of prejudice.”
When I read the above I was struck by similar thoughts. Unacceptable to demonise minorities? What about the BNP? What about paedophiles? Isn’t Mr Mulholland being rather selective with his minorities? Isn’t ‘minority’ being humpty dumptied into warm fuzziness, just as ‘islamophobia’ has been humpty dumptied into irrational hatred?
The semi-anonymous Jerry S bravely writes:
Yup, I can just imagine you guys having a respectful engagement with the Taleban as they execute women in football stadia.
Um, actually, I had in mind the many and diverse people who, like me, inhabit British cities, but who, unlike me, happen to be Muslims. If you think that they are all (or even largely) like the Taleban, then you are astonishingly ignorant.
So let’s get this clear then Chris.
You’re saying that Mulholland’s nonsense is about a very restricted form of Islamophobia; namely a dislike of British muslims.
And we’re supposed to understand this when you say:
“What I take Mulholland to be saying, is that a relentless harping on about just the bad things about a disadvantaged group can betray an attitude of contempt towards that group (and the individuals who compose it) even when all the things that are said are true. And that attitude of contempt is not conducive to respectful engagement with the individuals who make up that group.”
Suddenly it’s all crystal clear…
Tell you what, though, the British muslims I know wouldn’t take too kindly to your description of them as a disadvantaged group…
But then you’d know that, being a trendy urban hipster type.
Philosophers, don’t you just love ’em.
“Well, it’s one of the few valid points Mulholland makes – indeed it’s one that thinking people on all sides of the political spectrum would endorse.”
It’s not a valid point, unless it is simply a definitional point or there is no value judgement about the contempt.
It depends on how bad the bad things are; if people are executing women in football stadia because they’re suspected of adultery, then Mulholland can go on as much as he likes about the fact that they’re nice to furry animals, but I’m not going to.
Part of the reason this piece is so stupid is because it betrays a casual assumption that cultures cannot be rotten to the core. Well sorry, but they can be, and it’s time the Left woke up to this fact (not that there is any chance of that).
Individuals are the only solid ground. I can diagnose them with physical or mental illnesses (with more or less accuracy). I can hold them accountable for their actions (with more or less justice).
Groups are composed of individuals, yet we seem to treat them with some sort of supra-rights or -privileges. As if, by the sheer fact of joining together, they become immune to judgement either as a whole or in parts.
An individual does not have the right to injure or coerce another individual; I think most would agree to that. Yet, I am somehow not allowed to say that Indian treatment of women is wrong: I become an ethnocentric bigot.
Groups do not have rights. Laws should not protect or defend or codify groups.
The history of an organization does not give it the right to anything at all.
All cultures are equally invalid, existing only in each individuals mind as a seperate artefact.
We must eliminate group-think and cultural effects in all of our actions, not just our scientific endeavors.
Some will say that man cannot exist outside of a culture, that we are all corrupted by our upbringing (except Ophelia who was raised in a vat) and that I only say these things because I was raised in a post-enlightenment, Western, White,logical environment.
Logic is independant of culture.
Jerry et al, allow me to play the devil’s advocate. No matter how mistaken Mulholland may be about the benevolence of Islam, doesn’t he at least have SOME point to make when he asserts, say, that “Liberals have a tendency to treat their own norms as self-evident and, as expression of ahistorical ‘rights’, not only universally applicable but necessary components of full human morality.” ? And don’t Liberals tend to treat non-Liberal values as ‘false consciousness’? By way of example: it’s one thing to express justified contempt towards the Taliban and similar humanoids, another to pontificate (as the International Herald Tribune did the other day) that all Americans opposed to the official recognition of homosexual unions (i.e. most religious Americans and most conservative secularists) are effectively ‘writing bigotry into the Constitution’.
Of course it is absurd to insist that we treat “with respect and due regard” every wacko flat-earther culture we encounter. But many Liberals consider EVERY culture other than their own to be wacko and flat-eartherish. That’s the problem. They tend to assume that liberalism is the source of all wisdom, that no other culture past or present has had any lessons to teach us, that ‘traditional societies’ are a load of old rubbish, etc. Perhaps Liberals should occasionally consider that they may have a few beams in their own eyes. If only Mulholland had elaborated that particular argument rather than go off at a tangent to invent a benign ‘Islam imaginaire’ that exists only in his head, he might have not only have had a point – he might have convinced some readers that he has a good one.
Well, Chris, you’re right that I didn’t quote everything Mulholland said. But I think I did understand what he’s saying, and I don’t agree with it. And I can’t agree that I simply spun out of my own imagination the view that groups think alike – you seem to me to be making the same assumption in your own comment.
“What I take Mulholland to be saying, is that a relentless harping on about just the bad things about a disadvantaged group can betray an attitude of contempt towards that group (and the individuals who compose it) even when all the things that are said are true.”
But is it “harping on about just the bad things about a disadvantaged group” to point out, for instance, the way Dalits are treated by one group, or the way women are treated by a good many groups? Who is disadvantaged there, who is the group, who is the recipient of the contempt? Aren’t you simply assuming that, for instance, Hindus are a disadvantaged group while Dalits are not, Dalits are simply subsumed in the group ‘Hindus’? And I take Mulholland to be making the same muddle.
Cathal
But isn’t it precisely the liberal intelligentsia here who are defending the illiberal?
And isn’t it the conservatives who are taking the more hawk-like line?
Jerry S,
“What gets me about the left-leaning intelligentsia is that their obsession with the requirement that we respect minorities, other cultures, etc., leads to the most appalling kind of moral relativism.”
Well I know, and that’s why ‘Cultural Relativism’ is one of the first items included in B&W’s In Focus.
Oh and Keith, PM and anyone else who pointed out other strange comments in the Mulholland post that I neglected to criticize: quite right, I could have. I was selective. I just didn’t want to go on and on, bore everyone, bore myself, etc.
And Jerry S, again – not all the left-leaning intelligentsia. Witness B&W itself, and e.g. Harry’s Place, Normblog, etc. The effort to separate the left-leaning intelligentsia from cultural and moral relativism is one of B&W’s goals in life.
OB
Well, you know that I rate Norm, but there is a liberal intelligentsia beyond the world of blogs, and it is mostly hopelessly muddled about these things.
There are, of course, honourable exceptions.
But we’re all doomed, I tell you, doomed! ;-)
Liberal intelligentsia? Gosh, I just play the bongos at coffee houses and discuss Sartre, do I qualify?
Funny how people think that just because there are only two big American political parties that everyone (in America, presumably) must be either liberal or conservative…and that we adhere to some hopelessly democratized Party Line. Perhaps that’s just my ‘Political Relativism’ talking.
Individuals have individual opinions – and those that get them downloaded from any radio station don’t really qualify as adults, but that’s probably elitist and right–no wait, I can’t remember, which group are the elitists?
Grouping, stereotyping, generalizing…effective dodges.
I do like this:
“Liberals have a tendency to treat their own norms as self-evident and, as expression of ahistorical ‘rights’, not only universally applicable but necessary components of full human morality” but isn’t that true of basically all humankind? It takes a lot of arrogance to make that point as an attack against any particular group and not realize it is a symptom of the whole.
Oh no! I’m scared! I want my blankie!
Ah, beyond the world of blogs. True. But I don’t know anything about that – I never leave these four walls.
Mark,
Ah no, this liberal intelligentsia that everyone is talking about is in the UK, where you can tell them by their, um, tiny little badges. We don’t have them over here. We just have anti-elitists, instead.
Mark
Not quite sure what you’re talking about there, but good show anyway!
Abbas, yes, I think a lot of people thought that.
Perhaps your sister would like to write something about it for us…?
Sorry, Ophelia, but her English is poor. I did, however, send her the address of this site. If she visits, it is bound to improve!
“Groups do not have rights. Laws should not protect or defend or codify groups.”
Amen to that. I don’t think I have read a statement recently I agree more with.
I thought of that, Abbas – and my next thought was that you could translate for her…
Anyway, thanks for sending her B&W’s address. Tell her good luck from us!