Errors of Omission
A little more on that thought. The thought that it’s not very helpful to say that difference always deserves respect, without defining what kind of difference is meant. Evasive language that leaves out the very point that is at issue, is not helpful and is not honest.
There was some of that on the Talking Politics I mentioned. I’ve been meaning to transcribe the comments I had in mind, and I finally got around to it. So – Ann McElvoy. First, on why France is not to be admired on questions of multiculturalism.
The state appropriates to itself, I think entirely wrongly, the right to tell Muslim girls that they may or may not even wear a scarf, let alone the veil on their heads, and that to me is exactly where we wouldn’t want to go.’
Left something rather large out there – making her point seem a lot stronger than it in fact is. The state tells girls they may or may not wear a scarf at state schools – and nowhere else. She neglects to mention that.
Next.
What worries me is the more difficult decisions, what do you do about people who want to live separately – I don’t think you can force them, just like pledges of allegiance, to do things they really don’t believe in, if they’re not doing you any harm, and I think that is the very difficult question that we will be faced with, it comes up again with things like the burqa – just because white Britain feels a bit uncomfortable about the burqa is that a reason to ban it.
That one’s a double prize, because there are two large omissions. ‘If they’re not doing you any harm’ – but doing me harm is not the issue. What if they are doing other people harm? What if they are doing harm to their daughters for instance? And ‘just because white Britain feels a bit uncomfortable about the burqa’ – but feeling uncomfortable about the burqa is not the issue – the issue is what harm is the burqa (arguably) doing to other people? Or to put it another way, why would anyone feel ‘a bit uncomfortable about the burqa’? If it were just a difference in dress – some embroidery, or puffy sleeves, or morris bells – would anyone feel uncomfortable? I hardly think so. No, people are ‘uncomfortable’ about the burqa for a reason, and as a matter of fact it’s a good reason, not a bad or stupid one. The damn thing stands for subordination and inferiority, therefore it makes people uncomfortable. Of course it can still be argued that it should nevertheless not be interfered with or even criticised – but it’s cheating to try to do that by ignoring crucial aspects.
I’m reliably informed by my Christian friends that they think women should be subordinated to men as well – I bet they’re just jealous they didn’t think of the special clothing first.
“If it were just a difference in dress – some embroidery, or puffy sleeves, or morris bells – would anyone feel uncomfortable? I hardly think so.”
Of course, if the Burqa were -just- a difference in dress, we’d be even less likely to allow children to wear it in our schools, it is paradoxically -because- it carries all that religious baggage people are prepared to think of it as the next step after the jilbab.
[Contrary to France, I’d have been happy with us making small concessions to religious dress, allowing scarves, turbans, scull caps, but not jilbabs, knives or whatnot]
“I’m reliably informed by my Christian friends that they think women should be subordinated to men as well – I bet they’re just jealous they didn’t think of the special clothing first.”
Actually, I’ve known quite a few Christian fundies in my time, and quite a few of them (all men, by the way) say the same vicious thing about rape: that it’s caused by women wearing provocative clothing and therefore women are largely to blame for it. They also see the purpose of marriage as “an outlet for the release of sexual tension that is the only one sanctioned by the Bible” (exact quote)…in other words, their wives are designated sperm receptacles whose primary purpose is to keep their menfolk from committing the sin of Onanism. Charming, no? These were all middle-class American and Carribean men who said this, most of whom had wives or girlfriends. Pity those poor wives (unless of course you’re Naomi Wolf, in which case you envy them).
And they say we atheists have a crass and stunted view of life.
The ones I know have a quaintly modern spin on it – that in a relationship only one person can be in charge, and God just happened to choose the man. What a sweet combination of equality and oppression.
Blimey, PM, you do pick your friends! How do you go about cornering them? I know some who don’t think that. Should they be introduced to each other?
The anti-religion rant is no more sensible than the religion rant. You won’t stop people being religious by standing in a small room and bellowing at each other that religion is ridiculous. It might be, but simply declaring it so among friends is not going to prove that.
Religion is there: you have to deal with it. Nor is it an entirely negative force in world affairs. We’ve had Ophelia’s comment some time ago on the few unimportant ‘pretty’ things is seems to have produced, and I quarreled with that because it seemed a debasing of the argument. It is unworthy of Ophelia, who is so damn right on so many things in my opinion.
The problem is to devise laws that limit the powers of any one particular group of people to impose their views on others by force. It’s a simple enough idea, just a touch devilish in practice. Come to think of it not even that simple as an idea. What constitutes the group? What constitutes force?
As we’ve already said it is not the item of clothing, the burqa, that is the problem. If it were a matter of having to wear knotted handkerchief on your head in the manner of Blackpool 1958 ithe problem would be the same.
The idea (as we interpret it) of oppression of women by such means offends us. We, as a group, could insist that this symbol should be banned. We then have to negotiate with the possibility that others – including women – might oppose our ban. We can deprecate away to our heart’s delight and so can they, but we are talking legislation here.
The French solution regarding the rules in state schools seems a perfectly possible route to me, but that’s just me and a few million others. It needs to be talked through in the UK .
That is what we should be working on. It is not advisable to invent legislation on the hoof, but a decision is there to be made and having made a decision, we should apply it without fear or favour as the cliche has it.
Yup, Don. That’s about the size of it, I think.
Oh damn! That bloody grocer’s apostrophe.
“What worries me is the more difficult decisions, what do you do about people who want to live separately – I don’t think you can force them, just like pledges of allegiance, to do things they really don’t believe in, if they’re not doing you any harm,…”
This is the classic, classic segregationist crap we used to hear back when I was little.
“if they’re not doing you any harm,…”
Separate but equal. Is this supposed to be some kind of tolerance?
“I’m reliably informed by my Christian friends that they think women should be subordinated to men as well – I bet they’re just jealous they didn’t think of the special clothing first.”
Actually, I’ve known quite a few Christian fundies in my time, and quite a few of them (all men, by the way) say the same vicious thing about rape: …”
And this is a fairly cheap shot, pretty much on par with the fundie propaganda about the amorality of atheists using carefully selected atrocities. It’s a cheap trick to claim that fundies are representative of anyone but themselves.
Surely it is actually a very good illustration that fundamentalist Islam does not hold the monopoly on the oppression of women.
“Religion is there: you have to deal with it…The problem is to devise laws that limit the powers of any one particular group of people to impose their views on others by force.”
Right. That’s just it. That’s what makes dealing with it so tricky right now. The fact that it’s there and has to be dealt with slides into ideas that it has to be ‘respected,’ deferred to, obeyed (as in the case of ‘Behzti’ for instance, or for that matter in the case of Salman Rushdie) – and, ultimately, allowed to impose its views on others by force. So the only way of dealing with that, as far as I can see, is by a process of discussion and education, which has to include pointing out some things that not all believers want to hear – such as that it is not reasonable to require other people to believe things that are not supported by the evidence.
‘Actually, I’ve known quite a few Christian fundies in my time, and quite a few of them (all men, by the way) say the same vicious thing about rape: …”
This kind of crap isn’t limited to any particular group, you don’t need religion to be a creep. You don’t even need to be a man. However, when religious groups codify these attitudes and claim divine sanction …
As for integrated, secular education, regrettably government policy is heading in exactly the opposite direction. My local council has just been brutally pressured (do it or lose £200 million from your education budget) into agreeing to a city academy dominated by a car salesman who described evolution as ‘Just an idea thought up by some guy called Darwin.’ (May not be 100% on the quote, but close enough.) Meanwhile a high school is to be turned into a Moslem girls’ school and another local academy hosts visits from Truth In Genesis.
It only costs two mil. to get control of a high school. How about a whip-round. We could call it the ‘Richard Dawkins High School.
Seriously, British education is virtually up for grabs by any group with a bank roll and a religious agenda. Wrong direction, Tony.
One thing that surprises me is that there doesn’t seem to be any curiousity about what drives the French approach of state secularism. There is actually a lot of political and cultural history that underlies it, little of which is explicitly anti-women or anti-Muslim. Rather, it comes from the absolute priority of l’etat in French society. I suggest a glance at “Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French”, by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow. It’s an ethnological analysis of France and the French, and well worth a read.
‘The absoute priority of the state’, or the struggle against the Catholic Church that shaped Republican France’s institutions in the last 30 years of the C19th?
“This kind of crap isn’t limited to any particular group, you don’t need religion to be a creep. You don’t even need to be a man. “
Yes, but ….
It really HELPS if you have religion – and GOD of course – on your side.
then it is your holy duty to oppress women and unbelievers and wrong-believers.
All religions are a form of blackmail.
“It’s a cheap trick to claim that fundies are representative of anyone but themselves.”
Uh, I was talking about the fundies, dude. Specifically. More specifically, about numerous Christian fundie men (perhaps 50 or 60 over the course of 15 years and a very wide geographical area, all of whom used almost identical language, which raises questions of how representative these cretins are and where they’re getting these ideas and even the very language they use and whether their “faith” tempers or aggravates these attitudes…)
George, yes, I realize I can’t argue with literalists (although Irshad Manji is doing exactly that, and boy do I hope she makes headway) about what they believe themselves, but I mentioned evidence in terms of what they can demand that other people believe. That’s not really the right word – I spent some time groping for a word when I wrote that and couldn’t come up with it. What I’m trying (clumsily) to argue is that believers can’t order other people to believe things on faith. Just for one thing, it’s not even possible; but it’s also not right. So I was trying to make a distinction between telling people what to believe themselves, and telling them not to try to coerce other people into believing what they believe, and saying that that is also part of dealing with religion.
I can tell how not-easy the religious schools question is – for instance from the strong reactions Nick Cohen got when urging separation of church and state on ‘Talking Politics.’ Ann McElvoy said that was a totalitarian impulse.
There is certainly a broad range of opinion on how freethinkers should deal with religion, from the ‘after all its the human condition, the poor little simpletons can’t help it’ to ‘how could any thinking person ascribe to such bilge’. Been there, done both of those. There may be those who think we should adopt the position of hating the sin but loving the sinner. The flaw is that pointed out by the ordinary language philosopher Peter Strawson, if we treat people in conversation as if they are cognitively ill we can hardly expect to engage them in a meaningful dialogue.
“a totalitarian impulse…”
No, just French.
it is my opinion that we want to educate the children, not alienate them. the next step for a religious person put off by some overbearing secularizer government such as france is to leave that crappy public school & spring for a nice, comfortable religious school & they will go in the opposite direction of what many of us would consider a good (secular) education.
To continue fgc’s point: or, as is becoming more common in the US, homeschool them. Then you can teach them exactly what you want – and nothing you don’t want – as long as they can still pass the required exams.
“Uh, I was talking about the fundies, dude.”
Whatever. It was in the context of a discussion about Islam in general, so aresponse would likey be somewhat parllel.
But if you were talking abut fundies, I agree totally and further I think you are dead on the money about the eerily wide distribution of this kind of thinking among them. They are very well networked. There is a preaching circuit among these congregations and also a network of “think” tanks and foundations and so on. The Family Research Council in Boulder comes to mind. This male dominance ideoology is also the kind of thing that Promise Keepers was criticized for, and think of how they got around. The use of the identical langugae, and I know exactly what you mean, is the giveaway. If it were only about content rather than exact verbiage, this would be more an organic development.
There is a parallel with Wahhabi capture of mainstream Islamic institutions in the US and Europe.
Something else to watch. Promise Keepers is no longer on the scene. They have either morphed into something else, or vanished entirely, but obviously the individuals they appealed to are stiil with us. This was characteristic of the white supremacist/Christian Identity groups that were so much on everyone’s mind in the mid-nineties. It was called “Leaderless Resistance.” This suggests that the adherents are not just being manipulated, but that they are ideologically committed for the long haul.