Power without scrutiny
Andrew Anthony is good on the subject of Warsi’s little talk on “Islamophobia.”
She has complained that the last government was “too suspicious” of faith and treated it as “a rather quaint relic of our pre-industrial history”. Given that Tony Blair was overtly religious, his government expanded and promoted faith schools and consistently tried to pass censorious blasphemy laws, it gives pause to wonder how much more religious Warsi would like her own government to be.
Really. She thinks Labour wasn’t religious enough?
In citing liberal critics of religion such as Polly Toynbee as representing an “abhorrent” attitude, she certainly made it clear how much less secular she would like society to be.
A lot less.
Last year, Number 10 made her withdraw from the Global Peace and Unity conference in London. Despite its title, the GPU event featured several antisemites and Islamic hate preachers. By all accounts, Warsi was disappointed not to attend. Had she spoken, she intended to challenge extremist attitudes.But she also saw in the GPU a chance to show the power of an organised faith community. As she put it in another speech: “In Britain, the resilience of religion gives us the confidence to reject the intolerance of secularist fundamentalists.”
This is the kind of language that plays well among many religious activists. However, there is a hidden paradox in Warsi’s position. She wants to give greater voice to religion in the political arena, yet she also wishes there to be less criticism of religion, in other words, power without scrutiny.
Just like the pope.
This woman sounds a lot like Sarah Palin.
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Well said. Seculairism might very well be considered a benevolant political mechanism by the very faithheads who rail against it, if for no other reason than it spares their dogmatic doctrines from further and widespread exposure to the inevitably harsh glare of logical analysis and reasoned critique. To paraphrase your own eloquently made point, no person or institution can reasonably enter into the pluralistic and adversarially styled political arena of a contemporary western democracy without expecting to be challenged on almost every single aspect of it’s constitution, always vigorously and often vehemently so.
Yes, AA’s was a good talk. And the comment stream is worth a read too.
I particularly liked the comment by ‘dgamble’ ( 23 January 2011 1:57PM ). ‘dgamble’ gives a string of pro-violence quotes from the Koran ( ie violence with righteous and pious indignation) and then adds:
I want to make myself a T-shirt with ‘REJECT DHIMMITUDE’ across the chest. I reckon it will be a good conversation starter. On the back it will have ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA IS A SMOKESCREEN’.
Those reading one side might ask those reading the other what it all means. Once their conversation begins I will step sidewards and begin more discussions.
At the moment we have a situation in South Africa where an Islamic mosque is seriously annoying its neighbours with the call to prayer. The neighbours figure because the majority of the community is not Islamic, the mosque should just STFU. Literally.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article868074.ece/Mosque-stirs-unholy-rumble
I, as a secularist fundementalist, have written up a post defending the mosque. I call them bad neighbours but basically point out that now its there, its there and the people who worship there have the right to do so.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article868074.ece/Mosque-stirs-unholy-rumble
And in comfortable, relatively high living standard UK you have a Baronness whining and whinging about how bad us secularist fundementalists are for you know, saying government and religion shouldn’t mix. You know what happens when the two mix and yours is the religion in the minority? Your minority religion gets its rights capped in the name of the majority religion.
A right to worship? Perhaps as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others to live peacefully and in freedom. There is no need for a loudspeaker call to prayer, not all mosques have minarets, and they must indeed go if Muslims want to peacefully practice their religion in a secular society.
I find it ironic that loudspeakers, a modern western invention, are used for a medieval alarm clock and propaganda machine.
And Sarah Palin gloats on about freedom, but that freedom, especially the right to bare arms, is granted by a secular constitution, not by Christianity. And again, those guns are a modern invention.
Religion and politics are simply an explosive mix that must be separated in political discourse. When Sayeeda Warsi begins talking religion while belonging to a political party, she has stepped over the line, and abuses the democratic process that got her elected. And the same applies to Sarah Palin.
Egbert
The Church gets its bells, the Shembe get their whistles, and the Mosque gets its loudspeaker.
Its also good for us atheists – if people associate religion with being an inconsiderate prick to your neighbours, maybe less people will want to be religious.
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I was quite cheered last year by the Pope’s suggestion that Christians should express their faith more often in public life. It makes it much easier to spot the arseholes, will generate much hilarity for the rest of the population and will likely only hasten the decline of organised religion in the UK.
I must therefore commend Baroness Warsi for her courage in speaking out about how most sane people find her beliefs bloody objectionable and encourage her to continue with her petulant whine that it’s they who are in fact in error.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/warsi-asked-to-explain-why-dubai-locks-you-up-for-having-a-shag-201101203453/
I the year 2011 is there still need for a call to prayer? Surely there’s an App For it?
Warsi is bad, but nothing like as bad as Palin.
I remember a conversation I had last year with an earnest young man. He explained to me his belief in rather quaint and traditional terms – belief in a benevolent supernatural figure that is able to tell whether one lives a good life and will reward those who do. This figure had been to earth in the past but had then ascended to his current home and would return in the future to reward the good.
The question I had at the time was whether I should ‘respect his belief’, by remaining silent, or should I describe my own true feelings about the figure – and in so doing expose him to information and questions that may very well result in the destruction of his own faith.
My conclusion in the end was to ‘respect’ his belief – but only temporarily – if he still believes in Santa when he’s 8 his Mother and I will have to let him know who pays for those Christmas presents.
Correction to comment #6. Warsi is not elected. She is an electoral failure.
Yes, she stood as a Conservative candidate in 2005, but lost to Labour.
She clearly was not considered competent enough to try again in 2010, and so was appointed a life peer by Cameron. Quite what she had done to deserve being a life peer is not clear. A cynic might assume that having a brown, female Muslim in Cameron’s team might help deflect criticism of the Conservatives as party with a residual culture of racism and sexism.
Unelected and serving in the cabinet, how democratic of the conservatives.
Couple of points – Baroness Warsi was made a peer in 2007, under a Labour government and there’s nothing particularly Tory about having people in the Cabinet who haven’t been elected (Lord Falconer, Lord Sugar, etc).
‘I remember a conversation I had last year with an earnest young man. He explained to me his belief in rather quaint and traditional terms – belief in a benevolent supernatural figure that is able to tell whether one lives a good life and will reward those who do. This figure had been to earth in the past but had then ascended to his current home and would return in the future to reward the good.’
Does this benevolent figure live in the North Pole – with elves?
The US cabinet is usually entirely unelected, and it’s always unelected as such – that is, a serving Senator or Rep might be appointed, but no one is elected to the cabinet post.
Although she was appointed in 2007 she was nominated by Cameron. Under the bizarre UK process of appointing people to the House of Lords all political parties with MPs in the Commons get to choose a number of people to be so appointed. Normally the people so appointed are expected to have some record of public service. I have never been able to find out what Warsi has done, other than work in the Crown Prosecution Service.
Oh yes, she appears to be nothing much more than a political animal.
I suspect that she’s ascended more on the back of what she is rather than what she has done.
Tory, wealthy background (from business) and covers a good number of the demographics that the Conservatives at least want to pay some kind of lip service to including (Muslim, female and the North of England).
I find the idea of people holding positions of power without being elected bizarre. Especially when people are supposed to be voting for representatives, presumably from which the elected representative must answer to. I am more angry about this flagrant disregard for the fundamentals of democracy than Warsi’s pathetic lecture.
[…] Ophelia points out, Anthony Andrews has also demolished the Baroness’s claims quite effectively: She wants to give […]
But then again, a lot of bizarre thgings become understandable when you realise that for the poor of the world, a religious identity is about all they have. Whatever community and its support they have, they get or so they are led to believe, courtesy of some controlling priest, imam or whatever.
And in those environments, the worst control freaks are those most determined in clawing their way to the top.
Ian Paisley and Moqtada Al-Sadr have at least that much in common.