Maryam received a Prix international de la Laïcité yesterday in Paris. She posted her acceptance speech on Facebook:

I am truly honoured to have been awarded the International Secularism (Laïcité) Prize from the Comité Laïcité République in Paris on 2 November. The wonderful Malek Boutih won the National Prix and Étienne-Émile Baulieu the Scientific Prize for 2016. Here is my acceptance speech in English.

Thank you for this wonderful honour. I am so glad to have the support of so many present here, including my husband and son, as well as my Muslim parents.

We live in an age where totalitarianism is masked as divine righteousness, theocrats legitimised, dissent vilified and victims blamed for their own murder.

This is a time where “solidarity” is no longer an act of defending revolutionaries but fascists; where there is always support for Islamist projects like Sharia courts, the burqa, gender segregation, apostasy and blasphemy laws – whether de jure or de facto – but never for those who refuse to be silenced, erased and “disappeared”.

It’s a time when “progressive” all too often means protecting regressive identity politics, which homogenises entire communities and societies, and deems theocrats as the sole legitimate arbiters and gatekeepers of “community” values.

It’s a politics of betrayal – devoid of class struggle and political ideals – which sees any dissent through Islamist eyes and immediately labels it “Islamophobic” and blasphemous.

We are called “aggressive apostates”, “fundamentalist secularists”, “native informants”, “inflammatory”. We are accused of violating the “safe spaces” of Islamists on universities and even “inciting hatred”.

Don’t believe it. That is the Islamist narrative.

In the world today, it is we who are being slaughtered not the other way round.

In their world everyone dies yet we are accused of being “offensive” – as if cartoons and apostasy are worse than murder.

Islamists discriminate against, shun, flog, imprison, terrorise, abduct, and slaughter but somehow it is always the victim whose “provocation” is to blame – whether it’s Charlie Hebdo or Avijit Roy…

Laicite is not a theoretical discussion for ivory tower academics and champagne socialists. It’s a matter of life and death for many of us:
• The likes of Asia Bibi in Pakistan facing execution for blasphemy
• Young ex-Muslims (Islam’s Non Believers) in Britain facing a life-time of shunning
• The likes of Afsana Lachaux whose rights violations in a discriminatory Sharia court in the Middle East have been upheld by French courts due to bilateral agreements
• Human Rights Activist Narges Mohammadi given a 16 year prison sentence for opposing executions; Jafar Azimzadeh sentenced to 11 years for labour organising; or dual nationals used as pawns such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff as well as Siamak and Baquer Namazi in Iran
• Blogger Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes for writing about religion and politics and on and on and on…

“Secularism is the solution”, is a graffiti Raif Badawi saw scrawled in a Saudi prison lavatory. Yet we are told that secularism is a neo-colonialist demand by so-called “anti-colonialists” whose worldview always coincides with the ruling elite, including in former colonies, and never the dissenters. Those “anti-fascists” who are only anti-some fascists, some of the time. Those who are “anti-racist” as long as we do not venture outside the pigeonholes that we are meant to live and be buried in; (if we dissent, though, they are at the forefront of insisting on racist cultural relativism and “different” rights for “different” people). The so-called progressives who condemn us to living lives within the confines of Islam whilst the sky has no limits for them…

They cannot begin to understand that no one needs Laicite more than those who live, struggle and die under the boot of the religious-Right.

And this includes the innumerable voting with their very feet and dying as we speak to seek refuge in secular societies, including the women, men and children of Calais, who deserve the basic human right to asylum and protection, not vilification and criminalisation.

And it includes believers. The right to religion must have a corresponding right to be free from religion to have any real meaning.

The historical battle that we are faced with today is not a clash of civilisations as the vile far-Right says in order to promote what is fundamentally white and often Christian identity politics. Rather, it’s a clash between theocrats on the one hand and secularists and universalists on the other – across real or imagined communities, borders and boundaries -and including many Muslims and migrants.

Secularism is not French or Western or Eastern; it’s universal.

It must be unequivocally and unashamedly defended against this era’s totalitarianism.

Today more than ever, we need Laïcité and we need it now.

Our very lives depend on it.

Thank you.

I’m proud to know her.

Jeff Sharlet wrote a powerful public post on Facebook a few hours ago. It’s a “why we have to vote for Trump anyway” post but one that doesn’t minimize the things we dislike about Clinton – on the contrary it goes into some detail on them, via his own investigative journalism.

I’m so tired of Hillary Clinton posts, but I’m going to write one anyway. This is directed at my friends and acquaintances who, like me, are very critical of Clinton’s corporate centrism, cronyism, elitism, and militarism: Please consider voting for her anyway, even if you live in a “safe state.” Clinton is probably going to win, but it’s no longer a lock. Trump has a narrow but real potential path to victory. He also has the potential for great harm if he loses, which is why even though I live in Vermont, I’m voting for Hillary. The margin must be big, because the margin isn’t Hillary’s victory — everyone understands that millions are voting against Trump — it’ll be Trumpism’s defeat.

My track record as a critic of Hillary and Clintonism in general is pretty good. In 2007, Kathryn Joyce and I teamed up to write a sharply critical story on Clinton’s deep-rooted corporatism and affiliations with a fundamentalist movement known as The Fellowship. She wouldn’t speak to us — her infamous press secretary, Philippe Reines, cursed and screamed at me just for asking, the most unpleasant encounter I’ve had in my years of Washington reporting — but we interviewed many significant figures from her life, read nearly every published thing she ever wrote, and reviewed the entire history. The portrait that emerged was about what most critics would expect — lip service for progressivism combined with a penchant for “compromises” nobody but the far right asked her to make. Most telling, to me, was her collaboration with then-Senator Sam Brownback, as conservative as they come, and the late ideologue Chuck Colson on an effort to unnecessarily water down a human trafficking bill to suit the demands of the religious right — to the extent that many NGOs and activists in the field saw the bill as an attack on their work. Bad stuff.

I teamed up with Kathryn again to write a piece for Religion Dispatches on Hillary’s surprising backroom dealing on abortion — again, what’s sometimes described as “centrist” seemed to reflect the kind of purely political triangulation that has always made Clintonism antagonistic to the left. I followed that up with an expansion on the two articles for my bestselling book The Family. The work got some attention: NBC Nightly News did a lead segment on it in 2008, and much of the progressive press picked up on it, while conservatives — and Hillary partisans — attacked Kathryn and [me] for suggesting that she’s anything less than the reincarnation of Dorothy Day.

That triangulation shit is why I went so thoroughly off Bill Clinton and have stayed off ever since.

I offer this history in the hopes of convincing you that I’m not another Hillary partisan trying to bully you into abandoning your Jill Stein vote, or your plan not to vote at all, for the sake of yet one more exercise in the democracy-destroying and soul-crushing exercise of lesser-evilism.

The thing is, as a writer on religion who has spent time with real killers and the worst bigots, I take the term “evil” pretty seriously. I don’t think Hillary is evil. I think she’s one more entry in a long tradition of neoliberal American imperialist politics. That’s bad! Very, very bad. But evil? No. Hell, I don’t even know for sure if Trump is evil — that might require a more expansive imagination than he possesses — but after studying the American right for decades and publishing two books about it, after traveling around with the Trumpers for a NYT Magazine story in the spring, I believe I can say with certainty that yes, Trumpism is evil. The real deal. The thing that must be stopped.

Yeah.

I do kind of think Trump is evil, though I don’t know for sure he is. But that’s an unnecessarily high standard. I think he is for good reason: because he is so prolifically, eagerly, consistently mean and vindictive and abusive, and so extremely impoverished in anything that tends the other way. There are a million stories of his cruelty and bullying, and zero stories of his kindness or generosity. We can see him raging and bullying as often as we turn on the news, and we cannot see him being kind or even polite. He comes across as a startlingly horrible human being. That’s probably as close to evil as you can get. Do I think he could be a Hitler in the right circumstances? Hell yes, in a heartbeat.

And yes, Trumpism must be stopped.

I’ve filled in most of my ballot; drop box tomorrow.

I was startled by the part where Suzanne Moore said Wonder Woman has been named a UN ambassador so I followed her link.

“This is the most fun the UN has had, I’m pretty sure right?” Diane Nelson, president of DC Entertainment said at a ceremony appointing Wonder Woman as the United Nations’ honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls. The ceremony was meant to honor the fight for gender equality and the 75th anniversary of the character.

Pause to stare in amazement.

How insulting is that? What, because the empowerment of women and girls is so trivial and such a joke that a comic book character might as well be ambassador for it?

Also…

Not really about empowerment, or women and girls? Sexual fantasy rather than empowerment? The male gaze as opposed to the empowered woman or girl? Hello? Can anyone hear me?

t was announced that Wonder Woman would become an honorary ambassador earlier this month, in support of the UN’s sustainable development goal number five – “to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. The sustainable development goals were adopted by the UN in 2015 and hope to fulfill their agenda by 2030.

The news was met with both praise and criticism, and a petition was created by “Concerned United Nations staff members” asking the UN secretary general to reconsider. It mentioned concerns over her “overtly sexualized image” that is not “culturally encompassing or sensitive”.

And it’s also not about empowerment. It’s about the passive, powerless non-action of being looked at. It’s about being so unreal that only a comic can represent you.

Protesters entered the chamber at the start of the event, and stood with their backs turned and their fists raised. They walked out of the event about halfway through, but three women stood outside for a few minutes to speak about their actions.

Though they didn’t intend to speak about their protest to the media, one, who was asked if the Guardian could mention her remarks anonymously, said she wished a real person had been chosen for the role of ambassador.

“For something that is this important, you need a woman or a man who can speak, somebody who can travel, somebody who can champion these rights, somebody who is able to have an opinion, somebody that can be interviewed, somebody that can stand up in front of 192 member states and say this is what we would like you to do,” she said.

In other words an actual female human being, not a two-dimensional stylized drawing.

Also, it’s a commercial product. The UN presumably wouldn’t make a Mercedes SUV or Blue Goose Vodka an ambassador, so why make a comic book character one?

The ceremony on Friday featured famous guests, actors Lynda Carter and Gal Gadot who have both brought the character to life on screen, Patty Jenkins, the director of the forthcoming Wonder Woman film, and Diane Nelson, president of DC Entertainment, which owns the character. The audience was full of Girl Scouts and young women and men, all in Wonder Woman T-shirts given out at the event. Jim Lee, co-publisher of DC Comics, and Phil Jimenez, a comic artist who has drawn Wonder Woman, were also there.

Cristina Gallach, UN under secretary general for communications and public information, attended on behalf of the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. She seemed to explain the choice of Wonder Woman in her remarks. “I don’t need to tell you Wonder Woman is an icon,” she said. “She has been known for justice, peace and equality and we are very pleased that this character will help us reach new audiences with essential messages about empowerment and equality.”

Nelson, who spoke next, commemorated the character’s long history in the DC Comics universe. Wonder Woman made her first appearance in All-Star Comics #8 back in 1941. The character soon got her own series and has been constantly transformed during her long history, with her origin story and costume specifics tweaked over the years.

As part of the yearlong campaign, DC Comics is developing a Wonder Woman comic that “tells the story of empowerment, peace, justice and equality” that will be available worldwide and in multiple languages, Nelson said.

Of course it is. How kind of the UN to give it such an advertising boost. Not so kind to women and girls though.

Tom Harris at the Telegraph is disgusted by the suspension of Louis Smith.

He starts with Roy Hattersley’s submission to Islamist outrage at Salman Rushdie in 1989.

Hattersley, whose constituency of Birmingham Sparkbrook included a large number of Muslims, has revealed that as a consequence of pressure put on him by local Muslim leaders, he proposed a “compromise”: Rushdie’s book should not be issued in paperback, as would normally be the case after the initial marketing of the hardback.

Of course, this was no compromise at all. The Shadow Home Secretary was advocating a surrender to the threat of terrorism. He advocated the compromising of free speech as a route to sating the blood thirst of the leader of a fascist state.

And they’re still doing it.

Nearly 30 years on, it would be nice to imagine that our political leaders considered freedom of speech more important than the personal hurt feelings of the followers of a particular faith. So where are the voices condemning the absurd suspension by British Gymnastics of athlete Louis Smith for his “mockery” of Islam?

There are some of us, but not many in the government.

Yet still our MPs seem pretty shy about discussing this issue or defending Smith’s right to offend. Many of them will, of course, like Hattersley before them, have to consider the electoral consequences of being seen to defend mockery of one particular religion (even if it means a defence of mockery of all religions). Have they no faith? Have they no confidence in their Muslim constituents to be able to take a sensible, moderate view of this little controversy? Isn’t it a little condescending towards all Muslims to assume that they will be so enraged by Smith’s behaviour that they will switch their votes away from any politician who dares defend his right to offend?

British Gymnastics has behaved deplorably, and our political leaders should say so. And Muslim leaders in the UK should say so too. They should celebrate the fact that we live in a country and society where we can offend each other without the threat of violence or official sanction.

Except, as British Gymnastics have now proved, we don’t. In 1989, Lord Hattersley advocated financial penalties on a writer for daring to write something that was offensive to some. Ten years earlier, Glasgow City Council penalised its own film-loving citizens by banning local cinemas from showing The Life of Brian.

By keeping their own counsel, political leaders give the green light to a bullying, blinkered officialdom that will continue to behave however it likes until someone at a national level calls it to heel.

From the SPLC to British Gymnastics…we’re told to respect Or Else.

Another bad thing. Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters writes:

Just had a horrible, bruising experience on BBC Asia Network whilst debating the problem of religious arbitration bodies, especially Sharia Councils, and their rulings on family and personal matters.

I was pitted against two Islamic ‘judges’ who call themselves ‘scholars’ who defended the existence of Sharia ‘Courts’: They argued that these bodies were set up for women and run on principles of compassion and justice. (Try telling that to the many Muslim women and women of other faiths who approach SBS on a daily basis with horrific stories of domestic violence and religious abuse of power; including those who contacted us today as a result of the debate on the Victoria Derbyshire Show!)

I was forced to walk out of the debate because it was clear that the two Islamist women (Khola Hasan and Amra Bone) from Birmingham and Leytonstone Sharia Councils were being allowed to dictate the terms of the debate with support from the facilitator who appeared completely out of her depth.

The facilitator invited me to respond to Khola Hasan’s view that Sharia Councils were set up for women and then cut me off as I tried to explain that Sharia Councils were set up to control women, not support them. I said that these bodies are in fact, part of an Islamist project and was about to cite evidence in support of this assertion but the facilitator jumped in and attempted to shut me up by saying that she did not want to get into a discussion about ‘ideology’ for which there was no proof! Instead, cutting me off in mid flow, she conveniently decided that she wanted to ‘hear from listeners’ as this was a ‘live radio talk show’.

It was a crude and ignorant response lacking in any insight into the seriousness of the situation that faces minority women whose rights are being discussed with reference to a patriarchal, theological framework rather than human rights.

I can imagine it all too easily. They’re terrified of that kind of thing, the BBC – and yet for some reason they’re not at all terrified of shutting up Pragna and what she was saying.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Potok was not about to let facts change his mind.

A significant faction on the left hates them for upholding the values they have forgotten

How did a significant faction on the left become apologists for a far-right movement that they would be the first to condemn if it were dominated by white people? Some random thoughts on how this might have happened.

I suspect that most leftists have a notion that it is legitimate to criticize what other people think or do, but not what they are as individuals, which is fine to a certain point. But language is flexible. You can always invent a name for “The kind of person that thinks/does [insert ideas/behaviors]” and frame that as an “identity” or something you are as a person. And since “identities” are sacred, it follows that any criticism of said ideas/behaviors is a hate crime.

There is also the problem of overcompensation. It is certainly true that hardcore racists and bigots often disguise their hatred as a fake concern for the treatment of women in Muslim societies etc. (The obvious example being atheists who opportunistically exploit the suffering of Dear Muslima to attack Muslims while spending every free moment harassing women online), and every leftist knows it. In the absence of telepathic power there is no method for identifying all the fakers without implicating lots of sincere people in the process. If you have determined that racism is infinitely bad, it seems to follow that no consequence of accusing others of racism – whether they are in fact guilty or not – could possibly be worse than failing to call out even a single real racist.

Then there’s the well-known phenomenon of attacking others to prove one’s own righteousness: “Don’t you see how viciously I call out even just alleged racists? So how can I possibly be one of them?” One of the main things I took away from Jung Chang’s biography of chairman Mao was that the endless purges and show trials were not actually meant to smoke out any real dissidents. At least that wasn’t their main function. The real purpose was to convey the following message: “Some percentage of the population will be made to pay during the next purge whether they are in fact guilty or not. Make sure it’s not you!” And of course the way to make sure it wasn’t you was to make sure it was somebody else. So basically people were forced to compete to inform on others in order to stay clear themselves. Hardly anything can be more toxic than a culture in which insufficient eagerness to accuse others of thoughtcrime is all it takes to be accused oneself.

Last but not least, it seems to me, there have always been a tension on the left between two, not necessarily contradictory, but certainly very different perspectives, or mindsets, or modes of thought:

On the one hand there’s a perspective that says “We’re all the same on the inside”. I.e. there might be some individual differences, but differences between groups are just superficial and irrelevant like skin color or the shape of a person’s genitals. To the extent that there appears to be some real differences in the distribution of interests or talents, it’s basically a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e. people turn out differently because we already think and act as if there were such differences, and treat people accordingly. Hence people end up different because of how they’re treated, not because of how they’re born. Bottom line, because people all function in pretty much the same way, there is no justification for treating them differently. Hence “equality” ultimately means rendering our various group identities irrelevant with respect to how people are treated.

On the other hand there’s a strand of thought that says it’s ok to be different, hence the emphasis on tolerance and the celebration of diversity. According to this perspective, people really are different, and there is nothing wrong with that. Insisting that we must all be the same “on the inside” is in itself a form of bigotry.

My personal view is that both perspectives have some validity (obviously, both can’t apply equally well in every particular case, but reality is complicated, and different principles may apply under different circumstances). For example: Are certain jobs considered “women’s work” because they’re seen as low-status (the first perspective), or are they considered low-status because they’re seen as “women’s work” (the second perspective)? I suspect the answer is some mixture of both.

I also think both modes of thought can be potentially problematic if applied simplistically, or dogmatically, or without regard for the specifics (in short, without thinking), especially if one fails to distinguish between innate and cultural differences.

The first perspective, if misapplied, can lead to a dogmatic inability/unwillingness to even consider the possibility that extremists like the IS actually mean what they say. After all, if we’re all the same on the inside, we must all be motivated by the same kinds of goals and values, hence all this talk of obeying the will of Allah etc. can only be an “excuse”.

The second perspective, if applied uncritically, leads to tolerance of intolerance, the abandonment of universal standards and a return to different rules for different groups of people. “Equality” is redefined as everybody having the same right to be treated according to the rules appropriate to their particular group identity (trans activism being the obvious example). There is also the idea that whatever your ancestors happened to believe/practice is automatically “right” for you. And this is where I think a label like “The regressive left” is indeed justified. All leftists agree that westerners should work to change their culture from within, but regressive leftists have somehow convinced themselves that nobody outside the West could possibly want to live differently than their ancestors for reasons other than internalized Western bigotry against “their own” culture. The idea that non-western women, homosexuals, secularists etc. might want the same changes we have made (imperfectly, but still) in the West for exactly the same reasons we did, simply doesn’t compute.

“Difference” is a word like “change”. Some changes are for the better while others are for the worse, and yet others don’t matter at all. This is why my head explodes when people talk about supporting Trump because he represents “change” as if “change” were synonymous with “improvement”. It is, certainly, true that Trump represents “change”, more specifically change for the worse. I just don’t see why that’s a reason to vote for him. The same goes for “difference”. Differences between languages, artistic styles, food traditions, ways of dressing (at least as long as there is no coercion involved) etc. may all be created pretty much equal. Differences in ways of treating women and homosexuals, not so much. Specifics matter.

Finally, I think leftists are right to be concerned that “universal standards” in practice means holding up Western culture as the norm to which everyone else needs to conform. I therefore hasten to say that that’s not what I’m advocating. We should aim higher than replacing the burqa with Western porn culture.

Headline:

Bono Becomes The First Man To Make Glamour’s Women Of The Year List

Because…there just aren’t enough women good enough to win it?

Glamour’s annual Women of the Year list always takes in a lot of territory, from noteworthy fashionistas and sports heroes to social justice activists and business leaders.

Enter Bono: The first Man of the Year among the magazine’s Women of the Year, all to be honored at a Nov. 14 ceremony in Los Angeles.

“We’ve talked for years about whether to honor a man at Women of the Year and we’ve always kind of put the kabash on it. You know, men get a lot of awards and aren’t exactly hurting in the celebration and honors department,” said Cindi Leive, Glamour’s editor-in-chief.

“But it started to seem that that might be an outdated way of looking at things, and there are so many men who really are doing wonderful things for women these days. Some men get it and Bono is one of those guys,” Leive said in a recent interview.