Did you read this article at Dissent by Nadia Urbinati? I find it a little baffling…because she’s a professor of political theory at Columbia, but the article seems to me to be just startlingly bad. It reminds me of several I read the other day at Comment is Free. It goes like this: first a lot of straw man stuff, then a lot of pointing out the obvious, then mixing the straw man stuff with the obvious stuff, then it winds up with a resounding contradiction.

Am I missing something?

(Probably not, actually, because Michael Walzer in his reply says much the same thing except far more politely, but then Urbinati is a friend of his.)

[O]n the one hand, there are those who, questioning what they regard as a naive liberal ideal of toleration, acknowledge the existence of cultural and religious differences within a democratic community, but with one exception—Islam. On the other hand, there are those who question this exception insofar as they suggest we should be careful to articulate our judgment on the Islamic culture and think it is a mistake to regard it as a whole, as if it were a homogeneous world with no internal differences.

That’s your strawman stuff, along with a lot more like it. Complete nonsense. Who on the Left thinks it’s not a mistake to regard ‘the Islamic culture’ (whatever that is) as if it were a homogeneous world? No one. Then she makes an inane comparison with the Cold War, then goes on to say how much cleverer about these things European intellectuals were during the Cold War – thus talking about European intellectuals as if they were a whole, and she does the same with other large groups.

As a matter of fact, once the Italian Communists agreed to discuss their doctrinal principles with a liberal theorist according to the method of “arguments and counter-arguments,” they were actually agreeing to put their dogmatic system on trial, and to risk acknowledging its limits and flaws.

‘The’ Italian Communists? Hardly! She’s talking about the leadership there, not all Italian Communists, who of course didn’t agree to any such thing.

Dilip Gaonkar and Charles Taylor…emphasize, correctly, the important implications that [this theoretical contribution] has today in the face of the rebirth of new Manichean attitudes amidst Western reformist intellectuals…[I]t assumes that within each culture there are minorities (which the liberal rights of the “exist” and “voice,” as elucidated by Albert Hirschman, should guarantee)—in other words, that no culture is monolithic.

That’s the mixture of straw man and obvious. No culture is monolithic – gee, no kidding! Who knew?

The philosophy of dialogue is based on these premises, both of which Manichaeism radically rejects.

No doubt, but there is no such Manichaeism; that’s an invention, a fantasy.

Then she charges Paul Berman with ‘Manichean Occidentalism,’ which is more straw, then she recommends internal criticism and contextual criticism, which is more banging on an open door. Then she identifies two visions of democracy, one being the politics of the will: “ideological, quasi religious in kind, based on a nucleus of values that are identified with the West as an organic whole (it corresponds, more or less, to a Wilsonian conception of democracy as a mission and that not only many American neo-conservatives but also some revisionist liberals such as Berman identify with.”

While it acknowledges democracy as the highest value and peace as its corollary, the politics of the will betrays the democratic principle of self-determination, which is the necessary condition for the creation of democracy, and violates the principle of sovereignty without which neither democracy nor peace can exist…The other vision is identifiable with a politics of judgment. It is better rooted than the other one in the idea that citizens’ consent is the fundamental requirement for a democratic political order.

Well there’s some block thinking for you, and it’s block thinking that makes a complete nonsense of what she seems to want to say. What is this self-determination? What is this sovereignty? The politics of the will is clearly enough another name for liberal interventionism, so the subject is apparently why democracies should not force non-democracies to become democracies. There certainly are arguments for that view (although I think they’re stronger in some cases than in others – she said, stating the obvious herself) – but self-determination and sovereignty? Self-determination of whom, by whom? What does self-determination mean in the case of an authoritarian regime? Not much! If the people aren’t asked, then it’s determination by an elite or an autocrat – in an authoritarian regime, self-determination is a cruel oxymoron. And the same goes for sovereignty. If the ruler is there by force, what’s the sovereignty worth? Not much. Who cares about Hitler’s sovereignty, or Pinochet’s, or Mugabe’s? Yet Urbinati cites them as if they should make us choke up with emotion. Of course it’s true that people generally don’t like being invaded, but that has to be spelled out; just calling it self-determination and sovereignty fails to do that. It’s blocky.

Then in the last para there’s the contradiction. The first sentence says X, the second and last says not-X.

Now, too, we are witnessing perhaps the need to emancipate the individual from the identification with the culture and/or the religion she or he belongs to. The issue here is not a conclusion that culture and religions are fictions and illusions, but the emphasis that culture and religion are expressions of—and originate in—the individual search for meaningful life.

I see. [wanders off, scratching her head]

Now it’s the pope’s turn to tell us what’s what. He met with some ‘academics’ at the Vatican and told them “that science is not capable of fully understanding the mystery of human beings.” No doubt implying that the Vatican by contrast is.

[It is important not to ignore anthropological, philosophical and theological research, which highlight and maintain the mystery of human beings, because no science can say who they are, where they come from and where they go.

Theological research? Into…what? And what does it tell us about the mystery of human beings? Well, other than the fact that they believe in peculiar and usually nasty gods.

Man, said the Pope is “characterized by his otherness. He is a being created by God, a being in the image of God, a being who is loved and is made to love. As a human he is never closed within himself. He is always a bearer of otherness and, from his origins, is in interaction with other human beings”. Contrary to the Darwinian concept of man, Pope Benedict said that “man is not the result of mere chance, of converging circumstances, of determinism, of chemical inter-reactions.”

And the Pope knows this how? On the basis of what research?

“In our own time, when the progress of the sciences attracts and seduces for the possibilities it offers, it is more necessary than ever to educate the consciences of our contemporaries to ensure that science does not become the criterion of good, that man is still respected as the centre of creation…”

And that mysterious humans go on thinking the Vatican is as important as they always have so that the pope can go on wearing the embroidered outfits. Sure.

Another thing about the archbishop. He suggests, you remember, that we should ‘exercise a little imagination’ about the Muslims in West Yorkshire who were angry about Salman Rushdie’s book – who “know only that one of their most overpoweringly significant sources of identity is being held up to public scorn.” Well I think it’s the archbishop who needs to exercise some imagination here, or perhaps rather some rational thought along with some knowledge. He phrases that as if all West Yorks Muslims or at least West Yorks Muslims in general knew only that, but in fact 1) he doesn’t know that and 2) in fact it isn’t true, because the anger was political: it was Islamist anger, not Muslim anger, and it’s not reasonable or sensible to assume that all Muslims shared the Islamist view of the matter. You can’t just assume that if some people in X ‘community’ are angry about something that means that actually all people in X ‘community’ are angry about that something but most of them are too busy or distracted or tired or apathetic to go outside and scream about it. That’s not reasonable, it’s not fair, it’s not good epistemology, it’s not good politics, it’s not good anything. That’s especially important to remember when the thing that some people are angry about is not a thing it is reasonable to be angry about. The archbishop’s argument here rests on the assumption that this feeling was pervasive if not universal and therefore should be treated with sympathy even if it was unreasonable. Well – he doesn’t know how pervasive it was, and it was utterly unreasonable, so it shouldn’t be treated with sympathy.

Bad archbishop, no archbishop biscuit.

One or two thoughts on the Archbisop of Canterbury’s speech. One thought is that he’s a sly bastard. If you read the speech slowly and carefully, it’s clear enough what sinister nonsense he is talking, but he embeds it so deeply and thoroughly in layer upon layer upon layer of episcopally dignified verbiage that it’s very difficult to convey how nonsensical and sinister it is by for instance quoting passages. In this he is very unlike the many other people I get so much innocent pleasure from teasing. He’s just as wrong-headed they are, but he makes it much less obvious. That’s not fair! If he’s going to talk obsequious churchy bullshit, he ought to be obvious about it.

Actually – I thought that was a joke, but in fact I think it’s true. I think he is talking sinister stuff, and in fact I do think he should make it plainer what he’s saying. I don’t think he should do an elegant and profoundly boring seven-page minuet in order to prevent people from fully grasping his meaning. The guy has a lot of power, to put it mildly; that imposes a certain obligation on him to make himself crystal clear.

But he doesn’t, so in the meantime I will confine myself to one passage, near the end. He talks about the reaction to The Satanic Verses and urges us to have some imagination about the state of mind of a powerless minority “with the most limited access to any sort of public voice, [who] were being left at the mercy of a powerful elite determined to tell them what their faith really amounted to” and about the similar situation of Muslims in Denmark. Then he says yes, there has been some violence, and the cartoon outrage was “deliberately exaggerated” (and to his credit he does point out that extra cartoons were added, which a lot of commentators on this subject don’t mention). But.

But what if we exercise a little imagination again? What Webster describes as the insensitivity of an elite means that those who lack access to the subtleties of the English language, to the means of expressing their opinions in a public forum or to any living sense of being participants in their society know only that one of their most overpoweringly significant sources of identity is being held up to public scorn. This feeling may be the result of misunderstanding or misinformation, it may even be in some cases linked to a failure or reluctance to take the opportunities that exist to move into a more visible role in the nation’s life, but it is real enough and part of a general conviction of being marginal and silenced. It is not a good situation for a democratic society to be in.

Notice what he’s saying there. (That’s not easy. This is an example of the embedding thing. He hides it in so many layers of fat that it can go right past you – but it’s there.) “This feeling may be the result of misunderstanding or misinformation” but it’s real anyway and you should fret about it and the laws should be framed accordingly. This feeling may be the result of not having read the book in question, having no clue what it actually says or in what context it says it, of having been worked up by someone else who also hasn’t read the book – this feeling may be just plain factually wrong – but we should exercise a little imagination and then enact illiberal laws against free publication and speech anyway. That’s a remarkable claim.

The grounds for legal restraint in respect of language and behaviour offensive to religious believers are pretty clear: the intention to limit or damage a believer’s freedom to be visible and audible in the public life of a society is plainly an invasion of what a liberal society ought to be guaranteeing; and the obvious corollary is that the creation of an offence of incitement to religious hatred is a way of avoiding the civil disorder that threatens when a group comes to feel that it has been unjustly excluded…I should only want to suggest that the relative power and political access of a group or person laying charges under this legislation might well be a factor in determining what is rightly actionable.

“The creation of an offence of incitement to religious hatred is a way of avoiding the civil disorder that threatens when a group comes to feel that it has been unjustly excluded” – when a group comes to feel – no matter how mistaken it may be in coming to feel that, or in the things it chooses to get enraged about in response, or in the facts of the case when it gets enraged – then it is a good idea to avoid civil disorder by creating an illiberal religion-protecting new law. Well look – people (and groups) can “come to feel” they have been unjustly excluded – or ripped off, or pushed around, or insulted, or disrespected, or outnumbered, or overwhelmed – any time, about anything. White people can do that, gentiles can do that, men can do that, heterosexuals can do that. Anyone can do that. Anyone can work up a grievance about anyone. It does not follow that it is a good idea to make laws requiring prior restraint of publication or speech just in case there might be some public disorder emanating from one or more of these pissed-off groups. If it did follow, the result would be a complete freezing and choking off of all human mental life. That’s what the archbishop is suggesting, in his remarkably covert way.

Gee…that there Archbishop of Canterbury really doesn’t grasp the principle of free speech, does he. Or he does but he doesn’t agree with it and is surprisingly unbashful about saying so.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has called for new laws to protect religious sensibilities that would punish “thoughtless and cruel” styles of speaking…The Archbishop…said it should not just be a few forms of extreme behaviour that were deemed unacceptable, leaving everything else as fair game. “The legal provision should keep before our eyes the general risks of debasing public controversy by thoughtless and, even if unintentionally, cruel styles of speaking and acting,” he said.

In other words the legal provision should frighten us out of saying certain things. Yes, that sounds like a good idea; much like Turkey, or Syria, or Afghanistan.

Dr Williams said: “It is clear that the old blasphemy law is unworkable and that its assumptions are not those of contemporary lawmakers and citizens overall. But as we think about the adequacy of what is coming to replace it, we should not, I believe, miss the opportunity of asking the larger questions about what is just and good for individuals and groups in our society who hold religious beliefs.”

Okay, ask the questions. Go right ahead. But the new laws? Not a good idea.

Women in Santa Maria Quiegolani, Oaxaca, Mexico are not allowed to vote in local elections because the men say they don’t do enough work.

It was here, in a village that has struggled for centuries to preserve its Zapotec traditions, that Eufrosina Cruz, 27, decided to become the first woman to run for mayor – despite the fact that women aren’t allowed to attend town assemblies, much less run for office. The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn’t a “citizen” of the town. “That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women,” said Valeriano Lopez, the town’s deputy mayor.

Yes, that used to be the custom in a lot of places, indeed in most places, that women were not considered citizens and that they didn’t vote. Not all customs are good customs, and saying something is the custom here does not always settle the matter.

Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious, national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government, known as “use and customs,” which were given full legal status in Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping across Latin America. “For me, it’s more like ‘abuse and customs,”’ Cruz said as she submitted her complaint in December to the National Human Rights Commission…But the male leaders are refusing to budge. “We live differently here, senor, than people in the city. Here, women are dedicated to their homes, and men work the fields,” Apolonio Mendoza, the secretary of the all-male town council, told a visiting reporter.

Right. Who’s ‘we’? When the male secretary of the male council says we live differently here, he may not be speaking for the women of the place. That ‘we’ can cover up a lot of dissension and struggle to get out from under.

At a recent meeting of several dozen Cruz supporters, most of them voteless, women in traditional gray shawls recalled being turned down for government aid programs because they weren’t accompanied by a man. Martina Cruz Moreno, 19, said that when her widowed mother sought government-provided building materials to improve her dirt-floor, tin-roofed wooden home, village authorities told her, “Go get yourself a husband.”

See? There are some of those women now! I have a feeling Apolonio Mendoza is not speaking for them.

During all-important village festivals, women are expected to cook for all the male guests. But instead of joining them at the table, Cruz says, they are relegated to straw mats on the floor…Cruz decided to escape that life after she saw her 12-year-old sister given to an older man in a marriage arranged by her father. The sister had her first child at 13, and has since borne seven more.

That’s that living differently from people in the city business. Doing all the work, not being allowed to sit at the table, giving birth at 13. Custom.

In Mexico, many local governance rules date to before the Spanish conquest and weren’t given national legal recognition until a 2001 Indian rights reform was enacted in the wake of the Zapatista rebel uprising in Chiapas. The law states that Indian townships may “apply their own normative systems … as long as they obey the general principles of the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals, human rights, and particularly the dignity and well-being of women.” Despite this specific protection, about a fourth of the Indian villages operating under the law don’t let women vote, putting human rights groups in a dilemma: Most actively supported recognition for Indian governance systems, and few have therefore taken up the women’s cause.

Because…women aren’t human?

From Price of Honor by Jan Goodwin, pp 69-70.

“A typical case was related to me by Deputy Police Superintendent Farkander Iqbal…the chief of an all-female police station in Lahore, which was set up to handle only crimes against women.”

Iqbal tells about a sixteen-year-old girl, Rahina Jasnin, who was married to an unemployed laborer and whose in-laws complained that her dowry was too small. They beat her; she screamed; the neighbours heard the screams, but did nothing. Rahina gave birth to a daughter, and was beaten because it wasn’t a son. One night she woke up to find her mother-in-law holding her down.

“Her husband poured kerosene over her and then ignited it…When it was over, Rahina’s in-laws, thinking she was dead, took her to the local hospital and reported she had killed herself. But the young woman, who was burned over ninety percent of her body, lived for two more days. Before she died, she spoke about what had happened to her…’The local police dropped the case,’ Iqbal told me…’You find male police officers siding with the men under suspicion…We see ten to fifteen wife burnings a month at this location alone.'”

“Pakistan is very different today from what it was twenty years ago, according to Iqbal. ‘Before, crimes against women were relatively rare. If a man misbehaved himself toward a woman, he was promptly dealt with legally and society ostracized him. Today, in Pakistan, respect for women no longer exists, and crimes against them have increased dramatically. They claim to have “Islamized” us,’ she says derisively. ‘How can you Islamize people who are already Muslim? Ever since Zia gave power to the mullahs, it seems as though every man feels he can get hold of any female and tear her apart.'”

Tina Beattie in Open Democracy.

If we are to understand [the upsurge in various forms of religious extremism] and its social and political implications, then we must go beyond the headline-grabbing confrontations between religious and atheist extremists.

She says, contributing her own mite to the headline-grabbing confrontations between religious and atheist ‘extremists,’ in particular by using the phrase ‘atheist extremists’ at all. What are atheist extremists? And in what sense of the word are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens – Beattie’s chosen examples – extremists? Do they advocate violence against believers? Suppression of believers? Forcible silencing of believers? No. They disagree with them, that’s all; they think believers are wrong, and they say so. In what sense is that extreme?

The attempt to stage a war between religion and science – whether fuelled by religious or scientific fundamentalists – is part of the problem and not part of the solution with regard to the times we are living in.

She says, attempting to do her bit to stage a war between religion and science by using the phrase ‘scientific fundamentalists,’ as if unaware of how oxymoronic that phrase is, and how tiresomely overused it also is. Really, she’s doing quite a job here of saying tut tut, let’s not do this, and doing exactly what she is saying let’s not do.

If we seek to preserve our liberal western values, then we need to resist the spirit of aggression and confrontation which is becoming increasingly characteristic of public debate – in Britain and the United States especially – concerning the role of religion in society.

Do we? But who says it is a spirit of aggression and confrontation? Why is it not instead a spirit of honest inquiry and forthright criticism? Honest inquiry and forthright criticism are very much part of liberal values (not just western ones – why did she specify that?), aren’t they? And I would say that attempts to shut those activities down by using inflammatory and inaccurate words like ‘extremist’ and ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘aggression’ to characterize mere written and spoken analysis and criticism is very illiberal indeed.

Also lurking within the media treatment of religion today is a masked anti-Catholicism, for that too has been a feature of modern societies such as Britain and America whose values have been largely shaped by Protestantism.

Oh, it’s not masked in my case. I hate Catholicism. But that’s allowed – that’s part of liberal values. We can hate libertarianism, we can hate socialism, we can hate Catholicism.

The recent confrontation between religion and science is in this context a smokescreen which is distracting us from much more urgent political and intellectual issues. It allows the secular intelligentsia to hide behind a convenient and inflated – where not fabricated – myth of religious extremism…

So it’s the secular intelligentsia that is fabricating a myth of religious extremism. What about those myths of atheist extremism then? Who is fabricating those?

I see on Tina Beattie’s page at Roehampton that one of her teaching interests is Religion and Human Rights. That’s a strange pairing, I thought – even stranger than those pairings of ‘Religion and Ethics’ that we see everywhere (such as at the BBC). Why religion and human rights? It is so often bishops or priests or mullahs who oppose human rights rather than supporting them – it seems odd to link them. The pairing of religion and ethics gives religion the credit for ideas and views that are often entirely secular; pairing religion with human rights would seem to do the same thing.

Human Rights Watch is aware of the tension.

Is there a schism between the human rights movement and religious communities? Essential disagreements appear increasingly to pit secular human rights activists against individuals and groups acting from religious motives. The list of contentious issues is growing: on issues such as reproductive rights, gay marriage, the fight against HIV/AIDS, and blasphemy laws, human rights activists and religious groups often find themselves on opposing sides.

Yes we do, and on the human rights side we find ourselves dealing with bad or no arguments from the religious groups. ‘We want to block these suggested rights, and we don’t have a real reason, we just know that God wants us to, so we’re more devout than you are, so we have the moral high ground, so you should give in to us.’

The controversy that hit the EU in October 2004 around…conservative Catholic Rocco Buttiglione illustrates some of the issues at stake. Unperturbed by the furor he was arousing, the candidate for Commissioner on Justice, Freedom, and Security—who in that function would have been in charge of fighting discrimination—affirmed in front of bewildered members of the European Parliament that “homosexuality is a sin” and that “the family exists to allow women to have children and be protected by their husbands.”

Well…maybe what we mean is ‘Liberal Religion and Human Rights.’ But that’s not what it says – and the sad fact is that most religion isn’t liberal. It’s a comfortable illusion of the safe middle-class in the safe developed countries that most religion is liberal and getting more so all the time – hence perhaps the bewilderment of the members of the European Parliament – but it is indeed an illusion. One of the perks of religion is being able to be dogmatically and arbitrarily opposed to lots of things you don’t happen to like, and most believers have no interest at all in giving up that perk. If it’s human rights you’re after, religion is generally the wrong place to look. (Yes there are exceptions; yes MLK was religious.)

About this exorcist guy…You know how the pope likes to put up this front of being rational and scholarly and reasonable? Well…the church he’s at the top of has exorcists. The Chief Exorcist of Rome is very emphatic on the point that Satan is for real and that anyone who says otherwise is engaged in ‘true heresy.’ Satan is not a metaphor, or an abstraction, Satan is a fella. Father Gabriele Amorth wants everyone to make no mistake about that.

Those modern theologians who identify Satan with the abstract idea of evil are completely mistaken. Theirs is true heresy; that is, it is openly in contrast with the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church.

So much for all those people who keep trying to say that the ‘New Atheists’ go after crude targets that no one actually believes in. I think the Catholic church and its hierarchy count as someone? Someone with a fair amount of influence?

The other interesting point here is the question of how the exorcist knows what he is so confident that he knows. Apparently because of the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church – but why does he think those are reliable sources of knowledge? Because he thinks God wrote or ‘revealed’ the Bible, presumably – but the question is why. Frankly I never really understand that – why grown-up people believe that with, apparently, no qualms. I don’t understand it because what would a Bible that wasn’t written or revealed by God look like? It would look the same. There is nothing about the Bible that makes it unmistakable that it’s a book by God rather than by humans. What is it that makes the exorcist and his friends so sure that it was? How do they know what they know? They don’t, of course, but why do they think they know?

And another thing. Why do we hear so much indignant complaining about ‘the New Atheists’ and so little about the Old Theists? Why do so many putative intellectuals treat unapologetic atheism as some kind of outrage and blithely ignore the combination of nonsense and mental torture that believers in Satan sprinkle around the landscape? Why does not Tina Beattie criticize the exorcist instead of talking stark nonsense about atheism?

The demonisation of religion that is perpetuated by a certain, very dull kind of anglo-american atheist materialism, allows us to escape our own responsibility for a burgeoning global climate of violence and confrontation.

Why does Tina Beattie say that kind of thing (and a lot more of it) instead of rebuking Father Gabriele Amorth? I’m genuinely curious. Why do people like Tina Beattie get outraged by explicit atheists and not by explicit demonologists and exorcists? Why does she think (apparently) that the former do more harm than the latter?

Shukria Barakzai seemed (cautiously) optimistic in 2005.

2002 was a splendid year for Afghan women, a year begun with the formation of the interim administration…As the country becomes more pacified, we receive more and more requests for Women’s Mirror throughout Afghanistan. Three years later, our goals, commitments, and principles remain largely the same: the development of Afghan women.

The BBC talked to her last June.

For the past three months, Afghan female MP Shukria Barakzai has been receiving a letter saying she may be targeted by a suicide bomber in the next six months. The cryptic government letter contains an intelligence warning that Ms Barakzai’s life is under threat and she should be careful. She is one of six MPs getting such a letter these days. “That is all that the government does – send a letter by mail once every month saying my life is under threat. There isn’t talk of even providing security.”…Barakzai says she is being targeted by “various elements” because of her speeches against the country’s warlords, her support for women’s rights and for her criticisms of Pakistan. “I am going crazy. My friends are telling me to leave the country.”…When you consider that two women journalists have been killed recently in and around Kabul, you realise that even women of influence and power in Afghanistan live and work in fear under threats from warlords, the Taleban and other insurgent groups. Six years after the departure of the repressive Taleban this is the paradox of women in Afghanistan. They now have a say and a position under the country’s constitution. But they have to work in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

With journalists getting the death penalty merely for downloading material about the role of women in Islamic societies – yes, I would call that an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

No blasphemy allowed. Blasphemers must be killed. What’s blasphemy? ‘Downloading material from the internet relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.’ That’s just one example of course – there are others. In fact, if truth be told, it would be simpler and quicker to say what is not blasphemy than it would be to give a complete account of what is. What’s not blasphemy? Ummmmmm…well to be honest that’s such a short list that there doesn’t seem to be anything on it. Let me put it this way – blasphemy is anything some pious group of thugs says it is at any particular moment when they want to shut people up by having them killed. It’s basically just any old thing; see? It’s whatever They say or do that We don’t like – that’s all.

So how that plays out is that in Afghanistan it’s a capital crime to download material relating to the role of women in Islamic societies. Why? Because if God had meant women to be treated like human beings then he would have told the Prophet (pbuh) that, and God must not have told the Prophet (pbuh) that, because if God had the Prophet (pbuh) that, we would treat women like human beings, and we don’t, so he didn’t. You see? Unbreakable chain of reasoning. Therefore it’s blasphemy to read anything that might possibly in a strong light suggest anything else, and since it is blasphemy, the blasphemer has to be killed, because we’re pissed off. See? Good.

It’s exciting to learn that there is such a thing as the Chief Exorcist of Rome and that he has such stimulating beliefs.

Those modern theologians who identify Satan with the abstract idea of evil are completely mistaken. Theirs is true heresy; that is, it is openly in contrast with the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church…How can those who deny the existence and the many activities of Satan understand the achievements of Christ? How can they understand the value of the redemptive death of Christ?

Oh right, the Magisterium – that’s that non-overlapping one that Steve Gould told us about. Science has its, and religion has its, and in the latter, Satan is a real fella. Because it’s a separate Magisterium, science and related ways of thinking don’t get to say ‘Gee, what a lot of bullshit.’ No, the Catholic Church gets to terrify as many unhappy people as believe that bullshit – yet the rest of us are supposed to be respectfully quiet because religion is so consoling. Satan is consoling? Ask someone who agrees with Father Gabriele Amorth how consoling Satan is.

[T]here is no doubt that Satan’s power is felt more keenly in periods of history when the sinfulness of the community is more evident. For example, when I view the decadence of the Roman Empire, I can see the moral disintegration of that period in history. Now we are at the same level of decadence, partly as a result of the misuse of the mass media (which are not evil in themselves) and partly because of Western consumerism and materialism, which have poisoned our society.

Cool, the Exorcist and Madeleine Bunting join hands. Consumerism, materialism, decadence, Satan’s power is felt more keenly. Interesting that the Exorcist thinks consumerism and materialism are the most noteworthy examples of moral disintegration in the world today – but then the Catholic Church never has given much of a shit about cruelty. Too busy inflicting it, most of the time.

I will mention one more item on this subject. Just as it would be wrong to deny the existence of Satan, it is also wrong to accept the prevalent opinion that there are spiritual beings that are not mentioned in the Bible. These are the invention of spiritists, of followers of the occult, of those who espouse reincarnation, or of those who believe in “wandering souls”. There are no good spirits other than angels; there are no evil spirits other than demons.

Ah. And you know this how? Two Councils of the Church done said so. Okay…

Some people marvel at the ability of demons to tempt man and even to own the body (but they can never take the soul unless man freely gives it to them) through possession and oppression. We should remember what is written in Revelation –

We should remember what is written in the phone book. But never mind my little jokes – this is not just bullshit, it’s foul, cruel, mind-torturing bullshit. It frightens people and it makes them think they are evil. As Johann said, this isn’t love. This is nasty, bad, harmful stuff, and the Vatican should be ashamed of itself. It never is, but it should be.

How’s that again?

Amnah is going through a divorce and is baffled at being told that she must wait for three months to remarry, considering that she hasn’t seen her estranged husband for two years. Dr Hasan with an intense look…[Dr Hasan] meets this with a simple reply: “These rulings are all in the Koran. The rulings are made for all.” Amnah has little choice but to comply: Dr Hasan is a judge, and this is a sharia court – in east London.

She has little choice but to comply? Why? If it’s a sharia court in east London, then she does have other choices, doesn’t she?

It is one of dozens of sharia courts – also known as councils – that have been set up in mosques, Islamic centres and even schools across Britain. The number of British Muslims using the courts is increasing. To many in the West, talk of sharia law conjures up images of the floggings, stonings, amputations and beheadings…However, the form practised in Britain is more mundane, focusing mainly on marriage, divorce and financial disputes.

Oh, just marriage and divorce – no big deal then. No impact on people’s lives. Not about floggings and beheadings, therefore mundane and ho-hum.

The judgments of the courts have no basis in British law, and are therefore technically illegitimate – they are binding only in that those involved agree to comply.

Well then it’s not true that Amnah has little choice but to comply. She may have decided to bind herself to obey a sharia court, but she still does have a choice (unless someone is coercing her, which is not mentioned).

So let’s learn more about this Dr Hasan fella. He sounds interesting.

“Whenever people associate the word ‘sharia’ with Muslims, they think it is flogging and stoning to death and cutting off the hand,” he says with a smile.

Ah yes! Such an amusing subject – I can see why he would smile!

Dr Hasan is open in supporting the severe punishments meted out in countries where sharia law governs the country. “Even though cutting off the hands and feet, or flogging the drunkard and fornicator, seem to be very abhorrent, once they are implemented, they become a deterrent for the whole society…If sharia law is implemented, then you can turn this country into a haven of peace because once a thief’s hand is cut off nobody is going to steal. Once, just only once, if an adulterer is stoned nobody is going to commit this crime at all. We want to offer it to the British society. If they accept it, it is for their good and if they don’t accept it they’ll need more and more prisons.”

I wouldn’t accept it if I were you. My advice would be to say no thanks.

Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain’s inter-faith committee, admits that to non-Muslims some laws may seem harsh on women. Those who are married to a man with a number of wives can be treated badly, for instance. But he insists that sharia is an equitable system. “It may mean that a woman married under Islamic law has no legal rights, but the husband is required to pay for everything in marriage and in the case of a divorce all the woman’s belongings are hers to keep.”

Oh I see – that does sound equitable! The woman has no legal rights, but – um – well, she has no legal rights. What could be more equitable? I’m like totally reassured.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, points out that during British rule in India, Muslim personal law was allowed to operate and sees no reason why it wouldn’t work now. “Sharia encompasses all aspects of Muslim life including personal law,” he says. “In tolerant, inclusive societies all faith groups enjoy some acceptance of their religious rules in matters of their personal life.”

You mean the men in the ‘faith groups’ enjoy that. The women don’t enjoy it quite so much.

From Catharine MacKinnon’s ‘Turning Rape into Pornography: Postmodern Genocide,’ which is about videotaped rapes as propaganda in Croatia and Bosnia. From Are Women Human? pp 162-3:

Some of the rapes that are made into pornography are clearly intended for mass consumption as war propaganda. One elderly Croation woman who was filmed being raped was also tortured by electric shocks and gang-raped in the Bucje concentration camp by Serbian men dressed in generic camouflage uniforms. She was forced to “confess” on film that Croatians raped her. This disinformation – switching the ethnic labels – is especially easy when there are no racial markers for ethnic distinctions. It is a standard Serbian technique…Serbian propaganda moves cultural markers with postmodern alacrity, making ethnicity unreal and all too real at the same time.

That seemed to me to link up rather nicely with a recent post of Nigel Warburton’s on Slavoj Žižek – who is from Slovenia.

Zizek like many postmodernists, poses as one who knows, who can see through ideology and diagnose the short-sightedness of those in the grip of naive enlightenment ideas or systemic violence that is more or less invisible to most of us. We dim-sighted ones naively rail against what he calls subjective violence (or what we traditionally call ‘violence’), apparently blind to systemic and symbolic violence. Unfortunately when he comes to discussing ‘historian’ David Irving he seems to commit symbolic violence himself…On p.92 of Violence, in the context of a discussion of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, Zizek suggests that the freedom of the press in the West is not as extensive as we like to believe because we can’t tolerate questioning of the Holocaust.

Nigel points out that Žižek describes Irving as ‘expressing his doubts about the Holocaust’ – but Irving did a lot more than that: he not only denied the evidence, he also extensively falsified it in at least one of his books, as Richard Evans discovered for the defense at the trial in which Deborah Lipstadt defended herself against Irving’s libel suit. Falsifying evidence is not mere ‘questioning,’ and calling it that is just another kind of falsification. Another example of moving markers with postmodern alacrity.

Which includes the well-intentioned version offered by Bergen Community College.

In the full knowledge of the commitment that I am freely willing to undertake as a student, I promise to respect each and every member of the college community without regard to race, creed, political ideology, lifestyle orientation, gender, or social status sparing no effort to preserve the dignity of those I will come in contact with as a member of the college community…I will embrace and celebrate differing perspectives intellectually.

No; sorry; no can do. I can’t possibly promise to respect each and every member of the college community a priori in that way. Civility is one thing, and respect is another. BCC is within its rights to demand civility, but it is outside its rights to demand respect. And as for sparing no effort – what are the students of BCC, I beg your pardon the members of the college community supposed to do, throw robes of state over every person they come in contact with? How does one even go about sparing no effort to preserve the dignity of those one comes in contact with as a member of the college community? One imagines a crowd of frantic Paramus students crashing into each other in their haste and zeal to preserve each other’s dignity in some nebulous but athletic way.

And then of course there’s the educationally and academically and epistemically absurd promise to embrace and celebrate differing perspectives intellectually. They might as well swear an oath to embrace and celebrate mistakes and falsifications and forgeries! The poor bastards are presumably at Bergen Community College in order to learn something, and learning something is among other things a process of elimination. It’s not a process of embracing and celebrating. For that you need to go to Healing Touch Academy or Cuddly Woolly Institute, but not to a real school.

Salman Rushdie isn’t having it.

“I don’t make my decisions based on 25 goondas at the gate,” says Salman Rushdie tartly…Whether it’s India or England or America, he says, “we cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought”. This, he says, is as true about the American religious right as it is about the Sikh mobs in Birmingham that prevented the production of a play. “It’s not specific to any religion or any place,” he adds. “Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic…it’s really a decision about what kind of culture we want to be in.”

Quite. And that kind is the kind that allows a wide range of thought, as opposed to the kind that squashes the allowable range of thought into a narrow airless little channel. It’s the choice between breadth on the one hand and choking confinement on the other.

He recounts his meeting with India’s most famous contemporary exile, the artist M F Husain, who he recently met in New York. “This is the grand old master of contemporary Indian painting,” Rushdie declares, his well modulated voice rising with outrage. “We’re not talking about some pavement artist. The idea that this man in his nineties should be forced into exile by his own country is a national disgrace. This is somebody who should be given the highest state honours instead of being treated like a pariah.” If India wishes to seem like a cultured country by the rest of the world, he says emphatically, it cannot treat its artists thus—”this has to stop”. So, too, in the case of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen…”I think we are in a dangerous position now in India where we accept censorship by very small numbers of violent people. Two things form the bedrock of any open society – freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.”

Censorship by very small numbers of violent (or sometimes merely noisy) people – that’s what more and more of the world looks like these days, and what a horrible appearance it is. Let’s not have it.

Well good. Excellent. It’s about time. Some teachers and students at a university have pointed out that Papal epistemology does not belong at a university. That Papal ways of knowing are not academic ways of knowing; that, in short, there is indeed a tension between reason and ‘faith.’ Well done.

Pope Benedict XVI last night called off a visit to Rome’s main university in the face of hostility from some of its academics and students, who accused him of despising science and defending the Inquisition’s condemnation of Galileo…[A] letter [was] signed by more than 60 of La Sapienza’s teachers, asking that the invitation to the Pope be rescinded. The signatories of the letter said Benedict’s presence would be “incongruous”. They cited a speech he made at La Sapienza in 1990, while he was still a cardinal, in which he quoted the judgment of an Austrian philosopher of science* who wrote that the church’s trial of Galileo was “reasonable and fair”…La Stampa reported that a number of foreign scientists had since added their names to the initiative.

That’s it! Get in there and mix it up. The pope is always telling everyone what’s what; good for the foreign scientists telling him back.

Rightwing opposition MPs were outraged. One suggested La Sapienza, which means “wisdom” or “learning” ought now to be renamed La Ignoranza.

Right. The pope stands for wisdom and learning and a secular university stands for ignorance. And up is down and wet is dry and now is then.

*Paul Feyerabend, it was.

The bishop of Oxford is ‘personally very happy for the mosque to call the faithful to prayer in East Oxford’. I don’t suppose he lives there, does he? Or does he.

“Faith is a very important factor in the lives of 80 per cent of the world’s population and a public expression of that faith is both natural and reasonable…It is good that we should be reminded of the faithfulness of many members of the community.”

Is it? Why? And even if it is, we get reminded quite a bit already, don’t we?

“It is natural that Muslim communities will gather in a particular area and what matters is that we demonstrate the kind of respect that is the basis of any civilised society.”

Okay. The next time I see Muslim communities gathering in a particular area, in their natural way (like wildebeest gathering at a water hole is it?), I’ll make a point of demonstrating the kind of respect that is the basis of any civilised society. I’m not sure what that is, but I’ll make a point of demonstrating it anyway. Perhaps I just go up to the gathering communities and tell them, in so many words and accompanied by poignant and demonstrative gestures, that I respect this gathering in a particular area ceremony? Would that be it?

“I would say to anyone who has concerns about the call to prayer to relax and enjoy our community diversity and be as respectful to others as you would hope they would be respectful to you.”

Relax and enjoy it. So if one of my neighbours takes to broadcasting a speech by Huey Long through a loudspeaker from a tower for two minutes three times a day every day, I should relax and enjoy it? I should relax and enjoy any old broadcast repeated noise? Or just the kind that reminds me of the faithfulness of many members of the community? Well whichever it is, I’ll find it difficult. The bishop may be a good multitasker but I’ve never been very good at filtering out intrusive noise. I try not to make a lot of racket myself, and I don’t enjoy it when other people do – so the relaxation bit will probably be difficult, and the enjoyment even more so.

“I sympathise with those who find any kind of expression of public faith intrusive, but I think part of being part of a tolerant society is saying, ‘I don’t agree with this but I accept it as part of my responsibility as being part of a diverse community’.”

Why? Why is it part of being a tolerant society along with part of my responsibility as being part of a diverse community? Why is it my responsibility to not mind amplified intrusive noise? Why isn’t it the responsibility of other people to not make amplified intrusive noise? The bishop forgot to explain that part.

Kpalime, Togo, 1997: Hajia Zuwera Kassindja apologized to her late husband’s cousin, the patriarch of his family, for having helped her daughter Fauziya run away to America to escape having her genitals cut off. She had given her daughter nearly all of her money to run away.

”What the mother did pains me a lot,” the patriarch, Mouhamadou Kassindja, said in a scolding tone…”She is my brother’s wife. It is for me to take care of my brother’s child since he is no longer alive. She acted as though the child were hers. She and the child made the laws. That is why the child did not want to follow the customs.”

She acted as though the child were hers – fancy that. I suppose that might have had something to do with having given birth to her, and raised her for sixteen years?

Though it was common among the Muslims of Tchamba to take as many as four wives, Mr. Kassindja wanted only Hajia. He also shielded his daughters from genital cutting. He could recall the screams of his sister during the rite and her suffering afterward, when she developed a tetanus infection. And his wife often spoke of the death of her older sister from a genital wound. The tragedy had led Hajia’s parents to spare her from the practice. Though the Kassindjas could not read or write, they wanted all their children, including their daughters, to be educated.

This pissed off the relatives.

They accused him of trying to act like a white man. His girls would never be considered full Tchamba women until their genitals had been cut, the elders said, and he was wasting money by sending them to high school.

Never mind; once he died, they got their chance to straighten things out.

Four months and 10 days after her husband’s death, as patriarchal, Muslim-influenced Tchamba tradition dictates, his family required Mrs. Kassindja to leave the home where she had raised her seven children. Her husband’s only sibling, a widowed sister, Hadja Mamoude, moved in and took responsibility for Fauziya. In 1994, two years before Fauziya was to graduate, the aunt, who is herself illiterate, ended Fauziya’s education. ”We don’t want girls to go to school too much,” said the aunt…”We don’t think girls should be too civilized.”

In pursuit of this kindly thought, they arranged for her to marry a man who already had three wives – all of whom had had their genitals cut off, and the blushing groom stipulated that Fauziya must arrive minus genitals too or he wouldn’t be having her. No problem, the family said.

Mrs. Mamoude, herself the second of three wives, broke the news to Fauziya. The aunt’s eyes still get a hard look and her hands slash the air angrily at the memory of her niece’s obstinacy. ”It was for me to decide what was best for her,” she said.

Which, of course, was being taken out of school, scraped clean between the legs, and married to a man with three wives. Much the best thing.

The husband’s relatives had (as is customary) taken most of his money for themselves, but they let Fauziya’s mother have $3,500 of it; she gave $3000 to Fauziya, who escaped on her wedding day, while the women who were to hold her down and cut her genitals off were already in the house. She went to Ghana in a taxi, then to Germany, then to the US, where the INS kept her for a year – but in the end, thanks to a lawyer and a campaign, she won the right to stay.

Many other girls don’t have the luck.