Not again.

The systematic demonisation of Muslims has become an important part of the central narrative of the British political and media class; it is so entrenched, so much part of normal discussion, that almost nobody notices. Protests go unheard and unnoticed.

No it hasn’t; no it isn’t; no they don’t.

As a community, British Muslims are relatively powerless. There are few Muslim MPs, there has never been a Muslim cabinet minister, no mainstream newspaper is owned by a Muslim and, as far as we are aware, only one national newspaper has a regular Muslim columnist on its comment pages, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of The Independent.

What does it mean to be powerless as a community? What is a community? Who decides? What is not a community? Who decides that? How many dentist MPs are there? Has there ever been an engineer cabinet minister? Is any mainstream newspaper owned by a computer programmer? Or what about chess players? Fans of Herodotus? Bird watchers?

Why are people supposed to be powerful as a community and what does that mean and who decides and what are the criteria? Is it possible that this way of thinking is stupid and parochial and ill-advised? Swap ‘Christian’ for ‘Muslim’ and it can look downright insane. So why is it any saner when used of a different religion? Why is it considered right-on to conflate one religion with a ‘community’ when it’s not at all right-on to conflate a different religion with a ‘community’? Or, in short, why don’t people think about what they’re saying?

Islamophobia – defined in 1997 by the landmark report from the Runnymede Trust as “an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination” – can be encountered in the best circles: among our most famous novelists, among newspaper columnists, and in the Church of England.

That’s the key move, of course, but it’s also the stupidest. The landmark report from the Runnymede Trust can define any old thing any old way it wants to; that doesn’t make it a valid definition; and people have been pointing out and pointing out and pointing out that that’s a bad and deceitful and misleading definition. If you want a word for ‘an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims’ then it would have to be Muslimophobia, not Islamophobia; Islamophobia means – this is too obvious even to say, but there’s the Mail columnist (eh?) getting it wrong – dread and dislike of Islam.

Its appeal is wide-ranging. “I am an Islamophobe,” the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in The Independent nearly 10 years ago. “Islamophobia?” the Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle asks rhetorically in the title of a recent speech, “Count me in”. Imagine Liddle declaring: “Anti-Semitism? Count me in”, or Toynbee claiming she was “an anti-Semite and proud of it”.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Bad Peter Oborne. No. It’s not the same thing, it’s not comparable, it’s not parallel. Surely you understand that. Islam is a religion, with particular ideas and rules; we are all allowed to dislike it. Semitism is not a religion. Don’t. be. silly.

Its practitioners say Islamophobia cannot be regarded as the same as anti-Semitism because the former is hatred of an ideology or a religion, not Muslims themselves. This means there is no social, political or cultural protection for Muslims: as far as the British political, media and literary establishment is concerned the normal rules of engagement are suspended.

No it doesn’t. It’s quite common to distinguish between Muslims and Islam. Go play war games with your Martin Amis and Ian McEwan dolls.

There was a call for papers on the Women’s Studies List yesterday, for a Women’s and Gender Studies conference in March 2009 in conjunction with an Association I hadn’t heard of before, called the Association of Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies. That’s a lot of things to be in one Association, especially when they’re all plural. Out in the conventional world of course there’s just epistemology, but this Association gets to have lots of them (of the Feminist variety). One wonders how that works. One also wonders what this Association is like.

FEMMSS (Feminist Epistemologies, Metaphysics, Methodology and Science Studies) continues to be concerned about the importance and difficulty of
translating knowledge into action and practice. Ours is a highly interdisciplinary group of feminist scholars who pursue knowledge questions at the interstices of
epistemology, methodology, metaphysics, ontology, and science and technology studies.

Ah, that’s what it’s like. Wordy, jargony, self-admiring, and – clueless. It apparently doesn’t even know what ‘interstices’ means – it seems to think it’s a more elegant version of ‘intersections.’ Anyway, what the hell would an intersection or an interstice ‘of epistemology, methodology, metaphysics, ontology, and science and technology studies’ be? What on earth is that absurd formula supposed to mean? Anything? Does this highly interdisciplinary group of feminist scholars know anything about all those subjects, or is it just deploying vocabulary?

FEMMSS 3 seeks to deepen the understanding of the politics of knowledge in light of the increasing pressures of globalization, neoliberal
restructuring, and militarization. Calling an array of theoretical frameworks including transnational feminism, post-colonial theory, cultural studies, epistemologies of ignorance, feminist epistemologies, and feminist science studies, this conference works to understand the ways in which knowledge is politically constituted and its material affects on people’s lives. The politics of knowledge can be discerned through the allocation and the appropriation of intellectual and natural resources, through the allocation of research funding, the control and commodification of the health sciences and health care by multinational corporations, and the
dominance of Western knowledge over that of the Two-Thirds world. Furthermore, the politics of knowledge can be seen in the way groups and
communities actively resist troubling affects (sic) of knowledge production through grass-roots organizations such as the Third World Network, community
action groups, the citizens’ science movement, environmental justice groups, and the various women’s health movements.

Why do I get the feeling that one can figure out in advance what the ‘array of theoretical frameworks’ will end up understanding? I guess because that paragraph pretty much says it will. Why does that paragraph make me feel slightly ill? I guess because I think every single one of the cited ‘theoretical frameworks’ is tendentious bullshit rather than any kind of scholarship or inquiry – that’s why. (What the fuck is ‘epistemologies of ignorance’ you wonder? Google it. I can’t bring myself to go into it. It’s a phrase some guy used in a paper once [no, excuse me, he ‘introduced’ it] that people latched onto with squawks of glee as if it were the key to all mythologies, the way they always do, the sheep.) Because if I really wanted to know something about the politics of knowledge and globalization I wouldn’t go to someone in postcolonial theory or cultural studies to find out.

Whose Knowledge Matters?
How do class, gender, race and ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and other formations of difference shape what counts as expertise, what questions are
considered relevant, and which outcomes emerge from clashes and negotiations between different forms of expertise?
How have epistemologies of ignorance emerged as important conceptual and political approaches to not only reveal patterns of active unknowing, but
also to point to strategies for resistance?

And so on. Do you feel a keen curiosity to know the answer to those questions? I’m guessing you don’t. I know I don’t. I’m confident they’ll be all too familiar, and written in a style all too similar to the style of the questions themselves, and above all predetermined by the questions themselves.

‘Feminist Epistemologies’ is a genyoowine academic subject though, don’t you think it isn’t.

Mainstream epistemology seeks to found universal theories of Truth, to develop the means to achieving objectivity, and to discover a deep structure of human language and an intelligible reality. Feminist epistemologists, on the other hand, argue that knowledge is always partial, situated, and embodied. In this course, we will study several themes and theories of knowledge developed by feminists working out of analytic, pragmatist, continental, queer and postcolonial contexts: standpoint theories, situated knowledges, the matrix of power/knowledge, the workings of epistemic privilege, the pragmatist link between knowledge and action, and the role of emotions, embodiment, and desire in knowledge.

There’s mainstream epistemology, and then there’s Feminist Epistemology (except when there are Feminist Epistemologies). To put it another way, there’s rational and then there’s raving bat-loony. There’s even a course in Feminist Theory: Epistemologies of Ignorance. It’s about reading memoirs. They use the word ‘Epistemologies’ in the title so that it will sound more academic-like. Or something.

You did enjoy the ‘American Family Association’ story I hope. I know I did.

AFA apparently has implemented a policy of substituting “homosexual” whenever the word “gay” appears in wire stories that appear on its website. That resulted in a fantastic write-up of this weekend’s Olympic track and field trials, which were dominated by sprinter Tyson Gay.

Like so:

Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has…Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing. “It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”…Wearing a royal blue uniform with red and white diagonal stripes across the front, along with matching shoes, all in a tribute to 1936 Olympic star Jesse Owens, Homosexual dominated the competition.

Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee gasp heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee gasp gigglegigglegiggle choke.

God bless the ‘American Family Association’ and God bless America.

I’m a sucker for sudden releases from captivity. Well who isn’t. I feel sheepish, because it’s so obvious, but what the hell. I’m a sucker for reunions, too. You get your release from captivity and your reunion together – well there you go. I’m glad Bettancourt is free, I’m glad she looks so much healthier than she did last November.

Funny, it was almost exactly a year ago – a year ago tomorrow – that Alan Johnston was suddenly released, and I was a sucker then too.

There are other captives though.

Just in case there was any doubt, Obama assures us that religion is indeed mandatory in the US. Just in case we had any hope that the relentless ‘faith’-mongering would go away when Bush went away, Obama tells us it won’t. Just in case people who don’t consider ‘faith’ a cognitive virtue were feeling at all optimistic, Obama goes after the godbothering vote in a hail of ‘faith’ language.

“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”

Thanks; that’s a big help. So all those people who think – who claim to know – that God wants them to murder their daughters or persecute gays or bomb abortion clinics – how do you plan to tell them their ‘faith’ is wrong? Once you make ‘faith’ a virtue how do you plan to talk about anything in a rational way? Compartmentalization? But that’s just arbitrary, so it’s vulnerable to everyone else’s different brand of compartmentalization. You don’t want to justify X on the basis of ‘faith’, but if someone else does, what can you say, once you’ve made ‘faith’ a central principle?

Mr. Obama is proposing $500 million per year to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps for students. He proposes elevating the program to the “moral center” of his administration, calling it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Thus implying that ‘faith’ and morality are necessarily linked. Thanks a lot.

Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign, said that the campaign expected resistance from a large part of the evangelical community, but that millions of faith voters were persuadable. “We’re not going to convince everybody,” said Mr. DuBois, 25, a former associate pastor of a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church in Massachusetts…”But others will be open to him because they see he’s a man of integrity, a person of faith who listens to and understands people of all religious backgrounds.”

Thus, again, implying that ‘faith’ and integrity are more or less the same thing. Thanks.

In a brief video shown at the beginning of meetings with religious voters, Mr. Obama says he is “blessed” to help lead a conversation about the role of religious people in changing the world.

Now, see, that I have no problem with (apart from ‘blessed,’ of course). Just welcoming religious people into projects to change the world (for the better, one hopes, and then one has to decide what that means) is sensible, inclusive, and compatible with the separation of church and state. But giving government money to religious institutions is quite another thing, and so is making a virtue of faith. It’s perfectly possible to include and welcome religious people without even discussing ‘faith,’ much less making a totem of it. Apparently that’s too much to expect; that’s a pity.

I took a dislike to Cristina Odone years ago, some time when B&W was very young. She hadn’t commissioned a hatchet profile on me as she did to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, she’d merely said something narrow-mindedly faithy, perhaps even overtly Catholic, which got up my nose. (Why ‘even’? Because she doesn’t always admit [to put it mildly] that that’s where her narrow-minded views are coming from, and I suspect that she prefers to leave that out of the picture when she can get away with it.) I can’t remember what it was, or when, but no matter, her unpleasantness now gives us more than enough to scowl over.

Ed Balls began his witch-hunt against faith schools last spring, unleashing informants to trawl the country, knock on doors, note down names and infractions…Many see this inquisition as the latest twist in Labour’s internal politics.

That’s a good example of the not admitting habit right there – she accuses Ed Balls of doing things that the Catholic church used to do (and that Ed Balls of course is not doing) and delicately doesn’t mention her own loyalty to Catholicism. It’s a bit rich to see a bigoted Catholic charging non-Catholics with witch-hunting inquistions when no such thing is going on. A bit rich and more than a bit disgusting.

And then there’s the breezy way she says ‘Ball’s charges against faith schools can be dismissed one by one’ as if mere dismissal were the same thing as actually rebutting. Of course the Ball’s charges against ‘faith’ schools can be dismissed one by one, any charges can be dismissed one by one; it’s dead easy just to say ‘no’ repeatedly, and by gum that’s all Odone does. But that doesn’t tell us anything except that Odone doesn’t like the charges against ‘faith’ schools. The BHA gives some details on why Odone’s dismissal won’t cut it.

The BHA points out that the state funded faith schools which the report seeks to promote differ from state funded community schools in that, for example:

They are allowed by law to discriminate in their admissions policies;

They are allowed by law to discriminate in their employment policies;

They teach their own syllabus of Religious Education without the regulated syllabuses that apply to community schools.

Strident stuff, eh?

Bernard-Henri Lévy spells out the perverse and tragic effect of three great ideas.

[W]e are here facing a sort of perverse effect of three great modern ideas. A sort of paradoxical and counter-effect of three great ideas, which are: anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and the fight against imperialism, three great ideas—among the best which have been produced in the 20th century…[Y]ou have a huge part of the population in America and in Europe, who believe, as a sort of Pavlovian reflex, that these sort of murders, these sort of genocides, can only be committed by ugly, stupid, white men…[W]hen a country of the third world which was colonized (as was Sudan), commits such bloodbaths, commits such crimes, to stop this, to try to prevent this, to intervene in order to make it stop, could be an act of colonialism. And in America and in France, you have a lot of people [of] the Left, to which I belong, [who believe that] we cannot interfere in the internal affairs of Sudan. Let’s be careful not to impose under the flag of human rights the old rule of Western superiority.

Let’s be careful not to say or do anything under the flag of human rights, or women’s rights either, especially when they seem to be in tension with that one religion whose name it is Forbidden to Utter unless something conciliatory or affectionate or admiring follows immediately. Let’s be so careful that we find ourselves with nothing left except our exquisite caution.

If four courts tell you No, then try a fifth. Don’t worry about boring people or being a nuisance or making a fool of yourself.

Danish Muslims are planning to take Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten daily to Europe’s highest human rights court over the publication of satirical drawings of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him)…The move comes a day after a Danish court rejected a suit by seven Muslim groups against newspaper editors for publishing the offensive cartoons…”It is a known fact that acts of terror have been carried out in the name of Islam and it is not illegal to make satire out of this relationship,” the court said.

Well that’s the problem, isn’t it: it is not illegal to make satire out of this relationship. That’s what we’re saying. It should be illegal. It should be illegal to say things we don’t want to hear. The law should say ‘Nobody may write or say or sing anything that these seven Muslim groups don’t want to hear. Never you mind how you’re supposed to know what that is; use your common sense.’ The law would say that, if Denmark weren’t such a poxy secular infidel decadent feeble degenerate impure shithole of a place. Why did we ever come here? Well apart from the jobs and the prosperity and the freedoms and the drink and the infrastructure and the peace and the good governance and crap like that.

Thursday’s ruling was the fourth by Danish courts to reject legal charges against the daily….The drawings, considered blasphemous under Islam, have triggered massive and sometimes violent demonstrations across the Muslim world and strained the Muslim-West ties.

And rightly so. Because the drawings are considered blasphemous under Islam and therefore no one in the world ought to be allowed to draw such drawings because what is considered blasphemous under Islam ought to be considered blasphemous by everyone everywhere because Islam is – well because Islam is Islam and so everyone ought to obey it. Not everyone is under Islam, but everyone ought to be, so people can’t just ignore what’s considered blasphemous under Islam, because if they were doing the right thing they would be under Islam. Because Islam ought to be in charge of everything and everyone and telling everyone without exception what to do. And if they won’t do it we’ll just sue and sue and sue and sue until finally they’ll get so bored they’ll give in.

Bilal Assaad, Chairman of the Islamic Faith Society, one of several plaintiffs, also lamented the court ruling…”We had hoped that we could put this unfortunate matter behind us and that the High Court would draw the line that establishes the limits of freedom of expression in religious matters.”

You see we want the High Court – of Denmark – to draw the line that establishes the limits of freedom of expression in religious matters in a place where we want it to be drawn rather than where the High Court or the people of Denmark or both want it to be drawn. We get to decide these things you see because we are Religious Leaders and in particular we are Muslim Religious Leaders so courts ought to be drawing lines where we say they should be drawn and not anywhere else. Because what we say goes. Can’t say fairer than that, can you.

Following the cartoons crisis, Muslims in Denmark and worldwide took many initiatives to remove widely circulated stereotypes about Islam in the West. Danish Muslims established the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, a grouping of 27 Danish Muslim organizations, to raise awareness about the merits and characteristics of the Prophet.

Ah, did you? I’ll tell you something, guys: it’s not working. To tell you the truth it’s doing the opposite of working. It’s marching smartly backwards. The more you try to force me to admire and love the prophet, the more I hate the very word. You might be better off if you could grasp that. A lot of people don’t like being told what to think about this or that long-dead religious figure. We even more don’t like it when people try to force us to think something in particular about this or that long-dead religious figure. We find it an imposition, and an impertinence, and a species of bullying, and we do not like it. If I were you I would give it up. You’re teaching people to hate your religion, not to admire it.

Hmm. Topp intellectuals is it.

Number 1, Fethullah Gülen –

An Islamic scholar with a global network of millions of followers…an inspirational leader who encourages a life guided by moderate Islamic principles…a threat to Turkey’s secular order…fled Turkey after being accused of undermining secularism.

Number 3, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Number 6, Amr Khaled –

…rock-star evangelist, Khaled preaches a folksy interpretation of modern Islam to millions of loyal viewers around the world. With a charismatic oratory and casual style, Khaled blends messages of cultural integration and hard work with lessons on how to live a purpose-driven Islamic life.

Number 8, Tariq Ramadan. Hmm.

Not all bad. Muhammad Yunus fine, Orhan Pamuk fine, Aitzaz Ahsan fine. I don’t know of Abdolkarim Soroush but he sounds good –

Soroush, a former university professor in Tehran and specialist in chemistry, Sufi poetry, and history, is widely considered one of the world’s premier Islamic philosophers. Having fallen afoul of the mullahs thanks to his work with Iran’s democratic activists, he has lately decamped to Europe and the United States, where his essays and lectures on religious philosophy and human rights are followed closely by Iran’s reformist movement.

Shirin Ebadi fine. Hirsi Ali of course terrific, Sen terrific. But 1, 3, 6 and 8…hmmm.

Oh come on. You have to be kidding. This has to be from the Onion, or the Daily Show – this can’t be for real. Can it? Can it? Karl Rove calling Obama ‘arrogant’? And then expanding on the point?

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” he said at a Capitol Hill breakfast, according to ABC. “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone.”

Is that more funny than it is enraging? Or the other way around? I can’t tell, I just can’t tell. Okay, so let’s get this straight – a white powerful privileged guy who helped to get a white unqualified incompetent ignorant incurious lazy disengaged wildly overprivileged guy who would be nothing if his father had not been president, elected president, is calling a black guy with no presidents or senators in his family who made his own success by using his own brains and effort – the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone?

What country club? What fucking country club you miserable crawling contemptible stop-at-nothing hack? And as for making snide remarks – your talentless vacuous privilege-using arrogant boss is famous for them, and Obama isn’t. So what are you talking about?

Oh look, I figured it out: it’s more enraging than funny.

Okay, we know what he’s doing, and we know it works, so it’s not surprising that he’s still doing it. It’s not surprising, it’s just shameless. Hillary Clinton tried the same thing. He’s complaining that Obama is too god damn smart; he’s equating intelligence with arrogance; and then he’s insulting the intelligence of everyone present by pretending to think that Obama is country club guy while Bush is a Texas farmhand who got to the White House by being salt of the earth reg’lar folks despite having quite school in the 8th grade.

Country club. Country club. I can’t get over that. Country club. The Bushes are the country club. The country club is built with plaster made from Bush ancestors. The Bushes are the country club and the legacy at Andover and Yale. Humble salt of the earth George Bush went to Andover and Yale because he was a legacy; if he’d had Obama’s family and his own (as opposed to Obama’s) grades, he really would have gone to East Jesus High School.

Okay, so there is nothing those cynical bastards won’t say, no stupidity too stupid to try out. I knew that. But sometimes the actual examples…make little red spots jump up and down in front of my eyes.

Daphne Patai’s What Price Utopia? Essays on Ideological Policing, Feminism, and Academic Affairs arrived in the mail today, and it looks like a big old feast of just the kind of thing I like. That means you’d probably like it too (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, would you).

The Economist takes a slightly skeptical look at inter-faith conferences. Then it gets to a real issue.

As well as repeating certain familiar commonplaces and negotiating certain familiar taboos, participants in inter-faith gatherings do sometimes run into real questions, that make a difference to the world at large. One such is how, if at all, freedom of speech can be reconciled with the Muslim demand for a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities. At this week’s meeting in Malaysia, that question was addressed in a way that frightened the relatively few participants whose understanding of civil rights was rooted in a Western, liberal world-view.

Don’t tell me, let me guess. The question was addressed by saying that a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities is desperately needed and freedom of speech is, quite frankly, a colonialist orientalist misbeliever piece of crap. Just a wild guess.

Speaker after speaker called for some formal, internationally agreed restriction on the defamation of religion. “I can never accept that freedom of speech is morally right when it offends my faith,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior Saudi official.

Oh gee, will you look at that, I guessed right. What do you know.

Adding further to the tension—and an element of this week’s debates in Kuala Lumpur—is the increasingly well-co-ordinated campaign by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to redefine human rights in a way that explicitly outlaws the defamation of religion.

Why yes, that does rather add to the tension. I know it makes me quite tense. I would really rather not see the OIC succeed in requiring the entire world to shut up about its particular religion.

Dominic Lawson quotes the Department of Health replying to an MP complaining on behalf of a constituent about ‘psychic surgery.’ (Yes, psychic.)

“We are currently working towards extending the scope of statutory regulation by introducing regulation of herbal medicine, acupuncture practitioners and Chinese medicine. However, there are no plans to extend statutory regulation to other professions such as psychic surgery. We expect these professions to develop their own unified systems of voluntary self-regulation.”

Other professions? Other professions? Psychic surgery is a profession? In what sense? If psychic surgery and acupuncture are professions, are divination and palmistry and astrology also professions? If so, what distinguishes a profession from just messing around?

Last week, in fact, the Department of Health published the report which outlines the regulation hinted at by Lord Hunt. It is called the Report to Ministers from the Department of Health Steering Group on the Statutory Regulation of Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and other Traditional Medicine Systems Practiced in the United Kingdom…Acupuncture is at the most respectable end of the alternative health spectrum – its practitioners would be affronted to be lumped in with psychic surgeons. Yet what, really, is the difference?…Pittilo and his band of “stakeholders” have come up with their own way of “regulating” the alternative health industry – which the Government has welcomed. It is to suggest that practitioners gain university degrees in complementary or alternative medicine…

Ah, right – so if you get a degree in Magical Dentistry, then you have a profession, and your profession is regulated, and hey presto, Magical Dentistry fixes your teeth.

David Colquhoun read the report.

The report is written by people all of whom have vested interests in spreading quackery. It shows an execrable ability to assess evidence, and it advocates degrees in antiscience…This steering group is, as so often, a nest of vested interests. It does not seem to have on it any regular medical or clinical scientist whatsoever…You can read on page 55 of the report

“3a: Registrant acupuncturists must:

understand the following aspects and concepts for traditional East-Asian acupuncture:

– yin/yang, /5 elements/phases, eight principles, cyclical rhythms, qi ,blood and body fluids, different levels of qi, pathogenic factors, 12 zang fu and 6 extraordinary fu, jing luo/ meridians, the major acupuncture points, East-Asian medicine disease categorisation, the three burners, the 4 stages/levels and 6 divisions

– causes of disharmony/disease causation

– the four traditional diagnostic methods: questioning, palpation, listening and observing”

That’s embarrassing. Or as Colquhoun puts it, “Anyone who advocates giving honours degrees in such nonsense deserves to be fired for bringing his university into disrepute (and, in the process, bringing all universities and science itself into disrepute).”

Close on the heels of the astonished Indy reporters, we get a piece on Hizb ut-Tahrir in Germany.

An internationalist Islamist organisation is submitting an application to the European court tomorrow in an effort to overturn a ban on its activities in Germany. Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Party of Liberation, believes that the five-year-old ban is unlawful…Germany has accused the party of breaching the “concept of international understanding” enshrined in the country’s constitution, a charge more usually levelled against parties of the far right.

More usually…meaning that Hizb is not a party of the far right. The Guardian thinks that Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a party of the far right!!! Even though it has Hizb’s own self-description immediately after that staggering remark.

The party denies it is antisemitic and, says it is against violence and that its aim is to unite Muslim countries into a single state ruled by Islamic law.

The Guardian thinks that Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a party of the far right – so what does it think Hizb is then? A party of the center? A party of the left? Does the Guardian really seriously think that a party which wants to see Muslims and unfortunates who live in majority Muslim countries ruled by Islamic law is a party of the center or the left? Does it? Does it? Really? Seriously? No jokes?

I would really love to know. I would love to understand the thinking of people – from Rowan Williams to Ian Cobain – who think Islamic law is not far right. I would love to know what it is about sharia that Williams Cobain thinks is not right-wing. Meanwhile I shall remain yours sincerely, Baffled.

The New York Times spots ‘tolerance’ where a more jaundiced observer might spot giggling incoherence mixed with wide-eyed gullibility.

[N]early three-quarters of [Americans] say they believe that many faiths besides their own can lead to salvation, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The report…reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths. For example, 70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life.”

Yee-ha! The report reveals an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict each other; the report reveals an ability among many Americans to believe anything and everything; the report reveals that Americans are adept at believing things and complete crap at thinking about them. Hooray, hooray, hooray! We’re a generous people. We know there are lots of religions around, so we’ll just go ahead and believe all of them. No problem. It’s just as easy to believe all of them as it is to believe one, so why be stingy about it? Hah? What the hell! Many religions can lead to eternal life. Yuh huh. You got your Hinduism, and your Total Immersion, and your Church of the Talking Snake, and your Freshwater Baptist Twice Removed, and every dang one of them can lead to eternal life. You just follow them down Spang Road until you get to the fork, and there’s your eternal life on your left – you can’t miss it.

“It’s not that Americans don’t believe in anything,” said Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University. “It’s that we believe in everything. We aren’t religious purists or dogmatists.”

No, and we aren’t clear thinkers, either.

Ziauddin Sardar likes a new translation of the Koran by Tarif Khalidi.

The best way to demonstrate its newness, and how close it is to the original text, is to compare it with an old translation. The translation I have in mind is Khalidi’s predecessor in the Penguin Classics: The Koran, translated with notes by NJ Dawood…It has been a great source of discomfort for Muslims, who see in it deliberate distortions that give the Qur’an violent and sexist overtones. It is the one most non-Muslims cite when they tell me with great conviction what the Qur’an says.

Hmm. That’s interesting – because one has to wonder what Muslims Sardar has in mind. Most Muslims, certainly including most Muslims in the UK, after all, don’t know Arabic – so when these Muslims that Sardar mentions ‘see’ in Dawood’s translation ‘deliberate distortions that give the Qur’an violent and sexist overtones’ – how do they know about the distortions? Unless Sardar means only Muslims who do know Arabic – but in a UK context (which this is, being the Guardian) that would be a pretty small and rarified bunch, so you would think he would specify that was what he meant. But perhaps he didn’t mean only Muslims who know Arabic – but then what did he mean? How do Muslims in general know what is or isn’t a distortion of a translation of the Koran when they can’t read the Koran in Arabic themselves? It’s interesting that Sardar chose the word ‘see’ there. That’s consistent with just seeing violent and sexist overtones and then concluding that they are the fault of the translation. It’s not a tremendously straightforward way to say things though. And then there are those wicked non-Muslims who cite Dawood’s translation. Well granted that is very naughty of them, but then what about the Muslims Sardar knows? Don’t any of them cite translations when discussing what the Koran says? Does he not know any Muslims who don’t know Arabic? In short, is he trying to bamboozle the reader? I kind of think he is.

Dawood translates Az-Zumar (chapter 39) as “The Hordes”, suggesting bands of barbarian mobs; Khalidi renders it as “The Groups”…The old Penguin translation uses rather obscurantist images throughout to give the impression that the Qur’an is full of demons and witches. For example, in 31:1, Dawood has God swearing “by those who cast out demons”. Khalidi translates the same verse as: “Behold the revelations of the Wise Book.”

Okay. But which is more accurate? Sardar doesn’t say. Maybe Khalidi’s is; but Sardar doesn’t say.

So this translation is a quantum leap ahead of the old Penguin version.

Not quantum; wrong word; ten points off. But more to the point: is it? There’s only one place where Sardar actually says Khalidi translates something correctly; all the rest of it has to do with whether he translates it flatteringly. That’s a different issue. It’s not clear that a more flattering translation is a leap ahead. It may be a more accurate translation, but one can’t tell whether it is or not from Sardar’s review. That’s either careless or…not.

They still don’t get it. (Who? I don’t really know – I don’t really understand who these people are. The people who think Islamism is okay. Who are they [apart from Islamists of course]? I don’t know. I don’t understand what this tendency or ideology or grouping is. They baffle me. I encounter them here and there, but what they think their politics might be remains opaque. I know they get very irritable with people who have reservations about Islam [let alone Islamism], but that’s not exactly manifesto-quality thought, is it.) They find it astonishing that a clever literate person would despise Islamism. Because – what? Because they themselves would find life in Jeddah perfectly pleasant? Because they would be quite happy to see their children enrolled at a madrassa instead of a real school? What?

The novelist Ian McEwan has launched an astonishingly strong attack on Islamism, saying that he “despises” it and accusing it of “wanting to create a society that I detest”. His words, in an interview with an Italian newspaper, could, in today’s febrile legalistic climate, lay him open to being investigated for a “hate crime”.

It could? Where? In what jurisdiction? If he were Canadian, it probably could; but he’s not; so what can that mean? But more to the point, why are a couple of Indy reporters astonished at the strength of McEwan’s attack on Islamism? Do they think Islamism actually, contrary to McEwan, wants to create a society that no right-thinking person could possibly detest? If so…do they live in burrows underground?

I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on – we know it well.

Well, some of us do; others apparently don’t. Or else they have very peculiar tastes.

Not so fast. Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer, disagrees with Anthony Lewis’s suggestion that some speech is genuinely dangerous even if it doesn’t imminently threaten anyone. (I agree with that, in case you’re wondering. I don’t think there is no danger until one says ‘Here, kill this person right here, now, hurry up.’ I wish it were that simple, but I don’t think it is.)

“Free speech matters because it works,” Mr. Silverglate continued. Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era. “The world didn’t suffer because too many people read ‘Mein Kampf,’ ” Mr. Silverglate said. “Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea.”

Not so fast. What do you mean ‘free speech works’? Free speech works in the sense of never issuing in violence? You’re kidding, right? And what do you mean the world didn’t suffer because too many people read Mein Kampf? How the hell do you know that, and is it even true? I’m not a bit sure it is true. It’s not as if the Nazis took power through some kind of magic, after all – they took power because there were Nazis, it wasn’t just Hitler and a book that had no effect on anyone. Anyway even if that very dubious claim were true, it wouldn’t necessarily be extendable to all other books and speech acts. Even if it is true that the world didn’t suffer because too many people read Mein Kampf, the world (at least a part of it) certainly suffered because too many people listened to Serbian State Radio or Radio Mille Collines. In other words if the Mein Kampf point is supposed to stand for all kinds of speech and writing – well, it can’t. It just isn’t the case that violence is never set off by people hearing or reading people saying things. It would be tremendously helpful if that were the case, but it isn’t.

David Littman of the Association for World Education makes a joint statement with the International Humanist and Ethical Union to the UN Human Rights Council, in which they denounce the stoning to death of women accused of adultery and the marriage of girls age nine in countries where Sharia law applies. The UNHRC heartily agrees, right?

The speaker, David Littman, was interrupted by no fewer than 16 points of order and the proceedings of the Council were suspended for forty minutes when the Egyptian delegate said that “Islam will not be crucified in this Council” and attempted to force a vote on whether the speaker should be allowed to continue. On giving his ruling after the break Council President Costea said that the Council “is not prepared to discuss religious questions…Declarations must avoid judgments or evaluation about religion…I promise that next time a speaker judges a religion or a religious law or document, I will interrupt him and pass on to the next speaker”.

Oh. So any human rights abuses that have a religious element are…off limits to the UN Human Rights Council? Well. That seems rather disabling.

But read on, and it seems more than a bit disabling.

At the Islamic summit in Mecca in December 2006, the OIC decided to adopt a policy of zero tolerance against any perceived insults to Islam as part of their overall strategy of advancing the cause of Islam worldwide. The measures agreed upon included creating an “Observatory” to monitor all reports of “Islamophobia”. Muslims throughout the world were to be encouraged to report any cases of perceived Islamophobia, however trivial. Cases submitted so far, for example, have included Muslims who have received “hostile glances”.

And that Maclean’s case.

Plans were also put in place to seek changes in national and international law to provide additional “protection” for Islam. The battlegrounds were to include the European and national parliaments, and the UN, including the Human Rights Council. It was also proposed to move towards the creation of a new Charter of Human Rights in Islam, and the setting up of an Islamic Council of Human Rights to be based not on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but on Sharia law. Fast forward 16 June 2008. The Egyptian delegate to the Human Rights Council, Amr Roshdy Hassan, saw an opportunity to wrong-foot the Council by attacking the statement by AWE/IHEU. Egypt had prepared their ground carefully, breaking protocol by arranging to receive advance copies of our statements, and finding in our statement on violence against women exactly what they were looking for.

Littman begins his statement, Egypt interrupts, Pakistan joins Egypt, Slovenia says hang on – and Egypt goes into unrehearsed unscripted bullying mode.

Mr. President, through you Sir, please Sir, I would humbly and kindly ask my colleague from Slovenia to reconsider. What we are talking now about is not about the right of NGOs to speak but about the Sharia law and whether it is admissible to discuss it in this Council. I appeal to my colleague from Slovenia not to accept any discussion of the Sharia law in this Council because it will not happen. And we will not take this lightly.

The UN Human Rights Council is apparently dominated by an alliance of thugs. Sharia is protected, and women’s rights are buried under a hail of stones. Terrific.

Warren Jeffs lectures the girls at ‘Alta Academy’ – Alta Academy being the pseudo-school inside the walls of the FLDS compound. The teachings give an interesting insight into the ‘beliefs’ and practices of Jeffs and his subjects.

The Lord on purpose has sent us into this world to meet the two opposite powers, and we must choose. And I testify to you young ladies the right, the eternal way, is Priesthood. If Priesthood is not involved in something, we should not want it. The holy Priesthood is the eternal power where God himself places his nature into a man. The women do not bear the holy Priesthood, but they have the power of that Priesthood in them through their husbands or their father if they are unmarried.

Clear enough? The Priesthood is everything. Whatever ain’t got the Priesthood is anathema. God sticks it into men. He doesn’t stick it into women. Women get to use the power of it through a man, but they don’t get to have it itself. It’s for men. Women are – how shall I put this – not good enough.

And when you are sealed to a man, you become part of him. I emphasize, “part of him.” You don’t become all of him, but part of him. The woman who wants to be everything, will seek to rule over her husband. And it’s our job, each one, to find our place in this oneness as part of the work of God. In this world today there are great battles between men and women and their rights. So I remind you of what the Prophet said. “It takes a man and a woman to make a man. It takes a man and many women to make a man.”

Clear enough? Women become part of men, but not all of them. It takes a lot of women to make one man. Women are kind of like building material – but men are the actual buildings. Women are an old pile of bricks and window frames, men are the buildings.

You wake up each day yearning to please [your husband]. You rejoice in his will towards you. You pray for him, you seek his counsel. In your life there’s no secrets you keep from him, but you keep his secrets. You keep sacred your relationship with him, and all this as a oneness with your Priesthood head…I remind you that Priesthood government is persuasion through love. It is not force…And so you ladies, to fulfill that command of the great Jehovah that, “Your desires shall be to your husband and he shall rule over you,” it requires you willingly submit.

Right. Here’s how it is; it’s like this and no otherwise; listen up and do what I say. This here is persuasion through love; it is not force. And so to fulfill the command, it requires you willingly submit. You have to, but you have to do it willingly. You are required to submit, willingly. After that would you kindly go to the blackboard and draw us a square circle in the hand of a married female bachelor.

Now what if you detect that he might have a weakness? Maybe you have come from a good father, and perhaps you would be given to an inexperienced man or a man who has great weaknesses, or you think so. What should you do? For sure, if a woman rules over the man, both will lose the spirit of God. If a man only does good because you tell him, both of you don’t have the spirit of God, you both lose. Pray for him, seek his counsel in faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father.

Clear enough? The Priesthood is in men, and it is not in you, so even if we shove you onto a stupid nasty man who hasn’t got the morals of a stoat, he’s still your boss and you’re still scum, so what you do is, you pray and hope for the best. Don’t, whatever you do, try to tell him what’s what, because if you do, God will hate you. And don’t forget you have to do all this willingly. Or else.

I am approaching this lesson toward the path of success, not just the warning of failure. And the success is to give yourself to your husband — mind, body, soul, with a living faith in God that the Lord will guide him right in teaching you and training you…[A]s the prophet Brigham Young said, a mother or wife who has the spirit of God will never intrude on the rights of her husband. She will never go beyond her bounds and try to rule over him. Don’t try to step out ahead, say the Prophets.

Even if he’s a shit and a fool and you’re not – still – don’t you dare try to step out ahead. Why? You know why. He’s got the Priesthood, you ain’t. Even if he is a shit and a fool, he’s still better than you, because of the Priesthood. He’s always better than you, no matter what, because he’s a man and you’re a woman. The Prophets said this.

So when the prophets say, “Beware. Don’t try to dictate your husband,” you must realize it could happen in any area of life where you haven’t on purpose sought to become one with him. And oneness means submission, “Thy will be done.” It’s a living faith in God that He will lead you through your Priesthood head, your husband.

True womanhood is attained through Priesthood. Motherhood, womanhood, is glorified, honored and blesses others through Priesthood. All your connection with other women should be through Priesthood, through your head. All your conversations with other women should be to please your head. Your secrets, the desires of your heart, should be centered in him. And that takes some doing.

Yes I just bet it does – even if you’ve been trained to it by Warren Jeffs and his slaves from infancy on up, it still takes some doing – it still takes Warren Jeffs coming along to nag and nag and nag and nag just in case any of those Priesthood-deprived girl-humans might disobey. Gotta get in there and really ‘persuade’ those girls to act like zombie slaves for the comfort of men.

Holy holy holy.