I've listed my ten best books of the year down the right-hand side of this page, using one of those Amazon widget things. I've cheated a bit, as some of these were published in paperback this year but came out in hardcover earlier, and the collection of Vasily Grossman's war journalism sneaks in even though the book appeared towards the end of 2006.
In fact, some of the best books I've read this year were published some time ago. They include Jean Bethke Elshtain's Just War Against Terror (which I mentioned here), Afary and Anderson's Foucault and the Iranian Revolution (see here) and Ian Thomson's superb biography of Primo Levi.
My Christmas wish list includes Marshall Berman's New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg, Philip Roth's latest, and Orhan Pamuk's new collection of essays.
In my ideal world, the next two weeks would be spent doing very little except eating, drinking and reading, reading, reading...
Thursday, 20 December 2007
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
He's forty. She's eleven. And they are a couple.
This is the UNICEF Photo of the Year:
And this is the caption:
He’s forty, she’s eleven. And they are a couple – the Afghan man Mohammed F.* and the child Ghulam H.*. “We needed the money”, Ghulam’s parents said. Faiz claims he is going to send her to school. But the women of Damarda village in Afghanistan’s Ghor province know better: “Our men don’t want educated women.” They predict that Ghulam will be married within a few weeks after her engagement in 2006, so as to bear children for Faiz.
The picture, by American photographer Stephanie Sinclair, makes an eloquent statement - perhaps more powerful than any number of wordy articles - about women's rights, children's rights, and the ways in which they continue to be traduced in many conservative religious cultures. According to UNICEF:
During her stay in Afghanistan, it consistently struck American photographer Stephanie Sinclair how many young girls are married to much older men. She decided to raise awareness about this topic with her pictures. Particularly as the official minimum age for brides in Afghanistan is sixteen and it is therefore illegal to marry children.
Early marriages are not only a problem in Afghanistan: worldwide there are about 51 million girls aged between 15 and 19 years who are forced into marriage. The youngest brides live in the Indian state of Rajasthan, where 15% of all wives are not even 10 years old when they are married. Child marriages are a reaction to extreme poverty and mainly take place in Asian and African regions where poor families see their daughters as a burden and as second-class citizens. Already in their younger years, girls are given into the “care” of a husband, a tradition that often leads to exploitation. Many girls become victims of domestic violence. In an Egyptian survey, about one-third of the interviewed child brides stated that they were beaten by their husbands. The young brides are under pressure to prove their fertility as soon as possible. But the risk for girls between the ages of 10 and 14 not to survive pregnancy is five times higher than for adult women. Every year, about 150,000 pregnant teenagers die due to complications – in particular due to a lack of medical care, let alone sex education.
Yes, of course, poverty helps to create the contexts in which child marriages persist, but the influence of powerful religious discourses, in which women are regarded as inferior beings, should not be overlooked. Still, it's good to see UNICEF making this bold choice for its photo of the year and not being held back by fear of offending particular religious or cultural groups (though I'm curious as to why I couldn't find any reference to the award on their main English-language website: when I googled this I was directed to their German site). Women's rights, children's rights, human rights - are universal and indivisible.
It's a deserving choice - and a heartbreaking image. You can see more examples of Sinclair's work on this topic here.
(Via)
Update
The Afghan Women's Network have kindly linked to this post. According to their website:
AWN is a non-partisan Network of women and women’s NGOs working to empower Afghan women and ensure their equal participation in Afghan society. The members of the Network also recognize the value and role of children as the future of Afghanistan and, as such, regard the empowerment and protection of children as fundamental to their work.
And this is the caption:
He’s forty, she’s eleven. And they are a couple – the Afghan man Mohammed F.* and the child Ghulam H.*. “We needed the money”, Ghulam’s parents said. Faiz claims he is going to send her to school. But the women of Damarda village in Afghanistan’s Ghor province know better: “Our men don’t want educated women.” They predict that Ghulam will be married within a few weeks after her engagement in 2006, so as to bear children for Faiz.
The picture, by American photographer Stephanie Sinclair, makes an eloquent statement - perhaps more powerful than any number of wordy articles - about women's rights, children's rights, and the ways in which they continue to be traduced in many conservative religious cultures. According to UNICEF:
During her stay in Afghanistan, it consistently struck American photographer Stephanie Sinclair how many young girls are married to much older men. She decided to raise awareness about this topic with her pictures. Particularly as the official minimum age for brides in Afghanistan is sixteen and it is therefore illegal to marry children.
Early marriages are not only a problem in Afghanistan: worldwide there are about 51 million girls aged between 15 and 19 years who are forced into marriage. The youngest brides live in the Indian state of Rajasthan, where 15% of all wives are not even 10 years old when they are married. Child marriages are a reaction to extreme poverty and mainly take place in Asian and African regions where poor families see their daughters as a burden and as second-class citizens. Already in their younger years, girls are given into the “care” of a husband, a tradition that often leads to exploitation. Many girls become victims of domestic violence. In an Egyptian survey, about one-third of the interviewed child brides stated that they were beaten by their husbands. The young brides are under pressure to prove their fertility as soon as possible. But the risk for girls between the ages of 10 and 14 not to survive pregnancy is five times higher than for adult women. Every year, about 150,000 pregnant teenagers die due to complications – in particular due to a lack of medical care, let alone sex education.
Yes, of course, poverty helps to create the contexts in which child marriages persist, but the influence of powerful religious discourses, in which women are regarded as inferior beings, should not be overlooked. Still, it's good to see UNICEF making this bold choice for its photo of the year and not being held back by fear of offending particular religious or cultural groups (though I'm curious as to why I couldn't find any reference to the award on their main English-language website: when I googled this I was directed to their German site). Women's rights, children's rights, human rights - are universal and indivisible.
It's a deserving choice - and a heartbreaking image. You can see more examples of Sinclair's work on this topic here.
(Via)
Update
The Afghan Women's Network have kindly linked to this post. According to their website:
AWN is a non-partisan Network of women and women’s NGOs working to empower Afghan women and ensure their equal participation in Afghan society. The members of the Network also recognize the value and role of children as the future of Afghanistan and, as such, regard the empowerment and protection of children as fundamental to their work.
Friday, 14 December 2007
In praise of Jean Bethke Elshtain
One of the (many) good things, for me, about the online review Democratiya is the way it has introduced me to writers I wouldn't otherwise have come across. The Summer issue included the text of a speech on 'Defending American values at home and abroad' by political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain. On the strength of this, and having looked up 'What we're fighting for: a letter from America', of which Elshtain was one of the signatories, I bought her book Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, which was first published in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and updated in 2004 to include a chapter on the Iraq war. OK, so I'm a few years late in making this discovery, but better late than never.
I'm only part-way through the book, but already there's much to praise. Anyone who has ever despaired of the parlous state of the academic Left and its reflexive oppositionism and anti-Americanism should read the chapter headed 'The academy responds to terror', while Elshtain's analysis of 'What happened on September 11' is a cool and methodical deconstruction of blowback theory. And at a time of increasingly shrill anti-secularism among religious commentators, it's refreshing to read a defence of the separation of church and state from a progressive Christian perspective.
As with all good books, you find yourself wanting to quote whole sections. Here, as a taster, is part of Elshtain's dismissal of those who 'insist that America brought the horrors of September 11, 2001, on herself':
Conducted within the boundary of reasonable political debate...are those arguments that an international 'war on poverty and despair', or a change in the direction of U.S. Middle Eastern policy, or a different U.S. policy towards Iraq will stay the hands of murderous terrorists in the future. Certainly those arguments deserve a hearing. Pushing more programs that deal with poverty and despair or rethinking American foreign policy, including our approach to Iraq, may have desirable outcomes. But no such change, either singly or together, will deter Osama bin Laden and those like him [... ] We could do everything demanded of us by those who are critical of America, both inside and outside our boundaries, but Islamist fundamentalism and the threat it poses would not be deterred.
[...]
When I claim that changes in our policies would not satisfy Islamists, the reason is quite basic: They loathe us because of who were are and what our society represents [...] bin Laden and his followers mean it when they call us 'infidels'. To Islamists, infidels are those who believe in separation of church and state. Infidels profess the wrong religion, or the wrong version of a religion, or no religion at all. Infidels believe in civic and personal freedom. Infidels educate women and give them a public presence and role. Infidels intermarry across lines of religion. Infidels believe that all people have human rights. Whatever else the United States might do on the world scene to allay the concerns of its opponents, it cannot repeal its founding constitutional principles, which condemn it in the eyes of such fundamentalism.
I'm only part-way through the book, but already there's much to praise. Anyone who has ever despaired of the parlous state of the academic Left and its reflexive oppositionism and anti-Americanism should read the chapter headed 'The academy responds to terror', while Elshtain's analysis of 'What happened on September 11' is a cool and methodical deconstruction of blowback theory. And at a time of increasingly shrill anti-secularism among religious commentators, it's refreshing to read a defence of the separation of church and state from a progressive Christian perspective.
As with all good books, you find yourself wanting to quote whole sections. Here, as a taster, is part of Elshtain's dismissal of those who 'insist that America brought the horrors of September 11, 2001, on herself':
Conducted within the boundary of reasonable political debate...are those arguments that an international 'war on poverty and despair', or a change in the direction of U.S. Middle Eastern policy, or a different U.S. policy towards Iraq will stay the hands of murderous terrorists in the future. Certainly those arguments deserve a hearing. Pushing more programs that deal with poverty and despair or rethinking American foreign policy, including our approach to Iraq, may have desirable outcomes. But no such change, either singly or together, will deter Osama bin Laden and those like him [... ] We could do everything demanded of us by those who are critical of America, both inside and outside our boundaries, but Islamist fundamentalism and the threat it poses would not be deterred.
[...]
When I claim that changes in our policies would not satisfy Islamists, the reason is quite basic: They loathe us because of who were are and what our society represents [...] bin Laden and his followers mean it when they call us 'infidels'. To Islamists, infidels are those who believe in separation of church and state. Infidels profess the wrong religion, or the wrong version of a religion, or no religion at all. Infidels believe in civic and personal freedom. Infidels educate women and give them a public presence and role. Infidels intermarry across lines of religion. Infidels believe that all people have human rights. Whatever else the United States might do on the world scene to allay the concerns of its opponents, it cannot repeal its founding constitutional principles, which condemn it in the eyes of such fundamentalism.
Thursday, 13 December 2007
More depressing news about violence against women in Iraq
Mark Lattimer provides a horrific account of routine violence against women in Iraqi Kurdistan:
They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman's face into a fixed look of surprise.
These women are not casualties of battle. In fact, the cause of death is generally recorded as "accidental", although their bodies often lie unclaimed by their families.
"It is getting worse, especially the burnings," says Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan that works to combat violence against women. "Just here in Sulaimaniyah, there were 400 cases of the burning of women last year." Lack of electricity means that every house has a plentiful supply of oil, and she accepts that some cases may be accidents. But the nature and scale of the injuries suggest that most were deliberate, she says, handing me the morgue photographs of one young woman after another. Many of the bodies bear the unmistakable signs of having been subjected to intense heat.
"In many cases the woman is accused of adultery, or of a relationship before she is married, or the marriage is not sanctioned by the family," Khanim says. Her husband, brother or another relative will kill her to restore their "honour". "If he is poor the man might be arrested; if he is important, he won't be. And in most cases, it is hidden. The body might be dumped miles away and when it is found the family says, 'We don't have a daughter.'" In other cases, disputes over such murders are resolved between families or tribes by the payment of a forfeit, or the gift of another woman. "The authorities say such agreements are necessary for social stability, to prevent revenge killings," says Khanim.
As I've said before, the fact that these 'honour' killings are happening in Kurdistan, in many ways the part of Iraq which stands the best chance of developing into a stable democracy, is profoundly depressing. Though as Lattimer notes, the situation is even worse elsewhere in the country, especially in the increasingly theocratic and Iranian-influenced south.
Lattimer's report is worth reading in full, despite his attempt to pin the blame on the US invasion and to make tendentious links between localised abuses by American soldiers and this widespread, institutionalised misogyny. He may be right that the general climate of disorder and lawlessness that followed Saddam's removal has created the conditions in which unchecked oppression of women can flourish. However, to my mind Lattimer's article, in common with many Guardian reports, seems reluctant to attach sufficient blame to the reactionary, anti-feminist politics of the Islamist militias, or to the conservative religious forces that have been allowed to flourish in the wake of Saddam's demise.
They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman's face into a fixed look of surprise.
These women are not casualties of battle. In fact, the cause of death is generally recorded as "accidental", although their bodies often lie unclaimed by their families.
"It is getting worse, especially the burnings," says Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan that works to combat violence against women. "Just here in Sulaimaniyah, there were 400 cases of the burning of women last year." Lack of electricity means that every house has a plentiful supply of oil, and she accepts that some cases may be accidents. But the nature and scale of the injuries suggest that most were deliberate, she says, handing me the morgue photographs of one young woman after another. Many of the bodies bear the unmistakable signs of having been subjected to intense heat.
"In many cases the woman is accused of adultery, or of a relationship before she is married, or the marriage is not sanctioned by the family," Khanim says. Her husband, brother or another relative will kill her to restore their "honour". "If he is poor the man might be arrested; if he is important, he won't be. And in most cases, it is hidden. The body might be dumped miles away and when it is found the family says, 'We don't have a daughter.'" In other cases, disputes over such murders are resolved between families or tribes by the payment of a forfeit, or the gift of another woman. "The authorities say such agreements are necessary for social stability, to prevent revenge killings," says Khanim.
As I've said before, the fact that these 'honour' killings are happening in Kurdistan, in many ways the part of Iraq which stands the best chance of developing into a stable democracy, is profoundly depressing. Though as Lattimer notes, the situation is even worse elsewhere in the country, especially in the increasingly theocratic and Iranian-influenced south.
Lattimer's report is worth reading in full, despite his attempt to pin the blame on the US invasion and to make tendentious links between localised abuses by American soldiers and this widespread, institutionalised misogyny. He may be right that the general climate of disorder and lawlessness that followed Saddam's removal has created the conditions in which unchecked oppression of women can flourish. However, to my mind Lattimer's article, in common with many Guardian reports, seems reluctant to attach sufficient blame to the reactionary, anti-feminist politics of the Islamist militias, or to the conservative religious forces that have been allowed to flourish in the wake of Saddam's demise.
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Refreshingly direct language from Pryamvada Gopal
I've criticised Cambridge academic and Guardian columnist Pryamvada Gopal on a number of occasions for her circumlocutory root-cause cultural-relativist outbursts. So it's good to see her using uncharacteristically direct language to excoriate those western leftists (such as Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali) who have defended the brutal policies of the regional communist government in West Bengal (see here and here for details). She also criticises the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its western supporters for failing to defend feminist and human rights activist Taslima Nasrin in her continuing battles with religious fundamentalists. Gopal's defence in this piece of the admirable principle 'Never solidarity before criticism' is curiously at odds with this Guardian article, in which she appeared to argue that western liberals had no right to criticise the oppression of women in Asia and the Middle East.
Monday, 10 December 2007
Post Office plot to destroy Christmas shock horror
My parents, who are active Methodists, were visiting us yesterday. We were discussing the designs for this year's Christmas stamps, assuming they would be pleased with their religious theme. They were - but they told us about an email circulating among their local congregation, claiming that Royal Mail staff were under instructions not to issue the more overtly Christian 'Madonna and Child' stamps unless customers explicitly asked for them. Apparently, this was part of a plot to massage the demand for religious stamps downwards, so that the Post Office could get away with producing only secular images in future years.
A little bit of internet searching today revealed that this rumour is not confined to Nonconformists. The 'Anglican Mainstream' website reproduces the email circular in full:
Royal Mail has traditionally alternated between sacred and secular designs for their Christmas stamps and this year it is the turn for a religious image. Royal Mail has issued two sets of designs this year.
The main set of designs, available in all the main denominations is of angels, which is vaguely Christian but not explicitly so and certainly not specifically Christmassy. They have also issued a ‘Madonna and Child’ design for first and second class only. Post Office staff have been instructed to only sell this design if people specifically request it, but obviously people can’t request it if they don’t know it exists!
If people don’t buy these stamps, Royal Mail will claim there is no demand for religious Christmas stamps and not produce them in future.
Please therefore ask for ‘Madonna and Child’ stamps when you do your Christmas posting and also tell your friends, contacts etc. to do the same. Thank You.
I have it on very good authority that Royal Mail have issued no such instructions to their staff. And as for people not knowing the 'Madonna and Child' stamp exists: all of this year's designs are on display on the Royal Mail website.
Don't you just love the way these urban myths spread? Before you know where we are, this fake Post Office plot will be an established 'fact', like the 'Winterval' stories that circulated last year. You get the impression that some believers enjoy feeling persecuted, don't you?
Update
The Royal Mail has issued the following statement:
We have become aware of an incorrect assertion being made about the motives behind the sales of our Christmas stamps. There is absolutely no intention on our part to suppress sales of the Madonna and Child stamps in order to be able to claim there is low demand for religious stamps in future years. Indeed, we have produced tens of millions of them, and we want to sell them!! We have given publicity to both types of Christmas stamps, and the availability of both has been widely covered in the national and local press. Furthermore we plan to have the Madonna and Child stamps available every Christmas in future, alongside each year's "special" set, which will continue to alternate between religious and secular themes.
(Via)
It's been nice to see some of the more sensible Christian websites taking a lead in scotching the myth.
A little bit of internet searching today revealed that this rumour is not confined to Nonconformists. The 'Anglican Mainstream' website reproduces the email circular in full:
Royal Mail has traditionally alternated between sacred and secular designs for their Christmas stamps and this year it is the turn for a religious image. Royal Mail has issued two sets of designs this year.
The main set of designs, available in all the main denominations is of angels, which is vaguely Christian but not explicitly so and certainly not specifically Christmassy. They have also issued a ‘Madonna and Child’ design for first and second class only. Post Office staff have been instructed to only sell this design if people specifically request it, but obviously people can’t request it if they don’t know it exists!
If people don’t buy these stamps, Royal Mail will claim there is no demand for religious Christmas stamps and not produce them in future.
Please therefore ask for ‘Madonna and Child’ stamps when you do your Christmas posting and also tell your friends, contacts etc. to do the same. Thank You.
I have it on very good authority that Royal Mail have issued no such instructions to their staff. And as for people not knowing the 'Madonna and Child' stamp exists: all of this year's designs are on display on the Royal Mail website.
Don't you just love the way these urban myths spread? Before you know where we are, this fake Post Office plot will be an established 'fact', like the 'Winterval' stories that circulated last year. You get the impression that some believers enjoy feeling persecuted, don't you?
Update
The Royal Mail has issued the following statement:
We have become aware of an incorrect assertion being made about the motives behind the sales of our Christmas stamps. There is absolutely no intention on our part to suppress sales of the Madonna and Child stamps in order to be able to claim there is low demand for religious stamps in future years. Indeed, we have produced tens of millions of them, and we want to sell them!! We have given publicity to both types of Christmas stamps, and the availability of both has been widely covered in the national and local press. Furthermore we plan to have the Madonna and Child stamps available every Christmas in future, alongside each year's "special" set, which will continue to alternate between religious and secular themes.
(Via)
It's been nice to see some of the more sensible Christian websites taking a lead in scotching the myth.
Friday, 7 December 2007
NYophilia
Last Friday saw yours truly being profiled by Norm. This week it's the turn of Paul Berger, who blogs at Englishman in New York, a blog that I read regularly with a mixture of pleasure and (as a confirmed NYophile) thinly-disguised envy. Mind you, any blog with a picture of NYC at the top of the page is OK by me (Paul's is of a subway train): especially views of the Manhattan skyline, like the one that adorns Snarksmith's excellent blog and used to be found atop New Centrist's site, before it was replaced with a more edible scene.
All this talk of New York, plus the fact that this week saw both the celebration of Hanukkah and the beginning of Advent, and it being a Friday, is excuse enough to feature this photo of the festive tree lights being switched on outside the Rockefeller Center a week or so ago (via the New York Times). I've only ever been to NYC in the summer and would love to be there right now. Happy Holidays.
All this talk of New York, plus the fact that this week saw both the celebration of Hanukkah and the beginning of Advent, and it being a Friday, is excuse enough to feature this photo of the festive tree lights being switched on outside the Rockefeller Center a week or so ago (via the New York Times). I've only ever been to NYC in the summer and would love to be there right now. Happy Holidays.
In praise of Democratiya
The winter issue of the online review Democratiya is now available here. As always, it's packed with good things. So far, I've only had time to skim through a few of the articles, but among the highlights is Nick Cohen's new postscript to What's Left, which includes an attempt to understand the causes of the Left's current deformations (rather than simply catalogue them) in a way that the book itself didn't quite manage.
Also worth looking at is Ophelia Benson's review of Ibn Warraq's new book on the perils of 'leaving Islam', which Norm links to here: as he says, 'to insist on fixity of belief is, indeed, a most appalling betrayal of the human spirit, of the genius that belongs to our species.'
Fred Siegel's review of new books on religious extremism is also interesting: it's made me want to seek out one of them, Matthias Kunzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred, which joins the dots between Nazism and Islamism (but which doesn't seem to be available via Amazon UK at the moment).
And finally, thanks to Democratiya for reproducing the whole of Tony Blair's recent speech to the Al Smith Dinner in New York. Among the many reasons for being disappointed with Gordon Brown is the realisation that it's impossible to imagine him making a speech as direct, impassioned and downright eloquent as this.
As Norm notes, Democratiya's 'record of quality and consistency' is remarkable. Since launching in 2005 it's become required reading for the anti-totalitarian social-democratic Left on this side of the Atlantic - in much the same way that Dissent is across the pond. But much as I love the ease of access that the review's free, online format allows, I sometimes wonder whether it renders it less than visible in wider UK political discourse. There's something about having a physical presence on the shelves that means your views get noticed by the mainstream media. Or maybe it's just that I'm nostalgic for the sense of excitement I used to feel when my weekly copy of the (now unreadable) New Statesman dropped through the letterbox, or more recently when the latest London Review of Books (increasingly going the same way, politically at least) arrived.
Also worth looking at is Ophelia Benson's review of Ibn Warraq's new book on the perils of 'leaving Islam', which Norm links to here: as he says, 'to insist on fixity of belief is, indeed, a most appalling betrayal of the human spirit, of the genius that belongs to our species.'
Fred Siegel's review of new books on religious extremism is also interesting: it's made me want to seek out one of them, Matthias Kunzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred, which joins the dots between Nazism and Islamism (but which doesn't seem to be available via Amazon UK at the moment).
And finally, thanks to Democratiya for reproducing the whole of Tony Blair's recent speech to the Al Smith Dinner in New York. Among the many reasons for being disappointed with Gordon Brown is the realisation that it's impossible to imagine him making a speech as direct, impassioned and downright eloquent as this.
As Norm notes, Democratiya's 'record of quality and consistency' is remarkable. Since launching in 2005 it's become required reading for the anti-totalitarian social-democratic Left on this side of the Atlantic - in much the same way that Dissent is across the pond. But much as I love the ease of access that the review's free, online format allows, I sometimes wonder whether it renders it less than visible in wider UK political discourse. There's something about having a physical presence on the shelves that means your views get noticed by the mainstream media. Or maybe it's just that I'm nostalgic for the sense of excitement I used to feel when my weekly copy of the (now unreadable) New Statesman dropped through the letterbox, or more recently when the latest London Review of Books (increasingly going the same way, politically at least) arrived.
Thursday, 6 December 2007
A small victory in the fight to repeal blasphemy laws
Christian Voice director Stephen Green got more than he bargained for when he tried to have the BBC prosecuted for blasphemy over their screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera. Not only has the High Court rejected this particular case, but judges have ruled that broadcasters and theatres staging live productions should be immune from prosecution for blasphemy.
So, a small victory for free speech and common sense. But it's not enough, of course. The implication of the ruling is that it's still possible for those working in other media - writers, print journalists, maybe even bloggers - to be charged under this law. In the words of Anna Fairclough, legal officer for Liberty: 'Today's ruling is a blow to bigotry. The obvious next step is to repeal this outdated offence.'
So, a small victory for free speech and common sense. But it's not enough, of course. The implication of the ruling is that it's still possible for those working in other media - writers, print journalists, maybe even bloggers - to be charged under this law. In the words of Anna Fairclough, legal officer for Liberty: 'Today's ruling is a blow to bigotry. The obvious next step is to repeal this outdated offence.'
Wednesday, 5 December 2007
An atheist's experience of teaching in a faith school
In the very recent past, I worked in a place where I wasn't able to apply for a more senior post because I don't believe in God.
That's Gordon Cairns describing his experience teaching in a state-funded Catholic school in Scotland. He catalogues the discrimination he and other atheist teachers experience in faith schools, which include being prevented from teaching religious education and biology and from applying for headships. To which one response might be: what did you expect? If you choose to work for an organisation whose mission you don't fully endorse, how can you expect equal treatment? Isn't it rather like those nominally christian parents who push for their children to get into church schools, then complain about the amount of RE and religious services?
Of course, the situation is complicated by the issue of state funding. As Cairns explains, since Catholic schools were incorporated into the state system a century ago, they became part of mainstream provision and their teaching posts theoretically open to all those working that system. He adds:
Scottish teachers don't have a lot of influence on which school they work in. Where you pitch up by chance as a supply teacher is often where you end up working permanently, as most jobs go to the sitting candidate.
If faith schools (whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever) are going to accept state funding, it could be argued that they should be subject to the same employment practices as other public bodies. Cairns notes that the Catholic Church has always managed to wangle certain exemptions: 'One practice the church demanded was the right to be able to approve of teachers in certain jobs by means of a certificate signed by the local priest and renewed every few years, and known unofficially as the teacher's MOT. '
At the same time, Cairns feels no hostility to the school he worked in. On the contrary, he found it to be a 'warm, supportive community' and he was sorry to leave. And he acknowledges that faith schools have strengths that might be lacking in secular institutions:
I suppose in any environment it is when we encounter death that religion comes into its own. A popular former teacher died suddenly and a mass was held for him one lunchtime. The crowd overspilled into the playground from the chapel as pupils and teachers came together to pay their respects. I can't think of any secular ritual or act that could so successfully allow a community to come together and mourn.
Here, Cairns pinpoints to a dilemma familiar to uneasy secularists like myself: secularism might be necessary (indeed increasingly necessary, and needing to be defended, in times of revived fundamentalism and irrationalism such as these) - but is it sufficient?
Despite his criticisms of the discriminatory practices that he experienced, Cairns ends his piece by articulating a decidedly ambivalent attitude - as an atheist - to faith schools:
I am against the role religion has in education in a country where these old practices are dying away, never mind being the central tenet of the school. I think if parents want their children to have a religious education they should do it themselves, with the support of their church. But my experience is of a faith school system that is working. In general, the children identify with their school far more strongly than I ever did with my non-denominational school. Although it is a myth that Catholic schools are more academically successful than non-denominational schools in Scotland, recent school inspections have given them excellent reports, particularly praising community and ethos. It is difficult to say whether these successes are down to the schools having faith as a unifying factor or because they are truly comprehensive, but they succeed, so why break up something successful?
That's Gordon Cairns describing his experience teaching in a state-funded Catholic school in Scotland. He catalogues the discrimination he and other atheist teachers experience in faith schools, which include being prevented from teaching religious education and biology and from applying for headships. To which one response might be: what did you expect? If you choose to work for an organisation whose mission you don't fully endorse, how can you expect equal treatment? Isn't it rather like those nominally christian parents who push for their children to get into church schools, then complain about the amount of RE and religious services?
Of course, the situation is complicated by the issue of state funding. As Cairns explains, since Catholic schools were incorporated into the state system a century ago, they became part of mainstream provision and their teaching posts theoretically open to all those working that system. He adds:
Scottish teachers don't have a lot of influence on which school they work in. Where you pitch up by chance as a supply teacher is often where you end up working permanently, as most jobs go to the sitting candidate.
If faith schools (whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever) are going to accept state funding, it could be argued that they should be subject to the same employment practices as other public bodies. Cairns notes that the Catholic Church has always managed to wangle certain exemptions: 'One practice the church demanded was the right to be able to approve of teachers in certain jobs by means of a certificate signed by the local priest and renewed every few years, and known unofficially as the teacher's MOT. '
At the same time, Cairns feels no hostility to the school he worked in. On the contrary, he found it to be a 'warm, supportive community' and he was sorry to leave. And he acknowledges that faith schools have strengths that might be lacking in secular institutions:
I suppose in any environment it is when we encounter death that religion comes into its own. A popular former teacher died suddenly and a mass was held for him one lunchtime. The crowd overspilled into the playground from the chapel as pupils and teachers came together to pay their respects. I can't think of any secular ritual or act that could so successfully allow a community to come together and mourn.
Here, Cairns pinpoints to a dilemma familiar to uneasy secularists like myself: secularism might be necessary (indeed increasingly necessary, and needing to be defended, in times of revived fundamentalism and irrationalism such as these) - but is it sufficient?
Despite his criticisms of the discriminatory practices that he experienced, Cairns ends his piece by articulating a decidedly ambivalent attitude - as an atheist - to faith schools:
I am against the role religion has in education in a country where these old practices are dying away, never mind being the central tenet of the school. I think if parents want their children to have a religious education they should do it themselves, with the support of their church. But my experience is of a faith school system that is working. In general, the children identify with their school far more strongly than I ever did with my non-denominational school. Although it is a myth that Catholic schools are more academically successful than non-denominational schools in Scotland, recent school inspections have given them excellent reports, particularly praising community and ethos. It is difficult to say whether these successes are down to the schools having faith as a unifying factor or because they are truly comprehensive, but they succeed, so why break up something successful?
Lusophilia
Three brief items for Lusophiles...
Here's singer Sara Tavares, born in Lisbon but of Cape Verdean extraction, being interviewed in the Guardian. Tavares' music exemplifies what she herself describes as Cape Verde's 'metisse culture', in which African and Portuguese influences combine, while her lyrics reflect the multilingual argot of Lisbon's younger generation. 'I think anthropologists will study the slang because it speaks a lot about our social evolution and the identity of cities,' she says. I first came across her music via a compilation album that featured her paeon to her home city, 'Lisboa' - the standout track on her album Balancé. There must be something in the Cape Verdean air. Despite its tiny population, it continues to produce amazing - mostly female - singers: first Cesaria Evora, and now Tavares and other rising stars such as Lura and Mayra Andrade.
Staying with Lisbon: the New York Times has a feature describing the city's emergence as a 'serious design destination', highlighting the transformation of the waterfront Santos district. As the paper says: 'Overshadowed by larger, wealthier and more flashy European countries with world-renowned design specialties — Italian lighting, Scandinavian furniture, French fashion — Portugal has long hid on the Continent's margin both geographically and creatively.' But all of that may be changing. It seems there are controversial plans for a Norman Foster-designed 'futuristic tower and commercial complex' on the waterfront, the goal being a project that 'promotes the worlds of design and the arts', but which some argue will ruin Lisbon's historic skyline. When we were in Lisbon last year, we stayed in the Santos quarter, close to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga - Portugal's national gallery. It's an attractive area, but rather spoilt by the noisy expressway connecting central Lisbon to Belem in the west, which cuts it off from the Tagus. And it has interesting literary associations: not only did Antonio Tabucchi feature the Museu in Requiem, his hallucinatory fictional tour of Lisbon, but the nearby York House hotel is a key location in Dutch author Cees Nooteboom's experimental The Following Story and (more popularly) in John le Carré's The Russia House.
And finally: BBC4 screened the second in the Brasil, Brasil series last Friday. The focus was on the Sixties, when the country languished under a military dictatorship and the Left was divided as to whether the proper cultural response was serious, nationalistic folk music or the western-influenced hedonism of the Tropicália movement. As in the first programme, there was some fantastic archive footage. The final episode, which explores the Brazilian music scene today, will be broadcast this Friday.
Here's singer Sara Tavares, born in Lisbon but of Cape Verdean extraction, being interviewed in the Guardian. Tavares' music exemplifies what she herself describes as Cape Verde's 'metisse culture', in which African and Portuguese influences combine, while her lyrics reflect the multilingual argot of Lisbon's younger generation. 'I think anthropologists will study the slang because it speaks a lot about our social evolution and the identity of cities,' she says. I first came across her music via a compilation album that featured her paeon to her home city, 'Lisboa' - the standout track on her album Balancé. There must be something in the Cape Verdean air. Despite its tiny population, it continues to produce amazing - mostly female - singers: first Cesaria Evora, and now Tavares and other rising stars such as Lura and Mayra Andrade.
Staying with Lisbon: the New York Times has a feature describing the city's emergence as a 'serious design destination', highlighting the transformation of the waterfront Santos district. As the paper says: 'Overshadowed by larger, wealthier and more flashy European countries with world-renowned design specialties — Italian lighting, Scandinavian furniture, French fashion — Portugal has long hid on the Continent's margin both geographically and creatively.' But all of that may be changing. It seems there are controversial plans for a Norman Foster-designed 'futuristic tower and commercial complex' on the waterfront, the goal being a project that 'promotes the worlds of design and the arts', but which some argue will ruin Lisbon's historic skyline. When we were in Lisbon last year, we stayed in the Santos quarter, close to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga - Portugal's national gallery. It's an attractive area, but rather spoilt by the noisy expressway connecting central Lisbon to Belem in the west, which cuts it off from the Tagus. And it has interesting literary associations: not only did Antonio Tabucchi feature the Museu in Requiem, his hallucinatory fictional tour of Lisbon, but the nearby York House hotel is a key location in Dutch author Cees Nooteboom's experimental The Following Story and (more popularly) in John le Carré's The Russia House.
And finally: BBC4 screened the second in the Brasil, Brasil series last Friday. The focus was on the Sixties, when the country languished under a military dictatorship and the Left was divided as to whether the proper cultural response was serious, nationalistic folk music or the western-influenced hedonism of the Tropicália movement. As in the first programme, there was some fantastic archive footage. The final episode, which explores the Brazilian music scene today, will be broadcast this Friday.
Monday, 3 December 2007
Contrasting views in the religion vs secularism debate
Who said this?
The Church portrays itself as the victim of an aggressive secularism. It looks to me, rather, as if the Church is itself in danger of adopting an aggressive fundamentalism and that the secular societies it excoriates demonstrate a tolerance that is often closer to the ideal of Christian charity.
No, not a spokesperson for the National Secular Society, but Stephen Wall, a self-proclaimed 'lifelong Catholic' and former adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor. In an article in The Tablet which is a breath of fresh air in the religion vs secularism debate, Wall criticises the Catholic Church for 'giving pre-eminence to its concept of law and disregarding its duty of love' in recent controversies over abortion, IVF and gay adoption. He concludes:
Above all, the Church's approach should be rooted not in power, authority and threat, but in love and understanding and, dare I say it, in acknowledging that it can be wrong or that many of life's most poignant problems raise issues of right and wrong, love and duty, pain and suffering that are not susceptible to simple answers.
Wall's thoughtful article is in contrast to a hysterical piece by Chris Hedges in the same magazine. Hedges is reviewing Tina Beattie's book The New Atheists. Here's a taste:
The agenda of the new atheists is disturbing: they embrace a belief system as intolerant, chauvinist and bigoted as that of religious fundamentalists, proposing a route to the moral advancement of the human species through science and reason....Those who believe in the
possibility of this perfection often call for the silencing or eradication of human beings who are impediments to human progress...
These new atheists are a secular version of the religious Right ... They too are anti-intellectual. And while the atheists do not have much power and are not a threat to the democratic state as they are in the United States, they engage in the same chauvinism and call for the same violent utopianism of the fundamentalist Christian Right. They sell this under secular banners, but this does not excuse it. ...They argue, like these Christian fundamentalists, that some human beings, maybe many human beings, have to be eradicated to achieve this better world ...They urge us forward into an unreal world, where force and violence, selfexaltation and blind nationalism are an unquestioned good. ...They use this fear to justify cruelty and war.
Phew! Now, I've read one or two of these 'new atheist' books and, though I don't agree with everything in them, I don't recall Dawkins or Hitchens calling for the 'silencing' or 'eradication' of anyone, or advancing 'violence' or 'blind nationalism' as good things. Like all attempts to find moral equivalence, this one is laughably short of evidence and quickly descends into bluster and hyperbole.
Chris Hedges is described by The Tablet as 'a Pullitzer Prize-winning writer' and a former staff member at the New York Times. Apparently his book American Fascists has been acclaimed for pointing to the threat to democracy from the Christian Right. It's disturbing that a writer with such a track record can confuse the rationalist critiques of a handful of atheist authors with the irrational bigotry and violence of religious fundamentalism.
The Church portrays itself as the victim of an aggressive secularism. It looks to me, rather, as if the Church is itself in danger of adopting an aggressive fundamentalism and that the secular societies it excoriates demonstrate a tolerance that is often closer to the ideal of Christian charity.
No, not a spokesperson for the National Secular Society, but Stephen Wall, a self-proclaimed 'lifelong Catholic' and former adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor. In an article in The Tablet which is a breath of fresh air in the religion vs secularism debate, Wall criticises the Catholic Church for 'giving pre-eminence to its concept of law and disregarding its duty of love' in recent controversies over abortion, IVF and gay adoption. He concludes:
Above all, the Church's approach should be rooted not in power, authority and threat, but in love and understanding and, dare I say it, in acknowledging that it can be wrong or that many of life's most poignant problems raise issues of right and wrong, love and duty, pain and suffering that are not susceptible to simple answers.
Wall's thoughtful article is in contrast to a hysterical piece by Chris Hedges in the same magazine. Hedges is reviewing Tina Beattie's book The New Atheists. Here's a taste:
The agenda of the new atheists is disturbing: they embrace a belief system as intolerant, chauvinist and bigoted as that of religious fundamentalists, proposing a route to the moral advancement of the human species through science and reason....Those who believe in the
possibility of this perfection often call for the silencing or eradication of human beings who are impediments to human progress...
These new atheists are a secular version of the religious Right ... They too are anti-intellectual. And while the atheists do not have much power and are not a threat to the democratic state as they are in the United States, they engage in the same chauvinism and call for the same violent utopianism of the fundamentalist Christian Right. They sell this under secular banners, but this does not excuse it. ...They argue, like these Christian fundamentalists, that some human beings, maybe many human beings, have to be eradicated to achieve this better world ...They urge us forward into an unreal world, where force and violence, selfexaltation and blind nationalism are an unquestioned good. ...They use this fear to justify cruelty and war.
Phew! Now, I've read one or two of these 'new atheist' books and, though I don't agree with everything in them, I don't recall Dawkins or Hitchens calling for the 'silencing' or 'eradication' of anyone, or advancing 'violence' or 'blind nationalism' as good things. Like all attempts to find moral equivalence, this one is laughably short of evidence and quickly descends into bluster and hyperbole.
Chris Hedges is described by The Tablet as 'a Pullitzer Prize-winning writer' and a former staff member at the New York Times. Apparently his book American Fascists has been acclaimed for pointing to the threat to democracy from the Christian Right. It's disturbing that a writer with such a track record can confuse the rationalist critiques of a handful of atheist authors with the irrational bigotry and violence of religious fundamentalism.
Friday, 30 November 2007
Thursday, 29 November 2007
An old-fashioned feminist on the religion vs atheism debate
Andrew Sullivan links to an interesting article by Katha Pollitt in The Nation, on 'the current vogue for atheism'. Pollitt is at pains to offer balanced coverage of recent debates on the role of religion. For example, she attempts to understand what lay behind Ian Buruma's now-notorious description of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an 'Enlightenment fundamentalist', while maintaining her own admiration for the latter, 'despite her conservative associations'. As she says: 'Not every feminist has to be a social worker or a grassroots organizer. I'll bet plenty of women, Muslim and not, have been given courage by her books and example. Just to speak out is a feminist act.'
And while Pollitt is critical of the decision to ban Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States, she is clear that 'he is no friend of women's rights'. She adds: 'If Hirsi Ali is too alienated from her former community to speak for it, Tariq Ramadan strikes me as the latest edition of the elder who claims to represent the community but actually represents the interests of fathers, husbands and brothers.'
Still, wonders Pollitt, why do discussions about Islam in the modern world always revolve around people like Ramadan:
I'd rather hear from Marjane Satrapi, whose 'Persepolis,' a brilliant graphic memoir of growing up under the Ayatollah Khomeini, has just been made into a dark, tragicomic and equally brilliant animated film. And from Pakistani-born Mohsin Hamid, author of the hilarious novel 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'.
But Pollitt's main argument in the article is that tirades against religion by atheists are unlikely to cause Muslims or other believers to 'wake up one morning and abandon their ancestral faith':
Even if you are a ferocious Sam Harris-style atheist who thinks religion is completely stupid--the province of shysters and fools--you have to admit it would be quite astonishing if that view persuaded the devout anytime soon....
...if all you can offer people is reasons to quit their religion--which also often means their community, their family, their support system and their identity--you're not going to have many takers. For every brilliant angry teenager you strengthen in doubt, there's a mosque- or churchful of people who'll choose the old-time religion if the only other choice is nothing.
Pollitt comes to the conclusion that it's 'pointless' for non-Muslims to weigh in about Islam: 'Why should Muslims care, any more than a Jew cares what a Hindu thinks about Moses? It's their religion, and they'll figure out what they want to make of it.' She doesn't claim to offer an alternative, except for encouraging the media to feature a more diverse range of voices to represent Islam - including writers such as Satrapi and Hamid. As she concludes: 'Maybe art can go where atheism cannot.'
Katha Pollitt's writings (she's a prize-winning poet as well as a regular columnist) are little known in Britain. I came across her name for the first time quite recently, when a collection of her essays was discussed in the New York Review of Books. Reviewer Cathleen Schine describes Pollitt as 'a good old-fashioned feminist and leftist' who is also 'an exquisite observer' of life, love and politics, as well as being a very funny writer - 'a sort of M. Hulot of the feminist left.' The extracts that appear in Schine's review certainly whet the appetite for more.
Footnote
Since writing this I've discovered Katha Pollitt's blog, which links to articles and reviews of her work, including this and also this from the Guardian.
And while Pollitt is critical of the decision to ban Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States, she is clear that 'he is no friend of women's rights'. She adds: 'If Hirsi Ali is too alienated from her former community to speak for it, Tariq Ramadan strikes me as the latest edition of the elder who claims to represent the community but actually represents the interests of fathers, husbands and brothers.'
Still, wonders Pollitt, why do discussions about Islam in the modern world always revolve around people like Ramadan:
I'd rather hear from Marjane Satrapi, whose 'Persepolis,' a brilliant graphic memoir of growing up under the Ayatollah Khomeini, has just been made into a dark, tragicomic and equally brilliant animated film. And from Pakistani-born Mohsin Hamid, author of the hilarious novel 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'.
But Pollitt's main argument in the article is that tirades against religion by atheists are unlikely to cause Muslims or other believers to 'wake up one morning and abandon their ancestral faith':
Even if you are a ferocious Sam Harris-style atheist who thinks religion is completely stupid--the province of shysters and fools--you have to admit it would be quite astonishing if that view persuaded the devout anytime soon....
...if all you can offer people is reasons to quit their religion--which also often means their community, their family, their support system and their identity--you're not going to have many takers. For every brilliant angry teenager you strengthen in doubt, there's a mosque- or churchful of people who'll choose the old-time religion if the only other choice is nothing.
Pollitt comes to the conclusion that it's 'pointless' for non-Muslims to weigh in about Islam: 'Why should Muslims care, any more than a Jew cares what a Hindu thinks about Moses? It's their religion, and they'll figure out what they want to make of it.' She doesn't claim to offer an alternative, except for encouraging the media to feature a more diverse range of voices to represent Islam - including writers such as Satrapi and Hamid. As she concludes: 'Maybe art can go where atheism cannot.'
Katha Pollitt's writings (she's a prize-winning poet as well as a regular columnist) are little known in Britain. I came across her name for the first time quite recently, when a collection of her essays was discussed in the New York Review of Books. Reviewer Cathleen Schine describes Pollitt as 'a good old-fashioned feminist and leftist' who is also 'an exquisite observer' of life, love and politics, as well as being a very funny writer - 'a sort of M. Hulot of the feminist left.' The extracts that appear in Schine's review certainly whet the appetite for more.
Footnote
Since writing this I've discovered Katha Pollitt's blog, which links to articles and reviews of her work, including this and also this from the Guardian.
Iranian activists save rape victim from gallows
After the recent case of the Saudi rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes and a prison term, there's better news from Iran. A young woman who was sold into prostitution at the age of nine, and who had been sentenced to death for incest after her brothers confessed to raping her, was saved from the gallows by the intervention of human rights activists, including Shadi Sadr, a lawyer who was herself imprisoned earlier this year for taking part in human rights demonstrations.
But the verdict in this case should not be taken as an indication that Iran is a less misogynist country than Saudi Arabia. Sadr points out that the Iranian judicial system remains deeply conservative and unfair to women: 'These male judges have not had any training about sexual charges. They all have a chauvinistic point of view and they see the woman as guilty'. And she points out that in many poor Iranian families 'a girl is considered one of the first commodities or properties that can be traded or sold in the eyes of a parent'.
More optimistically, Shadi Sadr believes that constant pressure from human rights campaigners is making Iran's judges more sensitive to public opinion: 'There will be so many protests or so much complaints from the human rights activists that the judges are under pressure not to issue a death sentence.' So, perhaps those Amnesty letter-writing campaigns do have an impact, and change is possible, even in Ahmedinejad's Iran.
But the verdict in this case should not be taken as an indication that Iran is a less misogynist country than Saudi Arabia. Sadr points out that the Iranian judicial system remains deeply conservative and unfair to women: 'These male judges have not had any training about sexual charges. They all have a chauvinistic point of view and they see the woman as guilty'. And she points out that in many poor Iranian families 'a girl is considered one of the first commodities or properties that can be traded or sold in the eyes of a parent'.
More optimistically, Shadi Sadr believes that constant pressure from human rights campaigners is making Iran's judges more sensitive to public opinion: 'There will be so many protests or so much complaints from the human rights activists that the judges are under pressure not to issue a death sentence.' So, perhaps those Amnesty letter-writing campaigns do have an impact, and change is possible, even in Ahmedinejad's Iran.
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
More archiepiscopal antics
Following the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent tidings of woe about western modernity, vicar and regular Guardian commentator Giles Fraser endorses his boss's cultural pessimism, reducing modernity to consumerist materialism in the process and making the sweeping suggestion that religion offers the only alternative to market forces. Fraser argues that following the collapse of Marxism 'the only people offering a genuinely countercultural critique of western modernity are to be found in churches, mosques and synagogues'. Norm disposes of this fallacious argument here. Fraser's article is further evidence of its author's trajectory from thoughtful liberal Christian to tub-thumping anti-secularist.
Meanwhile Fraser's fellow theological pugilist Theo Hobson leaps to Rowan Williams' defence in the row over the Church's attitude to homosexuality. Hobson is responding to the accusation of another archbishop - Desmond Tutu - that Anglicans are 'obsessed' with the issue of gay priests and that Williams has failed to demonstrate that God is 'welcoming'. According to Hobson:
when a liberal cleric attacks Rowan Williams, it is really the worst sort of hypocrisy. When Tutu became a priest, he pledged to uphold the church's teaching, and to respect the authority of the hierarchy. When it became apparent to him that official Anglican teaching was homophobic, he was free to resign. By remaining a priest, he actually became complicit in the homophobia. Instead of honestly confronting his guilt, Tutu wants a scapegoat.
This is strong stuff, especially given the status of semi-sainthood generally ascribed to Tutu. The BBC's trailers for the Radio 4 interview (broadcast last night) in which the South African churchman makes these criticisms have been reverential in the extreme - 'when he speaks, the world listens' kind of thing. No mention of Tutu's hamfisted condemnation of Israeli 'apartheid' or his participation in dubious international conferences. Tutu is right, of course, about the Church and homosexuality, just as he was right about South Africa. But that doesn't mean he's infallible. In fact, he shares with Rowan Williams a naivety about global politics, and particularly about events in the Middle East, that seems endemic among Anglican prelates.
Meanwhile Fraser's fellow theological pugilist Theo Hobson leaps to Rowan Williams' defence in the row over the Church's attitude to homosexuality. Hobson is responding to the accusation of another archbishop - Desmond Tutu - that Anglicans are 'obsessed' with the issue of gay priests and that Williams has failed to demonstrate that God is 'welcoming'. According to Hobson:
when a liberal cleric attacks Rowan Williams, it is really the worst sort of hypocrisy. When Tutu became a priest, he pledged to uphold the church's teaching, and to respect the authority of the hierarchy. When it became apparent to him that official Anglican teaching was homophobic, he was free to resign. By remaining a priest, he actually became complicit in the homophobia. Instead of honestly confronting his guilt, Tutu wants a scapegoat.
This is strong stuff, especially given the status of semi-sainthood generally ascribed to Tutu. The BBC's trailers for the Radio 4 interview (broadcast last night) in which the South African churchman makes these criticisms have been reverential in the extreme - 'when he speaks, the world listens' kind of thing. No mention of Tutu's hamfisted condemnation of Israeli 'apartheid' or his participation in dubious international conferences. Tutu is right, of course, about the Church and homosexuality, just as he was right about South Africa. But that doesn't mean he's infallible. In fact, he shares with Rowan Williams a naivety about global politics, and particularly about events in the Middle East, that seems endemic among Anglican prelates.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Defend adult education: sign the petition
There's another excellent post on liberal adult education and the threats to its continuing existence from the Fat Man here. It's ironic that a political party that arguably owes its existence to the adult education movement of the late 19th and early 20th century has done so much to undermine it since coming to power. First there was the ending of support for 'non-vocational' adult classes, and now we have 'ELQ': the decision to remove public funding for the teaching of students studying for qualifications equivalent to, or lower than, qualifications for which they have previously received an award. This will restrict the opportunities available to mature students who wish to change direction, or make up for missed opportunities, and runs counter to the government's rhetoric about 'upskilling' and 'widening participation'.
The Guardian published a letter the other day, protesting against the move, from the great and the good in higher education. Here's a snippet:
Widespread unintended consequences are likely, particularly in relation to widening participation. Significant numbers of adults will discontinue their lifelong learning because they cannot afford it. Their withdrawal will make large tracts of university continuing education unviable - often in the very institutions criticised for not doing enough to widen participation.
You can sign the petition against the ELQ policy here.
The Guardian published a letter the other day, protesting against the move, from the great and the good in higher education. Here's a snippet:
Widespread unintended consequences are likely, particularly in relation to widening participation. Significant numbers of adults will discontinue their lifelong learning because they cannot afford it. Their withdrawal will make large tracts of university continuing education unviable - often in the very institutions criticised for not doing enough to widen participation.
You can sign the petition against the ELQ policy here.
Sunday, 25 November 2007
The Michael Foot of Anglicanism
We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control.
Who said that? John Pilger perhaps, or Seamus Milne? And what about this:
Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.
Sounds like Madeleine Bunting on a bad day.
In fact, both statements are from an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 'Muslim lifestyle' magazine, Emel, in which he contrasted America's foreign policy with the heyday of the British Empire:
It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.
It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.
Needless to say, the archbishop had little to say about America's role in liberating Kuwait from Saddam, protecting the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, or rescuing Afghanistan from the repressive grip of the Taliban. Nor did he explain how these actions compared unfavourably with Britain's century-long occupation and exploitation of the Indian subcontinent.
The kindest explanation for these remarks is that Rowan Williams is a bookish theologian who has been thrust into a leadership role, in which academic evenhandedness comes across as weakness (witness the gay clergy affair) and an eagerness not to offend translates as political naivety. In other words, he is the Michael Foot of the Anglican church.
Less kindly, the archbishop's disillusionment with 'western modernity', combined with his expressed admiration in the interview for Muslim piety, and the fact that -as the Sunday Times comments tersely - he 'makes only mild criticisms of the Islamic world' - can be seen as yet another example of liberal Christian fascination with (and unconscious envy of?) Islam.
Update
There's more on this from Bob here (thanks for the link), including an excellent demolition job on the Archbish's comparison between US and British 'empires' . He concludes:
The fact is, Williams is not alone. An insanity has gripped Western elite opinion, rendering it unable to see with any proportion, unable to make moral judgements. America, Israel and Blair are magnified into the worst possible monsters; all other crimes are relatavised away; all good things America does are literally invisible and unthinkable for these people.
Who said that? John Pilger perhaps, or Seamus Milne? And what about this:
Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.
Sounds like Madeleine Bunting on a bad day.
In fact, both statements are from an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 'Muslim lifestyle' magazine, Emel, in which he contrasted America's foreign policy with the heyday of the British Empire:
It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.
It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.
Needless to say, the archbishop had little to say about America's role in liberating Kuwait from Saddam, protecting the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, or rescuing Afghanistan from the repressive grip of the Taliban. Nor did he explain how these actions compared unfavourably with Britain's century-long occupation and exploitation of the Indian subcontinent.
The kindest explanation for these remarks is that Rowan Williams is a bookish theologian who has been thrust into a leadership role, in which academic evenhandedness comes across as weakness (witness the gay clergy affair) and an eagerness not to offend translates as political naivety. In other words, he is the Michael Foot of the Anglican church.
Less kindly, the archbishop's disillusionment with 'western modernity', combined with his expressed admiration in the interview for Muslim piety, and the fact that -as the Sunday Times comments tersely - he 'makes only mild criticisms of the Islamic world' - can be seen as yet another example of liberal Christian fascination with (and unconscious envy of?) Islam.
Update
There's more on this from Bob here (thanks for the link), including an excellent demolition job on the Archbish's comparison between US and British 'empires' . He concludes:
The fact is, Williams is not alone. An insanity has gripped Western elite opinion, rendering it unable to see with any proportion, unable to make moral judgements. America, Israel and Blair are magnified into the worst possible monsters; all other crimes are relatavised away; all good things America does are literally invisible and unthinkable for these people.
Two excellent music documentaries from BBC4
BBC4 has screened two excellent music documentaries in the past week or so. First we were treated to a retrospective exploration of the life and work of Ella Fitzgerald, to mark the 9oth anniversary of her birth. The programme was illuminating about Ella's early life - including new information about her early experiences as a street child and reform school inmate, before success in a singing competition dramatically changed her fortunes. There was some fascinating archive footage of Harlem in the 20s and 30s. As someone who came to jazz fairly late in life (brought up on a diet of rock and pop in the 60s and 70s), I've been slow to appreciate Fitzgerald's genius, initially preferring Billie Holliday's languid and tortured voice to Ella's more mellifluous sound, which can easily be mistaken for superficial smoothness. One of the contributors to the documentary claimed Ella had the best jazz voice ever, and on the evidence of the clips shown here, he may well be right. The programme sent me back to the recordings, and especially the great 'songbook' albums recorded with Norman Granz, with renewed enthusiasm.
Last Friday saw the first in a three-part series, Brasil, Brasil, tracing the history of the country's musical culture. The first instalment was good at demonstrating the mixed African and European roots of samba, and again there was some excellent archive material - this time of Rio and Sao Paulo in the early years of the last century. The programme took us up to the arrival of bossa nova in the early 1960s and included great clips of Jobim, Gilberto, Stan Getz et al. The series is shaping up to be as good as last year's South Bank documentary about current Brazilian star Seu Jorge. Can't wait for next week's instalment.
Last Friday saw the first in a three-part series, Brasil, Brasil, tracing the history of the country's musical culture. The first instalment was good at demonstrating the mixed African and European roots of samba, and again there was some excellent archive material - this time of Rio and Sao Paulo in the early years of the last century. The programme took us up to the arrival of bossa nova in the early 1960s and included great clips of Jobim, Gilberto, Stan Getz et al. The series is shaping up to be as good as last year's South Bank documentary about current Brazilian star Seu Jorge. Can't wait for next week's instalment.
Friday, 23 November 2007
Harry Potter: enemy of God
Further to this post about Harry Potter and the literalism of the fundamentalist mind: here's a snippet from the newly-released documentary Jesus Camp, about an evangelical Christian summer camp for kids in North Dakota. This is pastor Becky Fischer whipping up her young flock:
Becky Fischer: And while I'm on the subject, let me say something about Harry Potter. Warlocks are the enemies of God! And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they're an enemy of God and had it been in the Old Testament Harry Potter would have been put to death!
Crowd: Amen!
Becky Fischer: You don't make heroes out of warlocks!
To which there's no better riposte than Mark Kermode's, in his review of the film on Radio 5 Live this afternoon: 'If this had been the Old Testament Harry Potter wouldn't have been put to death: because he's a fictional character!' (or words to that effect)
Becky Fischer: And while I'm on the subject, let me say something about Harry Potter. Warlocks are the enemies of God! And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they're an enemy of God and had it been in the Old Testament Harry Potter would have been put to death!
Crowd: Amen!
Becky Fischer: You don't make heroes out of warlocks!
To which there's no better riposte than Mark Kermode's, in his review of the film on Radio 5 Live this afternoon: 'If this had been the Old Testament Harry Potter wouldn't have been put to death: because he's a fictional character!' (or words to that effect)
An offence and an anachronism
Christian fundamentalist activist Stephen Green wants the BBC prosecuted over its 2005 screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera. The charge? Blasphemy. I wonder how the particular target of his wrath - the corporation's director general Mark Thompson, who was last year named as one of Britain's top 100 lay Catholics - will feel about that.
The human rights group Liberty argues that the blasphemy law violates the European Convention on Human Rights. According to its legal officer Anna Fairclough: 'These blasphemy laws should be shelved in dusty archives, not used as a tool to bring mischievous prosecutions against the arts.'
Nice to see the Christian thinktank Ekklesia agreeing. In the words of its co-director Simon Barrow:
Human rights advocates, including people of faith, have quite rightly campaigned against blasphemy laws in Pakistan and other countries, and having one on the statute in the UK is both an offence and an anachronism.
Privileging one religion above other views is indefensible in a democracy, and for Christians there is the added irony that Christ was himself arraigned on a charge of blasphemy. Using the law to attack opinions about belief is to misuse it, and suggesting that God needs protection against free speech makes no theological sense at all.
The Christian message is about the power of self- giving love, not the love of one's own power. This is why it is wrong religiously as well as legally and democratically.
...which is rather similar to what I was trying to say here (scroll down to point no.6).
The human rights group Liberty argues that the blasphemy law violates the European Convention on Human Rights. According to its legal officer Anna Fairclough: 'These blasphemy laws should be shelved in dusty archives, not used as a tool to bring mischievous prosecutions against the arts.'
Nice to see the Christian thinktank Ekklesia agreeing. In the words of its co-director Simon Barrow:
Human rights advocates, including people of faith, have quite rightly campaigned against blasphemy laws in Pakistan and other countries, and having one on the statute in the UK is both an offence and an anachronism.
Privileging one religion above other views is indefensible in a democracy, and for Christians there is the added irony that Christ was himself arraigned on a charge of blasphemy. Using the law to attack opinions about belief is to misuse it, and suggesting that God needs protection against free speech makes no theological sense at all.
The Christian message is about the power of self- giving love, not the love of one's own power. This is why it is wrong religiously as well as legally and democratically.
...which is rather similar to what I was trying to say here (scroll down to point no.6).
Thursday, 22 November 2007
A transatlantic greeting
Criticism of Islam is not racist
I've been wanting to write about Ronan Bennett's extraordinary savaging of Martin Amis in Monday's Guardian, but I haven't had the time or energy for the detailed fisking it demands. However, here are a few thoughts. First, Amis' original comments were unwise and open to misinterpretation, but they were not racist. Second, one wonders why Bennett and the Guardian have sought to revive this debate at such length and with such ferocity weeks after the dust had settled on it. Thirdly, Bennett's claim that 'we' have let Amis get away with racism is overblown, given the novelist's denunciation in the introduction to Terry Eagleton's book, not to mention the mostly hostile media coverage at the time. Fourthly, Bennett's claim that hostility to a particular religion is necessarily racist is a threat to freedom of expression and should be fought tooth and nail.
Anyway, there's no need for a line-by-line response to Bennett's piece, as more able critics have since weighed in. A resounding riposte by Christopher Hitchens appeared in Wednesday's Guardian, while yesterday's letters page included this defence of Amis by fellow-novelist Ian McEwan, which is so good I make no excuse for reproducing it in full:
A religion is above all else a thought system. Since Islam, like Christianity, has many adherents and makes highly specific, extravagant and supernatural claims about the world, it should expect, in an open society, to be challenged. Ronan Bennett insists that because religion is "also about identity, background and culture, and Muslims are overwhelmingly non-white", to criticise this thought system is "Islamophobic", and therefore racist. This is an old ploy, familiar to the extremes of the political left and right, of attempting to close down debate. Seventy years ago, a critic of the Soviet Union could expect to be called a fascist. Something of the same spirit prevails today in relation to Islam, especially in the pages of the Guardian.
Much of what passes for moral guidance in the Bible, especially, but not only, in the Old Testament, appears to me to be morally repugnant. I like to feel free to say so. Similarly, there are firmly held beliefs in "mainstream" Islam that are questionable. One instance is apostasy. The orthodox view appears to be that men and women who turn away from their religion are guilty of a serious thought crime. Recommended punishments range from ostracism to death. There are numerous websites now on which courageous ex-Muslims across the Middle East, Pakistan and Bangladesh correspond with each other in secret. The dominant emotion is fear of being discovered. Such a dispensation appears to me to be an offence to rational inquiry and free thinking. To say so, Mr Bennett, is not to be a racist, but to exercise the gift of consciousness and the privilege of liberty.
I've known Martin Amis for almost 35 years, and he's no racist. When you ask a novelist or a poet his or her view of the world, you do not get a politician's or a sociologist's answer. You may not like what you hear, but reasoned debate is the appropriate response, not vilification by means of overheated writing, an ugly defamatory graphic, and inflated, hysterical pull-quotes. I wonder whether Ronan Bennett would care to expend so much of his rhetorical might excoriating at similar length the thugs who murdered - in the name of their religion - their fellow citizens in London in 2005.
Anyway, there's no need for a line-by-line response to Bennett's piece, as more able critics have since weighed in. A resounding riposte by Christopher Hitchens appeared in Wednesday's Guardian, while yesterday's letters page included this defence of Amis by fellow-novelist Ian McEwan, which is so good I make no excuse for reproducing it in full:
A religion is above all else a thought system. Since Islam, like Christianity, has many adherents and makes highly specific, extravagant and supernatural claims about the world, it should expect, in an open society, to be challenged. Ronan Bennett insists that because religion is "also about identity, background and culture, and Muslims are overwhelmingly non-white", to criticise this thought system is "Islamophobic", and therefore racist. This is an old ploy, familiar to the extremes of the political left and right, of attempting to close down debate. Seventy years ago, a critic of the Soviet Union could expect to be called a fascist. Something of the same spirit prevails today in relation to Islam, especially in the pages of the Guardian.
Much of what passes for moral guidance in the Bible, especially, but not only, in the Old Testament, appears to me to be morally repugnant. I like to feel free to say so. Similarly, there are firmly held beliefs in "mainstream" Islam that are questionable. One instance is apostasy. The orthodox view appears to be that men and women who turn away from their religion are guilty of a serious thought crime. Recommended punishments range from ostracism to death. There are numerous websites now on which courageous ex-Muslims across the Middle East, Pakistan and Bangladesh correspond with each other in secret. The dominant emotion is fear of being discovered. Such a dispensation appears to me to be an offence to rational inquiry and free thinking. To say so, Mr Bennett, is not to be a racist, but to exercise the gift of consciousness and the privilege of liberty.
I've known Martin Amis for almost 35 years, and he's no racist. When you ask a novelist or a poet his or her view of the world, you do not get a politician's or a sociologist's answer. You may not like what you hear, but reasoned debate is the appropriate response, not vilification by means of overheated writing, an ugly defamatory graphic, and inflated, hysterical pull-quotes. I wonder whether Ronan Bennett would care to expend so much of his rhetorical might excoriating at similar length the thugs who murdered - in the name of their religion - their fellow citizens in London in 2005.
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Light versus dark blue
Coincidentally we found ourselves in Oxford last weekend and Cambridge the weekend before. Both cities have strong personal associations: I was a student at Cambridge in the mid-70s and worked in community education on the outskirts of Oxford in the mid-80s.
We were in Cambridge to see Peter Gill's production of The Importance of Being Earnest (which transfers to London in January), starring Penelope Keith as Lady Bracknell, and with a supporting cast that included Rebecca Night who recently achieved fame as the star of the BBC's Fanny Hill. It was an enjoyable production, though you could almost hear the disappointment in the audience at Penelope Keith's low key interpretation of the famous 'handbag' speech. Our reason for visiting Oxford was more mundane: to do a spot of early Christmas shopping.
The two visits, so close together, revived our old debate about which city we like best. I used to prefer Cambridge's small-town, semi-rural feel, by comparison with the more urban, semi-industrial atmosphere of Oxford. And I've always liked the way you can walk freely through the colleges in Cambridge, whereas Oxford's tend to be hidden away behind high walls and 'keep out' signs. But this longstanding preference was challenged when we lived and worked in Oxford in the '80s. We grew attached to the city and its surroundings: there's a certain magic when you drive through the 'canyon' on the M40 from London and see Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds spread out before you, a first glimpse of the West Country.
In fact, the two cities now feel remarkably similar, with their identical Borders bookstores and anonymous new shopping centres. Interestingly, on both visits we found ourselves eating in restaurants located in converted public institutions. In Cambridge we had lunch at Browns, in the old Addenbrookes Hospital building, and in Oxford we ate in Carluccios, one of a number of new eateries situated in the old prison: the Malmaison hotel, in the same complex, has even retained the bars on the windows.
We were in Cambridge to see Peter Gill's production of The Importance of Being Earnest (which transfers to London in January), starring Penelope Keith as Lady Bracknell, and with a supporting cast that included Rebecca Night who recently achieved fame as the star of the BBC's Fanny Hill. It was an enjoyable production, though you could almost hear the disappointment in the audience at Penelope Keith's low key interpretation of the famous 'handbag' speech. Our reason for visiting Oxford was more mundane: to do a spot of early Christmas shopping.
The two visits, so close together, revived our old debate about which city we like best. I used to prefer Cambridge's small-town, semi-rural feel, by comparison with the more urban, semi-industrial atmosphere of Oxford. And I've always liked the way you can walk freely through the colleges in Cambridge, whereas Oxford's tend to be hidden away behind high walls and 'keep out' signs. But this longstanding preference was challenged when we lived and worked in Oxford in the '80s. We grew attached to the city and its surroundings: there's a certain magic when you drive through the 'canyon' on the M40 from London and see Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds spread out before you, a first glimpse of the West Country.
In fact, the two cities now feel remarkably similar, with their identical Borders bookstores and anonymous new shopping centres. Interestingly, on both visits we found ourselves eating in restaurants located in converted public institutions. In Cambridge we had lunch at Browns, in the old Addenbrookes Hospital building, and in Oxford we ate in Carluccios, one of a number of new eateries situated in the old prison: the Malmaison hotel, in the same complex, has even retained the bars on the windows.
Monday, 19 November 2007
Building bridges between believers and non-believers
This makes a refreshing change: a religious leader seeking dialogue with the secular world, rather than picking a fight with it. In a recent speech to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto in Italy argued that 'The non-believer is not outside believers, but within them' and suggested that 'dialogue between believers and non-believers can be understood as an exercise of reciprocal respect and a witness to religious freedom.'
The Archbishop added:
In this age of ours that lacks great hopes, perhaps more than ever the real difference is not between believers and non-believers, but between those who think and those who do not, between, on the one hand, men and women who have the courage to face life’s pain, to go on trying to believe, hope and love, and, on the other, men and women who have given up the struggle, who seem to content themselves with the penultimate horizon, and no longer know how to burn with desire and yearning at the thought of our last horizon and last home.
(via The Tablet)
The Archbishop added:
In this age of ours that lacks great hopes, perhaps more than ever the real difference is not between believers and non-believers, but between those who think and those who do not, between, on the one hand, men and women who have the courage to face life’s pain, to go on trying to believe, hope and love, and, on the other, men and women who have given up the struggle, who seem to content themselves with the penultimate horizon, and no longer know how to burn with desire and yearning at the thought of our last horizon and last home.
(via The Tablet)
Friday, 16 November 2007
Saudi justice: punish the victim
200 lashes and a six-month prison term. That's the penalty for rape in Saudi Arabia...for the victim. According to a BBC report:
An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped. The victim was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack. When she appealed, the judges said she had been attempting to use the media to influence them.
The 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in the eastern province 18 months ago. Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years. The rapists have since had their prison terms doubled, but the sentences are still low considering that they could have faced the death penalty.
Last month Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells called for Britain and Saudi Arabia to work more closely together on a basis of their 'shared values'.
An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped. The victim was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack. When she appealed, the judges said she had been attempting to use the media to influence them.
The 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in the eastern province 18 months ago. Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years. The rapists have since had their prison terms doubled, but the sentences are still low considering that they could have faced the death penalty.
Last month Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells called for Britain and Saudi Arabia to work more closely together on a basis of their 'shared values'.
Thursday, 15 November 2007
Debating the meaning of secularism
There's been a bit of a spat about religion and secularism over at the Thinking Anglicans website, sparked off by an article in the Church Times by vicar and regular Guardian columnist Giles Fraser (via Ekklesia). The latter takes the National Secular Society to task for the 'trickery' with which it employs the word 'secular', sometimes to mean the separation of church and state (with which Fraser agrees) but at other times using it as 'little more than a synonym for virulent anti-religious prejudice'.
In an early post on this blog, I criticised the NSS's tendency to blur the distinction between secularism and atheism, so I have some sympathy for Fraser's argument. But I'm disheartened by the animus which this liberal Christian commentator displays towards secularists, as in the sneering language of his opening sentence:
The Thought Police at the National Secular Society (NSS ) have held their latest annual gathering, patting themselves on the back for another bumper year of God-bothering.
Thought Police? Isn't that a bit strong when describing a minority pressure group, committed to freedom of belief, and having very little political influence? Fraser is deeply sceptical of the NSS's claim that it seeks 'a society in which all are free to practise their faith, change it or not have one, according to their conscience'. But he offers no evidence to back up his argument that the organisation's real aim is the 'eradication' of religion.
You can find some less heated debate about religion and secularism at two useful websites. The Religion and Secularism Network is based at Cambridge University, while The Immanent Frame is a blog on secularism, religion and the public sphere supported by the US Social Science Research Council, and devoted almost exclusively to discussion of Charles Taylor's new book A Secular Age.
In an early post on this blog, I criticised the NSS's tendency to blur the distinction between secularism and atheism, so I have some sympathy for Fraser's argument. But I'm disheartened by the animus which this liberal Christian commentator displays towards secularists, as in the sneering language of his opening sentence:
The Thought Police at the National Secular Society (NSS ) have held their latest annual gathering, patting themselves on the back for another bumper year of God-bothering.
Thought Police? Isn't that a bit strong when describing a minority pressure group, committed to freedom of belief, and having very little political influence? Fraser is deeply sceptical of the NSS's claim that it seeks 'a society in which all are free to practise their faith, change it or not have one, according to their conscience'. But he offers no evidence to back up his argument that the organisation's real aim is the 'eradication' of religion.
You can find some less heated debate about religion and secularism at two useful websites. The Religion and Secularism Network is based at Cambridge University, while The Immanent Frame is a blog on secularism, religion and the public sphere supported by the US Social Science Research Council, and devoted almost exclusively to discussion of Charles Taylor's new book A Secular Age.
'They want to take us back 14 centuries'
Here's 'Um Zeinab', a mother of six, describing what life is like for women in Basra:
I was heading to work in the morning. I used to stop at the main road to wait for the bus. As normal I was wearing a shirt and skirt and some make-up.
Suddenly, a motorbike came heading towards me at top speed. Maybe it wasn't my day to die because the bike rolled over and the driver fell off.
He had a beard and a black robe worn by the militia. I was so shaken. He didn't say anything but I could feel his anger. After that I started to wear hijab and light make-up or even no make-up.
My daughter, who is at the university, told me that some men are watching how women dress and ask them: 'Why are you wearing a skirt and a shirt?' One of her friends who doesn't wear a hijab received a letter threatening her.
Two days ago two women were killed in al-Makal district. All these incidents are recorded as 'killers unknown' and the bodies remain unidentified, because no-one dares collect them.
People said the women had received a warning beforehand, and that the gunmen then came to their houses and killed them - one of them in front of her kids.
I blame dark, fundamentalist extremists for these incidents. I don't know what's happened - have we become savages? I don't know what's happened to people's way of thinking, they've changed overnight. I remember back in the 1970s our teachers used to wear miniskirts and have the latest hair-dos. These are terrible setbacks. We don't know what they want, or why they want to take us back 14 centuries.
This personal account forms part of a BBC World Service report on what the local police chief calls the 'terrible repression against women in Basra' at the hands of Islamic militias. Other examples have included a woman killed in her home in front of her six year old son, who was rumoured to have been conceived in an adulterous relationship, and a university student shot in the legs for not wearing a hijab. Apparently 42 women were killed between July and September.
The police chief, Major-General Khalaf, who deserves praise for his own bravery in speaking out, said that local police were too scared to investigate the killings and relatives reluctant to report the crimes for fear of a scandal.
Will the Shia religious parties who dominate the Iraqi government condemn the actions of their co-religionists in the south of the country?
I was heading to work in the morning. I used to stop at the main road to wait for the bus. As normal I was wearing a shirt and skirt and some make-up.
Suddenly, a motorbike came heading towards me at top speed. Maybe it wasn't my day to die because the bike rolled over and the driver fell off.
He had a beard and a black robe worn by the militia. I was so shaken. He didn't say anything but I could feel his anger. After that I started to wear hijab and light make-up or even no make-up.
My daughter, who is at the university, told me that some men are watching how women dress and ask them: 'Why are you wearing a skirt and a shirt?' One of her friends who doesn't wear a hijab received a letter threatening her.
Two days ago two women were killed in al-Makal district. All these incidents are recorded as 'killers unknown' and the bodies remain unidentified, because no-one dares collect them.
People said the women had received a warning beforehand, and that the gunmen then came to their houses and killed them - one of them in front of her kids.
I blame dark, fundamentalist extremists for these incidents. I don't know what's happened - have we become savages? I don't know what's happened to people's way of thinking, they've changed overnight. I remember back in the 1970s our teachers used to wear miniskirts and have the latest hair-dos. These are terrible setbacks. We don't know what they want, or why they want to take us back 14 centuries.
This personal account forms part of a BBC World Service report on what the local police chief calls the 'terrible repression against women in Basra' at the hands of Islamic militias. Other examples have included a woman killed in her home in front of her six year old son, who was rumoured to have been conceived in an adulterous relationship, and a university student shot in the legs for not wearing a hijab. Apparently 42 women were killed between July and September.
The police chief, Major-General Khalaf, who deserves praise for his own bravery in speaking out, said that local police were too scared to investigate the killings and relatives reluctant to report the crimes for fear of a scandal.
Will the Shia religious parties who dominate the Iraqi government condemn the actions of their co-religionists in the south of the country?
Monday, 12 November 2007
Potter's end
I've just finished reading the final book in the Harry Potter series. Yes, I know, it's a bit sad, a grown man reading books meant for children, etc . But before you conclude that this is a sorry case of arrested development, I'd like to remind you that I do read other stuff, and I make no apologies for reading those children's books (Philip Pullman's trilogy would be another example) that have an appeal far beyond their intended youthful audience. We read the first Potter book with our children when they were at junior school. By the time the later instalments appeared they were teenagers and had put away such childish things, but leaving us with a lingering need to see how the story ended.
To begin with I found The Deathly Hallows far less appealing than the earlier books. It's much darker, for one thing, and its murderous opening sequence is more reminiscent of adult horror fiction than children's fantasy. There is little relief in the chapters that follow, as Rowling departs from the familiar and comforting framework of the Hogwarts school year and follows Harry and friends as they pursue their dogged quest to defeat Voldemort. There's an excessive emphasis on the 'technology' of magic, too, in this book, which will alienate less-than-fanatical readers who can't tell their Hallows from their Horcruxes and won't remember every detail and plot-twist from previous volumes. And just as the first book was criticised for taking too much time in setting up the context, so this final volume can be taken to task for devoting page after page to authorial tying up of loose ends.
None of which detracts from the beautifully-constructed final denouement (spoilers follow), which sees Harry sacrifice himself Christ-like to save the wizarding world from the satanic Voldemort, only to experience resurrection and a restoration of the old order. There's also a postscript which gives us a glimpse of an adult Harry seeing his children off on the train to Hogwarts. The book, and the series, ends with the brief sentence: 'All was well'. That this recalls Dame Julian of Norwich's 'All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well' is hardly accidental. This concluding book is replete with unmistakably Christian references, something Rowling herself has acknowledged in recent interviews.
All of which is one in the eye for those fundamentalist Christians who have disapproved of Harry Potter from the outset: their literal belief in the devil and the occult precluding any positive depiction of magic. Their tin ear for metaphor and allegory appears to be shared by Simon Jenkins, who recently interpreted the popularity of Potter as a sign of renascent 'pagan fundamentalism'. Jenkins' mention of the enduring appeal of The Lord of the Rings as additional evidence in this regard must have had the ultra-Catholic Tolkien spinning in his grave.
Surely it can't be long before Rowling's heptology (?) is accepted in the canon of modern Christian literature, alongside Tolkien's epic and C.S.Lewis' Narnia books? For those with an interest in such things, it's curious, and a little depressing, that it's hard to name a recent major work of fiction with an explicitly Christian theme that isn't written primarily for children, or set in a fantastic alternative world. Question: Is convincing realist fiction with a religious meaning possible in a secular age?
Finally, how's this for a succinct summary of the Potter series:
Geeky wizard goes to school. Has adventures. Dies. (OK maybe).
To begin with I found The Deathly Hallows far less appealing than the earlier books. It's much darker, for one thing, and its murderous opening sequence is more reminiscent of adult horror fiction than children's fantasy. There is little relief in the chapters that follow, as Rowling departs from the familiar and comforting framework of the Hogwarts school year and follows Harry and friends as they pursue their dogged quest to defeat Voldemort. There's an excessive emphasis on the 'technology' of magic, too, in this book, which will alienate less-than-fanatical readers who can't tell their Hallows from their Horcruxes and won't remember every detail and plot-twist from previous volumes. And just as the first book was criticised for taking too much time in setting up the context, so this final volume can be taken to task for devoting page after page to authorial tying up of loose ends.
None of which detracts from the beautifully-constructed final denouement (spoilers follow), which sees Harry sacrifice himself Christ-like to save the wizarding world from the satanic Voldemort, only to experience resurrection and a restoration of the old order. There's also a postscript which gives us a glimpse of an adult Harry seeing his children off on the train to Hogwarts. The book, and the series, ends with the brief sentence: 'All was well'. That this recalls Dame Julian of Norwich's 'All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well' is hardly accidental. This concluding book is replete with unmistakably Christian references, something Rowling herself has acknowledged in recent interviews.
All of which is one in the eye for those fundamentalist Christians who have disapproved of Harry Potter from the outset: their literal belief in the devil and the occult precluding any positive depiction of magic. Their tin ear for metaphor and allegory appears to be shared by Simon Jenkins, who recently interpreted the popularity of Potter as a sign of renascent 'pagan fundamentalism'. Jenkins' mention of the enduring appeal of The Lord of the Rings as additional evidence in this regard must have had the ultra-Catholic Tolkien spinning in his grave.
Surely it can't be long before Rowling's heptology (?) is accepted in the canon of modern Christian literature, alongside Tolkien's epic and C.S.Lewis' Narnia books? For those with an interest in such things, it's curious, and a little depressing, that it's hard to name a recent major work of fiction with an explicitly Christian theme that isn't written primarily for children, or set in a fantastic alternative world. Question: Is convincing realist fiction with a religious meaning possible in a secular age?
Finally, how's this for a succinct summary of the Potter series:
Geeky wizard goes to school. Has adventures. Dies. (OK maybe).
Friday, 9 November 2007
Who are the real totalitarians?
'Far from fading away, religion is on the ascendancy.' So claims Soumaya Gannoushi, citing a range of evidence to support her argument that belief in God is far from dead in contemporary Europe. Like other contemporary 'faith-ists', Gannoushi interprets the increasing interest in religion as an inevitable response to the 'meaningless' of modern society:
It is ironic that the further modern humans seem to move from religion and its many constraints, the more they thirst for it; the greater their sense of emptiness, and meaninglessness, the deeper their need for spiritual fullness and a moral horizon. In the certainty and coherence of religious belief, they find a way out of the wasteland of nihilism and the ruins of meaning.
Like many religious believers, Gannoushi is unable to imagine that life might have any meaning outside the 'certainty and coherence' of faith:
The truth is that while a few individuals, intellectuals and academics might co-exist with nihilism and even celebrate it as affirmative and Dionysian, the majority are unable to bear its icy grip on their souls or crushing burden on their lives.
This opposition between religion and nihilism is, of course, patently false and betrays a crass inability to understand the myriad ways in which the majority of people, who are not formally religious, find meaning in their lives.
Gannoushi characterises the recent revival of interest in religion as generally 'calm' but points to two 'aggressive' exceptions: 'The first is a Christian right rising in many parts of Europe - such as Switzerland and France - which across the Atlantic finds its most sinister expression in the evangelicals allied to neoconservatives'. And the second?
The other is no less totalitarian in its claims, but is secular rather than religious. It preaches absolute belief in science, reason and progress and calls for the eradication of religion and its "evil superstitions". Its proponents, who in Britain include Richard Dawkins and Anthony Grayling, are the new Jacobins, who are every bit as dogmatic and militant as their 18th century predecessors.
Yes, it's our old friend 'Enlightenment fundamentalism' aka 'aggressive secularism' aka 'militant atheism'. And it's the familiar rhetorical strategy of creating a false moral equivalence, to the effect that these new secularists and atheists are just as extreme as the religious fundamentalists they oppose. Except they're not, of course, despite Gannoushi's irrelevant reference to the excesses of the French Revolution. It's religious fundamentalists, rather than the likes of Dawkins and Grayling, who are 'totalitarian' in their calls for the expression of views hostile to their own to be proscribed, and who press for the 'eradication' of heretics and apostates.
Some readers will be astonished that Gannoushi does not mention, as one of her 'more aggressive trends', the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It's the elephant in the room in her discussion of renascent faith, and it's the missing link explaining the renewed efforts of secularists to defend pluralism and freedom of expression against the aggressive claims of extreme religionists.
It is ironic that the further modern humans seem to move from religion and its many constraints, the more they thirst for it; the greater their sense of emptiness, and meaninglessness, the deeper their need for spiritual fullness and a moral horizon. In the certainty and coherence of religious belief, they find a way out of the wasteland of nihilism and the ruins of meaning.
Like many religious believers, Gannoushi is unable to imagine that life might have any meaning outside the 'certainty and coherence' of faith:
The truth is that while a few individuals, intellectuals and academics might co-exist with nihilism and even celebrate it as affirmative and Dionysian, the majority are unable to bear its icy grip on their souls or crushing burden on their lives.
This opposition between religion and nihilism is, of course, patently false and betrays a crass inability to understand the myriad ways in which the majority of people, who are not formally religious, find meaning in their lives.
Gannoushi characterises the recent revival of interest in religion as generally 'calm' but points to two 'aggressive' exceptions: 'The first is a Christian right rising in many parts of Europe - such as Switzerland and France - which across the Atlantic finds its most sinister expression in the evangelicals allied to neoconservatives'. And the second?
The other is no less totalitarian in its claims, but is secular rather than religious. It preaches absolute belief in science, reason and progress and calls for the eradication of religion and its "evil superstitions". Its proponents, who in Britain include Richard Dawkins and Anthony Grayling, are the new Jacobins, who are every bit as dogmatic and militant as their 18th century predecessors.
Yes, it's our old friend 'Enlightenment fundamentalism' aka 'aggressive secularism' aka 'militant atheism'. And it's the familiar rhetorical strategy of creating a false moral equivalence, to the effect that these new secularists and atheists are just as extreme as the religious fundamentalists they oppose. Except they're not, of course, despite Gannoushi's irrelevant reference to the excesses of the French Revolution. It's religious fundamentalists, rather than the likes of Dawkins and Grayling, who are 'totalitarian' in their calls for the expression of views hostile to their own to be proscribed, and who press for the 'eradication' of heretics and apostates.
Some readers will be astonished that Gannoushi does not mention, as one of her 'more aggressive trends', the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It's the elephant in the room in her discussion of renascent faith, and it's the missing link explaining the renewed efforts of secularists to defend pluralism and freedom of expression against the aggressive claims of extreme religionists.
Monday, 5 November 2007
Happy holidays?
Now here's a bad idea. The Institute of Public Policy Research is suggesting that the UK, as a nation, should celebrate other religious festivals besides Christian ones:
If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas... then our public organisations should mark other major religious festivals too.
It's easy to identify the flaws in this well-meaning but misguided proposal. Firstly, how do you decide which 'other' festivals to mark, and which not to? Are we just talking about the festivals celebrated by the 'big three' monotheisms - Judaism, Islam and Christianity - or should the list include Hinduism and Sikhism (and if not, on what grounds)? What about Buddhist, or Mormon, or pagan festivals? What exactly counts as 'major'? Is the criterion bums on seats, or some other undisclosed measure of major-ness? Secondly, what if the festivals of a particular faith celebrate something malign, or offensive to those of other faiths? Should public organisations in Northern Ireland mark the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, which is dear to the hearts of Protestants, even at the risk of giving offence to Catholics? Who is to adjudicate on which are 'good' faiths/festivals, and which are 'bad'?
The IPPR's proposal is the latest manifestation of what we might call 'multifaithism'. An early example was Prince Charles' declaration that as king he wanted to be 'defender of faiths' rather than 'defender of the Faith'. More worrying were recent attempts to broaden the blasphemy law to cover other religions besides Christianity.
Multifaithism (which has some similarities with the 'faithism' that I described here) is based on a number of unexamined assumptions. One is that there is an element of truth in all religions and that, beneath their superficial differences, different faiths are all really saying the same thing. Another is that religion is generally a benign and uplifting phenomenon, related to which is the notion that having a faith is better than not having one.
If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas... then our public organisations should mark other major religious festivals too.
It's easy to identify the flaws in this well-meaning but misguided proposal. Firstly, how do you decide which 'other' festivals to mark, and which not to? Are we just talking about the festivals celebrated by the 'big three' monotheisms - Judaism, Islam and Christianity - or should the list include Hinduism and Sikhism (and if not, on what grounds)? What about Buddhist, or Mormon, or pagan festivals? What exactly counts as 'major'? Is the criterion bums on seats, or some other undisclosed measure of major-ness? Secondly, what if the festivals of a particular faith celebrate something malign, or offensive to those of other faiths? Should public organisations in Northern Ireland mark the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, which is dear to the hearts of Protestants, even at the risk of giving offence to Catholics? Who is to adjudicate on which are 'good' faiths/festivals, and which are 'bad'?
The IPPR's proposal is the latest manifestation of what we might call 'multifaithism'. An early example was Prince Charles' declaration that as king he wanted to be 'defender of faiths' rather than 'defender of the Faith'. More worrying were recent attempts to broaden the blasphemy law to cover other religions besides Christianity.
Multifaithism (which has some similarities with the 'faithism' that I described here) is based on a number of unexamined assumptions. One is that there is an element of truth in all religions and that, beneath their superficial differences, different faiths are all really saying the same thing. Another is that religion is generally a benign and uplifting phenomenon, related to which is the notion that having a faith is better than not having one.
It's a curiously British phenomenon, and one in which 'other faiths' are seen through the misleading prism of liberal Anglicanism. Faiths such as Islam and Hinduism are assumed to be basically benign, with a 'true' core which is about peace and love and which has been corrupted by the false prophets of extremism and fundamentalism. Real differences between faiths are glossed over in a search for a common front between faiths against the encroachment of secularism. The irony is that the 'faith' of the majority of modern Britons - agnosticism - is excluded from the picture.
This is not to deny that there are real issues to be faced as British society becomes more fragmented in its beliefs, while still retaining a sentimental attachment to age-old Christian festivals. But the attachment is precisely that: sentiment, rather than positive belief. It's nonsense to pretend that the majority of Britons mark Christmas or Easter as an expression of Christian belief, rather than as an opportunity for a holiday. To suggest that we should all mark Eid or Diwali or Passover in the same agnostic, off-hand way is surely to undermine the special religious meaning that these festivals have for their respective believers. The IPPR's suggestion smacks of a certain paternalism towards other faiths, a desire to colonise them for wider public consumption. The secular alternative, which is to tolerate a multiplicity of faiths in the private sphere, but to keep the public sphere free of association with any particular brand of belief, is surely the better path.
There's more on this here.
Friday, 2 November 2007
Have you been perfected?
From the people who brought you Obama Girl, Giuliani Girl and 'Hot4Hill', comes this response to Ann Coulter's recent claim that Jews need to be 'perfected' by converting to Christianity:
(Via Englishman in New York)
(Via Englishman in New York)
Mass beatification revives passions of Spanish Civil War
The pope's beatification of nearly 500 Catholics, most of them priests, monks and nuns, killed by Republican militias during the Spanish Civil War, will dismay liberal Christians, mystify non-Catholics, and anger many on the secular left.
The response to the decision has demonstrated that the passions ignited by events in Spain in the 1930s are still very much alive, and it's likely that the pope's actions will entrench rather than heal the divisions in Spanish society that are a legacy of that period. Indeed, it has been argued that this industrial-scale beatification is a calculated political tactic by the Vatican, in its continuing battle with Spain's socialist government over issues such as same-sex marriage, divorce and control of education.
The comments on this item on the BBC news website - many of them by descendants of those who were involved on both sides in the civil war - are among the most impassioned and articulate I've read for some time. They're recommended reading for anyone who doubts the cruelty of Franco's regime or the Church's complicity in it. Here's one from William Garcia:
When the fascist army marched into my grandmother's home village in Andalucia, in the very first weeks of the war, it was the Catholic priest who betrayed local people to the invaders. He gave them a list of everyone who lived in the village, so they knew if anyone had fled or gone into hiding. He told them who the 'troublemakers' were, who the leftists were, the intellectuals, the trade unionists, the people who didn't go to church regularly and those who had not baptised their children. It did not take long for the fascists to round all of these people up, along with anyone they didn't like the look of and men of fighting age, and shoot them all en masse in the village square.
For anyone who thinks this was an isolated incident, I'd recommend reading Paul Preston's magnificent but chilling biography of Franco.
For some on the Left, this complicity with fascist repression explains, even if it doesn't quite justify, the killing of priests by Republican militias. Here's Freens:
The successor of the man who praised Franco's 'Catholic victory' in Spain in 1939 has 'beatified' over 400 clergy executed by the militias during the Spanish Civil War. At best reactionaries, and at worst fascists, they represented not only social parasitism but also one of the most repressive forces in Spain, a force which gave its blessing to the mass murder by Franco's men of many thousands of men and women whose politics had even a liberal tinge.
Are we sure that all of those killed were really fascists, and isn't justifying the execution of people for what they represent, rather than what they actually did, a slippery moral slope? At the same time, there may be a certain resistance among progressives to any tarnishing of the reputation of their last remaining historical heroes - the anarchist and non-communist Left of the Spanish Civil War. But it should be possible to admit that there were occasional atrocities on the Republican side, without in any way equating this with the systematic, government-sponsored repression that followed Franco's victory.
Pope Benedict's actions must raise doubts, if they didn't exist already, about the whole process of beatification, which is the first step on the path to sainthood. To be described by the Church as 'Blessed', is it enough simply to have died for your faith, even if your life was reprehensible or your social attitudes (as must have been the case with at least some of these 'martyrs') decidedly unchristian?
These events also raise thorny issues for those of us who, at various times in our lives, have been attracted to both Catholicism and socialism, and even to both at the same time. In the last fifty years or so most 'thinking' Catholics in Britain have tended to be on the liberal left and the anti-clericalism of the European left has been largely absent from public discourse: in this country, anti-Catholicism tends to have sectarian rather than political associations.
However, to visit southern Europe is to become aware of the continuing battle for supremacy between a largely conservative Church and the forces of liberal, secular modernity. I remember being in Barcelona and feeling equally attracted by that city's liberal and progressive culture, and by the beauty of its churches. Then I came across a memorial in the cathedral to the priests that the pope has just beatified, and I felt as though I was being forced to make a choice between the two cultures.
Among the likely results of this process of beatification will be an intensification of the sense - which this pope appears to want to encourage - that liberalism and Christianity are rival ideologies, and a further shrinking of the space for exploring any kind of rapprochement between the two.
Update
There's a piece on the mass beatification by Graham Keeley in today's edition of the liberal Catholic weekly, The Tablet. Keeley makes the point that not all Spanish Catholics supported Franco, and that some priests were themselves victims of his regime: 'Many modern commentators and political figures on today’s Left see the Vatican’s decision to beatify priests killed by Republicans or anarchists as a failure to acknowledge those priests who died at the hands of Franco’s firing squads.' While acknowledging that many Catholics welcome the beatification ceremony, he adds:
However, relatives of priests such as Gervasio Albizu, MartÃn Lekuona and the writer and priest José de Ariztimuño do not feel the same. These priests were among 16 killed by pro-Francoist firing squads in San Sebastian, in the Basque country, in October 1936 because they were thought to be Basque nationalist sympathisers. But none of these priests or laymen who died during the same conflict were selected for beatification.
This confirms the political nature of the Vatican's gesture and gives the lie to the claim by the president of the Spanish episcopal conference, Bishop Ricardo Blázquez, that the ceremony represents 'an act of reconciliation'.
The response to the decision has demonstrated that the passions ignited by events in Spain in the 1930s are still very much alive, and it's likely that the pope's actions will entrench rather than heal the divisions in Spanish society that are a legacy of that period. Indeed, it has been argued that this industrial-scale beatification is a calculated political tactic by the Vatican, in its continuing battle with Spain's socialist government over issues such as same-sex marriage, divorce and control of education.
The comments on this item on the BBC news website - many of them by descendants of those who were involved on both sides in the civil war - are among the most impassioned and articulate I've read for some time. They're recommended reading for anyone who doubts the cruelty of Franco's regime or the Church's complicity in it. Here's one from William Garcia:
When the fascist army marched into my grandmother's home village in Andalucia, in the very first weeks of the war, it was the Catholic priest who betrayed local people to the invaders. He gave them a list of everyone who lived in the village, so they knew if anyone had fled or gone into hiding. He told them who the 'troublemakers' were, who the leftists were, the intellectuals, the trade unionists, the people who didn't go to church regularly and those who had not baptised their children. It did not take long for the fascists to round all of these people up, along with anyone they didn't like the look of and men of fighting age, and shoot them all en masse in the village square.
For anyone who thinks this was an isolated incident, I'd recommend reading Paul Preston's magnificent but chilling biography of Franco.
For some on the Left, this complicity with fascist repression explains, even if it doesn't quite justify, the killing of priests by Republican militias. Here's Freens:
The successor of the man who praised Franco's 'Catholic victory' in Spain in 1939 has 'beatified' over 400 clergy executed by the militias during the Spanish Civil War. At best reactionaries, and at worst fascists, they represented not only social parasitism but also one of the most repressive forces in Spain, a force which gave its blessing to the mass murder by Franco's men of many thousands of men and women whose politics had even a liberal tinge.
Are we sure that all of those killed were really fascists, and isn't justifying the execution of people for what they represent, rather than what they actually did, a slippery moral slope? At the same time, there may be a certain resistance among progressives to any tarnishing of the reputation of their last remaining historical heroes - the anarchist and non-communist Left of the Spanish Civil War. But it should be possible to admit that there were occasional atrocities on the Republican side, without in any way equating this with the systematic, government-sponsored repression that followed Franco's victory.
Pope Benedict's actions must raise doubts, if they didn't exist already, about the whole process of beatification, which is the first step on the path to sainthood. To be described by the Church as 'Blessed', is it enough simply to have died for your faith, even if your life was reprehensible or your social attitudes (as must have been the case with at least some of these 'martyrs') decidedly unchristian?
These events also raise thorny issues for those of us who, at various times in our lives, have been attracted to both Catholicism and socialism, and even to both at the same time. In the last fifty years or so most 'thinking' Catholics in Britain have tended to be on the liberal left and the anti-clericalism of the European left has been largely absent from public discourse: in this country, anti-Catholicism tends to have sectarian rather than political associations.
However, to visit southern Europe is to become aware of the continuing battle for supremacy between a largely conservative Church and the forces of liberal, secular modernity. I remember being in Barcelona and feeling equally attracted by that city's liberal and progressive culture, and by the beauty of its churches. Then I came across a memorial in the cathedral to the priests that the pope has just beatified, and I felt as though I was being forced to make a choice between the two cultures.
Among the likely results of this process of beatification will be an intensification of the sense - which this pope appears to want to encourage - that liberalism and Christianity are rival ideologies, and a further shrinking of the space for exploring any kind of rapprochement between the two.
Update
There's a piece on the mass beatification by Graham Keeley in today's edition of the liberal Catholic weekly, The Tablet. Keeley makes the point that not all Spanish Catholics supported Franco, and that some priests were themselves victims of his regime: 'Many modern commentators and political figures on today’s Left see the Vatican’s decision to beatify priests killed by Republicans or anarchists as a failure to acknowledge those priests who died at the hands of Franco’s firing squads.' While acknowledging that many Catholics welcome the beatification ceremony, he adds:
However, relatives of priests such as Gervasio Albizu, MartÃn Lekuona and the writer and priest José de Ariztimuño do not feel the same. These priests were among 16 killed by pro-Francoist firing squads in San Sebastian, in the Basque country, in October 1936 because they were thought to be Basque nationalist sympathisers. But none of these priests or laymen who died during the same conflict were selected for beatification.
This confirms the political nature of the Vatican's gesture and gives the lie to the claim by the president of the Spanish episcopal conference, Bishop Ricardo Blázquez, that the ceremony represents 'an act of reconciliation'.
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Is there a right to propagate religious beliefs in public?
There won't be much sympathy for the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas, following their $10.9m (£5.2m) fine for picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq -with placards bearing slogans such as 'Thank God for dead soldiers' and 'You're going to hell'. Members of the church, aka 'The most hated family in America', believe that the soldiers' deaths are God's punishment for America's sins: more specifically, for homosexuality (they have also picketed the funerals of AIDS victims).
However, the church is appealing on the grounds of free speech, and it has to be said that the case raises interesting questions about the freedom to express one's beliefs. Isn't the court that imposed this hefty penalty simply a mirror image of those faith groups who claim the right not to be 'offended' by anti-religious books, plays, cartoons, etc? If secularists have a right to offend believers, don't they also have a right to offend us - and shouldn't we just put up with it?
I suppose the response to this might be that, while there should be freedom to cause offence to the beliefs of others - there is no constitutional right to cause hurt and distress to another person. The religious extremists in this case were convicted of invasion of privacy and of causing 'emotional distress' to the families of dead soldiers.
Beyond this, I would argue that, while freedom of belief should certainly be protected, the freedom to propagate those beliefs in public should perhaps be subject to certain conditions. I'm aware this is a tricky area, and there's a danger of giving comfort to those regimes - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan come to mind - that restrict the rights of Christians and other non-Muslims to share their faith. However, it could be argued that citizens also have the right to protection from aggressive proselytising in public places and that those spaces should be preserved as faith-neutral zones.
The Westboro fanatics are at the extreme end of the spectrum, but I'm surely not the only one to be irritated by the vociferous preaching and amplified hymn-singing of the evangelical groups that are often to be found in British shopping centres on Saturday mornings. Other members of my family think I'm being over-sensitive, and betraying my unresolved conflicts with my evangelical past, when I grumble at this intrusion. But in the Midland town where we used to live, we couldn't walk down the high street at the weekend without being regaled with sermons on hellfire and divine punishment by preachers from a particularly fundamentalist local church. I've often wondered why local councils allow this, and whether they would give the same licence to (say) extreme Islamic groups to preach hate against Jews or gays outside Sainsburys.
The trouble is, these fundamentalist christians - whether the virulent homophobes of Topeka or the relatively benign happy-clappy types in our high streets - are so convinced of their rightness that they can't see that others might have a different view of the world, or be upset by their rantings. I know it's a difficult issue on which to adjudicate, but I'd argue for keeping the public square free of expressions of religious belief that impose themselves on others, and particularly of those that stir up hatred or cause distress.
However, the church is appealing on the grounds of free speech, and it has to be said that the case raises interesting questions about the freedom to express one's beliefs. Isn't the court that imposed this hefty penalty simply a mirror image of those faith groups who claim the right not to be 'offended' by anti-religious books, plays, cartoons, etc? If secularists have a right to offend believers, don't they also have a right to offend us - and shouldn't we just put up with it?
I suppose the response to this might be that, while there should be freedom to cause offence to the beliefs of others - there is no constitutional right to cause hurt and distress to another person. The religious extremists in this case were convicted of invasion of privacy and of causing 'emotional distress' to the families of dead soldiers.
Beyond this, I would argue that, while freedom of belief should certainly be protected, the freedom to propagate those beliefs in public should perhaps be subject to certain conditions. I'm aware this is a tricky area, and there's a danger of giving comfort to those regimes - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan come to mind - that restrict the rights of Christians and other non-Muslims to share their faith. However, it could be argued that citizens also have the right to protection from aggressive proselytising in public places and that those spaces should be preserved as faith-neutral zones.
The Westboro fanatics are at the extreme end of the spectrum, but I'm surely not the only one to be irritated by the vociferous preaching and amplified hymn-singing of the evangelical groups that are often to be found in British shopping centres on Saturday mornings. Other members of my family think I'm being over-sensitive, and betraying my unresolved conflicts with my evangelical past, when I grumble at this intrusion. But in the Midland town where we used to live, we couldn't walk down the high street at the weekend without being regaled with sermons on hellfire and divine punishment by preachers from a particularly fundamentalist local church. I've often wondered why local councils allow this, and whether they would give the same licence to (say) extreme Islamic groups to preach hate against Jews or gays outside Sainsburys.
The trouble is, these fundamentalist christians - whether the virulent homophobes of Topeka or the relatively benign happy-clappy types in our high streets - are so convinced of their rightness that they can't see that others might have a different view of the world, or be upset by their rantings. I know it's a difficult issue on which to adjudicate, but I'd argue for keeping the public square free of expressions of religious belief that impose themselves on others, and particularly of those that stir up hatred or cause distress.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Hugo tries to ban Hallowe'en
9.30 on Hallowe'en and still no trick-or-treaters. Ah well, those chocolate bars won't go to waste. At least we were spared a visit from the teenagers I saw coming out of Tesco laden with eggs earlier this evening: can't believe they were looking forward to an evening of omelette-making.
I mentioned here that I'm no great fan of Hallowe'en. But if there's one thing that could change my mind, it's hearing that Hugo Chavez wants to ban it. The Venezuelan autocrat has described the festival as part of the US culture of 'putting fear into other nations, putting fear into their own people'. As the BBC report slyly adds: 'He did not refer to incidents earlier this month when lanterns made from hollowed pumpkins carrying anti-government messages appeared in several places in the capital, Caracas.'
It's enough to renew your faith in the subversive power of this pagan festival of mischiefmaking.
I mentioned here that I'm no great fan of Hallowe'en. But if there's one thing that could change my mind, it's hearing that Hugo Chavez wants to ban it. The Venezuelan autocrat has described the festival as part of the US culture of 'putting fear into other nations, putting fear into their own people'. As the BBC report slyly adds: 'He did not refer to incidents earlier this month when lanterns made from hollowed pumpkins carrying anti-government messages appeared in several places in the capital, Caracas.'
It's enough to renew your faith in the subversive power of this pagan festival of mischiefmaking.
Cherie's cautious criticism of religious discrimination against women
Further to this post, Cherie Booth (Blair) today restated her belief that 'culture and religion cannot be used as an excuse for discriminating against women'. In many parts of the world, she argued, 'proclaimed adherence to a specific religion or system of belief or culture is intimately tied to women's continuing discrimation and abuse'. Moreover, she rejected the view that human rights could not be exported to some countries because of religious or cultural differences, saying 'human rights are universal'.
Perhaps mindful of her husband's new role as a Middle East peace envoy, Booth wouldn't be drawn into supporting protests against the visit to the UK of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. And some will think she was too cautious in her criticism of specific religious practices. Comparing the Islamic veil with the headgear of Catholic nuns, she said she had 'no problem' with women covering their heads. But on the niqab she was more forthright:
I think ... that if you get to the stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because we cannot see her face, then we do have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman's right to be a person.
Booth stopped short of identifying religion as such, or even a particular religion, as patriarchal or misognynist. Instead, she fell back on the well-worn formula of blaming 'fallible human beings, mainly men' for misinterpreting the 'true precepts' of their faith. She 'rejected the notion that Islam was innately discriminatory towards women by suggesting that the use of Sharia law in some Muslim countries went against the true precepts of the faith.'
This is reminiscent of her husband's claim after 9/11: 'There is nothing in Islam which excuses such an all-encompassing massacre of innocent people, nor is there anything in the teachings of Islam that allows the killing of civilians, of women and children, of those who are not engaged in war or fighting', and George Bush's 'The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.' These claims, which some would argue are based on a misreading of Islam through a western, christian prism (in which a perceived dichotomy between 'true' and 'false' religion has been a persistent dialectic), are discussed - and challenged - in an excellent article by Malise Ruthven in the current edition of the New York Review of Books.
Perhaps mindful of her husband's new role as a Middle East peace envoy, Booth wouldn't be drawn into supporting protests against the visit to the UK of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. And some will think she was too cautious in her criticism of specific religious practices. Comparing the Islamic veil with the headgear of Catholic nuns, she said she had 'no problem' with women covering their heads. But on the niqab she was more forthright:
I think ... that if you get to the stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because we cannot see her face, then we do have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman's right to be a person.
Booth stopped short of identifying religion as such, or even a particular religion, as patriarchal or misognynist. Instead, she fell back on the well-worn formula of blaming 'fallible human beings, mainly men' for misinterpreting the 'true precepts' of their faith. She 'rejected the notion that Islam was innately discriminatory towards women by suggesting that the use of Sharia law in some Muslim countries went against the true precepts of the faith.'
This is reminiscent of her husband's claim after 9/11: 'There is nothing in Islam which excuses such an all-encompassing massacre of innocent people, nor is there anything in the teachings of Islam that allows the killing of civilians, of women and children, of those who are not engaged in war or fighting', and George Bush's 'The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.' These claims, which some would argue are based on a misreading of Islam through a western, christian prism (in which a perceived dichotomy between 'true' and 'false' religion has been a persistent dialectic), are discussed - and challenged - in an excellent article by Malise Ruthven in the current edition of the New York Review of Books.
Iran to execute boy for gay sex
In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country.... In Iran we don't have this phenomenon, I don't know who told you this.
(President Ahmadinejad)
We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran.
(Columbia Queer Alliance)
Child offender Makwan Moloudzadeh, an Iranian Kurd, is believed to be at risk of imminent execution. He has reportedly been convicted of lavat-e iqabi (anal sex) for the alleged rape of a 13-year-old boy. Makwan Moloudzadeh was aged 13 at the time of the alleged offence. His death sentence has been passed to the Office for the Implementation of Sentences and he is due to be executed in public, near his home. He was reportedly arrested on 1 October 2006 in Paveh, in the western province of Kermanshah. He was detained in Paveh Prison and later transferred to Kermanshah Central Prison. Following interrogations in Paveh during which he was reportedly ill-treated, he was tried by Branch 1 of the Kermanshah Criminal Court and on 7 June 2007 he was sentenced to death. The witnesses and the two people who had pressed charges against him withdrew their claims after the trial. Under Iranian law, children (boys of up to 14.7 years) are to be flogged for lavat ("homosexual acts"). However, the judge relied on ‘elm-e qazi, the "knowledge of the judge" to determine that penetration had taken place and that Makwan Moloudzadeh could be sentenced to death. Makwan Moloudzadeh lodged an appeal on 5 July, which the Supreme Court rejected on 1 August. Several witnesses have withdrawn their testimonies and signed notarized written statements to that effect. During his trial, Makwan Moloudzadeh reportedly maintained his innocence. Previously, however, he was reportedly ill-treated during interrogation and "confessed" during interrogation that he had had a sexual relationship with a boy in 1999. He is reported to have gone on hunger strike for 10 days to protest against his ill-treatment in detention. Prior to his trial and conviction, on or around 7 October 2006 Makwan Moloudzadeh was reportedly paraded through the streets of Paveh riding on a donkey, with his head shaved. People in the street shouted abuse and threw things at him.
(Amnesty International)
(President Ahmadinejad)
We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran.
(Columbia Queer Alliance)
Child offender Makwan Moloudzadeh, an Iranian Kurd, is believed to be at risk of imminent execution. He has reportedly been convicted of lavat-e iqabi (anal sex) for the alleged rape of a 13-year-old boy. Makwan Moloudzadeh was aged 13 at the time of the alleged offence. His death sentence has been passed to the Office for the Implementation of Sentences and he is due to be executed in public, near his home. He was reportedly arrested on 1 October 2006 in Paveh, in the western province of Kermanshah. He was detained in Paveh Prison and later transferred to Kermanshah Central Prison. Following interrogations in Paveh during which he was reportedly ill-treated, he was tried by Branch 1 of the Kermanshah Criminal Court and on 7 June 2007 he was sentenced to death. The witnesses and the two people who had pressed charges against him withdrew their claims after the trial. Under Iranian law, children (boys of up to 14.7 years) are to be flogged for lavat ("homosexual acts"). However, the judge relied on ‘elm-e qazi, the "knowledge of the judge" to determine that penetration had taken place and that Makwan Moloudzadeh could be sentenced to death. Makwan Moloudzadeh lodged an appeal on 5 July, which the Supreme Court rejected on 1 August. Several witnesses have withdrawn their testimonies and signed notarized written statements to that effect. During his trial, Makwan Moloudzadeh reportedly maintained his innocence. Previously, however, he was reportedly ill-treated during interrogation and "confessed" during interrogation that he had had a sexual relationship with a boy in 1999. He is reported to have gone on hunger strike for 10 days to protest against his ill-treatment in detention. Prior to his trial and conviction, on or around 7 October 2006 Makwan Moloudzadeh was reportedly paraded through the streets of Paveh riding on a donkey, with his head shaved. People in the street shouted abuse and threw things at him.
(Amnesty International)
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