Islamists and Stalinists: brothers under the skin?

It’s tempting to regard the atrocities committed by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as uniquely barbarous. I can't help thinking of the scores of young Yazidi women, torn from their families, raped, and forced to marry IS fighters, with no prospect of an end to their ordeal, and of the despair that they and their loved ones must experience. Surely this transcends anything perpetrated in the recent history of warfare? But then, over Christmas, reading Joachim Fest’s account of growing up in an anti-Nazi family in Germany during the Second World War, I came across this:

In those days almost every story ended with acts of violence of some kind. As the Red Army approached, my sisters had left their grammar school in the Neumark, east of Berlin, and returned to Berlin; they now learned that their classmates – all aged between twelve and fifteen – had been raped, transported and disappeared into the expanses of Russia. 

There are many similar accounts of atrocities by the ‘liberating’ Red Army in Anne Applebaum’s devastating book Iron Curtain. Perhaps we make too much of the peculiarly religious character of Islamic State’s reign of terror. The quotation from Fest, with its uncanny foreshadowing of recent events in the Middle East, is a reminder that religious and secular totalitarianisms have more in common than we sometimes think.

Lost in translation

The BBC’s Hugh Schofield wonders why French books – and especially modern French novels – don’t sell abroad. This is in spite of the fact that France has a thriving literary culture, and despite the popularity of books translated into English from other European languages, notably Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. The authors and readers interviewed by Schofield propose various reasons, ranging from the supposed elitism and intellectualism of French literary culture to the unexciting covers of French novels, and on the other side, the laziness and misconceptions of Anglophone publishers and readers.

I actually quite like French book covers, as well as French bookshops, which are described rather dismissively as ‘cramped and colourless’ in Schofield’s piece. Those unadorned cream covers, enlivened only by the author’s photograph, are surely what makes a book distinctively French - it wouldn’t look right to have a French novel that wasn’t in that familiar Flammarion, Gallimard or Livre de Poche style. I can see a number from where I’m sitting (see photo below), and they bring a breath of the Left Bank into the room. As for French bookshops, I’m rather fond of their uniform rows of identical-looking volumes and studiously highbrow demeanour – all very un-Waterstones, and long may it continue.

I wonder if the absence of modern French writing from British and American shelves has something to do with the fact that the small publisher Harvill (absorbed first into Harvill Secker and more recently into Random House), which was largely responsible in the post-war years for introducing English-speaking readers to contemporary European writers, had a bias towards other countries, such as Portugal, Russia, and the old Eastern bloc - or was it just that there happened to be a number of brilliant translators available from those nations? But then I've just remembered that Harvill published the detective stories of Daniel Pennac, so maybe I've got that wrong. (Perhaps my brother Michael, who used to work for Harvill, will read this and be able to help out here).


Whatever the explanation, Hugh Schofield is basically right in his assessment that a great deal of contemporary French literature remains untranslated into English. If a major Spanish author like Javier Marias or Javier Cercas brings out a new novel, you know it’ll only be a matter of time before an English translation appears, and that it will be enthusiastically picked up by the Sunday broadsheets, as well as by the LRB and New York Review of Books. But there’s rarely an equivalent process, or fuss, over a French literary success, apart from, as Schofield points out, the headline-grabbing Michel Houllebecq.


I confess to having a personal interest here, since I’ve developed a yearning to read a couple of recently-published French novels, and I’ve been frustrated at the absence of English translations. I discovered these books via one of my current favourite blogs – The Catholic English Teacher. I know it won’t appeal to my agnostic and atheist readers, but I think it’s one of the best literary blogs around - and I love the masthead. Despite the title, Roy Peachey, the blog’s author, is remarkably well-informed about a range of contemporary literatures in languages other than English, and especially in French. Having read his recommendations, I’m keen to track down L’art francais de la guerre by Alexis Jenni, which won the Prix Goncourt a couple of years ago, and also the work of Claire Daudin, who as well as being a prize-winning novelist is also an expert on Mauriac, Bernanos and Peguy. However, neither of these authors has yet had any of their writings translated into English.


There’s a particular pleasure in being able to read something, however brief – a short story, an article, a poem even – in the language in which it was written. But as it stands, my French isn’t quite up to it, despite the fact that I have an ‘A’ Level in the subject. You could see this as the fault of the British education system – a failure to teach languages so that people can actually use them – or a reflection of my own laziness and lack of linguistic flair. I did only get an ‘E’, after all. Mind you, I enjoyed sixth-form French: watching Mr Levine pacing back and forth, gesticulating expressively as he went into raptures over poetic passages from Zola.


As I mentioned in a recent post, I had a bit of a Mauriac phase around the time of our visit to Bordeaux last summer. As our driver, Marise, pointed out while transporting us from the station, Mauriac is one of the three local ‘M’s – the others being Montaigne and Montesquieu. My family mock my habit of having to read something by a local author wherever we go: it was Saramago in Lisbon, Hammett in San Francisco, etc.  On this occasion, I read Therese Desqueyroux before we left home, and Le Noeud de Viperes on the way back, both in English translations (sorry, can't seem to do the accents on Blogger). 
However, on our return I was keen to read more by Mauriac and searched online for a collection of his post-war political articles - or Bloc-Notes. (Mauriac, a devout Catholic, was nevertheless a staunch opponent of the Franco regime in Spain and a supporter of the French Resistance.) But I discovered that these were only available in the original French, and reading them has been a bit of a struggle, to say the least. (Those books in the photo above? They all belong to my Other Half, who was a much better student of French literature than I ever was.) 


And so I’ve gone back to basics. Since October I’ve been working my way through Hugo’s French in 3 Months, filling in the gaps created by failing memory. I’ve just reached the end, and after Christmas it’ll be on to the advanced course. Mind you, as I related last week, I made a similar resolution earlier this year with regard to Portuguese, and that fell by the wayside. And then there was the year I took a Pavese novel in the original Italian on holiday, but gave up after a couple of chapters. I love languages, and since childhood I’ve been deeply envious of those who were brought up to be bilingual, but I’m a bit of a magpie – I tend to know a little about a lot and don’t speak or read any single foreign language very well.  We’ll see how it goes.


So, when it comes to contemporary French literature, I’ll have to wait, either for my facility with the language to improve considerably, or for some enterprising small publisher (do they still exist?) to develop a line in translations of modern French novels. Either way, I think I’m going to have to be very patient.

Justice delayed

This verdict had nothing to do with the actual evidence. It's all about la faccia, face. They had to convict her. Now, with the conviction, everyone has saved face, the judiciary, the prosecutors and police have been vindicated. There will be an appeal and she will be acquitted, and that will be done to satisfy the Americans. Then everybody will be happy. Of course, Amanda and Raffaele will be in prison for another two years, but that's a small matter compared to the careers of so many important people.

That was the prescient opinion of one 'highly-connected' Italian, quoted by US writer Douglas Preston, nearly two years ago.


You read it here first.

Boa viagem

Will be in this part of the world for a couple of weeks, with limited internet access, so the blog will be in recess until mid-August.

What we did (and who we saw) on our holidays

As promised, then, a brief account of our trip to Portugal. We were staying in the hills a few miles from Lisbon, within easy reach of the city, and of Sintra and Cascais. Much of the time was spent, as is our custom, sitting in the sun and working through a pile of books, but we made a few forays out to explore our surroundings.

Sintra (see photo in last post) was the retreat of Portuguese monarchs, and home to a number of wealthy eccentrics, who’ve left their mark in the architecture and landscape. For me, the charm of the place was somewhat undermined by the large number of crumbling, neglected buildings, and by the tourist coaches cramming the narrow streets and squares. However, we enjoyed our visit to the Palacio Nacional, and found refuge from the crowds in the Loja do Vinho, right on the main square, where the young maitre d' allowed us to sample a range of fine ports with our coffee. And on the way back to the railway station, we came across the Fabrica das Verdadeiras Quijadas da Sapa, which makes some of the finest cakes in the region.

The seaside town of Cascais was another scene of faded glory, its fine villas now overwhelmed by English pubs, tourist shops and badly-planned overdevelopment. We walked along the seafront, past beaches thronged with Lisboetas on day trips, to the equally faded resort of Estoril, once the playground of European royalty and apparently the inspiration for Casino Royale.

There was no disappointment of any kind, though, in our two train trips to Lisbon, the first from Sintra, through the multi-racial working-class suburbs of the city to Rossio station, the second from Cascais, overlooking the sea and the Tagus estuary, to Cais do Sodre. As we had 'done' Lisbon pretty intensively four years ago, we felt under no pressure to rush around the sights, but instead strolled about, soaking up the endless charm of one of my favourite cities. On our first sortie, we wandered through the Baixa to the vast Praca do Comercio, taking coffee at the Café Martinho da Arcada, Fernando Pessoa’s regular haunt, before shopping in the Chiado and having lunch at a theatre restaurant, in the very square where the great man was born. On our second visit, we climbed up the Rua do Alecrim, stopping briefly for coffee at a cool bar with free wifi, then wandered through the alleys of the Bairro Alto, before descending for lunch at the excellent, book- lined Café no Chiado, which we first visited back in 2006.

During our stay, the Portuguese media were dominated by news of forest fires throughout the country, due to the unusually high temperatures. We had a close call of our own last Saturday, when the hillside opposite us burst into flame and thick smoke billowed across the valley, until the local bombeiros and a water-spraying helicopter finally extinguished the fire.

It was on the same day that we bumped, almost literally, into a member of the British Cabinet. I have a habit of coming across celebrities when we're on our travels: previous sightings include Nancy Pelosi taking tea in San Francisco, Shami Chakrabati in Tuscany, and the Archbishop of Canterbury at Land's End. This time it was none other than Michel Gove, on holiday with his wife and children. Watching Mr Gove en famille and in vacation mode, it was quite difficult to maintain my one-dimensional image of him as school-wrecker and right-wing ideologue. And googling him on our return hasn't helped: he is, after all, a member of the Henry Jackson Society, opponent of Section 28, admirer of Tony Blair, and author of Celsius 7/7. If this were America, he'd probably be a centrist or conservative Democrat. Anyway, close encounters with politicians certainly play havoc with one's prejudices and preconceptions.

Since this is not one of those gossipy political blogs, and I'm not an MP-stalking Twitterer, I'll reveal no more. Except to let slip that Gove's holiday reading included Robert Wilson's A Small Death in Lisbon. I recognised this instantly, as I'd packed a copy of my own for the holiday. Wilson's lurid murder mystery jumps back and forth between the 1940s and the present, linking Nazi gold, the Salazar dictatorship and contemporary Lisbon (incidentally, can anyone recommend a good book - in English - on the Portuguese Carnation Revolution of 1974?).

While we were away, I also read Jose Saramago's Balthasar and Blimunda, a compelling and often very funny romp through eighteenth century Portugal, which takes swipes at monarchy and religion and includes elements of Marquezian fantasy. I also enjoyed Philip Graham's brief memoir of his year in Lisbon, which started life as a series of blog posts, and is reminiscent of the writings of Adam Gopnik. And I almost finished Jenny Uglow's splendid The Lunar Men, her engrossing narrative of the overlapping lives of 18th century inventors and innovators such as Erasmus Darwin, James Watt and Joseph Priestley.

That's the holidays done with, then. Time to catch up on what I've missed in the blogosphere during my absence.

Re-entry

(Sintra, near Lisbon: view from the Palacio Nacional)

I'm back, but rather travel-weary and preoccupied with matters domestic, so taking time to work myself up to a post about our time in Portugal. But I'll get there: just watch this space.

Lusolinks

Our imminent departure for a couple of weeks' holiday not far from Lisbon provides me with an excuse to link to some of my past scribblings on things Portuguese:

On Lisbon and Portuguese literary and musical culture

On Lisbon and Portuguese / Cape Verdean / Brazilian music

On a neglected Portuguese hero

On music again, specifically the saudade of Cesaria Evora and Mariza

On my feeble attempts to learn Portuguese

On the death of Jose Saramago.

As they say over there: Adeus, até logo.

No more burqas - but no ban

I loathe the niqab and the burqa and everything they represent. As Kenan Malik says: ‘The idea that in the 21st century women should be hidden from view for reasons of modesty or religious belief is both troubling and astonishing.’ When I see girls at my daughter’s school starting to ‘cover up’ on reaching adolescence – in one case so that only the young woman’s eyes were showing through a narrow slit in her black covering – it makes me both sad and angry.

I regard the burqa as the exact equivalent, for women, of the chain on the ankle of African slaves two hundred years ago: a visible token of servitude and control. It’s a feudal relic and should have no place in a society that has any claim to gender equality. Progressives and feminists should be deeply uneasy, rather than complacent, about its persistence on our streets and in our schools.

If I had a magic wand, I’d wish for the niqab and burqa to disappear from the face of the earth, along with the misogynistic religious mumbo-jumbo that sustains them, and which they reinforce. But I don’t have a magic wand, and nor do governments. Politicians sometimes fall into the trap of using the law as a means of wishing away things that bother them. However, not everything that is worrying or disturbing should necessarily be illegal. Moreover, there’s a danger that using the law as a blunt instrument to solve complex social problems can have undesirable and unintended consequences, such as limiting individual freedom, or causing suffering to the very people the law was intended to help.

That’s why, on balance, I don’t approve of the French government’s decision to ban the niqab and why I’m worried about campaigns to introduce similar legislation in Britain. I wouldn’t go as as far as Madeleine Bunting who says of the new law: ‘It sends a shiver down the spine’. What sends a shiver down my spine is the tendency among the pro-faith lobby (for whom Bunting is the cheerleader) to rush to the support of every new expression of religious fundamentalism. And I don't disagree with many of the things that French politicians, including some on the left, have said about the burqa/niqab and its deleterious effect on women’s lives. I often wish we had progressive politicians here who would be equally outspoken and not leave criticism of fundamentalism to the anti-immigration right. I also understand the support that feminists in Arab and majority-Muslim countries, such as the blogger Saudiwoman and the French organsaition Ni Putes Ni Soumises, have given to the proposal. For them, it's a small step forward in the long struggle against women’s oppression in their communities. If only we had more outspoken feminists saying such things in Britain, and getting media coverage for it - which is not to understate the fantastic work being done by Southall Black Sisters and the One Law For All (No Sharia) campaign, among others.

Sadly, discussion on these shores of the French plan has seen people slipping back into their comfortably polarised defensive positions: the ban has been supported most vocally by the anti-immigrant right (such as UKIP and Tory MP Philip Hollobone), while opposition to it, on the grounds of freedom and toleration, has become a badge of honour on the left. The Guardian's Gary Younge tweeted the other day along the lines that it was equally wrong for states to require women to force women to wear the burqa, and to prevent them from doing so. Fair enough, Gary, but the left should be just as vocal in pointing out that it's wrong for individual men, not to mention 'faith communities', to tell women what they can and can't wear - and the state has a role in protecting women against pressure to conform to patriarchal or religious requirements.

I don't think that every aspect of the French law is unworkable. The proposal that public institutions should be able to insist that both employees and customers uncover their faces seems eminently sensible. However, as Malik says:

If wearing a burqa is incompatible with the needs of particular jobs, then those particular employers – hospitals, schools, shops even - can legitimately demand that employees not be clad from head to foot. But again, one can impose dress codes for certain jobs without banning a type of clothing for everyone. After all, we don’t have judges and teachers wearing bikinis on the job either.

Similarly, one can applaud the French proposal to prosecute husbands and fathers who seek to control what their female relatives wear. But prosecuting women themselves for covering their faces in public risks making them victims twice over. And how exactly do politicians expect women who currently wear the burqa to respond to the new law? Will they defy the pressure of family, community and clerics and tear off the veil, so that they can go shopping, or work as teachers? A few brave souls might. But the danger is that others will simply be driven further back into the home, and become even less visible, even less active, in public life: which is presumably the aim of the burqa, and the whole plethora of patriarchal prohibitions that go with it.

If similar legislation were to be introduced in Britain, you can predict exactly what would happen. Firstly, there would be an intensification of fake Muslim victimhood, with the mullahs and their allies on the faith-bedazzled pseudo-left crying ‘Islamophobia!’ at every turn. Secondly, there would be a new focus for anti-immigrant feeling both on the 'legitimate' far right (UKIP, maverick Tories) and among the neo-fascists of the BNP and EDL, seeking to exploit the emotions whipped up by the debate. Needless to say, Muslim women would suffer most as a result: condemned by the fundamentalists if they comply with the law, or the racists if they don't.

So what’s the alternative? Well, I don’t have any easy answers, but I have a few suggestions, and would be interested to hear others from readers who, like me, are both anti-burqa and anti-ban.

Firstly, we should look to strengthen our gender equality and human rights law, making it a criminal offence for anyone, whether family member or religious leader, to force women to dress in a particular way, or to restrict their freedom of movement, employment or leisure outside the home.

Secondly, politicians of all stripes - but especially those on the left - should make clear their commitment to full gender equality and their opposition to customs and traditions that hinder women's freedom. They should stop appeasing conservative religious leaders in the name of 'community cohesion' or out of fear of losing the 'Muslim vote'.

Thirdly, gender equality, and human rights generally, should be a key plank of citizenship education, and all state-funded schools, including faith schools, should be required to promote it. This should have priority over the wishy-washy complacency of a 'multi-faith' education that teaches that all belief systems are to be 'respected', even if their practices contravene women's rights.

In other words, we need a broad strategy that may include some legislation, but is also focused on education and cultural change. As Kenan Malik says:

The burqa is a symbol of the oppression of women, not its cause. If legislators really want to help Muslim women, they could begin not by banning the burqa, but by challenging the policies and processes that marginalize migrant communities: on the one hand, the racism, social discrimination and police harassment that all too often disfigure migrant lives, and, on the other, the multicultural policies that treat minorities as members of ethnic groups rather than as citizens. Both help sideline migrant communities, aid the standing of conservative ‘community leaders’ and make life more difficult for women and other disadvantaged groups within those communities.

Update

Another Arab feminist voice in support of the ban: Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy

Update 2

A surprisingly (?) balanced and thoughtful editorial on the whole affair from Catholic weekly The Tablet. It sets out the 'dilemma' facing multicultural societies such as France and Britain, caught between not wishing 'to be culturally imperialist by treating ethnic minorities with disrespect' and not wanting 'to set aside their own core values such as opposition to the exploitation and abuse of women.' Then it makes this very good point: 'A society like Britain which insists that girls from very conservative Muslim families should nevertheless be sent to school to receive a good education has already taken sides in that debate.'

The editorial ends with a similar message to my own in the above post:

The British would not tolerate something as dirigiste as a state-imposed dress code, even though many British people would personally deplore the suppression of female identity that the burka seems to signify. It is by education and cultural influence that the values of Western civilisation will prevail in the end, and anything that divides or antagonises minority communities is unhelpful.

Update 3

Via Bob, a thought-provoking contribution to the debate (with lots of useful links, especially to French sources) from Tendance Coatesy.

Lusolinguistica

I've been brushing up my rusty and extremely rudimentary Portuguese, in anticipation of a visit this summer. My dedication to the task wavers, as I swing back and forth between fascination with and aversion from this most unfamiliar of European Romance languages. I keep myself motivated by the dream that one day I might be able to make sense of the volume of Pessoa's poetry that I bought when we were in Lisbon a few years ago (until then, I shall continue to rely on Richard Zenith's excellent translations) - or, failing that, at least order a drink without making a fool of myself.

Someone once described Portuguese as sounding like Spanish spoken by Sean Connery. Not only is this insulting to the Portuguese, who deeply resent such comparisons with their former colonisers, but also completely misleading. In fact, spoken Portuguese sounds nothing like Spanish. There's a closer aural resemblance with Russian, particularly in the way 'l' is pronounced, and in the ubiquitous 'sh' sounds. Not to mention the echoes of French, especially in the frequent nasal vowels ('bon', 'mim'). Then there are the dipthongs, such as 'ao' and 'oes', which are uniquely Portuguese and for which it's difficult to find equivalents in other languages. Finally, after years of learning to unflatten my southern English 'a' when trying to speak French, German or Italian, it's disarming to come across a European language in which (for example) the words 'para' and 'banca' sound like they're being spoken by a Cockney rather than by a Scot.

I started off with the BBC's lively little Talk Portuguese book and CD: all chirpy voices and annoying jingles, but it leaves you with a good grasp of the basics. I've now moved on to Teach Yourself Portuguese, which pleases me by interspersing the dialogues with grammatical explanations: something that BBC language courses, in hock to a spurious pedagogic pseudo-progressivism, seem to have spurned (as I argued here, this kind of withholding of the academic tools of the trade is actually patronising rather than empowering).

I only have two criticisms of the Teach Yourself course. One is the execrable quality of the CD (at least on the version I own), which seems to have been recorded in a cupboard and which features actors with less-than-crystal-clear enunciation (grasping spoken Portuguese, with all those 'shushy' consonants and swallowed vowels, is difficult enough for beginners). The other is the decision to teach European and Brazilian Portuguese together, which is as misguided as the BBC's attempt to combine European and Latin American Spanish in its Suenos course. The pronunciation and even the vocabulary used in Portugual and Brazil are often very different, and listening to the CD it can be difficult to make out which country the speaker comes from, and therefore which form would be appropriate in which location.

The compensation for all of these frustrations is being able to understand just a little of what my favourite Portuguese and Cape Verdean artists are singing about. Here's Mayra Andrade, providing the perfect accompaniment to a sunny spring afternoon:

Last posting day for Christmas

Time to sign off for a few days, with a couple of pictorial reminders of places we've visited during the year. First, Val d'Orcia in Tuscany, where we spent two weeks in the summer: this picture was taken from Pienza at Christmas time. And second, the west wing of the White House, which we saw during our trip to Washington in October, blanketed in snow last week. Happy holidays.

Amanda Knox is almost certainly innocent

That's the view put forward by columnists in The Times and The Guardian this week. According to Alex Wade, writing in the former:

This is a young woman preparing to spend the next 26 years behind bars, whose case, had it been brought in Britain, would never have reached court. If by some cruel miracle a British judge had found himself presiding over 12 good men and true, whose task it was to determine whether Knox was innocent of Kercher’s murder, it is inconceivable that he would not have made strong, telling directions to acquit.

Then why was she convicted? Wade puts it down to sexism, plain and simple: 'In a trial where the evidence has struggled even to reach the realm of the circumstantial, Knox has been demonised for being a sexually active woman.' And he concludes: 'It is a tragedy that Italy — which [...] played a key role in the development of Western jurisprudence — should stand by as so chilling a blend of sexism and injustice wreaks havoc.'

On the other hand, for US crime writer Douglas Preston, writing today in The Guardian, this apparent miscarriage of justice is all about preserving the reputations of corrupt and self-serving prosecutors. Preston alleges that Amanda Knox's initial interrogation was a travesty, in which she was tricked (and possibly beaten) into signing a confession she hardly understood:

I have read those statements. They are written in perfect, idiomatic, bureacratic 'police jargon' Italian. It is difficult to imagine that a foreign student, who had been in Italy for just two months, would have understood what those statements said, let alone made them herself.

And he accuses Italian police of declaring the case closed, and treating Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Solicito as convicted criminals, before they had even come to trial: 'With Knox and Sollecito locked up, the police threw all their resources into retroactively gathering the evidence to prove them guilty.' Then, despite the fact that defence lawyers painstakingly demolished every shred of evidence against them in court, and firmly believed they had won the day, the jury found the pair guilty. Why?

I posed this question to my most knowledgeable contact in Italy, a highly connected person who knows whereof he speaks. Here is his opinion: 'This verdict had nothing to do with the actual evidence. It's all about la faccia, face. They had to convict her. Now, with the conviction, everyone has saved face, the judiciary, the prosecutors and police have been vindicated. There will be an appeal and she will be acquitted, and that will be done to satisfy the Americans. Then everybody will be happy. Of course, Amanda and Raffaele will be in prison for another two years, but that's a small matter compared to the careers of so many important people.'

That's justice in Berlusconi's Italy.

[A trivial aside: I tried linking to Douglas Preston's article, which I read in the G2 section of today's print edition, but despite my best efforts I can't find it on the Grauniad website. It's not the first time this has happened: it may look pretty, but the paper's site must be one of the most frustrating to search, and there's often a strange disconnect between print and online editions. Inputting 'Amanda Knox' only brought up days-old articles, while typing 'Douglas Preston' threw up stories in which that particular Christian name had occurred in conjunction with the Lancashire town. On the other hand, when I searched The Times website, Wade's piece came up first time.]

Jefferson and the Motoons

Second historical quotation of the day. From what Oliver Kamm argues is 'the most significant document of the Enlightenment', the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, proposed by Thomas Jefferson in 1779 and adopted in 1786:

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion.

That surely includes being free to 'profess, and by argument to maintain their opinions' about religion. As Oliver writes in another piece, it's a freedom that has been undermined by the decision of Yale University Press to exclude all illustrations of Mohammed from Jytte Klausen's scholarly account of the Motoons episode. Yale appears to endorse the restricted version of freedom of expression articulated by a UN spokesperson after Islamic extremists reacted to the Danish cartoons with violent protests: 'We believe freedom of the press entails responsibility and discretion, and should respect the beliefs and tenets of all religions.' As Oliver says:

That principle is moderate, balanced and pernicious. The idea that people’s beliefs, merely by being deeply held, merit respect is grotesque. A constitutional society upholds freedom of speech and thought: it has no interest in its citizens’ feelings. If it sought to protect sensibilities, there would be no limit to the abridgements of freedom that the principle would justify.

Jefferson! Thou shouldst be living at this hour.

Anarchism: a challenge

I've been tagged quite a few times recently by my fellow-bloggers, so it's about time I issued a challenge of my own.

It hasn't escaped my attention that a number of the bloggers whose writings I read on a regular basis are pretty enthusiastic about anarchism and have a particular fondness for the anarchists of the Spanish republic of the 1930s. So much so that two of them even name-check particular anarchist (or anarchist-allied) grouplets from that era in their blog titles / identities. Even those whose politics have moved right- or democratic-left-wards seem to retain a fondness for their anarchist roots, evidenced in their links and reading recommendations.

I write as somebody who has never, in the many twists and turns of his political journey (from Tribunite Labourism via Gramscian Eurocommunism to anti-totalitarian liberal-democratic socialism), been drawn to anarchism, and knows precious little about it. I'm intrigued that people whose opinions I respect are still influenced by this political tradition, and wonder why they think it still has relevance.

Moreover, I question (genuinely - this is not meant to be provocative) whether their fascination with the Spanish anarchists of the Thirties is anything more than misty-eyed nostalgia for the only movement of the revolutionary left that didn't 'go bad'. (Or did it? Were the anarchist murders of priests and nuns during the Civil War any less barbarous than the Falangists' slaughter of anyone with a copy of Rousseau on their shelves?)

So I'm issuing a challenge - in the spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity, rather than political point-scoring. I'd like some of my anarchist-inclined blogging comrades (or anyone else who cares to respond) to explain to me - as briefly as they can - why they remain attracted to anarchism. Specifically, I'd like them to answer these questions:

1. What exactly do you mean by anarchism (which key ideas and thinkers are important to you)?

2. Does the anarchist experiment in the Spanish Republic have any relevance today (and if so what), or is the continuing fascination with it simply rose-tinted leftist nostalgia?

3. What exactly would it mean to implement anarchist ideas in a twenty-first century, globalised economy and polity - and would it even be possible or practicable?

Answers in the comments please - or if you want to take more space, on your own blog. I promise to include extracts from the most interesting responses in a future post.

Update (Saturday)

Responses are already in (see comments below) from The New Centrist, Brian, Les and Roland, plus a 'holding' message from Bob (and a longer response from Brigada on his own blog). I'm impressed. I'll do a proper round-up (and offer my own response to the responses) after the weekend (which lasts three days here in the UK, thanks to the late-summer bank holiday on Monday). In the meantime, thanks to everyone who has contributed so far - anybody else care to join in?

Update (Sunday)

A longer answer just in from The New Centrist - over at his blog. And from The Plump in the comments.

Update (Monday)

Just waiting for a couple more responses (Bob's promised one, and I'm still hoping Poumista will be tempted) before doing a final round-up. Watch this space.

Update (Thursday)

It's been a busy week, so I haven't got round to posting my 'response to the responses' yet. Will try to do so tomorrow.

To Italy and back

We arrived back from Italy on Sunday night, after two gloriously hot weeks renewing our acquaintance with our favourite valley in southern Tuscany. The highlights of our stay included sampling Brunello at an ancient vineyard outside Montalcino, and hearing white-cowled monks singing Gregorian chant at the beautiful Romanesque abbey of Sant'Antimo (see above).

Besides the excellent food and wine, the usual volume of holiday reading was consumed. After reading Arthur Herman's eye-opening book on the Scottish Enlightenment (which neatly brought together my interest in my Scottish family history and my fascination with the late 18th century) in St. Ives, I started off in Italy with David McCullough's 1776: Britain and America at War (who would have thought military history could be so gripping?), moved on to Iris Origo's autobiographical memoir (we visited her house and gardens during our stay), took an enjoyable diversion through Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon (every bit as witty and touching as his New York collection), then made a quick dash through Sarah Wise's The Italian Boy (in this case the link was with my early 19th century London ancestors), before launching into Doris Kearns Goodwin's monumental Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, in which I'm still absorbed. (It's an Obama favourite, of course. I notice, by the way, that he's taken another McCollough volume - on John Adams - to Martha's Vineyard. Fat chance he'll get to do any historical reading with his health care reforms being assailed from both left and right.)

Now it's back to work - and to blogging, once I've caught up with what I've been missing while I've been away.

Here comes the sun

Tomorrow it will be 40 years since the iconic zebra crossing photo that adorns the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road was taken. As I write, I have beside me the scratched copy of the LP, with its torn and dog-eared sleeve, that I bought from a friend in the playground when I was about fourteen, back in the days when no self-respecting greatcoat-wearing grammar-school boy could be seen walking to and from school without an LP - sorry album - under his arm.

I just missed being part of the Beatles generation. They were the soundtrack of my childhood, rather than my youth. The first single that we bought for our family's Dansette record player, when I was about seven, was I Feel Fine; I remember collecting pictures of the group to put in my TV Times sticker album; and playing in the street we used to divide into gangs based on whether we preferred the Beatles or the Stones.

Nevertheless, the first album I ever owned (I was thirteen) was the glossy, black boxed set of Let It Be, which cost the (then) astronomical sum of £3 (most albums were about 15 shillings, I think). I recall walking home from school with the record under my arm, and a friend who was a classical music buff (he's now a concert pianist) scoffing: '£3! For a load of shouting!' Such was the cultural divide in the early Seventies.

But by the time I was in my mid-teens, very little of the music we listened to owed anything (at least consciously) to the Beatles. Bowie and the punks looked to American bands like the Velvets and the Doors as key influences, and liking the Beatles even began to seem rather uncool. I think this was even more true for the generations of the '80s and '90s that followed us (Oasis being the exception that proves the rule). And today, I think you'd find very few British teenagers with more than even a passing knowledge of the Beatles' music.

This is in stark contrast to other countries, particularly in Europe, where the band's appeal has never really waned. In this BBC report, it's striking that almost everyone having their picture taken on the famous crossing is from outside Britain. The evanescence of the Fab Four's appeal in the country of their birth is probably the inevitable downside of the intense, fast-turnover nature of our pop culture, the upside of which is our deserved reputation for frantic innovation. Conversely, the greater appreciation of pop-musical heritage in many European countries is the positive side of musical cultures that are often static, repetitive and slow to move away from established styles.

To sign off for the week - for a couple of weeks, in fact, as we're off to Italy for a fortnight - here's George Harrison performing Here Comes The Sun: