Something for the weekend

Here's Mimitah - a new discovery, thanks to Bob's latest post. A little bit of African music to cheer up a wet and windy Saturday morning.

Blame game again

Time for our weekly dose of CiF self-parody.

Simon Tisdall catalogues the 'recent wave of violent attacks on Christian worshippers and churches in countries across the Muslim world', which has included the murder of churchgoers and the burning of buildings and Bibles. Cue an analysis of the worrying persistence of religious intolerance and its roots in fundamentalist versions of Islam, perhaps? Not a bit of it. Tisdall is, after all, a Guardian columnist and his piece appears under the 'Comment is Free' banner, so his interpretation of these events should come as no surprise:

[A]nalysts and academics suggest common threads do exist, notably the impact of globalisation on conservative communities across the Muslim world and a resulting threatened loss of cultural identity

[...]

Yet hostility also arises, in a fundamental sense, from Muslim perceptions of western aggression against Islam, be it the war in Afghanistan, domineering western economic and cultural behaviour, attempts to ban veils, offensive cartoon caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, airline and immigration profiling, or systemic, unchecked and arguably worsening discrimination and harassment of Muslim minorities living in western nations.

Hang on a minute: is Tisdall saying that murdering innocent churchgoers is an understandable response to a bunch of drawings? Or that we should blame the torching of churches in Egypt on a change in the uniform rules in French schools?

As for that bit about the impact of globalisation: it looks like Tisdall is casting Muslims as simply passive victims of world events, rather than people who are responsible for their actions. How patronising. Would he have the same response to (say) reports of western racists trashing mosques or burning copies of the Koran? I know historical comparisons can be odious, but it's rather like blaming Nazi war crimes on the Great Depression. Aren't you just glad, though, that globalisation is having an impact on conservative communities in the so-called 'Muslim world'? Who knows, it might eventually weaken the hold of their oppressive conservatism, to the great benefit of women, religious minorities and many others in those countries.

Reading Tisdall's depressing list of attacks on North African and Middle Eastern Christians, you'd have to strain every intellectual sinew not to put the blame squarely on Islamic militants and their intolerant ideology. But this, of course, is the Guardian, and that would never do. In the new pro-faith pseudo-liberal consensus, for which this once-great organ is the leading mouthpiece, you can blame the victim, blame anonymous historical forces, above all blame the west. But whatever you do, you must never ever blame the religion.

Via Mick , and also Norm, whose description of Tisdall as 'witless' is, I think, too kind.

Balancing bans

Few people will lose much sleep over the ban on Islam4UK and its parent organisation, al-Muhajiroun. However, even liberals who loathe everything these vile theo-fascist outfits stand for may question the government's motivation and tactics here. The ban was announced the day after I wrote this post about freedom of expression - and if, as liberals and humanists, we defend the right to criticise religion and the political reactionaries who exploit it for their own ends, then to be consistent we surely have to defend the freedom of those very reactionaries to express their views.

The only basis on which that freedom can be circumscribed by government - using the old 'shouting fire in a crowded theatre' principle - is if those ideas, or the act of expressing them, deliberately or intentionally stir up violence. That seems to have been the justification in this case: these organisations are said to have 'glorified terrorism'. But if that's the argument being used, then one has to ask: why wasn't the ban imposed before, given that al-Muhajiroun in its various guises has been organising in Britain for some time and its ideas are well-known?

The suspicion has to be that the ban was imposed as a direct reaction to Islam4UK leader Anjem Choudary's inflammatory proposal to organise a protest march through Wootton Bassett. One is tempted to draw the conclusion that the government acted not in response to the actual violence, or violence-inciting words, of Islam4UK's members, but out of panic at the thought of the likely violence against the group if the provocative march went ahead. Slapping a ban on the organisation must have looked like the quickest and most efficient way of putting the lid on a situation that was threatening to spiral embarrassingly out of control.

Of course, this wouldn't be the first time that the Brown government has used the sledgehammer of a blanket ban to avoid the prospect of a little bit of social disorder. Last year's refusal to allow Geert Wilders entry to Britain seemed to be motivated less by a belief that Wilders was advocating violence (though that was the dissimulating justification), than by fear of the violence threatened by his Islamic fundamentalist opponents if he were allowed to travel here.

Surely it's no coincidence that, on the very day that the Islam4UK ban was announced, the government also let it be known that it was renewing its ban on US shock-jock Michael Savage travelling to Britain. As I've said before, I hold no brief for Savage and his ultra-conservative opinions, but as in the Wilders case, it's the threat of violence against him by Muslim activists that seems to have been behind the original ban (Savage is, among other things, a vocal critic of Islam).

Renewing the ban on Savage this week looked like a cynical and populist tit-for-tat for the Islam4Uk ban: as if the government were sending a message to Muslims saying 'See, we're not anti-Muslim - we've banned an anti-Islamic extremist as well.'

If I'm correct in my analysis, then these bans are a further sign of the Brown government's willingness to use civil liberties instrumentally, as just another tool in its paternalistic approach to managing 'communities' in the interests of 'social cohesion'.

Barking mad

I've been doing quite a bit of research into my family's history recently, focusing on my mother's agricultural ancestors in what were then the fields and farms of rural Barking, and my father's forebears in Mile End and Whitechapel. So it pained me this week to read that both of these areas may soon boast (?) extremist demagogues as their political representatives - if Nick Griffin is successful in being elected as MP for Barking and Dagenham, and George Galloway achieves his apparent ambition to become mayor of Tower Hamlets.

I suppose having a fascist as your MP is marginally worse than having a supporter of clerical fascists and tyrants as your mayor, but if either came to pass, it would be a sad day for these boroughs, with their proud history of working-class activism and standing up to fascism.

Offences and excuses

Highly recommended (and not just becomes she kindly links to one of my posts): Eve Garrard's terrific guest post over at Norm's place, on freedom of expression and the taking of 'offence', in the wake of the violent attack on Kurt Westergaard. Here's a taster:

The attack on the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has raised yet again the issue of freedom of speech, and what is needed to justify and protect it. People whose principal reaction to the attack on Westergaard is to blame those who supposedly provoked the attacker by offending against his religious beliefs have been righty excoriated for this, partly at least on the grounds that no-one, including deeply committed religious believers, has the right not to be offended. And those of us who used to think, back in the late 20th century, that in the West at least the battle for free speech had been won, can now see with embarrassment how naive we were, and how complacent about the extent and durability of that freedom.

It's no longer possible to indulge such complacency; at least, not about the freedom to speak our minds. It's obvious to everyone now that the battle has resumed, and that the old arguments will have to be dusted off and fought for all over again.

I find myself in broad agreement with everything Eve writes here, and I particularly like her generous attempt later in the post to find common ground with religious believers in defending free speech (let's hope it's reciprocated). But I also thought this qualification from Primavera, about 'offence' as a motive for terror, was useful:

Eve mentions the importance of getting across to people that no-one, including deeply committed religious believers, has the right not to be offended. That is indeed an extremely important point, and the degree to which the opposite seems to be believed by the political and other chattering classes is horrifying and does not bode well. But I would add something else, too, which is that we shouldn’t, either, be too quick to accept one of the main premises of that particular debate (the debate about whether people should be protected from being offended). I’m talking about the premise that someone like Westergaard’s would-be-axe-murderer was really doing what he did because he was offended (which he may nevertheless have considered himself to be). Or, for that matter, that the whole world-wide eruption of violence over the original Mohammed cartoons was really all just because people felt offended.

I’m of the point of view advocated by Paul Berman and others: these attacks, this violence – all this is not happening because a Danish paper published some depictions of Mohammed (which it did, and which there was nothing wrong with) or because Israel is building settlements on Palestinian land (which it is and which there is a great deal wrong with) or because the United States props up the ruling family of Saudi Arabia (which I gather it does and which it probably shouldn’t). Rather the terrorism and the constant protests and the intimidation and the violence are driven by a simultaneously nihilistic and totalitarian agenda to attack the Occident (or what my father used to call, with great affection, the Abendland) and, ultimately, take over parts of it, as much indeed as possible. This does not need to mean that, say, Westergaard’s attacker had that particular ideology and big-picture agenda in mind when he attacked. The foot soldiers of a movement needn’t have a true understanding of the big picture in order to do their job and are often merely brainwashed fools. Westergaard’s attacker (his name, it seems, is not being published – why not?) may well have felt offended, or thought he felt offended. But why is it that, at this particular juncture in history, some Muslims, or at least some Islamists, respond to feeling offended by becoming violent, while, by and large, people of other persuasions don’t? Is it in the nature of Islamic belief itself? I don’t think that it is, and I say that not by way of hastening to insert the politically correct disclaimer (I don’t care whom I offend and if I thought it was inherent in Islam I would be happy to say so). Rather, it’s because the totalitarian, anti-Occident movement that Berman identified is indoctrinating its foot soldiers to behave this way. It’s not that the cartoon gave offence so the offended man got angry and attacked (even if that’s what the attacker himself honestly believes). It’s that the cartoon offered the opportunity to construct a pretext for violence and intimidation, and the taking of offence is part of that construct. There is a deeply dishonest and sinister, and extremely broad and radical, agenda behind the attack on Westergaard. And that is true even if the attacker, in his foot-soldier childishness, really thinks that he was acting alone and purely out of his own personal anger. If he thinks that, then he is simply unaware of the degree to which he had already been taught and conditioned to do violence.

All of which is a powerful riposte to Glenn Greenwald, writing in these posts, who seems to think he's being terribly bold and original in rehashing hoary old myths about America's support for Israel and actions in the Middle East somehow 'fuelling' terrorism. Do we have to quote former jihadist Hasan Butt yet again?

By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

One year in 120 seconds

There's been snow in these parts almost continuously for the past three weeks, and with the prospect of more of the white stuff falling this weekend, it's becoming pretty annoying, what with the daily uncertainty about school closures, transport disruptions, icy roads, etc.

At times like this, it can help to be reminded that this too will pass and, impossible though it may be to imagine right now, spring and summer will soon come around and this gnawing cold will be a distant memory. Here's Eirik Solheim's wonderful time lapse video of the view from his home in Oslo, recording the passing of the seasons (via):

Lest we forget

For conservatives who are starting to feel nostalgic for the Bush years, and liberals who may be wondering whether Obama is really any better than his predecessor: here's a reminder of the difference between them.

Two presidents taking very different approaches to admitting mistakes (not to mention the English language):

(Via and via)