Watch the full interview.

Jesus and Mo (peace be upon them)

This is a press release from One Law for All

HOLD THIS DATE – 11 February 2012
A Day to Defend Free Expression

One Law for All is calling for a rally in defence of free expression and the right to criticise religion on 11 February 2012 in central London from 2-4pm.

We are also calling for simultaneous events and acts in defence of free expression on 11 February in countries world-wide.

The call follows an increased number of attacks on free expression in the UK, including a 17 year old being forced to remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon or face expulsion from his Sixth Form College and demands by the UCL Union that the Atheist society remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon from its Facebook page. It also follows threats of violence, police being called, and the cancellation of a meeting at Queen Mary College where One Law for All spokespersonAnne Marie Waters was to deliver a speech on Sharia. Saying ‘Who gave these kuffar the right to speak?’, anIslamist website called for the disruption of the meeting. Two days later at the same college, though, the Islamic Society held a meeting on traditional Islam with a speaker who has called for the death of apostates, those who mock Islam, and secularist Muslims.

Whilst none of this is new, recent events reveal an increased confidence of Islamists to censor free expression publicly, particularly given the support received from universities and other bodies in the name of false tolerance, cultural sensitivity and respect.

The right to criticise religion, however, is a fundamental right that is crucial to many, including Muslims.

Clearly, the time has come to take a firm and uncompromising stand for free expression and against all forms of threats and censorship.

11 February is our chance to take that stand.

You need to be there.

Enough is enough.

Potkin Azarmehr on the banning of ‘Persepolis’ by the Ennahda party in Tunisia:

I was so saddened to learn about the trial in Tunisia over the broadcasting of the animated movie, Persepolis. The Tunisian revolution which was supposed to be about the overthrow of a dictator will soon descend into a religious dictatorship, if the secular Tunisians remain silent about this sort of thing. Once again, my favourite quote by Edmund Burke “Evil Only Prevails, When the Good Remain Silent” manifests itself in our own times.

The animated movie, Persepolis, is not about attacking sacred values at all. Only a religious zealot moron could come to such a conclusion. It is in fact a brilliant depiction of how a revolution against dictatorship is hijacked by such extremists. It is a movie that pre-warns ordinary people what will happen if they remain silent and allow the extremists to take over.

All Iranians who have experienced religious dictatorship will identify with the Persepolis movie. I remember watching it with my elder son in cinema. When the little girl, the main character of the film, stood up to her teacher, who was regurgitating the official revolutionary propaganda, and delivered the real truth, I was so overwhelmed that much to the embarrassment of my 10 year old, I got up in the middle of the movie and started clapping, only to have my shirt pulled by my 10 year old and be told “we just sit down and watch the movie ok? no clapping”.

The nonsense of the trial however can best be summed up by the following statement made by Nabil Karoui, the owner of the private Nessma television, which broadcast the movie:
“I am very sad when I see that the people that burned my house are free while I am here because I broadcast a film which was authorised” and he rightly described the trial as the “death of freedom of expression”.

After serious deliberation and consultation, officials from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) have come up with more than 50 phrases using the word “fuck” and 17 involving “butt”.

The list includes several apparently innocuous words and phrases, including “flatulence”, “deposit” and “fondle”. Others would likely only make sense to frustrated teenagers.

Among the more printable terms are “strap-on”, “beat your meat”, “crotch rot”, “love pistol”, “pocket pool” and “quickie”.

By and large the reaction has been ridicule and all of it directed at the PTA. Not least from Pakistanis themselves:

Shoaib Taimur in Karachi (@shobz) tweeted, “Thanks to PTA I can now curse like a Sailor. Thank u for helping me ‘improve’ my vocabulary and giving me a reason to laugh.”
Shakir Husain, also from Karachi (@shakirhusain) wrote, “the #ptabannedlist has ruined my evening plans.”
The choice and spelling of certain words and phrases is also the source of much humor. “Budweiser” made the list, as did “Gonorrehea” [sic].
Pakistan bans ‘monkey crotch’, ‘Jesus Christ’ and obscene words in text messages
But the agency’s decision to implement a ban in the first place has some Pakistanis worried.
Fahad Rehman, a 30-year old event planner in Lahore who often uses text messages to advertise his events, sees it as an attempt by “out-of-touch” officials to placate the more conservative sections of Pakistan’s highly-polarized society, by dictating what is and is not appropriate.
“The word ‘sexy’ is on the list? It’s ridiculous!” says Rehman. “There is, unfortunately, a large number of people who think like this. But this is a complete waste of time. It just diverts attention away from the real problems in Pakistan.”

Beyond the well deserved ridicule, some of the criticism has been thoughtful such as this comment by Umair Tariq:

Rather than putting emphasis on character building and progressiveness, the government threw us into confusion that ultimately led us to religious intolerance and extremism. We have given up regard for the privacy of an individual and we have forsaken the golden rule of religious tolerance on which Islam was founded.

According to these people, the liberty currently enjoyed by the minorities of our country is “enough” – the same liberty where Christians are raped and forcibly converted to Islam, where innocent Hindus are killed and where Ahmadis are unnecessarily targeted. I wonder how these people will react if the West suddenly replaces the liberty currently offered to Muslims and introduces this concept of “enough” liberty to them. How would they feel then?

I truly wonder at the hypocrisy of our nation.

Here are the complete lists of the banned words:
English Offensive Words (pdf)
Urdu Offensive Words (pdf)

Love is...

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi has an important and well-argued piece on the Charlie Hebdo firebombing and the failure of the liberal-left to stand up for it’s own liberal traditions. Last time it was the Guardian which capitulated to religious obscurantism in reaction to the Mo Toons. This time round it’s Time magazine (yes, that esteemed current affairs journal) which propped up a disgusting and cowardly justification of the incident by Bruce Crumley, on the basis that Muslims should not be expected to tolerate any form of offence to their prophet or their religious politics; not so much because Charlie Hebdo crossed the line of offence but because Muslims are incapable of rational self-critique. Disrespect Muslims at your peril. They might be inarticulate by ‘our’ standards, implies Crumley, but violence is the lingo of the offence takers.

The contrast with the debate in English-speaking circles is quite telling. Already the Guardian has put up an article by one Pierre Haski – a “co-founder and CEO of the French independent news website Rue89″ — who does not explicitly condemn the attack andeffectively urges readers to understand the firebombing in light of the fact that “for many French Muslims, religion has become a cultural identity, a refuge in a troubled society where they don’t feel accepted.” Thus, the attack on the publication’s office is merely “a disturbing reminder of the underground tensions in society.”

So back in 2006 and 2007 the Guardian went out of its way to publish articles by the likes of Karen Armstrong, a leading non-Muslim apologist for Islam. Her words speak for themselves: “But equally the cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others.” The result is that in Britain, this subject has often become a partisan left-right issue, even though it should transgress political boundaries.

It would appear some American outlets are following theGuardian‘s lead. For example, Bruce Crumley, the Paris correspondent for Time magazine, asked Charlie Hebdo‘s editors: “Do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of ‘because we can’ was so worthwhile?”

Incidentally, at Karen Armstrong’s alma mater – St. Anne’s College, Oxford University — it would appear that some students and staff are following in her footsteps. At a minor interlude during a seminar I attended last week, several students were placing the blame squarely on Charlie Hebdo for the vandalism, stressing the need to “respect” the religion of others; and one supervisor argued that Charlie Hebdo deserved to be held partially responsible if a violent response was predictable.

Unfortunately, the persistence of such sentiments only invites one to state principles that might seem obvious, but never grow unworthy of affirmation. There is no moral equivalence between those exercising their right to free speech and Islamists who wish to impose the standards of traditional Sharia (Islamic law) on society and are prepared to harm physically others and their property to achieve that end.

More generally, this affair — along with the attack on a Tunisian TV station for broadcasting the film Persepolis, and the  death threatsthat forced the flight from Pakistan of the judge who convicted the assassin of Salman Taseer, the Punjab governor who opposed the blasphemy law — demonstrates that Islam as a whole still has a long way to go to come towards accepting basic standards of toleration of criticism.

In short, one hopes that the following principle – well summed up by a prominent Melkite Greek Catholic deacon — will come to be accepted as mainstream in Islam: ‘[O]ne’s response to someone else’s provocative action is entirely one’s own responsibility. If you do something that offends me, I am under no obligation to kill you, or to run to the United Nations to try to get laws passed that will silence you. I am free to ignore you, or laugh at you, or to respond with charity, or any number of reactions.’

Read the rest here.

Rania Hafez

When this article was published this morning, the subs at the Indpendent gave it the title ‘Why we have to get over our fear of Islamophobia‘. Twelve hours later, they’ve renamed it to ‘Islamophobia: Why we have to get over our fears‘. Whatever they choose to call it, this is an amazing article. The author of the piece is Rania Hafez, a teacher educator and academic and founder and director of ‘Muslim Women in Education’.

‘Islamophobia is the new racism’ is now a seeming truism, or so Baroness Warsi and many others would have us believe. She claims that Islamophobia has ‘passed the dinner table test’ and that anti-Muslim prejudice is now normal and uncontroversial in respectable society. Warsi’s views are echoed by many British Muslims, who claim to experience such prejudice daily.

Like many a clever coining, the term ‘Islamophobia’ remains undefined and its existence uncontested. The first recorded use dates back to 1990 in the American magazine Insight, although its etymology can be tracked to the mid 1920s. Since then after being a sociological concept largely restricted to Britain its use increased exponentially when it was declared a new form of global racism by the UN in 2001.

In its simplest form, and just going by the term itself, ‘phobia’ can be defined as ‘an intense but unrealistic fear that can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, brought on by an object, event or situation’. Adding the prefix ‘Islam’ therefore implies that this irrational fear is triggered by Islam and directed at Muslims.

But are we conflating run of the mill prejudice that a few may encounter with a national epidemic of irrational hatred against Muslims? Or is the cry of ‘Islamophobia’ simply a way of deflecting legitimate criticism of certain backward ideas associated with religion in general; and conservative Islam in particular? When we talk about Islamophobia, what is it we are really talking about?

Neither the simple definition nor the forensic academic investigation of the concept help to explain what we are really dealing with. Both mask the real issues behind Islamophobia. The easy appropriation of psychoanalytical approaches to fear suggest that indeed fear is the key issue. However, ‘Islamophobia’ expresses not a primitive fear of Muslims and Islam but several deeper anxieties that dominate British and Western political culture.

The first of these is a fear of conviction. Contemporary ‘post-modern’ morality encourages us to reject certainty in ourselves and others. We fear to confidently state our own convictions in case we are accused of bigotry, and we are anxious about others expressing their beliefs in case they are forced upon us. We may repeat the mantra that all perspectives and philosophies are equal, including beliefs held by others, but we shy away from a close examination of these beliefs for fear of losing the moral high ground of being non-judgemental.

In this cultural climate, Islam presents the West with a double challenge. Its adherents display a remarkably strong and not the slight bit ‘post-modern’ conviction in their faith, and its tenets seemingly contradict social and political Western values. Unwilling and unable to engage either with the faith or its followers, Islamophobia becomes a useful subterfuge.

This fear of strong ideas is connected with another fear. Fear of free speech.

There is no doubt that there is a deep-rooted ‘phobia’ in our society, but it is not of Islam. The fear that has gripped people is a fear of open debate and free speech. Across the spectrum, politicians may advocate for liberty and freedom of speech, but with caveats and ever stricter limits.

Both sides of the Islamophobia debate have argued for curbs on freedom of expression and free speech. The free speech of Muslim ‘extremists’ is curtailed in the interest of community cohesion. And the freedom to criticise Muslim fundamentalists or even Islam is chilled by charges of Islamophobia.

Fundamental to the fear of free speech is the fear of giving offence. We live in a culture where giving offence is deemed worse than grievous bodily harm. Some even argue that ‘hate speech’ itself harms the very being of those at whom it is directed. This doesn’t just betray the fear of argument and debate, but also the diminished view of individuals and groups particularly Muslims as not being capable of rational argument.

Not immune from the same fears, some British Muslims have jumped onto that very bandwagon, seeing it both as a useful way of deflecting criticism and an avoidance of defending their ideas. Much easier to hide behind the charge of Islamophobia! The danger for them is that in rejecting argument and debate they start to lose the ability the express their ideas with conviction and claim a legitimate public space for their beliefs.

Fear of conviction, fear of free speech and fear of offence are the hidden fears in the cry of ‘Islamophobia’. Overcoming these fears is the real challenge to all of us: Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

100 lashes if you don't die of laughter

From the Huffington Post:

The Paris office of the satirical French MagazineCharlie Hebdo has been firebombed and its website has been hacked. It follows the announcement thatthe magazine would be ‘guest edited’ by the Prophet Muhammad.

It has been reported that the office was gutted by fire at around 1:00am Paris time, but there were no injuries.

Patrick Pelloux, a witness to the attack, told the AFP news agency that a molotov cocktail was thrown through the window.

“Everything was destroyed,” he said.

According to the Associated Press the director of the magazine said “the material damages are large”.

On Tuesday the magazine said that the Prophet Muhammad would be editing the magazine in “honour” of Islam’s role in this year’s uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other Islamic countries.

“In order fittingly to celebrate the Islamist Ennahda’s win in Tunisia and the NTC (National Transitional Council) president’s promise that sharia would be the main source of law in Libya, Charlie Hebdo asked Muhammad to be guest editor,” the editorial team said in a statement.

On Wednesday morning the magazine’s website had also apparently been hacked by an Islamist group.

From the Telegraph:

Ennahda won the most seats in Tunisia’s October elections and is now trying to form a coalition caretaker government.It has promised to work with more liberal parties, and respect gender equality.

“To fittingly celebrate the victory of the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia… Charlie Hebdo has asked Mohammed to be the special editor-in-chief of its next issue”, the magazine said in a statement.

“The prophet of Islam didn’t have to be asked twice and we thank him for it,” the statement said.

The cover of this week’s issue, out on Wednesday, shows Mohammed saying: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter”.

It also includes an editorial by the Prophet entitled Halal Aperitif and a women’s supplement called Madam Sharia.

Behind the humour, the editorial’s message is serious: “No religion is compatible with democracy from the moment a political party representing it wants to take power in the name of God”.

“What would be the point of a religious party taking power if it didn’t apply its ideas,” it goes on. “Hello, we are the Bolchevik party and if you vote for us we promise never to speak of Communism…Come on.”

French politicians and religious leaders were swift to condemn the attack.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, minister of economy, said: “Those who did this designate themselves as enemies of democracy.”

“You don’t negotiate the freedom of the press with bombs…If you are not happy with what’s in a newspaper, you take it to court.”

The Guardian:

the state of "yiddishkeit" yesterday

anyway, it appears to be (you can download it from here) from one of the increasingly odd sub-groups of the breslover sect of hasidim, who you may have seen in the recent tv documentary partying at their annual jamboree at the sect founder’s tomb in the town of uman in the ukraine. they are regarded as somewhat odd even by other hasidim (in a kind of sufi high-on-G!D hippy kind of way) but they are rather obsessed with the kabbalistic aspects of correct sexual activity, the piece itself being extremely revealing of the attitudes that filter through in much of the discourse from the haredi world, particularly the hasidic bits, so i thought i’d share it, with some translation and commentary:

1. a “leshem yichud” is a kabbalistic formula meant to be recited before an action in order to concentrate the proper intention and mindfulness.
2. the “sita aher”, normally called the “sitra ahra”, is a kabbalistic term for, not to put too fine a point on it, the “dark side of the Force”.
3. “klipot” is a term referring to the “shells” that enclose the “sparks of holiness that were trapped in the lower worlds (including ours) during the cosmic catastrophe of the creation of evil in lurianic kabbalah.
4. “pogem enayim” means “defiler of one’s eyes” – a transgression of a Torah commandment; according to most interpretations, gazing at immodestly dressed women will constitute this transgression – haredi interpretations of “immodestly dressed” covers pretty much anything that doesn’t cover hair, elbows, knees, neckline or reveals the curves of the (female, of course) body.
5. a “lav doraysa” is a negative prohibition (thou shalt not) directly commanded in the Torah.
6. “lo sasuro achary levavchem vachari anachem” is a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which refers to the commandment which is found in the third paragraph of the “shema”, numbers 15:37-41, to not “stray after your hearts”, in other words, follow impulses which might lead to idolatrous behavour.
7. “heshumer mkal dvar ra” is, again, a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which refers to the commandment which is found deuteronomy 23:10, to “guard the camp when you go out against your enemies”, usually understood as “watch your back”, but easily reinterpreted to signify the protection of one’s home from evil influences; you will note the implicit attitude to the outside world.
8. a “deraysa” is a Torah commandment. to be “over a deraysa” (again, hasidishe transliteration, inconsistently done) one means to transgress the Torah commandment.
9. “poskim” are halakhic decisors, some of the important ones of whom are mentioned here; of course, it is by no means clear that the *way* in which these guys mean it is the same as the way in which these poskim mean it, certainly their decisions do refer explicitly to watching a film, but rather to other situations. however, if you want to take it that way, this is where you’d get the precedent from. of course, you can see “immodest” women (as these guys think of it) anywhere you like these days, you don’t need to be watching a film.
10. ” to be over on “Vehyisem Kedoshim” and “Kidoshim Tihyo”” means to transgress the Torah commandments to imitate G!D by being “holy” – leviticus 11:45 / 19:1-2 – which is taken by these guys to refer to refraining from illicit sexual acts, although ramban – nachmanides – has a big argument with rashi on this precise point, so clearly this isn’t as clear as it is made out to be.
11. “reshaim” – evil people; presumably this means the baddies.
12. “pogem habris” means “defiler of the covenant”, which is generally understood to be the misuse of the bit of you that the brit affects – in breslover thought i believe this is generally understood to be a euphemism for [male] masturbation, in any case they don’t half go on about it.
13. “see keri while i am asleep” – i.e. have sexual dreams.
14. “shmoneh esreis” – this refers to the “amidah”, the “18 benedictions” or standing prayer, which is of supreme importance in jewish prayer and is said three times daily; they’re worried that your mind will drift off during it.
15. “hiruray znus with my tefillin on” – a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which can be translated as “thoughts of whoredom”, in other words, the contemplation of illicit sexual acts while wearing phylacteries during morning prayers, which they suppose will be much more likely; the preservation of proper mindfulness while wearing tefillin is of great importance.
16. “kfirot” – denial of the truth of Torah.
17. “tzadikim” – sages.
18. “holy Shemot” – the various Divine Names, the contemplation and manipulation of which are the practical structures on which many kabbalistic techniques are founded.
19. “azilut, briah, yitzirah and asiyah” – the kabbalistic names of the “four worlds”.
20. “nefesh, ruch, neshamah” – one schema describing the structure of the human soul.
21. “avodas haShem” – the service of G!D, which should of course be one’s primary consideration. the thought that watching a film might actually assist in this, or teach moral lessons, does not, of course, occur.
22. “moshiach” – the messiah.
23. “kedusha” – holiness.
24. “emunah” – belief / trust.
25. “chitzinim” – literally, “externalities”, which, kabbalistically speaking are elements of Creation that “act as a spiritual barrier” between humans and G!D, which are there effectively play “devil’s advocate” and be overcome in order to choose the way of Torah and commandments and closeness to G!D of our own free will.
26. “do teshuvah” – repent.
27. “find my zivug” – to locate and marry one’s destined wife.
28. “if i am married then i am willing to have my children considered semi mamzarim since i will not be able to control my thoughts.” – this, in my view is the most serious, as the prohibitions and disabilities associated with mamzerut (the offspring of Torah-prohibited intercourse such as an incestuous or adulterous liaison) are incredibly unpleasant, restrictive and persistent. this is pretty much tantamount to saying that they wouldn’t be able to get married (quite a penalty in the haredi world) because of your sins. to call this “overstated” barely covers it; there is no such halakhic status of being a “semi-mamzer”; the avoidance of potential mamzerut being a fundamental concern. raising it as a real possibility is, in my view, an outrageous piece of scaremongering based on the falsification of halakhah; it’s basically making up a new category of prohibition which can’t possibly be justified in intent, let alone determined in practice or policed; if having “impure thoughts” makes your kids “semi-mamzerim”, then nobody could possibly consider themselves free of these.

all in all, this would have been funny and mordant as a piece of swiftian satire – as a serious piece of moral exhortation, it is arrant nonsense and appallingly manipulative. if i find out who has been leaving this stuff lying around, i will have words.

i came across this particular gem of an essay  from his website today. it is an elegant argument for the ability to reconcile scientific and religious viewpoints:

“…Even if the Darwinian mechanisms were inadequate, presumably G!D had some sort of means of transforming creatures via natural law, which science would eventually discover. Dissing the neo-Darwinian explanation would mislead people into thinking that it necessarily happened in a supernatural manner.

Together with further contemplation of the topic, in which it occurred to me that the “random” nature of Darwinian evolution was no more theologically problematic than the “random” nature of the events of Purim or of a lottery, I realized that it didn’t make a whit of theological difference which mechanism powered evolution. As a result, I lost all interest in whether the neo-Darwinian explanation of the mechanism made sense or not. It was no more relevant to me than any other obscure problem of science.”

you can read the rest here.

r. slifkin’s continued writing, in the face of the continuing unjustifed attacks on him, is something that we at the spittoon should support. we are against obscurantism and nuttery and attempts to stifle discussion – and we are entirely in favour of the assertion of principles that are both rational, clearly expressed and both scientifically and spiritually honest to a degree that is all too rare in todays polarised debate.

Yesterday the blonde bigot was acquitted of inciting hatred of Muslims in a court ruling that will strengthen his political influence and exacerbate tensions in Europe.

On the issue of his acquittal and the question of freedom of speech, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has it just right:

As I’ve said from the beginning of Wilders’ trial, it’s wrong to prosecute anyone for free expression, no matter how hateful and deranged that expression is.

But it’s sadly ironic that Wilders was acquitted of exactly the same kind of persecution he wants to impose on all Muslims; he often calls for the Koran to be banned, advocates that Islam should not be considered a religion at all, and explicitly advocates that Muslims be stripped of the rights of free speech and free religion.

This is the correct judgment by the Netherlands court, but Geert Wilders is no hero of free speech — he’s a slimy hate-monger, just like the American bloggers who worship him.

M F Hussein. Photo Courtesy: Continuum/Delhi Art Gallery

Here are two thoughtful, though not uncritical, assessmentsof his life.

The first by Girish Shahane in Mint:

He studied at the JJ School of Art, though the myth of M.F. Husain, as it later developed, excluded this formal training. By the late 1940s, he was widely recognized as one of India’s leading talents. He reached the peak of his creativity in the 1950s and 1960s, crafting seminal canvases such as Man, Zameen, and Between the Spider and the Lamp. Having come to believe that shakti, the female principle, was the essence of Indian culture, he fell under the spell of Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and Mother Teresa in the 1980s. By this time, he was, by some margin, India’s most expensive painter. His prolific output was as crucial to the nascent market as Amitabh Bachchan’s films were to the movie industry. Well past his prime as an artist, the complex interaction of figure and colour of his best work increasingly replaced by easy symbolism, Husain became a media star, and enjoyed the attention. His flowing hair and beard, preference for walking barefoot, and humble background as a hoarding painter made a winning combination.

The second, by Salil Tripathi who writes about the controversies MF Hussein never courted but which surrounded his life and work particularly in the latter years; and how these controversies and censorship, cravenly engendered by the Hindu fundamentalist right-wing, hounded him to his death:

In the mid-1990s, a magazine in India found an old sketch of a nude Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning, which Husain had painted. The sketch is elegant and clean; and while it does not “resemble” Saraswati (for who knows what she really looked like?), it was his interpretation of Saraswati. But many Hindus felt offended because she was painted without any clothes. Then, they searched through his paintings and found many other paintings which also showed Hindu divinities without clothes. None of that was gratuitous, nor was it surprising: Hindus have painted their gods and goddesses without clothes for more than a thousand years. There is a concept, of nirakara, or formless, which lies at the heart of this: that you imagine what your deity might look like, giving the formless some shape.

That was too profound for the fundamentalists, and they began campaigning against him, in India and abroad. In 2006, the Asia House in central London had to cancel an exhibition of his works after unknown assailants damaged paintings. An art gallery showing his work in India was attacked. A television studio was attacked after a programme it produced asked viewers whether whether Husain should be given India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna.

At one time, hundreds of cases were filed against him. India has peculiar laws dating from colonial times, introduced by Britain soon after the rebellion of 1857 to keep communities separate and segregated. India kept them on the books, allowing bullies to terrorise artists and writers: the laws allow anyone who feels offended to lodge a complaint, which is then initiated by the state. Husain was prosecuted under Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code, which outlaws insulting religions, and section 153A, which deals with promoting enmity between groups.

Courts, which are supposed to judge if such cases have merit, would often accept the cases nonetheless, and had Husain lived in India and wanted to be a law-abiding citizen, he’d have spent the better part of his life criss-crossing across the vast country, appearing in different courts. There was no guarantee that fresh charges would not be brought against him — his presence in a town could be considered likely to cause violence, and so new, criminal charges could easily be imposed on him, with no certainty that he’d get bail.

In the end, higher courts threw out the cases, and, in a more polite tone, told his critics to get a life. But in India, that does not end the matter. And the kind of people who had ransacked galleries or attacked the TV studios made violent threats against him.

In the case of Dr Usama Hasan, an imam at Masjid Tawhid in Leytonstone, London, who has been persecuted and victimised, we call upon religious scholars, imams, mosque committees, Muslim community organisations and Muslim communities as a whole to affirm the following principles so that we may reaffirm the basic conditions for civilised and principled Muslim community life:

1. No imam or member of the Muslim community should be subjected to hate speech, intimidation or threats of violence on any matter regarding beliefs or religious rulings as this is contrary to the law of the land which British Muslims are bound to uphold, and most essentially that, under Islamic teachings and etiquette, mob rule has no legitimate place within our community life.

2. No religious scholar or any ordinary Muslim has the legal jurisdiction to declare any fellow Muslim outside of the faith of Islam (takfir) in the United Kingdom, and furthermore that they are duty bound to affirm freedom of religious conscience which is upheld in the United Kingdom.

3. Those who have made takfir of Dr Usama Hasan or who have acted in an intimidating or abusive fashion towards him must publicly retract their statements of takfir immediately and offer an unconditional public apology.

4. That there is a positive duty to uphold the etiquette of differences of opinion, and to condemn those who actively promote hatred and division within our communities. We should all affirm the necessity of developing a mature and wise ethos within Muslim communities so that we may handle matters of controversy with tact and wisdom in recognition of our great diversity.

5. All matters of mosque governance should conform to the Charity Commission’s guidance or any other relevant legislation, and no ad hoc measures should be undertaken in contravention of these rules or legislation in either letter or spirit.

Join up!

Update: A number of not-so-moderate groups have joined the moderates by supporting this campaign.  The list is growing:

The Islamic Society of Britain

The East London Mosque

Inspire

IMAZE

The MCB

India's grand master: forced to flee his homeland due to Hindu extremism and state censorship

Nick Cohen has a remarkable piece on the continuing suppression of freedom of speech and the glorification of “offence taking” by the far-right Hindu extremists in India, led by Bal Thackeray and the army of thugs from the Shiv Sena:

Why pick on Husain for sketches no one found disturbing when he first released them? Read his accusers, and they cannot justify their charges of blasphemy or obscenity. How can they when Husain’s paintings are not remotely pornographic but part of a deliberate attempt by the artist and his contemporaries to continue Indian traditions?

Husain’s real offence was to be born into a Muslim family almost 100 years ago and to defend Nehru’s secular dream. That was it. That was all his attackers needed. They wanted to feed their supporters a diet of outrage, and needed to supply them with targets for their rage. The identity of the target was irrelevant. If they had not gone after Husain, they would have gone after someone else. In the new, pure India they yearn for, a Muslim cannot be a true Indian, or indeed in Husain’s case live in India as a citizen. Any Muslim or any historian they could accuse of being a socialist, communist or relic of British liberalism would do.

Well, how lucky we are that we do not suffer from versions of India’s censorship laws here, and how proud we should be that we could offer Husain a sanctuary in London.

But we are not so lucky, and there is no cause for pride. Go back to the forced closure of the Husain exhibition in 2006. The reaction to the attack on intellectual freedom in the heart of a city that boasts of being a great cultural capital told you all you needed to know about the spread of the enfeebling dogma that society must appease any religious group that can claim offence and threaten violence. There was no reaction. The artists and intellectuals who are usually so keen to write round-robin letters to the press denouncing this policy or that injustice stayed silent. Journalists and politicians bit their tongues, too. They tacitly accepted the tyrannical proposition that if a writer or artist failed to show “respect”, then he or she must suffer the consequences. The denial by fanatics of the right of the public to see the work of a major artist did not warrant one paragraph in all the news-in-brief columns of the daily newspapers.

The closure of Husain’s exhibition shows that we have no right to feel superior to India. The West has quietly accepted a new blasphemy law. It is not a law that has been debated by congresses or parliaments. No legitimate authority has spelt out its limits in a statute book. No judge protects defendants’ rights to a fair trial. No jury insists that they must find the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt before conviction. It is enough that some know-nothing thug somewhere deems that a writer or artist had insulted him and his god or gods, and has the means, motive and opportunity to threaten retribution.

Read the entire piece in full.

The Park51 debate has now spilled over into the doomed territory of visceral offence taking. The opportunity to have this debate on issues such as the American Constitution’s provisions for freedom of religion and Islam’s obligation to universal principles in the USA may have been lost for good. Nevertheless Manji takes a crack at articulating a set of questions and demands expected of Imam Rauf should Park51 ever get built.

But for all the restless offense I feel, I step back and force myself to think. As I wrestle with the issues, I realize that an opportunity exists for something more constructive than anger.

Namely, accountability. If Park51 gets built, thanks to its provocative location the nation will scrutinize what takes place inside. Americans have the opportunity right now to be clear about the civic values expected from any Islam practiced at the site.

That means setting aside bombast and asking the imam questions born of the highest American ideals: individual dignity and pluralism of ideas.

• Will the swimming pool at Park51 be segregated between men and women at any time of the day or night?

• May women lead congregational prayers any day of the week?

• Will Jews and Christians, fellow People of the Book, be able to use the prayer sanctuary for their services just as Muslims share prayer space with Christians and Jews in the Pentagon? (Spare me the technocratic argument that the Pentagon is a governmental, not private, building. Park51 may be private in the legal sense but is a public symbol par excellence.)

• What will be taught about homosexuals? About agnostics? About atheists? About apostasy?

• Where does one sign up for advance tickets to Salman Rushdie’s lecture at Park51?

These questions aren’t gratuitous. I, for one, remain haunted by the 300 Muslims chanting “Death to Rushdie” on Sept. 10, 2001. They gathered outside a theater in Houston, Texas, to protest a visit by the novelist—the target of a 1989 death warrant from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. One Muslim told reporters, “The fatwa is valid even if the Iranian government no longer supports it.” Another warned, “We have not forgotten about him and his evil act.” That man affiliated himself with Houston’s Islamic Education Center. Education or indoctrination? The question deserves an honest response.

Through engagement that emphasizes questions like these, Americans of all faiths and no faith at all may very well make the colorful neighborhood around Ground Zero host to the most transparent, most democratic, most modern Islam—ever.

As a proud New Yorker as well as a reformist Muslim, I think, and not just feel, that this would be a fitting salute to the victims of 9/11. It would turn the tables on the freedom-hating culture of al Qaeda. And it would subvert the liberty-lashing culture of offense

given that the board of deputies and, by the looks of it, the community as a whole, has withdrawn cooperation with the programme, as it was clearly interpreted as a hatchet job, the same way that “the root of all evil?” was – tendentiously edited and, wherever possible, using extreme examples as if they were the norm. of course whenever the jewish community was mentioned, it was invariably accompanied by a shot of someone strictly orthodox – small boys with giant peyot, or behatted, abundantly bearded, penguinish yeshiva bochurs staring through bottle-top glasses. as we all know, all jews look just like that.

the jewish community yesterday, apparently

a salient example was that of the british humanist society researcher pulling out the “shocking” example of the jewish school that does 8 hours of “religious education” a week compared to 6 hours of science. i wonder which school it was? they didn’t say if it was a mainstream united synagogue school or a strictly-orthodox school, of course.

what the anti-faith-schoolers don’t seem to get is that in this “8 hours of religious education”, they’re *not teaching theology* or “how to be unscientific” – they’re teaching practical skills of language, textual analysis and interpretation. in this sense, the correct analogy is not between a “faith school” and a “secular school”, but between a “specialist school” and a “generalist school” – i don’t see dawkins jumping all over sylvia young because her schools devote 10 hours+ a week to performing arts compared to 6 hours of national curriculum science. these kids need to PRACTICE – and so do religious kids, whether they’re learning Qu’ran or Torah or gita or granth. most religion – and this is an area where the preponderance of christianity in this country distorts the debate – requires considerable grasp of both practical techniques and core knowledge, in the same way that you’d expect a specialist technology college to spend extra time on programming languages to an level of detail not matchable by a specialist modern languages college.

anyway, stereotypes apart, like most of the jewish people (and christians and muslims) i know, religious or not, faithschoolers or not, i do struggle with whether we’re doing enough to encourage critical thinking. and i think it is worth mentioning that, in my opinion, in general, we’re not, which is part of the reason that the kiruv and dawah organisations which are, as far as i’m concerned, the vanguard of clerical fascism, are gaining ground. whether pro- or anti- people don’t know enough about religion to make informed choices and, as a result, many are either accepting it for badly-thought-through, poorly-rationalised reasons, or seeking to have it eliminated for equally misguided reasons. there isn’t a strong enough voice saying that you can be both traditionally religious and a clear, critical thinker, or that even though you don’t believe something yourself you still think it has a role to play. and, in point of fact, i don’t hand over the programming of my kids’ minds to their school, to teach them “the correct way” to think, that has to be my responsibility as a parent as well. part of the problem with the faith schools debate, it seems to me, is that focusing on theology and the problems with critical thinking misses why faith schools are really needed – it isn’t to teach them to “think correctly”, it is to teach them the skills to live in that particular community, which are time-consuming to learn, the same way as if you wanted to grow up to be an orchestra player, you’d need to go to music lessons and spend a lot of extra time practicing in order to be able to perform to the required standard. because christianity does not, generally, require these sorts of skills (say, for example, latin and greek, or scholastic argumentation) it is a lot harder to say how they clearly add value, other than that by all the motivated parents competing to get in increases the performance of the school – i think it might in fact be just another variety of the hawthorn effect.

getting back to the main point about the critical thinking deficit, however, i think a major part of critical thinking is the ability to debate with people of differing opinions. this, i feel, is typified by the current debate over free speech and offence. i analyse the issue and i see a continuum, starting with unintentional offence, going through intentional offence, through harassment to ultimately incitement to violence. it seems to me the debate is currently polarised between those who see all offence as tantamount to incitement to violence and those who see even incitement to violence as merely an expression of free speech. considering the vehemence with which my religion and ethnicity is attacked by the former and their apparent inability to comprehend the continuum connection, one might think that i would go to that opposite extreme – as indeed i have been accused of many times, when pointing out instances of jew-hatred and being told i was merely being hysterical. in fact, i am naturally far closer to faisal’s espousal of the “fry/hitchens standard”, if you like – “so you’re offended? so fecking what?”, as i believe in free speech. my difficulty is where the line should be drawn, which needs a far more nuanced perception than i can currently bring to the debate.

an excellent example of the challenges of critical thinking is currently being debated at harry’s place and elsewhere in this intellectual neighbourhood of the blogosphere between edmund standing and others:

“why would anyone want to take books that manifestly do make assertions about ultimate reality and give clear commands about how humans should behave, the punishments they should incur for thinking or behaving differently, and so on, and then delude themselves and others into thinking that actually those books don’t say what they clearly do say, or attempt to ‘reinterpret’ those books in a way obviously at variance with their intended meaning?”

in other words, if someone says “kill the bastards”, he means “kill the bastards”, not “engage them in debate” – and you should take that statement at face value. the trouble is, mr standing, that *isn’t the way we do it in judaism* (and, i would argue, not the way many people do it in islam) – we take challenging statements like that as a jumping off point, assuming that there is more to the basic statement than meets the eye. it is, for us, clearly established by the talmudic debate about the “oven of akhnai” (BT baba metzia 59b) that human interpretation has the power to overrule a “voice from the heavens”, but our *authority* to do this is derived from the Torah’s plain meaning: “it is not in heaven” (deuteronomy 30) – in other words, that it is for us to interpret how the Text should be interpreted, that’s how it’s designed in the first place, not as an instruction manual free from ambiguity. jewish texts are based on cardinal principles of interpretative methodology and it is understanding how these work that constitutes a large part of the training that jewish children undergo when they are understanding their texts. i would go so far as to say that you can see the difference between people with this training and people without it is abundantly evident from the attitudes of, say, your average bible-belt christian and those of your averagely educated student of jewish law – the latter would not consider carrying out a punishment from leviticus, or even suggesting that it should be carried out as stated in the plain text without the full range of checks, balances and protective safeguards detailed in hundreds of folio pages of Talmud, commentaries and halakhah, under the precise circumstances in which such conditions apply. yet what some people seem to object to is interpretations based on simplistic misunderstandings. the objection then is:

“We don’t look at the work of medieval cartographers and then try to ‘reinterpret’ their maps so they fit with modern understandings of geography.”

well, no, but this isn’t a physical phenomenon here, it’s a legal framework, so its application is always going to be a matter of interpretation. i really don’t see what’s so hard to understand about that – but nonetheless, i don’t see an authoritative argument being made in return for the benefit of those who might not understand why interpretation is important; G!D Forbid, someone might think that that’s what those texts actually mean, or that G!D actually Wants us to behave like bronze age maniacs, when nothing could be further from the truth.

r. jonathan sacks once said, in conversation with john humphrys i believe, that the Torah seeks to teach us to learn to think for ourselves; initially, like a parent, G!D Chastises us and then Picks us up – but there is an expectation that we learn, over time, to pick ourselves up and eventually, not to fall over in the first place. i would argue that developing critical thinking is a salient example of precisely that and that the Commandment to do so is itself a Divine Mandate – so objections such as this:

“In every other area of human thought and writing, we turn to the latest, most advanced ideas, not to the primitive ideas of men of the past.”

should be shown as the red herrings they are. of course, this objection is foreseen:

“There is absolutely no rational basis for ‘reinterpreting’ ancient texts to make them appear relevant to today, nor any objective criteria for how this should be carried out, or to what extent such texts should be ‘liberally’ reinterpreted.”

but why should such criteria be objective? do we demand objective criteria against which to measure the Torah? do we demand that the world be judged against the Torah’s criteria? no, we do not – by the Torah’s own command. nor do we always demand a “liberal” interpretation. the point is that the giants of Torah throughout history to the modern era have always provided for the best of modernity to be understood, whether as “the wisdom of the nations” or as “Torah and wisdom”, but this perspective is in danger from the tendency to look inwards, to assume we have all the answers, from fear and suspicion of the outside world. simply to assert that “it’s not a valid question”, or that “it comes from an impure source” is not going to cut it in the long-term, whether or not you’re able to control the sources of people’s knowledge; and, if this is what is sought, it is both immoral and contrary to the justice that the Torah commands us in the most emphatic terms to pursue.

we need to understand and respond to these questions and attacks as a bona fide challenge, as if they were asked in an open-minded way – because regardless of whether the people conducting the public polemic are open-minded or not, similar questions will always be asked from “inside the camp” – and not to be able to address them effectively will prove the case of the public polemicists.

Alex Massie’s comment on the “Ground Zero Mosque” is spot on:

One of the recurring arguments against the plan is that, however well-intentioned its backers may be, it represents an unfortunate and unnecessary “provocation”. Even if those involved mean no harm and don’t mean to “provoke” they should have been wise enough to appreciate that their proposal was bound to provoke a hostile reaction. Which means they should think again.

That’s certainly an argument; I just don’t think it’s a very good one. It is a familiar one, however. Cast your mind back 20 years and remember the rumpus that erupted when Salman Rushdie had the temerity, the gall, the bare-arsed effrontery to publish The Satanic Verses. There were those – including plenty of so-called liberals – who effectively sided with the book-burners and maniacs who protested against Rushdie (and the Penguin group) calling for the book to be banned.

Rushdie, you see, should have appreciated that publishing was bound toprovoke people and, this being so, he should have been wise enough to pulp his novel. Yes, yes, of course we all believe in the right to freedom of expression but, in this instance, is it really sensible to insist upon it in such a provocative fashion? If there’s a backlash, well, poor Rushdie has brought it upon himself hasn’t he? He should have known better.

It was, as Christopher Hitchens has often argued a telling and not-so small moment that showed how willing many soi-disant liberals were to abandon liberalism as soon as that liberalism was tested. Liberty must be trimmed or even abandoned for fear its expression might upset someone else. The “right” not to be offended trumped all other more ancient and worthwhile rights.

But no-one has the right not to be offended and to try and insist upon such a right is a) absurd b) wrong and c) deeply inimical to the values of the kind of society we like to think we may, in our better moments anyway, be.

As with the Rushdie case, so with this “Ground Zero Mosque”. You can be as offended by it as you want to be but the mere fact that you may be offended does not trump other, more vital, considerations and nor does it give you any kind of moral, let alone substantive, veto over proceedings. Your outrage is not persuasive and nor does it shift the fundamental aspects of the matter.

Which is why the sub-Augustinian stuff we’ve been hearing lately is so depressing. Grant me religious tolerance lord – and a respect for the Constitution! – but not here and not yet, not now! That, you must understand, would be too hard.

To oppose the building of GZM on the grounds that it is “offensive” or a “provocation” or “controversial” is puerile and reactionary. The depressing fact is not so much that plans for a religious edifice near the site of “Ground Zero” could be shafted lest it offend anyone, it is rather that there is a large contingent of Americans today for whom building a mosque almost anywhere in the USA is an affront.

It is not “anti-American” to make this observation, nor does a mosque have to be in the vicinity of the World Trade Centre in south Manhattan to be considered an offensive “provocation”.

Take a look at the anti-mosque antics in Sheboygan Wisconsin, where:

a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.

At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their back yards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise – the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.

In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Quran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.

Not every opponent of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” is an anti-Muslim bigot with arguments rooted in prejudice. But if I were opposed to the GZM, I would be very keen to distinguish my set of reasons for opposing it from those by reactionary demagogues like Bill O’Reilly or Raheel Raza or even from a bunch of redneck farmers from Sheboygan, WI. Because at the moment, they are hardly indistinguishable at all.

If the reasons for opposing the mosque come down to not much more than being “offended”, then the response proffered by Stephen Fry in a conversation with Christopher Hitchens is without peer.

“So, you’re offended? So fucking what?”

Update: Good post from Gene at HP

recently, i gave up posting on pickled politics, partly because of the level of personal animosity i was facing, but mostly just in frustration at my apparent inability to get my point across. now, i suppose i have nobody very much to blame for that apart from myself, but i’ve never felt that was a problem before now. now, i think i’m starting to work out what it is that is bothering me; certainly, it’s not about the denizens of one blog, or even the blogosphere, or even the media. it’s not any one set of views, not any one person, but a set of trends, a collective movement i sense in wider society.

one of the things i like about the spittoon and my co-contributors is that they take a robust approach towards the cosy relationship between the left and the various apologists for, supporters of and partisans of islamist extremism. they take, of course, an equally dim view of other forms of clerical fascism, whether it be jewish, christian, or hindu, although, of course, we are often excoriated for not writing sufficiently on these subjects. and why is that? well, the answer that “they’re not as big a problem” simply won’t do. clearly, the activities of the likes of rss/shiv sena in india, or hardcore fundamentalists in the american south ultimately affect all of us. for me personally, the behaviour of both the extreme west bank settlers and that of rejectionist ultra-orthodoxy evokes both profound heartache and deep anger – just as the “as-a-jew” clique that only appear as jews in order to display their preening self-importance whenever an opportunity to attack israel arises. however, i would nonetheless argue that, from the perspective of wider UK society, these concerns are less immediate, in that these groups have no meaningful accommodation with either our government or the UK media, however influential they may be in the communities they come from. what bothers me, really, is what the effects of ongoing and intensifying fundamentalism on me, my family and community and wider society – in this, locally speaking, islamists are in the vanguard, as the leading proponents and practitioners of violence against my community specifically and, generally, against UK civil society.

the question inevitably arises – who’s really worse? well, i think i would on balance come down in favour of the idea that wherever a particular group becomes influential and the closer they come to the levers of power, the more of a problem they are in a particular country. thus, in the UK, the utterly misguided, racism-of-lower-expectations the-west-is-ultimately-responsible-for-everything-bad-y’know attitude has allowed the entryism of islamist organisations and sympathisers everywhere from the police to government to the left-wing media. but would it be any different anywhere else? i expect not – militant fundamentalist christians are busily inching closer to the levers of power in washington, india has had already had one bjp government and i think we’re all aware of the subversion of mainstream democracy and the processes of civil society in israel by the religious parties and the settler lobby. we’ve got a lot of muslim fundamentalists here in the UK and, in a profound act of ignorance and credulity, we’ve allowed islamic education to be systematically outsourced to salafi and wahhabi dawa organisations for a generation, with entirely predictable results – i think we can say the same of many european countries, although i would fall well short of the apocalyptic and hysterical “eurabia” scenario – in fact, i’d be more worried personally about the behaviour of the catholic party in poland led by an anti-semitic priest and any prospective alliance of a russian political party with the orthodox church – not trend anyone jewish can afford to ignore.

of course, in europe particularly, this isn’t the first time we’ve been here. there was of course an “enlightenment”, which consisted in large part of reaction against the authoritarianism of various forms of christianity, whether by trying to eliminate it altogether and replace it with a sort of ersatz state paganism, as in france, or whether to regulate it as a sort of national industry, as in germany and scandinavia, or whether to simply satirise and philosophise it into a manageable social pressure and community support lobby, as in britain. the enlightenment taught that religion was nothing but a corrupt power structure which only the mad, the bad and the deluded would indulge. as we also know, removing religion simply forced the mad, the bad and the deluded to find other channels for their unpleasant attitudes and activities. we still see this outdated and reductionist position being reinvented for modern times using all the tools of modern cultural influence, from popular science to childrens’ books to comedy. religious people are portrayed as knaves or fools. there appears to be no middle ground, no compromise possible – religion must be rooted out, cleansed and exterminated.

of course, we’ve been there before too – modern fundamentalism, as karen armstrong (before she started to become part of the problem by sucking up to the goons at MPAC-UK) pointed out in her still masterful study of fundamentalism “the battle for G!D” evolved largely as a reaction against the enforced, clumsy and often brutal imposition of modernity on societies all around the world. the fundamentalisms we have today have reached their current forms because of the political, technological and social realities of the societies in which they evolved. their priorities and obsessions are driven by the battles they originally fought, against pluralism, liberalisation of dress, behaviour, increased social equality (or inequality), against practically irreversible geopolitical realities, against the aftereffects of wars and economic dislocation. those who give aid and comfort to fundamentalists are inevitably picking and choosing where they have shared priorities and obsessions – anti-imperialism, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, anti-israel, social breakdown, the emancipation of women, the legacy of slavery – but they are always at odds with fundamental features of the societies they criticise.

what i see developing, however, is a sort of multi-lateral polarisation in which the first casualty is moderation, the second is tolerance and the third is social consensus. the effects of this, however, touch all of us, but the effects are peculiarly corrosive on those of us who are able to combine amd integrate reason and religion and deal with the subtleties of creation, revelation and evolution. we are frequently at odds with obscurantists and bigots within our faith, but we are now fighting a rearguard defence against anti-religious forces, without any letup in the attack on reasonableness, complexity and dialogue that continues from reactionary fanatics. both sides, naturally, accuse us of giving aid and comfort to the other in its mission to destroy them – if we’re not with them, we’re against them – and no prisoners will be taken.

so, on one hand, we have the forces of militant anti-religion mounting attacks on everything from headgear to faith schools, on the other we have the walls of the ghetto being built anew, only with gun-ports this time. we can also see the social contract of the enlightenment renewed; previously, the deal was “give up your difference and you’ll get rights as a citizen” – this time, it’s “you’ve abused your rights as a citizen, we can no longer tolerate your differences”. the behaviour of religious fanatics, in their quest to dominate their own communities, has destroyed the delicate balance which allowed religion to be an integrated part of civil society. naturally, comes the response: they want all or nothing? fine – let them have nothing. but what of those of us who always wanted to co-exist? who prize our cultural and spiritual distincitiveness? oh no, distinctiveness is still allowed – but religion will no longer be a valid reason for it. diversity in sexuality, gender, disability, intelligence, talent, wealth – all these are permitted, but not religion. we are offered the choice – everything or nothing. well, we want neither.

i refuse to hide in the ghetto. i contribute to this society. i work. i pay my taxes. i don’t walk about naked, nor do i hide my face from the world. i will not assimilate, nor will i act as if i am living in another country or another century. i refuse to eat foods that are forbidden to me and i refuse to forbid those foods to others who may want them. i refuse to give up the sabbath, the festivals, the Torah and my other sacred texts – and i refuse to impose my vision of them on those who do not share my perspective. if i am attacked, i will defend myself. if i am insulted, i will respond in kind. i am not looking for a fight, but i will not shrink from one. i will not allow others to define what i am. the search for social consensus has been a long and painful one – and now it has been destroyed again, by the hubris and arrogance of religious and anti-religious fanatics. i do not know if we can put the pieces back together again, but there has to be a basis for us to live together – both enforced segregation and enforced assimilation are fascistic responses.

judaism has always been not so much a culture or a religion as it has been a 3000+ year-old argument. there is nothing so boring as loads of people violently agreeing with each other – except perhaps two groups of people refusing to concede anything that the other is saying has any value or validity. the counter-enlightenment is in full swing, without any sign that it has learnt anything from the enlightenment.

From a BBC news report:

The Bangladeshi government has ordered mosques and libraries across the country to remove all books written by a controversial Islamic scholar.

The chief of the government-funded Islamic Foundation told the BBC that the books by Syed Abul Ala Maududi encouraged “militancy and terrorism”.

The chief of the government-funded Islamic Foundation told the BBC that the books by Syed Abul Ala Maududi encouraged “militancy and terrorism”.

Mr Maududi – who died in 1979 – is the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

His works are essential reading for supporters of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in the region.

The BBC report’s description of Abul Ala Maududi as a “controversial Islamic scholar” is an amusing piece of journalistic understatement. Maududi was unashamedly ”controversial”;  the party he created, the Jamaat-e-Islam (JI) was and continues to be a far-right religious supremacist party. He used both the pulpit and the political platform to become the foremost South Asian Islamist ideologue whose ideas were quickly absorbed into the “mainstream” of Islamist discourse spanning the Middle East and Far East Asia. You could say he is Pakistan’s first cross-over Islamist icon. And of course, he was a rabble rouser par excellence.

Maududi urged Muslims to assert themselves over non-Muslims because non-Muslims, he said, have:

“absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines.”

Because if they do:

“the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”

Bangladesh is the first country to ban Maududi’s texts and there are social, historical and political reasons behind the ban. Maududi constructed the religious framework which Jamaat-e-Islam implemented to justify its role in the war-crimes of Bangladesh in 1971. Clerical fascism continues to underpin the ideology of the JI and its various political factions and student-wings. The Awami League, who have imposed this ban, is diametrically opposed to JI’s politics both ideologically and strategically. JI also has the propensity to form easy mutually beneficial alliances with military juntas whenever the country has plunged into bouts of military dictatorship – which has been more often than not.

One positive effect of the ban is that it has set a precedent and identified Maududi as an iconoclast and his sectarian ideas as a danger to pluralism. Unfortunately, banning also has equally dangerous blowback effects. The BBC report quotes

A senior official from Jamaat-e-Islami, ATM Azharul Islam, described the move as an attack on Islam.

“Mr Maududi’s books are being published in many countries and there have been no complaints against his writings so far,” he said.

Bangladesh has set an important precedent and identified what Maududi stands for, however the decision to ban Maududi’s texts is wrongheaded.

Notwithstanding the fact that banning any literature is an assault on the principle of freedom of speech, there are other effects which would be foolhardy to ignore. Whenever extremist religious literature has been banned, it has the unfortunate effect of fetishising the material. Islamists will seek to exaggerate Maududi’s religious significance, which is why banning Maududi will be argued as an “attack on Islam” itself.

The Bangladesh government could do worse than to look to Israel, where Hitler’s Mein Kampf is published as well as translated into English and Hebrew.

The Spittoon contributor Raziq has written about of the legacy of Maududi:

In the UK today there are many organisations which have links to JI or actively support and propagate Mawdudi’s ideas. They include the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, East London Mosque, UK Islamic Mission, Islamic Forum Europe and leading figures in the Muslim Council of Britain. It is a shame that today in Britain we have organisations promoting Mawdudi’s hate-filled works and, if we are serious about defeating extremism in the UK, they must be exposed and challenged.

Analysis and argument of Islamist ideology should be the way to oppose clerical fascism, not by banning it.

Dhume commends Britain’s decision to ban Zakir Naik and criticises India for failing to do the same in regard to his record of hate speech. Dhume identifies two reasons why the Indian Left has failed to apply its own rules on the boundaries between free-speech and that which can be considered hate-speech.

1) The unthinking readiness to deferentially accept hate speech as free speech when the speaker claims the specious title of being a “religious figure”.
2) The inability to criticise proponents of hate speech by Muslim extremists, because they are loathe to be misinterpreted as “Islamophobic” and sympathetic to the far-right Hindutva interests.

What Dhume may not realise is the situation in Indian is very similar to the situation here in Britain. Islamists are treated with all the deference they demand and allowed to hold objectionable views which they are often allowed to propagate publicly with impunity. Any criticism of this practice is shut down by invoking “Islamophobia” as an outrage to “Muslim feelings”.

But this doesn’t fully explain Dr. Naik’s escape from criticism. It helps that Indians appear to have trouble distinguishing between free speech and hate speech. In a Western democracy, demanding the murder of homosexuals and the second-class treatment of non-Muslims would likely attract public censure or a law suit. In India, it goes unchallenged as long as it has a religious imprimatur. However, create a book or a painting that ruffles religious sentiment, as the writer Taslima Nasreen and the painter M. F. Husain both discovered, and either the government or a mob of pious vigilantes will strive to muzzle you.

In general, India accords extra deference to allegedly holy men of all stripes unlike, say, France, which strives to keep religion out of the public square. Taxpayers subsidize the Haj pilgrimage for pious Muslims and a similar, albeit much less expensive, journey for Hindus to a sacred lake in Tibet. This reflexive deference effectively grants the likes of Dr. Naik—along with all manner of Hindu and Christian charlatans—protection against the kind of robust scrutiny he would face in most other democracies.

Finally, unlike Hindu bigots, such as the World Hindu Council’s Praveen Togadia, whose fiercest critics tend to be fellow Hindus, radical Muslims go largely unchallenged. The vast majority of Indian Muslims remain moderate, but their leaders are often fundamentalists and the community has done a poor job of policing its own ranks. Moreover, most of India’s purportedly secular intelligentsia remains loath to criticize Islam, even in its most radical form, lest this be interpreted as sympathy for Hindu nationalism.

Unless this changes, unless Indians find the ability to criticize a radical Islamic preacher such as Dr. Naik as robustly as they would his Hindu equivalent, the idea of Indian secularism will remain deeply flawed.

We discussed the nature of Naik’s hate incitement here. We also discussed the agenda of certain centre-right Islamists who support, for extremist muslim clerics, the right to preach religious hatred under the pretext of free speech and liberal values, but subvert those same values by employing lawfare to silence their critics by libel action here.

You can get a taste of the type of racist material and conspiracy theory dressed up as theology that Naik would have delivered had he been allowed to lecture here from this video snippet:

“Today America is controlled by the Jews. Whether it be the banks, whether it be the money, whether it be the power.

No one can become a president of the USA without walking [sic] the Star of David. Though the Jews are a minority, less than 5% in America, but they are controlling the economy, they are controlling America.”

This is a sensible and correct decision delivered by the Home Office. Well done to Baronnes Pauline Neville-Jones for not flinching and standing firm, essentially for Britain and for liberal democratic principles.