The echoes of 1933 when the Nazis burnt some 20,000 books in Germany is clear. But this is not the first time Christian fundamentalists in the USA have shown their intolerance towards books by burning them, as this video show.

It goes without saying that this is an outrageous act of provocation. The fear is – how will Muslims react to this? My only hope is that they will not respond to this act of irrational cynicism and stupidity by reacting in kind, or worse. But perhaps that is asking for too much.

Nothing ruins my day quite like coming into contact with that breed of especially stupid person who thinks that 9/11 was an ‘inside’ job. Walking around Broadway Market in east London this weekend, I saw a poster which reminded me that such people have a like-minded community with whom they can share their delusions.

The poster advertised the 9/11 ‘truth’ events taking place all over London this week, hosted by an organisation called Truth Rising, to coincide with the nine year anniversary of 9/11. So, if you are that way inclined, you can go to a ‘party’ where you dress up as your favourite neocon, watch ‘Loose Change’ (a fictional movie pretending to be a documentary that is a fave with conspiracy theorists) and then be entertained by spoken word ‘legend’, MC Angel, and someone who calls himself Planetman.

Alternatively, if Brazilian music interspersed with ‘truth’ films about 9/11 is more your bag, you are catered for at Notting Hill Arts Club. Earlier in the day, you could get together with Stop the War Hounslow, WeAreChange London and London Truth Action for a demonstration outside the BBC to ‘pressurise’ them into reporting the truth about 9/11.

We’ve all been unfortunate enough to meet the types that go to such events. The sort of person who thinks that President Bush and co were devious enough to:

• Mastermind the destruction of the Twin Towers (using explosives/remote controlled planes/holograms of planes, delete as appropriate);
• Pin it on al-Qaeda (the dozens of protestations of al-Qaeda that, yes, they really did do it was another cunning sleight of hand by the Bush administration);
• Find new and exciting ways to restrict civil liberties (it was truly astonishing how you could find absolutely no dissent or
  criticism of Bush in the news, on the street, in music, film, or art during his entire time in the White House);
• Lie about weapons of mass destruction in order to justify going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq (to further the interests of Halliburton/the military industrial complex/Israel/world Jewry/the neoconservatives/other people we don’t like)

They seemingly weren’t devious enough to take the next logical
step and then fabricate WMDs in Iraq once they had invaded,
in order to complete the illusion. Still, they pulled off most of their grand masterplan, and had managed to keep it secret from the entire world – until, of course, a few bright sparks on the internet got wind of the plans.

I suppose we should be used to such lunatics by now. But I do think we should manage to maintain our sense of anger and moral outrage at those who – when confronted with totalitarianism, wickedness and mass murder – choose to blame anybody but those actually responsible.

Warning: Social cohesion it is not. But don’t worry, no ‘black Muslim Puerto Rican types’ were physically hurt in the making of this video.

This is a take of it from gawker.com :

Both supporters and opponents of the “Ground Zero” “Mosque”—a proposed community center—held rallies in lower Manhattan today. Can you guess which side started chanting “no mosque here” at a black guy wandering through the crowd?

While you spent your Sunday trying to teach your cat to go to the bathroom on a human toilet, a group of brave, freedom-loving Americans gathered in New York City to express their extreme disapproval with the Park 51 project, an al-Qaeda plot to build a community center featuring a swimming pool and auditorium on the very site where a Burlington Coat Factory once stood.

As you can see in the video above, at some point during the rally, a dark-skinned man wearing an Under Armor skullcap and what looks like a necklace with a Puerto Rican flag walked through the anti-”Mosque” crowd. The crowd, astutely recognizing that he was on his way to build the mosque, began to chant “NO MOSQUE HERE” at him. In the video, someone says, “run away, coward.” The man turns around, perturbed. “Y’all motherfuckers don’t know my opinion about shit,” he says. Au contraire, my friend: You are a black man wearing a skullcap, after all! You are definitely a pro-Mosque, anti-freedom Jihadist! Why, aren’t you, in fact… Osama Bin Laden??

No, actually, according to the guy who uploaded the video to YouTube, the skullcap-wearing gentleman’s name is Kenny and he’s “a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero.” Kenny is also—as he points out several times in the video—not a Muslim. (No word on whether or not he voted for Obama, as one of the very reasonable and intelligent-sounding anti-”Mosque” protestors speculates.) But I’ll bet you Kenny has been totally convinced about the truth of the Burlington Coat Factory Desecration Community Center. Who wouldn’t be?

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.

That was a party political broadcast brought to you by Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

Abu Faris has dismantled Naik’s spurious theology quite succinctly:

[Zakir Naik] is a past master of making false analogies. One of my favourites concerns his defence of state intolerance of non-Muslim faith communities in Muslim-majority countries. It runs like this:

(1) If you were running a school then you would not appoint a maths teacher who believed 2 + 2 = 5, because this is clearly not true.

(2) All other religions are false – that is, by false analogy, they are like the bad maths teacher who thinks and teaches that 2 + 2 = 5

(3) Only Islam is true – that is, by false analogy, it is like the good maths teacher who thinks and teaches the truth, that is that 2 + 2 = 4.

(4) So, in false conclusion, just as the school would be within its rights only to appoint the maths teacher who knows and teaches the truth, so the Muslim state is correct to ban or otherwise restrict the preaching and activities of faiths and their believers other than the Islamic faith – as all other faiths are false and only Islam is true.

Fascist nonsense, of course – and a measure of the disgusting sophistry and ignorance of even the basics of reasoning at the heart of so much Islamist “scholarship”.

As to be expected, Inayat Bunglawala, the Muslim Council of Britain, Islamophobia-Watch and MPACuk rush to Naik’s defence so that he may preach this cultural illiteracy and religious supremacism and pass it off as mainstream Islam to people living in Britain’s multicultural society.

A hereditary head of state, as Thomas Paine so crisply phrased it, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary physician or a hereditary astronomer. To this innate absurdity, Prince Charles manages to bring fatuities that are entirely his own. And, as he paged his way through his dreary wad of babble, there must have been some wolfish smiles among his Muslim audience. I quote from a recent document published by the Islamic Forum of Europe, a group dedicated to the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate and the imposition of sharia, which has been very active in London mosques and in the infiltration of local political parties. “The primary work” in the establishment of a future Muslim empire, it announces, “is in Europe, because it is this continent, despite all the furore about its achievements, which has a moral and spiritual vacuum.”

Prince Charles’ is whistling in the dark if he thinks his half-baked misapprehension of “traditionalism” is ever going to usher in a new Golden Age. This is a period in the future when it is hoped Europe’s ‘spiritual crisis’ will be reversed by the re-installation of a high-caste kshatriya super-nobility whose glory will be attended to by a devoted clerical class of brahman spiritual elite, a lá the ‘Perennialist’ fantasies of the protofascist, Julius Evola. But the problem boils down to the fact that Charles has no inkling, or is wilfully ignorant, of the difference between a sheikh of the Shadhiliyyah Darqawi order and an oily, on-the-make Jamaat-e-Islami rabble rouser.

Hitchens is right. The type of muslim supporter Charles’ attracts nowadays is not so much “spiritual elite” as “clerical fascist”. Inayat Bunglawala for example:

The Prince does come in for a fair amount of criticism, but as far as work with faith communities goes, he has done sterling work over many years and is well respected in return and rightly so.

The “sterling work” by Prince Charles which Bunglawala is gushing about is this kind of thing. In other words, his work with “faith communities” is, amongst other things, granting his royal endorsement to the the IFE and the Jamaat-e-Islam embedded in the East London Mosque.

Ansar Ahmed Ullah, another local opponent of the IFE, says that local people are frustrated with the way in which the white political establishment has endorsed and legitimised a mosque whose true nature they do not appear to understand. “We have told them many times about these people,” he says. “But you still get people like Boris Johnson, government ministers and Prince Charles going down there. People see that, and it gives them credibility.”

a reptilian overlord yesterday

anyway, we’ve had boobquake, gayquake and immorality-inspired flooding so, predictably, our new icelandic friend eyjafjallajökull has been pressed into surface for this purpose, proving variously that:

1. we should never have turned on that large hadron collider

2. iceland is being too tolerant of neo-paganism and europe of gay rights

3. G!D Disapproves of “obamacare”

4. people are having a go at the pope

5. aliens (or satan) are doing space paintings with ufos

6. G!D Disapproves of the british advertising standards authority ruling that the israeli tourist board can’t show the western wall as part of israel, because they’ve never taken the trouble to annex the Temple mount.

and my personal favourite:

7. the iron core engine of the planet is today becoming reenergized by the huge magnetic force field of the incoming twin binary dark star to our solar system (called “nibiru” in ancient sumer, or “nemesis the destroyer”)

personally, my money’s on deepak chopra’s laxatives.

“Do Anglicans, even moderates, really think of G!D as a sexless being? I was under the impression that most moderate religious people still think of G!D as male. People could use the singular ‘they’ and refer to a ‘parent’ if they were really that bothered.”

i think she could with some justice aim this question at judaism, but it is, nonetheless, a bit of an old chestnut. the best way i can answer it is that in the same way that we deal with anthropomorphism in the text: G!D Isn’t male any more than G!D Has a “hand”, or a “back”, G!D Forbid. when the Text speaks in these terms, it is only to be understood as the way *we* understand the interaction, not the *actual reality* – hence, when we speak of G!D as “Father” or “King”, these are merely the interactions and relevant relationships that are being described, not the Ultimate Reality of the Divine. by the same token, a number of incredibly important Divine Names and interaction/relationships are *female*, such as “E-L ShaDaY”, which comes from the word ShaDaYiM (breasts) and “Ha-RaHaMaN”, which comes the word ReHeM (womb), not to mention the considerable symbology of the Divine Feminine in kabbalah around the SheKhiNaH (Divine Presence) and “Matronit” and the male-female interrelationships actually *within* the G!DHead. one might also mention the idea that the “community of israel” is synonymous with G!D’s “bride” on some level, so that would require one of us to be “male” and the other “female” in that particular situation.

“And then there’s Jesus – no-one could lead themselves to believe he was genderless. Judaism has Moses, Islam has Mohammed – all these prophets are male. How does a person get around that one?”

perhaps by mentioning the seven major jewish prophetesses, sarah, miriam, deborah, hannah, abigail, huldah and esther – (talmudic reference: BT megillah 14a)? according to the great authority rashi, rebecca, rachel and leah should also be included.

a more serious criticism, i believe, is the following:

“If one accepts and follows traditions without question purely on the basis that they are traditions, this leaves the door wide open for all kinds of nasty things. In general, it silences and disables those who disagree with the traditions and would like to do things differently. It’s those ‘harmless’ traditions which can make people feel stifled and like there’s only one right way to do things. At the very least, they discourage creativity, critical thinking and independence.”

this is certainly a position with which we at the spittoon can identify – certainly within judaism (and, i and others would argue, within islam as well) the idea that there is One True Way Of Doing Stuff is a corrosive and oppressive idea not borne out by a truly insightful examination of the texts involved. however, the accompanying analysis is flawed:

“One can usually assess how harmless a tradition is by examining what the penalties are, if any, of not following it. In your example, I would imagine that a Jewish/Muslim pork-eater would face many negative reactions from their community, plus residual religious guilt, and that this is probably the real reason why they ‘like following the tradition’.”

now, this might be a perfectly adequate summary of how the uneducated “feel” about the law in question, in fact, the penalty in halakhah is the indication of exactly how important the principle incurring the penalty is in the first place. in fact, halakhically, the penalty is thirty-nine lashes, a comparatively light penalty compared to breaking shabbat, which is a stoning offence. now, before you get all bent out of shape on how unpleasant it is to get lashed, you’d have to also consider the standard of evidence, which required five further tests before the lashes could be administered:

1. the pork-eating in question would have to be done in front of two kosher witnesses (many, many difficulties in establishing what one of these looks like)
2. the two witnesses would need to have absolutely no discrepancy in their statements.
3. the pork-eater would have to receive a warning from the witnesses that by so doing, he would incur a penalty of lashes.
4. the pork-eater would have to respond that he had understood the warning and the penalty, reiterating precisely what they both were.
5. the eating would then have to occur within 3 seconds of this response.

incidentally, to be binding, the verdict would also have to be handed down by a properly constituted and duly authorised religious court – and there hasn’t been such a court for approximately 1500 years, but considering the re-establishment of such courts is a religious duty, i personally would prefer to rely on the other safeguards. even so, i hope you can see from the standard required that anyone who actually meets it is clearly out to make a point. oh, and, incidentally, if you ran away before the verdict was carried out, you couldn’t be re-arrested. in such a case, the negative feeling from your community is likely to be the only sanction.

another interesting challenge is made here:

“To what extent, for a religious person, is their holy book really their holy book, if they disregard most of its teachings (or haven’t even read it all the way through)?”

for jews, as we were born into a covenantal relationship, we are as subject to it as to the laws of the country we were born into. the same obtains with UK law. presumably amy’s not suggesting that i’m not obliged to follow the regulations of her majesty’s revenue collectors despite the fact that i may never have read them or heard of their provisions? by the same token:

“To align oneself with a movement, an organisation, that one disagrees with at least in part, knowing that in doing so you are giving it power – numbers at least, and in many cases, money too?”

i am not sure how this is different from being a citizen of a country whose policies you may or may not agree with – you’ve still got to pay your taxes.

as part of this discussion, i analysed deuteronomy 22:29 in its context. this provoked a number of further responses including:

“Regarding the Deuteronomy verse (22:29), it says that ’she shall be his wife, because he hath humbled her’ – humbled? That’s rather chilling, no? Is that a mistranslation too?”

not only that, but it is also misrepresenting what the text says, which is ‘AiNah” – “forced”, but not in a *physically* violent way, as in verse 25, more in such a way as to give her no choice but to marry him. i would say that this represents bringing about a marriage by “putting the woman in a compromising position”; if you know pride and prejudice, it’s what wickham does to lydia bennet to get money out of the family; he has to be bribed to marry her. the Torah is trying here to prevent the woman becoming unmarriageable; there is nothing to say that she can’t *then* divorce *him* (after betrothal and before final marriage), thus retaining her autonomy and a hefty divorce payout; it is just that *he* is forever prevented from divorcing *her*, not the other way around. i would understand this verse as a face-saving exercise.

amy then goes on to say:

“Regardless of whether rape occurred or it was ‘just sex’, isn’t it a bit sexist to generally suggest that it’s okay to buy a woman in this way?”

now, i’m not sure you can really project your attitude back to the bronze age as if human values and relationships have always been the same; i mean, that is the same sort of point of view that would reduce shakespeare’s “merchant of venice” to simple antisemitism. the initial audience of the Torah (as opposed to G!D) wouldn’t really understand what you’re getting at here. the thing is, you aren’t “buying a woman”; you’re contracting for procreative services, as it were, which can only be done by ensuring exclusivity on the woman’s part. the woman must enter into the contract without coercion and of her own free will and can exit it at her discretion on virtually any grounds (including bad breath) and is, for the duration of the contracted marriage, entitled to a statutory level of maintenance (and alimony), clothing, housing and sexual satisfaction, breach of which by the husband is, needless to say, grounds for divorce. this quite simply was revolutionary within the context in which the Torah was given; not only in that the woman had to agree, but that she maintained her rights, her property and right of cancellation. in fact, it compares positively to modern civil law in most respects – most people agree that merely falling in love is a rather worse basis for marriage than shared values and clear responsibilities on both sides! both sides contribute assets – the wife’s contribution is *not* a dowry, but her reproductive capabilities, hence:

“(Following your interpretation, it’s a bit like having to pay for something you broke in a shop – fair enough if it’s a vase, but a person? Why does having sex make you a broken person?)”

well, it doesn’t, nor is this implied, although permit me to observe, tongue-in-cheek, that most of us would pay more for new underpants than for second-hand. the statutory levels, in any case, are nominal – in reality, these would in the past have been negotiated, in the case of a woman who had emancipated herself from her father (or previous husband by divorce or widowhood) possibly by the woman herself. and there’s more:

“If God is a supremely knowledgeable being, with ultimate powers, and is perfectly good and moral, why couldn’t he send a clear message – even in the bronze age – that women are people, not property?”

the same reason that G!D also didn’t send the clear message “don’t drive on the wrong side of the road” – it wouldn’t have made sense at the time, only now. the clarity would in fact have been precisely the opposite.

“What stopped him from telling these citizens in no uncertain terms that it’s okay for women to have sex, they don’t have to be virgins until they’re married, and it’s not right to buy and sell them?”

the fact that this wasn’t a student dorm at berkeley, it was bronze age canaan – and if you hopped behind a bush with someone, you’d be liable to end up with your throat slit, or sold into slavery, thus precipitating a blood feud; it wasn’t like there was a police force and cctv; this was the wild fecking west! people took what they could get and, like it or not, if a woman didn’t have protection from a father, guardian or husband, she might be fair game, unless she stayed within the protection of the law. to be honest, this feels somewhat anachronistic reasoning, based on a very different axiomatic substructure, as the following statement identifies:

“I find it quite convenient that you’re explaining away misogyny as mistranslation, and contradictions as just not knowing the ‘right’ context of the verses in question. You seem to be taking it as your a priori assumption that there can’t possibly be any real inconsistency in the texts, there can’t possibly be any real misogyny. Why not? Why can’t there be?”

the answer to this is that if, axiomatically, one believes, as i do, that the Torah is a Divine document, any inconsistency in the texts is there to teach us something and the basis of traditional methodologies is the ability to identify the root cause of the inconsistency in order to illustrate the teaching point concerned. this has certainly been our approach as long as we can remember -and, more to the point, this is documented quite a long way back. secondly, in the conception we have of G!D it would make no more sense for G!D to Be a “misogynist” than it would for G!D to have a “hand”, or to “be angry”; these things are simply expressions of how we experience what we interpret out of the text. we believe that G!D Expects us to behave with respect and compassion to each other, not to systematically disadvantage half the human race. now, obviously, if you have different assumptions, then these might include a priori that any statement in the Torah reflects bronze age sensibility and capability in terms of gender relations, science and critical reasoning and therefore there can’t possibly be any real lessons to be learned from it. on this i suspect i might have to differ from you, seeing as how our culture is based almost entirely on this document and in most respects is generally considered to have produced major leaders in each field who are also committed to some of the same assumptions about the document. this is not to say that they are all going to agree with each other all the time:

“Why is your ‘methodology’ necessarily going to result in a clear, unequivocal message?”

because it is based on a clear set of assumptions and underpinned by a unified philosophical structure – i’m not saying that this necessitates clarity and unequivocable messaging in all cases, because it doesn’t, but in the case of this particular verse, it clearly precludes certain interpretations such as “G!D Is a misogynist” as nonsensical. there are some other pertinent questions that obtain:

“On what do you base your faith in it?”

on the fact that this way of doing things has preserved the sole remaining diaspora culture of the ancient world through several millennia of unremitting and occasionally genocidal hostility. in other words, it works.

“How do you know that the eventual interpretation is right, in any case?”

the principle we test it against is “after the majority shall you incline” (exodus 23:2) but we *also* preserve minority opinions (BT bava metzia 59b) in case eventually they become majority.

“What do you check it against?”

it’s peer-reviewed. all jewish law has been aggressively picked apart, analysed, defended or amended on this basis. that is what the talmud documents.

“Then you say that two contradictory positions can both be the word of the ‘living god’? How is that even possible – how can a creator of the universe not make his mind up?”

of course – but “it is not in heaven” (deuteronomy 30:10), so we are told we have to work it out for ourselves, on the authority of the Torah itself, so the majority opinion came down on one side at that time. G!D may well Have an opinion, but in the famous talmudic debate of the “oven of achnai” (the reference given above) the majority decision was to say “bugger off, G!D, this is a human decision now, You Said so in the Torah”.

“Not be 100% clear about his message? Do you not find it slightly odd that all this interpretation is necessary?”

no, we find it incredibly empowering that we are being treated like grown-ups responsible for our own actions, not children with no sense of right or wrong.

“Why doesn’t God reiterate his message and clear things up? Hasn’t he got the power to do this?”

well, yes, obviously, but during the “oven of achnai” debate, the position of the majority was “we do not make legal decisions on the basis of Divine Voices from Heaven”.

we still haven’t quite got to the bottom of the equality debate here, however:

“When I talk about a sense of equality, I am talking about equality between men and women – e.g. what is it that leads you to know that stoning a woman to death for not being a virgin is wrong? Would you only know that it’s wrong if you’d read all the scriptures? Or would you know that it’s wrong based on your own empathy and reasoning? I would argue the latter, seeing as I know it’s wrong, and I haven’t read all the scriptures or engaged in textual interpretation.”

i would argue that the case that you are basing it on your own “empathy and reasoning” alone is not a strong argument. nobody grows up in a vacuum. you have these attitudes because you developed them, based on your upbringing. i would argue that you *have* been influenced indirectly by them because they have influenced the society you grew up in. i can even point to the bit of Torah that it comes from: “you shall love the stranger [person who is different from yourself] for you were strangers in egypt” (leviticus 19:34) nor am i saying that my own reasoning is inoperative – obviously, i needed to use it to apply the verse to this situation, similarly the sages needed to apply it in order to get the relevant safeguards in place to prevent it happening unless it really, really, really, REALLY applied. if you’re going to do something as drastic as stoning a woman to death for not being a virgin, you’d better be really sure that’s what the text says – and that what the text says applies to this EXACT situation.

“This is what I’m talking about. A religious person reads such a horrendous verse, thinks ‘That can’t be right’ and proceeds to delve more deeply into the scriptures to find some way of justifying it.”

i don’t really understand why this should be so wrong – it is the way the Torah does thought experiments; under what circumstances might such a penalty apply? what might justify it in *practice*? are you sure? are you really, really sure? what principle is being upheld? that’s not the same as “justifying” it – you can’t be “justifying” it if you end up effectively prohibiting it, which was the actual effect – but then again, you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know the proper context for Torah, which is as the written component of jewish law, not as a copy of “gender relations for dummies”, which is how it is so often abused by literalist protestants and bible-bashers in particular.

“I doubt that a person starts reading scriptures and then concludes ‘Well whaddaya know? Stoning women is immoral!’”

i agree – and so do the sages! although there are more morally complex issues in the Torah than this one.

amy is also good enough to address a criticism i make of her that she is generalising about religious people:

“Sure, not all religious people follow their religion in exactly the same way, but they do believe in a god/gods, and their holy texts do mean something to them. These are the two aspects of religion that I critique in my piece, and they appear to me to be pretty universal among the faithful. The rest is a critique of the arguments used by religious feminists to defend the misogyny in their holy texts, and examples of religiously-inspired misogyny. What is it that I’m generalising about? What is it exactly that you object to?”

well, i suppose what i object to is the implication that religious feminists are “defending misogyny”, because as i have attempted to show, i don’t think the misogyny is there either in intent or in application – except by people who really don’t understand either the text concerned, or who don’t follow an acceptable standard of textual interpretation. i accept that it *could* result in misogyny, because it *has* – but human beings do get things wrong from time to time and Torah is not easy.

anyway, i hope this is not too irrelevant and that there are enough interesting nuggets here for the conversation to continue here; certainly i would encourage people to take a look at the original piece.

a woman causing an earthquake yesterday by blatantly showing her elbows and knees

well, i expect most of us have probably heard by now that, according to the not-at-all-bonkers iranian regime, that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes. i expect the haitians are buying their chadors as we speak. in the interests of balance, i thought it might be instructive to see which other religious figures are saying and doing stupidly daft things this week:

1. mobile phones damage your neshama

we are reliably informed that the son of the vishnitzer rebbe, a prominent hasidic sect (that’s vishnitz, not the rebbe himself, he can’t be a sect on his ownsome) doesn’t want yeshiva students to carry mobile phones, because they can damage the neshama which, in jewish mystical thought, is one of the higher and more holy parts of the soul. i should, in fairness, point out that the damage is indirect not direct, as the mobile phone *might* be able to access the internet which *might* lead to someone looking at porn. or the student might start texting girls, or looking at them, or talking to them, or something like that. anyway, i do feel i should mention that vishnitzer women don’t in fact shave their heads under their wigs, so there are untold sensual delights on the horizon once the students leave yeshiva and head for the wedding canopy, so presumably married students can be trusted to carry phones. nonetheless, this is not the only danger out there, as the rabbi went on to say; there is an even more terrifying danger to the haredi world – the haredi newspaper.

2. haredim forbidden to read haredi newspapers

yes, you heard right; the ultra-orthodox vishnitzer hasidim have been banned from reading the ultra-orthodox newspaper, hamodia. for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it’s slightly right of genghis khan and the only pictures allowed, if they’re of human beings at all, are something like this:

dangerous images of debauchery

 anyway, it’s not allowed. as hamodia itself declares:

“ALL Haredi Jews, by virtue of their faithful commitment to lead a wholesome spiritual life, free of the gratuitous violence and nudity so prevalent in today’s media, will neither own a television set, nor have internet access or radio in their homes.”

so, are the vishnitzers worried that pictures of the latest gedolim get-together might cause a ruckus? no, it’s because newspapers might, y’know, actually inform them about, y’know, stuff that, y’know, the rabbis might not actually want them to hear…. like reports of rabbinic corruption, for example, sorry, putting them at risk of falling foul of Torah prohibitions on tale-bearing and slander. i am sure mr justice eady would approve!

3. discriminating against christians will cause civil unrest in the UK

everyone’s favourite evangelist ex-archbishop, george carey, in a letter to the employment appeals tribunal objecting to a nurse rather stupidly being forced to take off her christian jewellery, threatened that:

“The fact that senior clerics of the Church of England and other faiths feel compelled to intervene directly in judicial decisions and cases is illuminative of a future civil unrest.”

yes, you heard right – christianity is under attack, apparently. ruth gledhill disagrees, pointing out that if you want to look for somewhere where christians are actually being persecuted, there are plenty of places, but i think predicting bedlam in bristol and uproar in uttoxeter is probably a bit on the alarmist side.

4. spate of hindu beheadings anticipated

apparently a headless body found at a temple of the hindu goddess kali was ritually decapitated and intended as a sacrifice. as loony religious behaviour goes, this one is hard to beat, but i look forward to john denham putting a well-funded programme to prevent human sacrifice by engaging with bemused community leaders from neasden. or something.

5. deepak chopra takes blame for american earthquake

my favourite right now – apparently, it isn’t immodestly dressed women, but fatuous, over-indulged, stupidly rich new-age gurus that cause earthquakes. followers of deepak chopra on twitter would have seen the following:

“Had a powerful meditation just now – caused an earthquake in Southern California. Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake. Sorry about that.”

oh deary, deary, deary me.

She wrote this article in response to a masters’ thesis by the University of British Columbia’s Melanie Butler. This is a snippet from Alaina’s article:

No one will ever tell me that Muslim or any women think it’s ok to not be allowed to get educated or to have their daughters sold off at 8 years old or traded off at 4 years old because of cultural beliefs. No one will tell me that women in Afghanistan think it is ok for their daughters to have acid thrown in their faces. It makes me ill to think a 4 year old girl must sleep in a barn and get raped daily by old men. It’s sick and wrong and I don’t care who calls me an Orientalist or whatever I will keep raising money to educate girls and women in Afghanistan and I will keep writing letters and sending them in the back pack of my friend Lauryn Oates as she works so bravely on the ground helping women and girls learn what it is to exercise their rights. I believe in human rights so I believe everyone has the right their own opinion, I just wish that the energy that was used to write that story, that is just not true, could have been used to educate a girl in Afghanistan. That’s what the girls truly want. That’s what the Women in Afghanistan truly want. I have a drawer full of letters from them that says just that.

Terry Glavin calls bullshit on Butler’s thesis, which he says is:

an eruption of “post-colonial feminist theory” that sets out to attack actually-existing feminists who do real work for their real, living sisters in Afghanistan.

Here’s a snippet of Butler’s post-modernist, post-colonial guff, Canadian women and the (re)production of women in Afghanistan:

“In their bid to help Afghan women. . . some feminist groups have failed to distance themselves from the discursive mechanisms that manufacture consent for women’s oppression in the name of Empire. Building on Krista Hunt’s analysis of feminist complicity in the War on Terror (Hunt 2006), this essay draws attention to Canadian feminists’ role in (re)producing neo-imperialist narratives of Afghan women. Focusing specifically on the NGO Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan), it shows how their use of feminist rhetoric and personal first-hand narratives, together with national narratives of Canada as a custodian of human rights, add to the productive power of the Orientalist tropes they invoke.”

Alaina is the cover person for Independent World Report journal this month.

Alaina Podmorow — now thirteen — knew what her choice was. She contacted Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, and asked if she could join the organisation. She was welcomed with open arms. Thus, Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan was born — a humanitarian organisation of young girls in Canada, trying to help the girls in Afghanistan. The organisation raises funds in order to support female education in Afghanistan, with the motto: Education = Peace.

In her own words:

“I am the founder of Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan. I founded this organisation three years ago, when I was nine years old. In the fall of 2006, I found out that the privileges that I have, other girls in our world do not get. I learned about this when I went with my mom to listen to journalist, author and human rights activist, Sally Armstrong speak about Afghanistan. She told stories about the terrible things that happen to little girls in Afghanistan. I was so moved. It was so upsetting to me that these girls were not able to exercise their rights. They were not able to go to school and sometimes they did not go to school because they were afraid they would be hurt or even killed.”

Support Alaina and her campaign here.

“A pope with no moral authority simply cannot function as a pope. Yes, he has ecclesiastical power. But ecclesiastical power without moral authority merely exposes the hollowness of an unaccountable, self-perpetuating clerisy. Does he think we don’t know? Does he understand that any parent of any child will be unable to imagine themselves in the same moral universe as this man?”

and some of them are even sort-of-default-catholics for whom this is the final straw:

“I could hardly be described as a good, or even decent, Catholic, but I’d managed to hang on in there, in the vaguest way imaginable.  Vague because it’s hard to pay lip-service to a faith that you feel hates you; a faith that would rather let you die in childbirth than have an abortion, won’t let you take the contraception necessary to prevent said abortion, hates gay people despite having many homosexual priests; a faith that talks ignorant nonsense about HIV and Aids, that would rather watch people die in Africa than let them use a condom; a faith that is unbelievably slow to say sorry about the fact that some of its members are habitual rapists of children.

I mean, you know, at some point you just give up. Not one of these things is defensible taken individually. Collectively, they are beyond comprehension.”

faith central has a bunch more, thanks to the always-charming ruth gledhill.

and now, of course the pope’s opposite number in the atheist world, the ever-reliable richard dawkins and his fellow diatribalist christopher hitchens (the man who, i was appalled to discover, repeated the “hole in the sheet” legend as fact in his anti-religious tract “G!D Is not great” without doing basic research) have volunteered to “do a pinochet” on big bad benny before his lips touch the tarmac at heathrow.

"science be praised!"

now, i have to admit that part of me admires them for having the stones to try and, frankly, i’d rather not foot the tax bill for his security. however, it is only fair to point out, as indeed does libby purves at the times, that:

“We know that even if the Vatican had never done anything legally dubious or morally wrong, Hitch and Dawk would still hate it.”

although on balance, i think i agree with her that this needs airing and dealing with properly if the church is not to avoid a fatal collapse in its already critically compromised moral authority. aside from the pre-vatican 2 accusations of deicide and more than a thousand years of clerical jew-hatred (oops, i’m not sure we’re done with that), i have, i think, a fairly relaxed attitude to catholicism and a great admiration for my many friends who seek to remain within its communion, even if i always thought the theology was a bit on the prudey-square side and have never, ever seen eye-to-eye with celibacy.

i’m actually not sure if it’s the general or the specific that worries me; i always admired peter tatchell when he tried this kind of stunt, but that’s peter tatchell, he’s a principled sort of bloke. it’s just that i could envisage dawkins and hitchens trying exactly the same thing on, say, an israeli chief rabbi or the sheikh of al-azhar; it’s all the same to them, of course, but if they were to get this to fly, you could see exactly what would happen with every single-issue campaigner/gadfly/wingnut: the same thing that happened with tzipi livni. we are, after all, talking about a mentality that will try any stunt, no matter how stupid, counterproductive and unhelpful, that gets them into the paper.

i suppose south park are right:

Dawkins knew that logic and reason were the way of the future. But it wasn’t until he met his beautiful wife that he learned using logic and reason isn’t enough. You have to be a dick to everyone who doesn’t think like you.

The Times:

“He was over, finished, completely destroyed!” Mr Edamaruku chuckles triumphantly as he concludes the tale in the Rationalist Centre, his second-floor office in the town of Noida, just outside Delhi.

Although exposing the Pandit went ‘miraculously’ well for Edamaruku, things have not always gone so smoothly for India’s highest profile guru-exposer:

The chief rationalist was almost arrested by the government of Kerala for revealing that it was behind an annual apparition of flames in the night sky — in fact, several state officials lighting bonfires on a nearby hill — which attracted millions of pilgrims. Despite his efforts, he admits that people still go to the festival and continue to revere self-styled holy men.

One reason is that Indian politicians nurture and shelter gurus to give them spiritual credibility, use their followers as vote banks, or to mask sexual or criminal activity. That explains why India’s Parliament has never tightened the 1954 Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, under which the maximum punishment is two months in prison and a 2,000 rupee (£29) fine.

Another reason is that educated, middle-class Indians are feeling increasingly alienated from mainstream religion but still in need of spiritual sustenance. “When traditional religion collapses people still need spirituality,” he says. “So they usually go one of two directions: towards extremism and fundamentalism or to these kinds of people.”

Since richer, urban Indians have little time for long pilgrimages or pujas (prayer ceremonies), they are often attracted by holy men who offer instant gratification — for a fee. The development of the Indian media over the past decade has also allowed some holy men to reach ever larger audiences via television and the internet. “Small ones have gone out of business while the big ones have become like corporations,” says Mr Edamaruku.

Not too different from things in the Southasian Muslim community over here then.

h/t: Indrapal Hitchens

1. transparency at the jewish leadership council

ok, we know who the board of deputies are. we know what it’s for. we know how it’s funded. we know how you get to be on it. we know who it represents. now, we have this new organisation called the “jewish leadership council”. on it, you have various movers and shakers, you’ve got the vc/banking/property tycoons, you’ve got the charity/safety/israel activists, you’ve got synagogue movement machers, you’ve got access, you’ve got international connections, you’ve got lords, baronesses, knights and the chair of ujs – you’ve got two women and no rabbis, for some reason. you’ve got no haredim, for some other reason. you’ve got leaders from the most broad-based and influential organisations in the community – but what are they for? clearly, this is an influential bunch of people, but who chooses them? who decided that there should be a jewish leadership council in the first place? how are they accountable? what is their strategy? what is their relationship with the board? how is it funded? i for one would like to know.

2. promote jewish (especially sephardic) cultural literacy

we are not short, for good or ill, of jewish education organisations, from the controversial chabad to the inestimable limmud and all points beyond. however, for the most part, systematic approaches aimed at enhancing jewish identity are without exception entirely religious-based. more worryingly, they seem to be ignoring the question of cultural literacy. whilst there are instances of successful specific initiatives, like the yiddish summer school run by the jewish music institute, or the various ulpanim run by israel-focused organisations, there is a distinct lack of provision for the sephardic and oriental communities to promote the learning of ladino and judeo-arabic – essentially, globalisation is being driven by majority tastes, hence the largest groups attract the most funding and if one didn’t learn it at one’s mother’s knee, one might struggle to gain familiarity with anything from cookery to piyyutim, history to dress. there are organisations, including musical groups and individual tutors, who are promoting and disseminating the results of their knowledge and expertise in specific areas, normally as a result of academic research, but there is no-one who can teach you about the culture of, say, an “indian iraqi”, everything from how to make sambusak and sehug to singing shbahoth pronounced correctly – in other words, the customs, the language, the music, the food, the history. and the same goes for the different ashkenazi traditions, with the possible exception of chabad, who integrate their cultural traditions such as “farbrengen” as part of their outreach programmes. it is possible that this may be the result of a hundred years of zionist shelilat ha-galut (“negation of diaspora behaviours”) or an enlightenment/modernist hangover against the backward ways of “ghetto culture”, or simply the influence of organisations whose sole concern is increasing religious observance, but surely one can no longer argue that diaspora jewish is simply something to be outgrown. yet we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater on this one – and forgotten much of what made being jewish interesting. this is something i believe where we can learn something from how other diasporas have preserved their cultures, the various south asian communities being a case in point.

3. take a lead on environmental frumness

something was said about making Shabbat the “greenest day of the week” – now, i am the first to expound on the benefits of one day with no driving, tv or communications, but i worry about the effects on the planet of copious use of tinfoil, urns, hot-plates, leaving lights on and most of all the use of disposable plates, cutlery, glasses and so on for ease of clear-up at synagogue kiddushim or on other communal occasions. i was less than underwhelmed at chiefy’s “green shabbat” damp squib and am regularly appalled at the environmental disaster area that most community functions seem to be. there is an opportunity for the community to change this – it is 100% wrong that correct religious observance should be in breach of Torah prohibitions on wastefulness and the destruction of natural resources. i would be delighted if religious organisations could take a lead in this department – the progressive movements have already made steps in this direction and organisations like limmud have made concrete moves to make policy into reality on its conferences. there are organisations such as hazon that are focused specifically on doing this in a jewish way – it is about time that the religious establishment, particularly within the traditional communities, does the same. a set of guidelines would be a start.

4. break the stranglehold of fiftysomething personal fiefdoms

i lose count at the number of community organisations in this country whose leadership and patronage is controlled by middle-aged people who run them as if they were their own personal kingdoms. sometimes, these people have some claim to expertise, or have built the organisations up, but more often than not, they have simply prevented the organisations from developing by hanging on to all the levers of power, dispensing patronage with the help of compliant boards of part-time trustees, picked for their names, contact books, relations and fat wallets. how many of these organisations have executive scrutiny from anyone under 35, let alone under 30? how many of these boards provide an effective check on the power of the chief executive or director? more worryingly, what happens when an organisation which has no competition begins to stifle innovation in its key area of focus and actively prevent other organisations challenging its dominance, or even block activities in its area which are not under its control? i propose that all community organisations adopt a code of practice which includes a commitment to the future planning of the organisation, specifically to succession planning and provides for some kind of non-executive checks and balances. not being an expert in charity law, i’m not sure what the actual rules are, but enough charity scandals have made it into the papers (and i know of some which haven’t even got that far) to suggest that there is something to address here, perhaps through the board?

5. shul and mosque twinning

although there are a plethora of opportunities for the ceremonial activities associated with interfaith dialogue (i’m thinking here of the likes of the indefatigable and admirable sir sigmund sternberg) and quite a few effective practical collaborations amongst communal professionals and academics (i’m thinking here of the leo baeck college jewish-christian-muslim conferences in germany and the tireless liaison work done by the cst) there are still far too few grass-roots initiatives (here, i’m thinking of the likes of radio salaam-shalom or the alif-aleph student dialogue activities) in the mainstream synagogue movements. i would propose a simple solution – a programme of twinning between synagogues and mosques, perhaps trilaterally including churches if it helps. by the same token, i think jewish-sikh dialogue has long been neglected and, particularly in view of our similarities as religions with a partly ethnic element, it would be extremely helpful to bring gurdwaras into the mix. a programme of working together on uncontroversial and useful community projects such as litter collection or redecorating local facilities would enable the building of links which would contribute strongly to community cohesion.

6. transparency in the tzedakah industry

every day, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds are donated by religious jews to the needy. the giving of “tzedakah” (not exactly the same thing as charity) is a religious obligation that is taken extremely seriously by both observant and non-observant jews. however, this system lacks transparency. every traditional morning service includes a point at which money is ceremonially donated, usually into a collection box. usually this money is given as coins or even notes, but there are a number of schemes, widely used in the strictly orthodox community, whereby tzedakah vouchers are purchased en masse, donated by the purchasers and then redeemed by the recipients. however, these cashflows, which are then collected and redistributed by either communal officials or charitable networks, undeniably place significant amounts of patronage in the hands of synagogues, rabbis and charities. there is little transparency about these donations, how they are used or what strings may or may not be attached.

on the other side of the transaction, a huge industry has built up around getting money donated for tzedakah to “the needy” or “for Torah study” – however, a sizeable (though who knows how much?) amount is directed towards ultra-orthodox institutions both here and in israel. similarly, the communities for whom “Torah is their profession” (in other words, they don’t work for a living, but live off these donations whilst studying full-time) are disproportionately benefited. i’m not saying they live in the lap of luxury, but they certainly have a lot of children, don’t pay a lot of tax (or, in israel, serve in the army) and don’t seem to pay much attention to the talmudic maxim, which is part of the normative halakhah of the shulhan arukh, that “he who does not teach his son a trade, teaches him to be a thief” (BT qiddushin 29a). moreover, if you spend any time in the strictly orthodox community, you will become aware of the number of people who come asking directly for money from the community during prayers, in most cases waving a laminated note under your nose about the operation they need to pay for, the medication they need to take, the institution of Torah learning that they are supporting or even the wedding they need to make for one of their 12 children. all of them seem to be able to afford plane tickets and most of them seem to think if you are collecting in the UK, you have no obligation to ask in english or provide any kind of english explanation of what you’re asking for, which is just plain rude.

now, i don’t deny that some of these are worthy causes, but some of them definitely aren’t. the money isn’t audited at either end. the tax authorities certainly aren’t consulted. money often goes missing, is diverted, is used to gain undue influence or ends up funding things of which i certainly do not approve (like illegal settlements) and we are all aware of the recent scandals in america over money-laundering. there is a secondary industry (well known in stamford hill) whereby you can hire a driver for a couple of days who has a list of addresses where people live who give to good causes live and the amount they are likely to give and he will shuttle you round from door to door in return for a cut. one person of my acquaintance used to keep a wodge of five pound notes by the door for when anyone rang – and, apparently, a lot of them complained about how little he gave! now it is all very praiseworthy that the jewish obligation for charitable giving is so powerful, but it is currently driving a lot of very, very questionable behaviours and practices.

the authorities have long been interested in the hawala system by which muslims raise money for good (and some not so good) causes and a focus on this is part of most anti-money-laundering computer systems. it is only a matter of time before the tzedakah system comes under scrutiny as a racketeering practice. in fact, it probably already is. my advice, particularly to the strictly-orthodox communities is this: clean house. do something about the lack of transparency. get audit trails and control systems in place – or you will live to regret it when this augean stable is eventually cleaned. there is an opportunity for, among other things, a cashless system to be introduced whereby people seeking donations can be issued a portable card reading device. similarly, if we can issue hechshers (stamps of kashrut) for food, there is no reason why we cannot do the same at the UK end for reputable collectors of funds – that way, we who wish to fulfil our obligation to donate can be assured that our funds are going to someone or a cause who really deserves it and not to anywhere else.

7. call the kiruv industry to account and combat the influence of artscroll

regular readers of the spittoon will be aware of my opinions on the kiruv or “outreach” industry and the organisations that are engaged in it. many of these organisations worry me. not because i object to bagels and speed-dating, but because i object to the hidden agendas of these organisations and the power they are increasingly gaining within the communal mainstream. at least one major united synagogue has outsourced its jewish education to a kiruv organisation in the past, which has been a source of some controversy. the ideology that drives these people comes straight from the haredi world. that is not to say that it is necessarily such a bad thing, but it’s simply not healthy that it is allowed to infiltrate and take over the mainstream of jewish education. the stalking-horse of this entryism is the powerful “mesorah publications” publishing house, home of the artscroll series of books. now i don’t know of one jewish house that doesn’t have at least one of their books, including mine, but i for one worry about allowing the hashkafah (“worldview”) of this part of the community to become dominant. both artscroll and the kiruv movements push a monolithic, heavily edited, selective, prudish, intolerant and above all doctrinaire view of judaism which flies in the face both of our history and the jaw-dropping complexity of jewish thought, theology, law and culture. people like simplicity and for things to be set out for them to understand – that’s fine. but what goes with this, both in the publications and the programmes, is an ideology – and it’s not an ideology that we should be comfortable or complacent about. the traditionalist mainstream has been supine in the face of this onslaught, in many cases sympathising with its negation of non-orthodox communities and streams of thought and, in many cases, actively encouraged by the power players in the religious leadership. it is time we fully understood what these organisations stand for, what their political aims are, what links they have to israeli political parties on the [ultra]religious right and what influence they have over the community in this country. they have been able to buy silence so far with what is in many places entirely praiseworthy community work, but it is time we had some transparent scrutiny of these organisations.

all suggestions are welcome!

outside the serene environment of the museum, however, the dispute between the self-appointed guardians of faith and reason continues to rage. professor richard dawkins, the napoleon of socio-biology, recently devoted an entire episode of his hagiographic (but mostly excellent) series on darwinism, “the genius of charles darwin”, to rubbishing religion, as usual choosing its most rabid, swivel-eyed partisans, leavened with a selection of double-tongued “intelligent design”-peddling weasels to make his point about the idiocy and irrationality of belief. the sole exception to this parade of lunacy appeared to be the archbishop of canterbury, whose lyrical, articulate moderation was immediately dismissed by dawkins as yet another creationist strategy, this time the stealth doctrine of “absorption”. to this way of thinking, even the honour accorded to darwin by burying him in westminster abbey was suspect.

it is notable that those who find evolution unpalatable are similarly splenetic, even if they fail to match dawkins’ magisterial contempt in either grammar or coherence. but however less militant in tone than his ferocious assault on religion, the god delusion, “the genius of charles darwin” still left the indelible impression of an agenda that believes there can be no genuine meeting ground between empirical, peer-reviewed truth and obscurantist, infantile fantasy. religion, in dawkins’ view, quite simply cannot be taken seriously as a choice for anyone who considers themselves intellectually sound or critically robust. it is a vestigial remnant, a reminder of the dark era before scientific knowledge was available, a sentimental, regressive attachment – and it must be discredited, debunked and unmasked for the toxic, anti-reason fallacy that it is.

this is, of course, not the first time that religion has been attacked in these terms. the european “enlightenment” was founded upon a profound hostility to religion as an obstacle to progress, judaism in particular. much of enlightenment criticism of judaism could also be characterised as a new version of christian supercessionism, this time using reason and science to prove that christianity was more “modern” and “progressive” than its “backwards”, “primitive”, “uncivilised” predecessor. naturally, some thinkers went far further than this, rejecting any and all religion in favour of a new faith in reason, science, progress, class, nation or race. for judaism, however, the hostility remained constant; whether the aim was to convert or debunk. and, ultimately, even for those who abandoned traditional belief or any kind of belief, a new form of hostility, based on a vicious distortion of science itself, was able to make even having jewish ancestors a crime punishable by extermination.

pseudo-scientific racism offered judaism no opportunity to defend itself but, fortunately, science and reason seem unlikely to lead to a new holocaust. but existential issues notwithstanding, the militancy of science-inspired hostility to religion seems to have adopted a recognisable posture and set of tactics. they appear to be strikingly similar to those of the famous mediaeval spanish “disputations”, in which judaism, represented by such luminaries as nachmanides, found itself called to account before the kangaroo courts of the catholic church and the inquisition.

i do not seek to defend all religion against assaults when it seems manifestly obvious that some are well-deserved and many criticisms can be shown to have excellent foundation; in particular, the accusation that religion has often shown itself as all too ready to excuse injustice, immorality, inhumanity and the abuse of power, whether as a social influence or a political force. the prophet jeremiah speaks of the dichotomy between a “heart of stone” and a “heart of flesh”. we must be unarguably able to lay claim to a voice of righteousness and truth, or we will be unable to respond, as we should in no uncertain terms:

our religion is not as you say it is. you are misrepresenting what we say, misrepresenting what we do and misrepresenting our mission in the world. you are either ignorant of what we actually believe, or you are guilty of the same lack of critical engagement that you believe religion exhibits where darwinism is concerned and violating your own principle of empirical investigation. we have no problem with science, especially darwinism; it undoubtedly has some important things to teach us about ourselves and the universe. but we are not interested in a war between religion and science. more to the point, we will take responsibility for our own benefit to society and will not have our terms of engagement dictated to us by you. they should be dictated by our respect for the sources within judaism that enable us to articulate that benefit:

“when i behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you established; what is man, that you are mindful of him and the son of man, that you think of him?”  psalms 8:6-7

“if a man is worthy, they say to him: ‘you preceded the angels’; but if he is unworthy, they say to him: ‘a gnat preceded you, a snail preceded you’” genesis rabbah 8:1

“man has no pre-eminence over the animals, for all is breath” ecclesiastes 3:19

 there are often surprising sources of religious authority for such interpretations. one such is the towering figure of “the rav”, rabbi j.b. soloveitchik, who asks in response:

 “in truth, what is man when set against the vast universe and the heavenly realms? what is his worth in comparison to the cosmic process? what is he when set against the world and the fullness thereof? what is he in relation to worlds, visible and invisible?” ‘halakhic man’, p.169

 soloveitchik understands us as being reconciled by understanding G!D’s Recognition of us as “worthy to stand before G!D”. i do not think it unreasonable to suggest that the purpose of religion is to make us worthy of that divine recognition – and where we are not, we cannot expect protestations of moral superiority to hold water.

scary kiruv cartoon

on reading it, i didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. on one hand, it’s a caricature of the position of the kiruv (“outreach”) organisations, but on the other hand, once you start digging into their theology, their internal politics, their fundraising activities and their influence on the jewish community and israeli politics, it’s hard not to find them scary.

i’ve been thinking about this for a good long time, because as an observant jew, albeit one who was became observant as an adult, i am constantly aware of the phenomenon of the ba’al teshuvah, the “penitent”, the returner-to-traditional-judaism. when you’re trying to do this, the kiruv organisations are the first to stand up and say they’ll help. however, i never took them up on their offers, because i could see where it led and i had seen its effect on friends and family when conflict arose. i won’t say that i’ve never met fantastic rabbis from chabad, project seed, aish or the jewish learning exchange – but i was always aware of the kiruv undercurrent and kept my involvement at arm’s length. it would appear, however, that not everyone is in possession of the requisite confidence and critical faculties to counter the half-truths, mendacious reasoning, tendentious interpretation and evangelistic love-bombing; people want their outer message of family values, Torah and a truly integrated lifestyle to be true – and so it is.  and, yes, of course these people are often more amusing than scary:

Lubavitch Sends T-800 Back in Time to Protect Holy Temple (thanks, the Knish)

but that’s not all it is.

what i truly find sinister about these organisations is their monolithic nature. like all fundamentalisms, they take a mythologised golden age (which may or may not have happened) and posit a fall from that state, which can only be regained by a return to the actions, behaviours and values espoused by the organisations which claim to represent the legacy of that golden age. whether this is an idealised picture of the yeshivas of lithuania, the shtetls of poland, or indeed the era of the prophets, patriarchs and classical rabbinic sages. if only we all attained that standard, they claim, it would all be different – the world would be transformed and us with it.

well, the world would be transformed all right, but something vital would be lost – and that is the vitality of religious biodiversity. there has always, *always*, *always* been variation in both belief and practice, there has *never* been a time in which we all did exactly the same thing and observed a uniform code of dress, behaviour, ritual and belief. maimonides’ “13 principles of faith” divided the community for a century. the hasidim and mitnagdim fought like cats and dogs (and continue to do so) – the accommodators of modernism and the NAY-SORRENDUR vanguard, the rationalists and mystics, the scholars and the businessmen – we’re all necessary just as much as we always have been. what i really, deeply object to is this idea – shared either overtly or covertly by all kiruv organisations, is the concept that we must all dress like this:

and spend all our time doing this:

hevruta study in a yeshiva

and everyone else should just be happy to pay for us to do this, because after all – we’re doing the world a favour by sitting and studying Torah all day. now, actually, i don’t entirely disagree that studying Torah a lot is a good thing for the world, but i also note that the sages expected us to Get A Job and Pay Our Taxes as well. rashi had a job. rabbi akiva had a job. maimonides had three jobs. now, suddenly, we’re expected to all wear the black-hat uniform and aspire to a life of Torah study?

i’m sorry, it’s never been like that and, hopefully, it’ll never be like that. but of course, we must remember what the consequences of not being like that are, in the view of the people in the ultra-orthodox world who fund the kiruv organisations. i was not entirely surprised, of course, to find that these cartoons are supposed to have caused the haitian earthquake – that’s right, because G!D Is bound to kill thousands of people in the caribbean just to get the jewish community’s attention.

this sort of thing is a wake-up call. these people are not the future of judaism – they are our wahhabis, generous, well-funded, well-organised and intelligently marketed – and puritanical, intolerant and disingenuous. just as we outsourced islamic education to the saudi international dawah programme a generation ago and are now reaping the dubious benefits, we are in the process of handing these people the future of jewish education. we should take ownership of our own Torah back before it’s too late.

in the spirit that got these imbeciles to cancel their most recent demo and, naturally, in tribute to the recent foiling of the detroit pants bomber, i humbly propose the following:

let all who wish to show this truly grotesque man up as the nasty, ridiculous bigot he is – FLY THE UNDERPANTS!

some pants yesterday

yes, we all know that angry andy and the bombastic beards of barminess would be applauding the Glorious Pants Of Terror right now if it had all gone as planned on flight 253, so let’s throw it right back in their faces. take a broomhandle or some other stick-type object and fly a pair of y-fronts off them as a flag. stick them in the window of your house or the window of your car, like people did in the last world cup. if all else fails, leave your trousers at home or wear your pants outside your trousers like a superhero! yes, the humble underpant must now become a SYMBOL OF RESISTANCE!

king messiah, or ex-parrot?

of course, the official chabad line on this is that they’re not in fact messianic and that messianic chabadniks are a small minority. some would beg to disagree. in fact, the jc offers a piece of analysis from my very favourite mainstream wiseacre, the egregious rabbi yitzhak “marry a jew” shochet, to show why the precise formulation of the affirmation demanded by the rca offers ample opportunity for a bit of hasidic taqqiyah. r. shochet, of course, is the  best friend of every parent in the matilda marks primary school catchment area, whose appallingly smug and arrogant “ask the rabbi” column in the jewish news, the cause of much friday night swearing in the bananabrain household, was memorably and accurately caricatured on the satirical jewdas website (not something i generally endorse, however).

the amusing thing is, of course, that r. shochet’s analysis appears to rest not upon the fidgy-widginess of whether chabad can sign up to the non-messianic affirmation required in good conscience, or not, but upon the contention that:

“Allegiance to the “Thirteen Principles of the Faith” does not matter, and all the serious problems afflicting Jews and Judaism are not of primary concern. They are not as important, and will not provide the headlines, as inventing and prosecuting alleged heresies. This is certainly an intriguing agenda for a rabbinical organisation.”

can we now expect r. shochet to drop his long-standing objection to the non-orthodox communities, whose non-adherence to the thirteen principles is generally considered as indicative of their heretical status? in fact, can we now look forward to a proper debate on the misappropriation of maimonidean dogmatic theology by the guardians of “Torah judaism”? is he prepared to have an honest look at whether maimonides actually meant what modern orthodoxies of every stripe say he meant, given that his positions aroused astonishing controversy at the time and were themselves condemned numerous times for heresy? can we now expect the united synagogue to cease prosecuting the non-orthodox movements for their “alleged heresies”?

i doubt it – but we shouldn’t let our antipathy to chabad stand in the way of hypocrisy, should we?

i will reiterate the reasons that i cannot support this:

1. what about jewish batei din and anglican ecclesiastical law?

some might consider this selfish, but shari’a courts must be allowed if the state is not to be guilty of severe double standards in respect of both jewish halakhah and christian canon law. although, obviously, some of the speakers (like the british humanist association and the national secular society) would argue that they would ban the lot and, indeed, maryam namazie herself says:

The One Law for All Campaign is opposed to all religious councils and tribunals including the Beth Din.

well, that’s lost my vote straight away. the reason for that is not *just* because i’m jewish, but because the “one law” that we are all subject to already caters for religious courts under the provisions of alternative arbitration.

2. alternative arbitration is, effectively, a human right

alternative arbitration arose in part because law, lawyers and access to the “one law” is prohibitively expensive, complicated and adversarial. services such as acas and relate are available to anyone that wishes to make use of them. those that do not are not compelled to do so if they do not wish to. obviously, there are some muslims (guess who) who think that muslims should be compelled to use shari’a courts, but the jewish community has long recognised that jews cannot be compelled to use, respect or comply with the dictates of the beth din – the case in point being that of agunah, where the inability (for whatever reason) of the beth din to prevent husbands from unreasonably withholding a bill of jewish divorce (thus effectively “chaining” the woman to the marriage despite the civil court having granted a civil divorce under civil law) and the shameful lack of a universally acceptable alternative resolution in halakhah. this loophole has now been specifically rectified in civil law whereby the judge now has grounds for refusing to grant decree nisi if s/he is notified that ability to obtain a divorce under a religious system is at issue in the case – i’m not aware of the precise drafting but i would have thought it’s a reasonable principle, but that’s the only place where i am aware that civil law has accommodated jewish law – it is to our discredit that it was necessary, of course and it is not entirely certain whether it has been entirely successful.

3. if religion is a private matter, then the state has no right to interfere with it and, moreover, cannot effectively control it

it is certainly up to individuals what they do with their genitalia in the privacy of their own home with consenting adults, just as it is certainly up to individuals which religion they wish to belong to and what they wish to eat or refrain from eating. in this case, you can’t have your cake and eat it. the right to marry or divorce with whom you wish however you wish is surely the most private right of all and if it’s private, as long as no harm is occurring, the state should keep its nose out of it. secularists have long demanded a separation of church and state, but they seem to have no problem with a state-sanctioned religion of secularism imposing itself on matters of personal individual commitment. more to the point, it is about as possible for the state to determine whether religious rules are being observed or not observed in a particular marriage as it is to determine whether people drink too much or smoke dope – in other words, not at all unless someone gets hurt. it is, effectively impossible to enforce the elimination of religious courts without surveillance to ensure that three rabbis do not meet in a room at once and issue a ruling. i am sure that the issue of civil liberties here cannot be missed – the same applies to shari’a courts. it’s also been tried and failed – in inquisition-era spain and the soviet union, where ritual immersion pools for observing the laws of niddah were often hidden in basements under false floors. is that a road we really want to go down in this country?

4. shari’a, like halakhah does not deal with issues of personal status alone, it is also a means of providing assurance of quality in a number of areas which require operational compliance with a standard

this is a fairly simple issue, it’s not about marriage and divorce, but about kashrut. the beth din decides what’s kosher and what isn’t and produces things like the “kosher food guide“, which tells us which foods are supervised, which e-numbers may have non-kosher ingredients and so on. of course, this information could be provided from abroad over the internet, as could halakhic advice, so effectively, there’s no way of preventing it. besides, how is it different from something like the international standards association or any chartered professional institute with its own rules and bylaws? kashrut is a set of standards, just as halal is; it is a knowledge-based system and thus any attempt to stifle it is bound to fail. of course, you could close any butcher’s shop where jewish people shopped, but i think many of us, including me, would see that as an unacceptable restriction of our civil liberties and leave the country.

5. it conflates shari’a with islamism and therefore serves the islamist agenda

i hardly think we are unfamiliar with this particular viewpoint. if all shari’a is bad, then we are playing into the hands of the likes of al-macaroon and the hizbies.

i do have one solution to suggest. if the muslim communities of this country wish to make shari’a respectable, it must be unified and centralised to a far greater degree than it presently is. at present there is a sort of guerrilla approach, any maniac with a beard and a qur’an can set up on his own and start issuing fatwas. that this constitutes a problem should be obvious simply from the issues i am aware of with halal quality control – there’s no real standard, no real means of universally acceptable certification and no real guarantee that what you are eating is actually halal. if muslims could get their act together to establish a more consistent benchmark with a central authority around it, it would enable them to rule rogue organisations out of court, as it were. i think this is the sort of thing muslim community organisations ought to be doing rather than playing silly buggers with politics; it would also give them a clear focus as valuable providers of communal services, rather than showing them up as rather inept manipulators of public patronage. in short, the muslims of the uk need to centralise, integrate and get organised, not around gesture politics, foreign policy grievances and communalist battles imported from bangladesh and elsewhere, but around the needs of the uk community for communal standards, consistent quality and procedures. that’s how we did it and, largely, it has worked. it would certainly provide a refutation of the trope of squabbling, shrill lobbyism that has characterised british islam in recent times.

UPDATE: this piece was picked up by comment is free, who asked me to rewrite it, which i duly did here. the comments are quite interesting, so i’ll respond to them below.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book “The King’s Torah” that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation.

Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs.  “It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,” he wrote, adding: “If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments – because we care about the commandments – there is nothing wrong with the murder.”

basically, if this is true, then it’s one of the most disgusting things i have ever heard, a true desecration of the Divine Name.
according to the failedmessiah.com blog, both ginsburgh and possibly shapiro himself are members of chabad, an organisation that, generally speaking, i have a lot of time for because they are prepared to go that extra mile on behalf of jews everywhere and help in ways that others aren’t, but one which i keep at distinctly arm’s length from because, well, to put it bluntly, i am not sure i trust their theology. i wonder if this, after the scandal of the last rebbe’s elevation to messiahship, will finally prove to be the undoing of this behemoth of outreach?

anyway, i’m going to be asking some very pointed questions of any chabad rabbi i encounter any time soon. stuff like this, quite apart from being the sort of thing that laid the groundwork for the murder of yitzhak rabin and presumably provides spiritual sustenance for the likes of jack teitel, undermines the sort of sensible, humane, rational, tolerant and open-minded position that ought to be halakhically mandatory. it is, quite simply, the foundation stone of terrorism.