Multiplicity
Discussion continues, in many places. Jonathan Derbyshire suggests a new thesis:
There’s a view, call it the “Crooked Timber thesis”, according to which the truth of statements about a group or a set of beliefs ought to be weighed against the perlocutionary effect of uttering such statements on the group or the holders of the beliefs in question. In one recurrent variant of this view, true statements about what, for shorthand purposes, I’ll call “political Islamism” ought to be circumscribed, if not actually withheld, for fear of inciting “Islamophobia”…And it seems to me obvious that the point applies in contexts different to the one in which it’s usually applied over at Crooked Timber. So one wonders whether the Guardian might have been advised not to run today Madeleine Bunting’s characteristically egregious and sophomoric piece on “Islamophobia” (these aren’t scare quotes, by the way; they simply indicate that the term is the one used by the author). Bunting manages a passing nod to the “horrific barbarity of Beslan”, but she has other, more pressing business to attend to.
Richard at Philosophy, et cetera has a very interesting post on the related subject of multiplicity, apparently inspired by that Manifesto by people of Muslim culture (including atheists) a few days ago.
This is great stuff, and deserves more publicity. Some of my fellow lefties are fond of diversity, but they only see it at the macro level – they espouse “cultural diversity”, yet ignore the diversity within cultures. But excessive tolerance of the former can have grevious costs for the latter. This blinkered focus can also lead to negative consequences within our own society.
Just so. This ignoring of diversity may explain why we hear so much more about al-Qaradawi and Ziauddin Sardar and Tariq Ramadan than we do about Ibn Warraq or Azam Kamguian or Maryam Namazie or Kenan Malik. Is there an assumption that Muslims are more ‘authentic’ spokesmen for ‘Muslim’ societies than secularists and atheists are? Well let’s hope not. I certainly wouldn’t accept that Christians are more ‘authentic’ spokesmen for the US than atheists are, for example. More representative, possibly, but that’s another matter. That’s that difference between democracy or majoritarianism on the one hand, and truth on the other, that we’re always running into.
Dunno about you lot, but while wanting to hear more from Maryam Namazie and her comrades, I also want to hear more from and about Tariq Ramadan. Muslim humanism, like humanist versions of other potentially nasty monotheisms, is something that I’d like to see more of. Is Ramadan it? I’m not sure as yet.
The answer to the question in your last paragraph is, inevitably, yes because Islam does not see any division between religion and politics. Your comparison with the Christians in the USA is inexact, because the US is (even now!) a secular society whose laws explicitly impose a separation of church and state. More importantly, most Americans support this separation.
This is not the case in most Muslim countries and in those like Turkey where the separation is being attempted it is under continuous pressure. Consequently, whilst secular voices in Muslim countries should be heard their status within those countries is going to be that of outsider rather than insider.
Does 100% of ‘Islam’ make no distinction between religion and politics? This might be the case, but I want to know either way.
I’m not going to be converted by Ramadan(just like I’m not going to be converted by Christians). But I think that I could happily live in the same polity as him, in a way that’s clearly not the case with the likes of Al-Quaradawi. For example, here’s Ramadan on minorities:
“When you live in the European landscape and come to understand its social fabric, you are not a minority citizen. You are, simply, a citizen. This is where we must affirm that we have values that come from the Islamic tradition, and that these values are held in common with our fellow–citizens and with the whole of society. When I call for social justice to remove racism and discrimination from European societies, I am invoking majority not minority values.
…
I think that governments, and indeed the majority of the population, often try and push Muslims into speaking and feeling as minorities. The European Council for Fatwa and Research, set up in 1997, is an example. It has proposed something called fiqh al–aqalliyyat (the law and jurisprudence of minorities). I have a real doctrinal problem with this notion. There is no such thing as a minority answer and a different majority answer. We have to speak as citizens. “
[From http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-5-57-2006.jsp%5D
Sure, it’s not perfect. But it’s not the kind of stuff that would have me refusing visas. And it implies that in the here and now, Ramadan appears to be acknowledging that politics /= religion.
Hmm. I’m not sure that follows, though, Chris Wh. I mean – does it follow from the fact that religion and the state are one in Islam, that secularists speak as outsiders? People don’t necessarily identify themselves with the state, do they? Especially not when that state is not what you’d call responsive, or chosen by the people in question.
Chris Wi, Sure, Ramadan may be better than Qaradawi, but I’m still considerably more interested in atheists and secularists from mostly-Muslim countries, because we hear vastly less about them than we hear about more or less moderate or extremist Muslims. At the moment I think it’s really worthwhile to keep pointing out that not everyone in Iran or Pakistan is even a Muslim at all. I think it’s worthwile because it reminds everyone that religion is in fact voluntary. It’s an idea, and thus something one can accept or reject; it’s not something one is born and can’t get rid of.
Surely the important difference is that the State counts them as outsiders, and that can be a dangerous thing to be in some States!
Surely the important difference is that the State counts them as outsiders, and that can be a dangerous thing to be in some States!
Fair point, Ophelia. As you know, I’m very keen to promote the WCPI etc everywhere where they are not already known. But at B+W, now, they are. My interest in people like Ramadan is partly driven by the fact that I know about world secularism already, and I want to know more about ‘Muslim humanism’, including, but not limited to, the question of whether it exists or not.
This is, I suppose, the difference between big S (NSS-style) Secularism, which promotes atheism, and small s secularism, which stops at separating religion and state. Every Secularist is also a secularist, but the reverse is not true. I’m not sure that Ramadan is a small s secularist, but (a) I’d like to find out and (b) I wonder whether or not the dynamic of his position will end in the promotion of small s secularism whether he wants it or not.
Chris Wh – in some ‘Muslim’ states, it’s a majority who are ‘outsiders’ for religious reasons. Syria and Iraq, for example.
Apologies for sending the same message twice – my system was going so slow I thought it hadn’t gone the first time.
Chris Wi – agree, but weren’t we talking about secularists? Presumably, they are outside the outsiders!