Do as I Say Not as I Don’t Do
Good old Iqbal Sacranie. One can see why the BBC and similar are always so eager to ask the MCB for its opinion on matters to do with ‘the Muslim community’.
Sir Iqbal said of civil partnerships: “This is harmful. It does not augur well in building the very foundations of society – stability, family relationships. And it is something we would certainly not, in any form, encourage the community to be involved in.”
Why? Why doesn’t it?
He said he was guided by the teachings of the Muslim faith, adding that other religions such as Christianity and Judaism held the same stance.
Yes, they do. A cardinal was saying so just the other day. So what? Why should anyone care? Why is that supposed to be a reason? We don’t want religious pseudo-reasons for public policy, we want real reasons, based on actual arguments. But we don’t get them – not from people who think their ‘faith’ is reason enough. That’s because they don’t have any. All they ever manage to come up with is meaningless hand-waving about the family.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien criticised Westminster over civil partnerships and the Scottish Executive over changes to the laws on uncontested divorce…He argued that alternative lifestyles were “undermining values which for generations have been treasured”. The cardinal claimed that the family remained “the basic social unit” to be recognised, protected and promoted as the most vital building block of society. He told his congregation: “When our lawmakers condone and endorse trends in society which are ultimately ruinous of family life we are entitled to question their motivation and condemn their behaviour.”
But why are civil partnerships ultimately ruinous of family life? Why do they not ‘augur well in building the very foundations of society – stability, family relationships’? Why? Because – what – married straight people will look around them and see (how?) that some gay people have civil partnerships, and – what? Be filled with despair and rage and bitterness and a sense of futility, and wonder why they ever bothered, and turn their children over to an orphanage or out onto the streets, and run off to Tahiti and Hoboken respectively, there to become layabouts and pickpockets? Or what? Straight people will contemplate the existence of civil partnerships and decide not to get married themselves because, I mean, after all, it’s obvious – ? Or what? What is the problem? Why does civil partnerships for gay people have any effect on marriage or ‘the family’ whatsoever? Hey – suppose somebody informed us all that, contrary to previous scientific opinion, ostriches and geckoes have formal, legal marriage, just like human marriage, right down to the new dishes and the arguments over who has to wash them. Would that make humans stop getting married and become pirates instead?
Sacranie does make an effort, to cobble together some sort of argument other than ‘because God,’ but he doesn’t do much of a job of it.
Asked if he believed homosexuality was harmful to society, he said: “Certainly it is a practice that in terms of health, in terms of the moral issues that comes along in a society – it is. It is not acceptable.”
The moral issues that comes along in a society. Right. Which ones? Why is it not acceptable? Other than hand-waving?
Not to mention, of course, to revert to the cardinal for a moment, the redolent irony of celibate priests fussing about the family. If you’re in such a sweat about the family, you prosing chump, why don’t you go have one? And if you don’t want to have one, why are you nagging everyone else about the family ‘as the most vital building block of society’? What do you mean by it?
Creeping theocracy, that’s what it is.
It’s interesting that Sacranie felt it necessary to use the phrase ‘scientific evidence’, but not, of course, to offer any. It’s also interesting that Tatchell says that ‘We should stand together to fight Islamophobia and homophobia’. What is more likely to happen is that anyone who objects to homophobia will be accused of islamophobia.
Is a Homophobe allowed to complain about Islamophobia?
Anyway Phobia is irrational fear, i’m not sure that fear of any type of religion can be described as a phobia given the history of religions……
True, about both scientific evidence (whoops! where’d it go?) and Islamophobia. Ridiculous word, as I’ve said (or shouted) many times. Muslimophobia is one thing, and Islamophobia is another.
When religious leaders say stuff like ‘civil partnerships are ruinous to family life’ it sounds like they are saying something relevent about something which is of general interest, something perhaps worth reporting, considering or respecting outside of their own sect. But as you say OB this makes no sense — they never explain how a ‘married’ gay couple down the road effects their neighboor’s marriage.
So what the hell do they mean then? I think they are talking in code. When they say ‘family life’ they don’t mean eating dinner together, going to the park, watching Eastenders on the sofa or any of the other things that make up familiy life. They mean something more specific, something more like ‘an institution that lets (our) religion put its nose into people’s sex-lives and prescribes who should get married (virgins, of the same religion) and how they should conduct their married life (the wife obeying the other husband, not using contraception, never getting divorced etc..)’ Something like that.
But if they came out and said that most people would say – oh that kind of familiy life, we are not bothered about that, this isn’t the middle-ages you know. And it would be obvious that they have nothing relevent to say about matters of general interest other than ‘God doesn’t want you to do xxx – it says so in our book’.
Exactly. Both the thing about sounding as if they are saying something when they’re not, and especially the thing about ‘family life’ as code. What it really means, I think, is that everyone without exception should be married (no later than high school or college graduation) and that women should always be subordinate to their husbands. In other words what it really really means is that all women should be 1) owned 2) under someone’s control 3) subordinate.
That’s the real agenda.
Well, I don’t know, GT. Obviously I’m speculating, but I think it’s the agenda in the sense of being the item that is least expendable.
I think OB (and GT) nails it. The goal of these arguments is simple: narrow the range of possibilities for living an adult life.
Even though the “traditional” model (husband+wife who stays at home and contributes no income to the household unit+as many children as you can pop out while living) is to a certain extent a 19th century myth, anyway (women earned much of the household income in the pre-industrial era, after all). And even though this “traditional” model ignores things like polygamy, the extended family, the “it takes a village” argument
It’s also a bit of a circular argument in that they say something is ruinous of family life, which, as far as they’re concerned, they can easily get away with by reserving religion the right to define what combination of individuals of which genders (yes, and with what hierarchy) could possibly constitute a family.
I’m not convinced this is entirely about getting everyone to be married and controlling women’s sexuality. I think it is more bsic and visceral than that.
Why do they spend so much time worrying about what gay people do, and so little time worrying about all the other violations of their little book carried out by themselves, and the non-believers?
I think the answer is that religion provides a nice culturally acceptable cover for the fact that they just hate gay people because it is icky and weird, and they just want these people stopped from doing it. That’s also why they are so much more worked up about the male ‘sodomites’, rather than lesbians, when really it should be the latter that really bother them if it’s women’s sexuality they’re worried about.
What PM says may be true, but it is hard to come to a conclusion on this question when the question of gay marriage is a hot issue for gays themselves. In general, one would expect any person to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy discussing controversial issues. For example, if someone proposes legalising prostitution, then people who are opposed to this will react to the controversy, putting more effort into opposing this idea then they will into fighting other things they oppose but which are not up for legalization.
But it is more than just the focus on the issue, it’s the way they talk about it that is revealing. You don’t see Catholics expressing quite the same level of disgust for heterosexual sex using a condom as they do for gay sex.
I don’t think it is just about controlling women’s sexuality, which is why I didn’t put it that way. That’s basic, of course, but I think what it’s really about is controlling women period. Just controlling them – not letting them run around loose like autonomous grownups. I think that’s what threatens people like this the most: autonomous women.
Here’s some food for thought:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/31/wtest31.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/31/ixworld.html
With an unsurprising follow-up about the angry reaction to it:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=26588&name=Muslim+groups+angry+over+%27racist%27+citizenship+test
Yeah, I saw that Telegraph story when it came out. Didn’t link to it because – too difficult to frame properly in a headline and short teaser.
You’re right. It’s a challenge. Couldn’t come up with anything witty to say about it either. Though I must say I like this sentence from the Telegraph item (because I wonder what could be understood from it out of context – maybe it’s been plucked from an article about applications to enrol at Patrick Henry…):
Other questions covering topics such as bigamy and whether parents should allow their children to participate in school sports have been called “trick questions”, meant to catch people off guard.
To PM:
I have heard some disgusting things said about sex with a condom, unfortunately.
All I am saying is that during a controversy people can become more extreme in their view, leading them to both to express themselves in nastier ways and to appear obsessed with the subject, thereby appearing to be similar to those who are permanently more extreme. Then when the controversy wane, they revert to their more moderate selves. Also: just as when there is looting some people who would not start the process will nevertheless steal, during a controversy when such a person becomes temporarily more extreme this person will express himself in the same way as those permanently more extreme, by a sort of “follow-my-leader”.
So. Gay Muslims. Anyone seen a webiste ? Like who the fuck cares anyway.