Tolerance and the dignity of all human beings
Muriel Gray points out some sad realities.
What new creative solutions were on offer to reconcile the directly opposing ideologies that are obedience to Islam and progressive Western democracy? No big thinking of any kind. Actually, worse than that…Obama informed us that throughout history, “Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality”. Hasn’t it just? Darfur was all a silly misunderstanding, and Sunni and Shia Muslims tolerate each other magnificently. Islam also, the president assured us, overlaps and shares common principles with America, namely the “principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings”. Many of these can currently be seen on view in Afghanistan, northern Nigeria, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Pakistan, to name but a very few.
One possible reply is that what Obama said was aspirational – meant to inspire people to live up to the flattering description, not to say how things really are. But…it’s not a very satisfactory or convincing reply, given the vastness of the gap between the flattering description and how things really are. Since Islam as it is really practiced in the real world in places where it has state power is conspicuously bad at tolerance and the dignity of all human beings, it seems foolhardy to say otherwise. (Would Obama be happy to see an adult Malia living in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or Pakistan? If not…maybe he should hesitate before talking about shared principles of the dignity of all human beings. [If the answer is yes, he’s nuts – but I strongly doubt that the answer is yes.])
By far the greatest disappointment was Obama’s “dealing” with women’s rights as lowly point number six in his speech. In a few short sentences he referred, rightly, to the importance of educating Muslim women, then bizarrely to the importance of keeping American citizens in their hijabs…No mention of the shameful atrocities being carried out worldwide in Islamic countries every single day; nothing of injustice and hopelessness, of the drudgery, powerlessness and virtual enslavement suffered by millions of women and girls in the name of an invented deity. To so sure-footedly ignore what is happening to women right now is nothing short of a disgrace, and his appeasement of this outrage is on a par with appeasing apartheid.
Right. He needs a copy of the book.
Yep – he’s a demagogue, not the liberator so many wanted to see before his election.
Let’s just hope he doesn’t get another four years to wreck the US economy and comfort the enemies of civilisation with more babble of the noxious sort he emitted in Cairo
KMcC: John McCain and/or Sarah Palin might have handled such a trip in better fashion, though something tells me not. Obama’s words as usual were carefully chosen “Islam has demonstrated… possibilities… tolerance… equality.”
Well so it has. No matter how bad Islam has become, it has never snuffed out completely the hope of a chance of a possibility that some day things might be better, or at least different. Not even in Saudi or Afghanistan.
All you have to do is read between the lines.
OB: I’m sure Obama could use a copy of your book. If I were you I’d offer to travel to the White House to present him with a signed copy at a press conference. I’m sure he would grab it with both hands, literally. It’s at least worth a try.
His minders would surely have been telling him that he can please Muslims abroad or liberals back home, but not both. And they probably added that liberals once offended are more easily straightened out again than are Muslims, who have their ways of going berserk.
If you ask me, he’s followed that script quite well.
The purpose of Obama’s speech is to isolate extremists and violent radicals within the Muslim world. If he succeeds at that (time will tell), he can go on step two, the problems of mainstream Islam. Give the man some time and some leeway.
Oh he is not a demagogue; good grief. George Bush is ten times the demagogue Obama is.
I’m not sure isolating extremists requires dancing quite so lightly over the issue of women (for instance), however.
he is a demagogue – an orator who appeals mainly to the emotions rather than the reason, leaving rationality to reassert itself later. The fact that he’s less of a demagogue than Bush is not the most salient fact about his rhetoric.
He may appeal to more noble emotions – hope, mainly – but he’s still trying to exploit our emotions when he’s doing it.
Consider also his faint praise for the veterans who fought actual fascism – he basically said they could have acted like cowards and bullies but didn’t. Why mention at all the Nazis’ opinion of the invading armies? And why mention that all sides committed barbarities? He’s a very slippery fish, this Obama. Me no likey
I do like Obama, and I feel that he has the possibility of being the finest U.S. president in my life-time (I’m 63). Obama’s political record and his personal style give the impression of someone concerned about and aware of women’s issues: unlike most world leaders, he doesn’t even pretend to be a macho man. I assume that the decision not to emphasize woman’s issues in his speech in Cairo was carefully studied by experts who understand the situation in the Middle East better than I do and that it was decided by Obama and by his team of advisors that in order to isolate radical extremists, they had to down-play the oppression of women by mainstream Islam at the start.
No, not a demagogue, but just a bit too much of an accomodationist for me! Given the response of the OIC to the report of the UN Special Reporteur, Obama’s faith-based approach the international relationships is very worrying.
Since he has now skated over some of the thinnest ice yet, how does he get back? I’m quite prepared to give him time, but to do what, exactly? He has not addressed the question of human rights in majority Muslim countries. He has not addressed the question of minorities in such countries, such as Bahais in Iran, Jews in Yemen, Christians in Iraq. He has ignored the oppression of women throughout the “Muslim world” – an assumption about unity of viewpoint and purpose that is not justified. And he has actually tried to appease Islamist sentiment by attacking those who have reason to fear that the isolation of Muslim women in democratic states is – in too many cases – not only oppressive to women, but unchecked will lead more and more to an increasingly alienated Muslim minority.
And he has not isolated extremists, Amos. He has appeased them. But even that, I’m afraid, will not be enough, and what can he do for an encore?
That’s a lot of damage to undo for one speech! I have a feeling that, sure as Obama’s grip might be on the American electorate, he does not understand the role that Islam plays in the world today. Nor should he have moved so confidently into homiletic realms by purporting to know what God wants. This is dangerous turf, and the speech, for all its good intentions, creates divisions where there may be none, and does not recognise divisions that do exist. Very troubling. He certainly needs your book Ophelia, but he also needs better counsel. I have a feeling that people simply do not understand the threat that religion poses today. It will undo us all, in the end, if we are not careful, and Obama was not.
I think amos may be right. Obama’s aim was to portray himself as friendly and unthreatening.
The best recruitment tool the Islamists have is anti-Americanism, and Obama was presumably attempting to defuse that.
Obviously what he said was nonsense, but it was probably the right thing to say from a political perspective.
As Jakob says, most of what Obama said was nonsense and Obama knows that. In his speech Obama makes it clear that his first responsibility is to protect his country and the lives of its citizens, thus the emphasis on isolating terrorists and radical extremists. For one reason or another, Obama and his staff decided that the first working hypothesis to try with Islam is that with clichés and nonsense, they can isolate Muslims likely to use bombs from Muslims who aren’t. That’s the way intelligent people (I think that Obama is very intelligent) proceed: they try a hypothesis, and if it fails, they try another. Obama isn’t appeasing anyone: he’s testing the waters with a speech. Time will tell what the results are. For the first time in who-knows-how-many- years, we have an intelligent, aware, well-read (he has actually read some philosophy)and socially conscious/concerned world leader. If not Obama, who? I like that, and I may patent it: if not Obama, who?
If not Obama, Ophelia. ;-)
I find it interestingly ironic that Obama’s remarks about Islam’s capacity for tolerance and equality was made in Egypt, a country that has a substantial minority of Coptic Christians. Egypt’s treatment of them is not exactly an exemplar of Islam’s tolerance and equality. Would have been nice for him to say something about that.
Rose, even if Ophelia was able to persuade one of the machines to nominate her, the wheels would probably fall off her campaign the first time she let rip and spoke her mind: which on my guess would be at around 11:00 am on Day One.
Obama can never lose sight of the fact that he was elected by a middle American majority, and has to speak for them: which he is doing; unless of course the comments on this thread critical of his speech represent mainstream American thought on the issue.
His big message for the Muslim world, which I am sure Muslims will not be slow to grasp, was what he said about the Israeli settlements on the West Bank. According to Stratfor:
“Amid the rhetoric of U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech June 4 in Cairo, there was one substantial indication of change, not in the U.S. relationship to the Islamic world but in the U.S. relationship to Israel. This shift actually emerged prior to the speech, and the speech merely touched on it. But it is not a minor change and it must not be underestimated. It has every opportunity of growing into a major breach between Israel and the United States.
“The immediate issue concerns Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The United States has long expressed opposition to increasing settlements but has not moved much beyond rhetoric. Certainly the continued expansion and development of new settlements on the West Bank did not cause prior administrations to shift their policies toward Israel. And while the Israelis have occasionally modified their policies, they have continued to build settlements. The basic understanding between the two sides has been that the United States would oppose settlements formally but that this would not evolve into a fundamental disagreement.
“The United States has clearly decided to change the game…”
Stratfor may well be onto something here.
http://www.stratfor.com/
I’m of mixed opinion. It seems important on one hand to acknowledge problems so that you can work to fix them. But on the other hand, religion only seems to advance by rewriting its own history to match modern sensibilities.
Look at Christianity. Christianity has evolved significantly in its social sensibilities even within only the past century. And it did so by changing the definition of christianity into something newer and more modern. Instead of rejecting christianity and its social trappings, people argued that “real” christianity had this or that trait, and eventually things changed.
So when I hear someone make arguments like that, or like Obama’s, part of me wants to pedantically point out that these arguments are quite clearly not true. But another part of me wants the person making the argument to win, because the newer, more modern version of the religion is usually nicer to live alongside.
Ian, the truly substantial message in the Cairo speech was not in the speech itself but in whom was invited :
Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood.
AFAIK, it is the first time any high-level US official, even more so the President, does such a thing. The message is that the US administration now considers political Islamists like the Brotherhood to be legitimate partners. A good dose of realism in foreign policy is always a good thing in my view but that’s pushing realpolitik way beyond reason.
My guess is that the US knows it has to pull out of the Middle East big time. Well, that’s not news. Anyone with a functioning brain knows that. But, what’s more scary is that, in the process, the US is signaling that it is ready to any compromise with anyone and throw under the bus whoever it takes. Someone between the White House and the Department of State is panicking.
I am puzzled by what alternatives the skeptics (most of you?) think Obama had. For the sake of discussion, let’s stipulate that Obama’s speech was terrible and essentially supported or at least tolerated all the worst people and social patterns of the Islamic world. (I don’t believe that is in fact even remotely so but just for the sake of discussion…)
Now then. What would you doubters have had him do? Had Robert Spencer write his speech? Told his audience that their governments reflect the bigotry and narrow-mindedness of the people they rule? That their governments steal because that’s what the whole culture is based upon? That they ought to stop their disgusting misogynistic ways? etc etc Just lecture Moslems about the changes they need to make?
I am genuinely puzzled about what any one of you (cynics?) would say if you were President? How would you have handled it?
(Note. I think OB’s explanation that the speech was “aspirational” rather than “descriptive” is pretty astute.)
Fifi: “The message is that the US administration now considers political Islamists like the Brotherhood to be legitimate partners.” That, with all due respect, is drawing a pretty long bow.
According to Fox News: “Despite some reports suggesting the Obama administration arranged the Brotherhood invitations, officials said invitations were only sent out by Cairo University and Al-Azhar University.”
The same source also states: “The Muslim Brotherhood is the leading opposition group in Egypt’s political system. Though it officially is outlawed in the country, its members — who run as independents — hold 88 seats in Egypt’s parliament.”
Not only would it have been out of character, Obama would have to have been off his head to knowingly invite MB members to his speech. He is a liberal, and opposed to the terrorism that various MB members have supported in the past.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/04/muslim-brotherhood-activist-obama-glosses-authoritarian-regimes-cairo-speech/
David, what alternative did Obama have? I’m not altogether sure, because the political situation is muddled almost beyond repair. However, he did not need to speak now, nor did he need to speak in such broad terms about the Muslim world, or attack those who are finding difficulties with accommodating the worrying alienation Muslims in democratic polities. He did not need to ignore the oppression of women, nor did he need to suggest that this oppression should be permitted to work itself out unchecked in Europe and the English speaking democracies. After all, Turkey, for very good reasons, limits the use of the headscarf, and there is no reason why, for similar reasons, the US, Europe and other places should not do the same. France already does so, and is supported by many Muslim women’s groups.
What he might more valuably do, it seems to me, is to address the narrower issues of Israel and the Palistinians, rather than try to solve the incredibly complex problem (made so much more complex by American intervention in the region) of the relationship of (religious) civilisations. In other words, far less rhetoric and much more in the way of a focused attention to existing problems. One has the uncomfortable feeling, sometimes, that Obama is still in electioneering mode, and does not fully realise the implications of being in power.
Ophelia’s observation about the aspirational nature of the speech may be astute. It is. But her qualification that it is not very satisfying or convincing, given ‘the vastness of the gap between the flattering description and how things really are,’ is vital. It’s in that gap that Obama’s incredibly general language plays a game of appeasement, and, as I say, he’s going to find it hard to get back to a place where he is controlling events.
Obama is, after all, President of the United States, not director of Amnesty International.
David – well for one thing, even if we all think Obama was exactly right to say exactly what he did, that still doesn’t mean we can’t point out the mismatch between what he said and reality.
For another thing, even if we all think he was right to do his best to isolate extremists or counter anti-Americanism or undo the work of the Bush admin, we can still think some of the specifics of what he said went too far. I for instance think it was absurd to pick out tolerance, of all things, as something that Islam has demonstrated the possibilities of. I also agree with Muriel Gray that he could have said different, better things about women’s rights. I also agree with Marieme Helie Lucas that he shouldn’t have addressed ‘Muslims’ throughout as if minorities and dissenters didn’t exist.
Amos,
Considering the cherry-picking, “moral equivalence” quality of some of their reports (they’re onto Iran’s misogyny but the rest of the Islamic “world” seems below their radar) Amnesty International is hardly an example Obama needs to emulate.
“In other words, far less rhetoric and much more in the way of a focused attention to existing problems.”
Now, actually, I don’t agree with that. I do think he should use his access to the microphones and his skill at reaching people and indeed his background and ancestry and experience to try to befriend the rest of the world. I absolutely think he should do that. He has an incredible, unmatched, unprecedented power to do just that, because of who he is (in all senses). I think he should use it to the max. But I think there are some things he shouldn’t say while doing that.
Yes, perhaps Obama could have done things a shade differently. But overall, I was impressed; I had never heard any politician anywhere refer so baldly to “governments which steal from the people.”
I was puzzled, however, by his balancing of “America” and “Islam” (rather than say, “the Islamic faith.”) That seems to support Al Qaeda’s view of Islam as a nation, a state, a political entity which is only divided because of human frailty and the wickedness of Jews, Crusaders etc.
Eric, I know. That’s why I criticized what he said! And my criticism was by no means exhaustive – I could have said a lot more. There’s no need to be sorry; obviously I find the OIC’s bullying of the Special Rapp very worrying too; that’s why I linked to it!
I doubt that he believes everything he said. For one thing, with HRC as Sec of State, I really doubt he can be unaware of, say, the implications of Sharia for women’s rights.
Ian,
“Despite some reports suggesting the Obama administration arranged the Brotherhood invitations, officials said invitations were only sent out by Cairo University and Al-Azhar University.”
BS. Fox News certified BS on top of that :) Do you really believe that list wasn’t vetted by the WH ? That’s nearly as awkward as Bush’s ‘explanations’ for the “Mission Accomplished” banner. “Errh, some other guy did it.”
No. I think Obama knows what he is doing. Both the presence of the Brotherhood and the rather bizarre content of the speech were deliberate. It’s a feeler towards Sunni political Islamists, plain and simple.
I agree things get more speculative for the why.
A benign reading is that Obama tries to disarm hostility to the US in the muslim world by showing that he knows and respect them. If so, it’s pretty ham-handed and I don’t think a speech is going to make a difference. Opposition to the US is constitutive to Islamism. Sayyid Qutb, the most important ideologist of the Muslim Brotherhood, developed his ideas during and after a scholarship in the US!
My own guess is that we’re seeing the beginning of a new realpolitik right out of Kissinger’s playbook.
The US knows it cannot maintain its influence in the Middle-East and even less its presence. The current strategy of propping-up repressive monarchies or quasi-monarchies is pretty compromised after the Iraqi fiasco. So it needs to ready itself for a more prominent role for Islamist political movements in Sunni dominated countries, not necessarily as a certainty and certainly not as as a deliberate strategy (I don’t think Obama is that cynical) but as a distinct possibility. Who knows. It’s already true in Gaza and it will be hard to reverse. It could certainly happen in Egypt if Mubarak botches his transition out of power. So that was the purpose of the whole thing, letting Islamists know that accommodations are possible and that the US is not necessarily hostile to them.
Fifi: “[Obama’s speech is] a feeler towards Sunni political Islamists, plain and simple.”
Stimulated by the debate on this thread, I looked up the speech.
(http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gkyWk2MK7xeDw2b1jPhFS6KsvPegD98N67R80 )
I read it as an attempt to drive a wedge between the Islamists and the rest of Islam. Basically it is saying that future prosperity for all concerned lies in economic development, rights and modernity, and not in fascism. There’s even a mea culpa for the US’ part in the overthrow of Mossadeq in Iran.
The applause comes at all the right places in the speech, and so far the ‘Arab street’ has found nothing to get out there and make a slogan-chanting fuss about.
Obama is no atheist, and would have been unelectable in the US if he was one. His theism allows him to talk to the Muslims to at least some extent in terms those Muslims find agreeable, while at the same time supporting concepts too many of them choose to have a hard time with, such as womens’ rights.
He wants more of their youth to study in the US and is prepared to help them do that. He also wants more economic and scientific development in the Islamic world.
“The issues that I have described will not be easy to address, but we have a responsibility to join together to behalf of the world that we seek, a world where extremists no longer threaten our people and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes, a world where governments serve their citizens and the rights of all God’s children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together. I know there are many, Muslim and non-Muslim, who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn’t worth the effort, that we are fated to disagree and civilizations are doomed to clash.
“Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There is so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith in every country. You more than anyone have the ability to reimagine the world, the remake this world.”
If it’s rhetorical, its of the right kind. ML King could have written that. For that reason alone, no Islamist is going to cheer it.
Ian MacDougall, you say:
Of course not, since he did not say anything to which the ‘Arab street’ could take exception. It may even be that some of the speech is a coded message to Muslim leaders. Perhaps he meant his words about women’s rights to be challenging to leaders who now are content to leave women in subjection to men, so that they remain without choices of their own. Perhaps. But when he combines that with the very first reference to women that he makes, about the right of Muslim women in the West to sequester themselves beneath concealing clothing, it seems much less challenging.
When his first reference to women is to the West’s failure to provide freedom for Muslim women in the West, the question arises, what point about freedom he really wants to make. This was, as Hitchens says, a direct criticism of French law restricting the use of religious symbols and dress in certain situations, forgetting that, for similar reasons, Turkey, a Muslim majority country, makes similar restrictions on the use of religious dress and symbols. And Turkey arguably provides the greatest freedom for women of any Muslim country, though it is becoming increasingly threatened.
Martin Luther King may have been able to write some of Obama’s more aspirational rhetoric, but there is a great difference here. King was in the midst of a struggle – right in the thick of it. It is still not clear where Obama wants to be, and the speech does not make it clear either.
What is more, the Cairo speech achieves what neither the pope nor the king of Saudi Arabia have been able to do: it religionises world politics. It makes the confrontation of the West and the ‘Muslim World’ the confrontation of religions. It fails to see that resistance to the use of the hijab and burkah in the West is, in some measure, an attempt to provide, for Western Muslim women, a small measure of freedom from the demands of religion, demands that are in full force throughout much of the ‘Muslim World’. And when the speech then contrasts Muslim tolerance (with Saudi Arabia just a stone’s throw away) with the intolerance of the Inquisition, he is not only comparing apples with oranges, but trailing red herrings to keep his listeners off the scent.
To speak, at this point, of his childhood in Indonesia, where Christians and Muslims lived side by side in peace, is simply a misunderstanding of the historical moment that we have reached today, as well reflecting an understanding of religion which now seems to be firmly rooted in the past. This is not only misleading, it shows a lack of understanding which is truly troubling. We may be able to imagine a better world, but we need to start our imagining where we are, and not in Reconquista Catholic Spain, or in Obama’s halcyon childhood days in a different world.
Eric: Obama could have really socked it to ’em, denouncing all the mediaeval practices of Islam we are all familiar with here, calling for its thorough overhaul and reformation, and adding in passim that they would all be better off without it altogether, and that they would be if they adopted Christianity or even the secularism now rampant in the west.
Just to pose that alternative is to show why he chose to leave it.
There have been no demonstrations against Obama in Muslim countries, not because there are no Islamists ready to take exception and organise one or two, but because Obama gave them no hook; they can’t get any traction from anything in his speech, even though (contra Fifi) it was directed solidly against them.
I may be out of order and in violation of some party line, but I do not support bans on hijabs, burkhas or bikinis; any more than I support the compulsory wearing of them. Upsetting women who want to wear one for whatever reason, even if you or I would see that choice as misguided, I see as an intrusion on personal liberty.
With genuine respect for your intelligence and erudition, I none the less suggest you give the speech another look.
I think it was something of a masterpiece, all things considered.
But Ian, that’s a false choice. A denunciation of Islam is not the only alternative to the speech he did give. He could have said different things without saying ‘that they would all be better off without it altogether.’ He could have left some things unsaid without saying that.
There is no party line on bans on hijab – but I at least do object when opponents of bans frame the issue as purely one of free choice to wear it, because that blithely ignores the reality that often there is no free choice not to wear it. It also sidesteps the really very striking fact that in some places women are beaten or murdered for not wearing it. It’s a very freighted article of clothing, and the issue of freedom and choice is by no means all on one side of the issue.
OB: I notice that you take this up in your ‘Law of the Brothers’ thread posted this morning. I followed your link to the Hitchens piece. It is not one of his best.
Hitchens attacks Obama for attacking the French law (which any fool can see was implied) banning hijabs. Cheering for that French law means supporting a situation where young Muslim women have the male half of their families telling them what they can wear at home, and French bureaucrats telling them what they can wear at school. Free choice is left right out of it.
“…many people of Muslim, Arab and North African descent in France” may support the dress code as a way of fighting the brotherhoods in their midst, but that is using one authoritarianism to fight another, and reminding the young women at every stage that they have no say in the matter anyway or at all.
That brings to mind Lenin’s fight with Tsarism. This is no trivial issue, or diversion, because Leninist dismissal of liberalism played a huge role is setting the stage for the ghastly regime that followed.
Obama was ultimately dealing in his speech with a world divided into a mediaeval half and a modernist half. The fundamentalists fighting to expand the first at the expense of the second have created the biggest global political issue of modern times, and Muslims when not cheering them on are aquiescing to them, at huge cost to the US and the West. I see that as another of Obama’s subtexts.
If the French government supported free choice at home and in school, they would pass a law to that effect, and would say to the Muslim patriarchate ‘if any of you bastards give women a hard time over this, we’ll be coming after you, and we’ll throw the book at you when we catch you. Look out.’
It might have come at the cost of a few cars overturned and set alight in the streets, but the French have been doing that themselves anyway, ever since 1789. It might have galvanised the wrong sort of fraternite, but it would have been a blow for liberte and egalite.
I lived for a short time in Tehran, where the atmosphere is oppressive. Also in France, where it is not. No French man I know would dare tell a woman what to wear, or be in favour of the Muslim brotherhoods’ doing so.
Ian,
Yes, I commented on the hijab issue earlier today, but not because of what you said – I wanted to comment on the Hitchens piece yesterday but didn’t have time; I also wanted to comment on what Obama said about hijab, at the time, but again didn’t have time.
It’s not a question of ‘cheering for the French law,’ at least not necessarily. Notice that in my comment I did not ‘cheer for’ the French law; I said people who are horrified by the ban often ignore one very large aspect of it. I could be against the law and still point that out – and in fact that would be a much more honest way to be against the law than is pretending that the hijab is simply a matter of free choice for the women and girls who want to wear it.
“Free choice is left right out of it.”
No it’s not, actually, because for girls who don’t want to wear it, the school ban gives them that choice. Of course that’s not ideal – it would be vastly better if the men in their families and neighborhoods were not bullying them in the first place.
“If the French government supported free choice at home and in school, they would pass a law to that effect, and would say to the Muslim patriarchate ‘if any of you bastards give women a hard time over this, we’ll be coming after you, and we’ll throw the book at you when we catch you. Look out.'”
Sorry, but that’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous in too many ways for me to spell out – think about it, and I trust you’ll be able to see the ways. ‘If only it were that simple!’ might get you started.
OB: Do you mean ‘if only it was as simple as the law against child abuse’? (I am not referring only to sexual abuse.)
‘If only it were that simple’ is another way of saying ‘if only there was the political will.’ But it was in the context of the prevailing political will on that and related issues that Obama made his tempered speech. A President Hitchens might have made a different one, and all hell might have broken loose.
Obama’s speech has to be seen in the context of the incredible legacy of distrust that Bush left not only in the Muslim world, but also in many other countries, including Chile, where I live. After Bush, when an American president speaks of “human rights” or “women’s rights”, many people, perhaps falsely, assume that he means “oil”. Obama’s posture of “I’m okay, you’re okay” towards Islam is a step towards healing the damage done to the reputation of the U.S. among Muslims and towards convincing non-fanatical Muslims that they can expect friendship and good will from the U.S., not bombs under the pretext of non-existent weapons of mass destruction coupled with unconditional support for Israeli military actions, thus, winning ordinary Muslims away from radical extremists.
Ian
Ian,
“I lived for a short time in Tehran, where the atmosphere is oppressive. Also in France, where it is not. No French man I know would dare tell a woman what to wear, or be in favour of the Muslim brotherhoods’ doing so.”
Go walk in La Courneuve or Bondy, or in Orange. The atmosphere reeks of oppression.
And yes, no one you know In France would pressure anyone about what to wear but it just means that next time you visit France, you need to get outside of your own cozy little ghetto and the bobo quatiers.
I recommend Metro ligne 7, north terminus or RER B, Aubervilliers station and take a walk around the projects … if you dare.
But if you choose not to see …
Fifi: Noted.
“‘if only it was as simple as the law against child abuse’?”
No of course I don’t – because ‘the law against child abuse’ (whatever that is) does not cover, for instance, pressure and coercion and dominance. The ways girls and women are coerced to wear the hijab are not all covered by any conceivable law, much less by any conceivable enforcement mechanism. It’s just a fantasy to think that all it takes to prevent men from bullying women is for the state to say ‘Stop it or we’ll come after you!’
OB: I’m not a lawyer, but a recurrent them in issues of both human (and animal) rights is reluctance of the authorities at whatever level to enforce existing law. BTW I speak from first hand experience here.
The law prohibits assault for example; a common means of coercion within family environments.
Politicians who depend heavily on the votes of men prone to routine violence might not be up to it, but it does the majority of them no harm to remind the people generally of their existing rights.
Ian – then what’s your point? The reality is, the ban on religious symbols in schools does what a law against abuse would not do, so what is it that you’re claiming?
OB: Young and old, Muslim women are coerced into wearing headscarves etc in public. It is a compulsory custom if you like. At school in France, the young women are coerced into not wearing the scarf part. The state over-rides their culture’s compulsory custom with one of its own.
I would prefer it if they were not coerced, period.
Maybe a battle between two regimes each with their own rules is a way to achieve that; maybe the best way. But I doubt it.
Muslim patriarchs living in the West have the problem of maintaining their authoritarian culture in a more liberal social environment than the one traditional to them, leading them often to break the law in minor or serious ways, up to the level of ‘honour killings’.
Either modern liberalism or mediaeval authoritarianism will prevail. I favour the former, and strategies for its success.
I see school uniforms of whatever kind as being a last squawk of Western mediaevalism, against which Islamic mediaevalism happens to find itself in conflict. As you would know, social ranks used to be dinstinguished by dress codes; for example, only the nobility were allowed to wear dyed-in colour.
There was an undercurrent of mediaevalism vs modernity in Obama’s speech. But nowhere did he fall into the trap of expediently supporting Muslim mediaevalism against western liberalism; unlike many on the modern left. Vide Nick Cohen.
Yes I already said it’s not ideal – but I also said that for girls who don’t want to wear it, the school dress code gives them that freedom. In other words the school dress code does not simply take away freedom of choice – it’s more complicated than that. You could just acknowledge that.
Thenk you.
I had to blurt something quickly, of course, since Humera had gobbled up the last couple of minutes ‘redefining’ patriarchy and Rana was being urgent about the ‘very briefly’ bit – so I blurted that!
(The thing about having to walk down the street in your underpants – not really comparable, because you don’t see other people walking down the street in their underpants, whereas girls do see other girls and women walking around with naked heads – at least I certainly hope they do, I hope they’re not so cut off in their banlieu that they never see any naked female heads. And then part of the issue is that women and girls shouldn’t feel as if their heads are the equivalent of their genitals. It’s not ideal to get the state involved in that, but it’s not ideal to just let it be, either.)
I saw the piece in Private Eye. “A powerful book” – and Private Eye hardly ever has a good word to say for anyone. Well done!
Ah really? So if Private Eye says it it means something? Cool!
I suspect that Private Eye goes Big Blog Hunting & coms back with items like the Caroline Toomey Makes Controversy one. I once came across a snippet that they had lifted wholesale from a Harry’s Place item. I thought blogs were meant to be parasites on MSM dead trees, not the other way round.
Er, that’s not what happened here though.