You have got to be kidding
Oh Jesus – I give up. Taner’s taken leave of his senses. He’s not ambivalent about liberalism, he’s ditched it entirely.
I don’t know if the institutional forms that constrain communities have to have to take the shape of an external arbiter, a Bureau of Individual Rights in Communities or something. Quite possibly, given our governmental habits. Say it’s so. But then, I would also expect such a Bureau to be sensitive to political negotiations between particular communities concerning what kind of exit procedures will be realized. It wouldn’t just be imposition of a liberal individualist superstructure.
Fucking hell. The human rights body has to be ‘sensitive’ about whether or not the communities will let people leave…
It’s crazy. It’s crazy and it’s scary. People like this would let me be locked up for life if they could! They would demand ‘senstivity’ and ‘negotiation’ before I could be allowed to escape – and maybe they would reluctantly say that the community simply wouldn’t have it, and I couldn’t be permitted to leave. This is madness!
And it gets even worse.
Presumably a multicultural regime in modern times would try to negotiate a balance between (partial, permeable) community autonomy, and (nonabsolute, constrained) individual autonomy. That is, short of life and limb, a community would still be able to impose significant costs on members violating internal norms. (Again, the extent of these costs would presumably be up to particular political negotiations.)
I should stop commenting, because I’m really disgusted, and I’ll get myself in trouble.
Taner – here’s a thought. Just read Shirley Jackson’s famous story ‘The Lottery.’ You need it.
It’s like a scab you just can’t stop picking …
The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle were great.
I’ll have to check out The Lottery.
Hey, don’t look now, but …. this is jihad!
People can always leave.
People can always leave.
People can always fucking leave!
Seriously, how fucking hard is this? It’s one of the goddamn cornerstones of modern liberalism, and has been for 40 years. How the hell has he missed this?!?!?!?
So Edis wants civilization to go back 100,000 years and live like people did then. What a lunatic.
Speaking of going back 100,000 years and novels Edis should not have read but sounds like he did, seems like Edis has been influenced by John Normans Gor series.
I read a story once somewhere about a regiment called The King’s Own Deserters, whose regimental flag was pure white, and who had trained their horses to trot backwards towards the enemy in order to hasten retreat, which always began at the sound of the first shot.
Something here reminded me of that.
“Just read Shirley Jackson’s famous story ‘The Lottery.'”
That’s exactly what I was thinking of as I read this.
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave.
He seems to have entirely missed the point that the autonomy of communities is within a framework of law, the purpose of which is to guarantee basic rights.
Why are we arbitrarily stopping at “life and limb”, Taner? Just follow to your bloody conclusion already.
I mean, it’s not as if public torture and executions didn’t regularly figure into the lives of many “communities” until very recently, historically speaking. Why assume that the Ideal Multicultural Society should limit its constituent communities to the range of punishments acceptable under current definitions of personal autonomy?
“Seriously, how fucking hard is this? It’s one of the goddamn cornerstones of modern liberalism, and has been for 40 years. How the hell has he missed this?!?!?!?”
He hasn’t missed it. He’s rejecting it.
I think you have to remember that Edis is from Turkey, and that this is the debate that is taking place in Turkey just now, to the great disadvantage of the secular liberal forces in that country. I think you also have to remember that this is precisely the conversation that many Muslims want us to have in the West, and that, so far, Islam seems to be winning the first round. Because, in carrying out this ‘conversation’ there are a number of people who are quite prepared to take the ‘conversation’ to a higher level and begin using violence. Princeton University Press has learned its lesson. Most major media outlets have learned their lesson. This is not just a conversation, as I hinted a bit earlier. This is jihad, plain and simple. Edis may not realise that he’s just become the tool of Islamist jihad, but he has. Yes, as dzd says: He hasn’t missed the idea. He’s rejecting it.
I guess what I’d like to hear from Edis is a more concrete statement w/r/t all of this musing. Are we being called to resist the coming multicultural dystopia? Probably not, since he seems to be claiming that liberal secularism is indefensible.
Is he throwing his hands up in despair that the battle is already lost and laying out what the societies of the future are going to look like? Possibly.
Or has he learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, so to speak? It seems like this entire series has been a case of him slowly talking himself into embracing traditionalist repression masquerading as “tolerance” and “sensitivity”.
I hope Edis realizes that he is playing with fire here. The New Communitarianism is currently employed in the defense of conservative Islam, but as an American I can see a number of its elements in play in the ongoing Religious Right/Tea Party/white-nationalist backlash against secular liberalism, with its own hatred of out-groups and its demands that cultural tradition be enforced by law. This is just the sort of tool set they need to win the “culture war” once and for all. And once that’s completed, Islamic jihad will have nothing on evangelical holy war.
He does know all this. I’ve just re-read Taner’s contribution to Leaving Islam, and it’s all there. He knows all this, yet – yet I don’t know what. He’s trying to start from scratch, for some reason, as if people hadn’t been talking and writing about the issue intensively for at least 20 years. And as dzd says, he’s playing with fire – yet in his reply to me he appears to be saying he’s just “exploring other ideas.” But there “other ideas” are suffocation and death for other people – it’s frivolous (at best) to talk of “exploring” them! We don’t “explore” the ideas of Hitler or the architects of apartheid, for good reason.
He accuses me of moral panic. But I would be totally fucked in the system he is “exploring,” and he would not be. Yes, his ideas scare me.
Scare the hell out of me too!
dzd, exactly. Whenever issues of “communitarianism” come up, people automatically think of Islam (and there are plenty of good reasons for that), but what would almost certainly be more of a threat to people already living in the West would be the way that Christian and to a much lesser extent Jewish denominations would seize that power for their own. If you have the misfortune of looking at religious blogs on occasion, even liberal ones, they tend to favor some sort of communal autonomy, or at least special exemptions for religious groups within the law. But if Muslim and other minority groups were given the ability to police their members in the way that Taner Edis seems to think they should be able to, well…I can just see the Catholic Church, evangelicals, fundamentalists, and so on salivating at the incredible amount of power they would now have to enforce their rules on their flocks.
A Catholic wants a divorce or contraception? Nope, it’s forbidden. A Southern Baptist wants to come out as gay? Forget it! Somebody in some fundie community blasphemes Jesus? Uh-oh…
Actually, this might prove to be this notion’s undoing — when people, religious or not, really come to understand what this might mean for THEM. If it’s just about Muslims or some tiny groups of ultra-Orthodox Jews or Sikhs or Hindus or whatever, it can be shrugged off as “not our affair,” but once they realize that the churches will be able to have coercive power over them to a far greater degree than anything now present in the developed world…well, I imagine the idea will suddenly seem a lot less “tolerant” and “inclusive.”
Incidentally, I’ve also noticed how quickly many educated believers are to glom onto postmodernism as against what they call “positivism” or “scientism,” since postmodernism offers a narrative where religion IS true, as opposed to the “outdated” worldviews of the “scientists” and “seculars” that offers religion nowhere to hide. How many times have I seen religious thinkers look down their nose at such unimaginative and behind-the-times thinkers like Dawkins et al.? (Taner, take note!) Of course, the embrace of postmodernism typically doesn’t extend to relativizing their religious beliefs — no, they’re still The Truth!
Well, yes, it might be the undoing of American democracy, or just telling it like it is might be the end of this silly kind of theocritising discourse. Tell many catholic women that they can’t have access to contraceptives and I can see a large outflow from the catholic church. Tell many fundamentalists that their religious beliefs can be enforced by law, and I think a lot of them – not all, but a lot of them – would see this as an intervention by government (religious government in this case) in their private lives. And I suspect Americans, even religious Americans, are libertarian enough that they wouldn’t accept this kind of interference by outside authorities in the private lives. I may be wrong, but not too far wrong.
So, if Americans had a real idea what people like Edis are recommending, and what dominionist Christians are recommending, they’d run a mile, and be sure that a quick end was brought to this idiocy. Well, I hope so, anyway. And, if they wouldn’t, and this is the wave of the future, I’m glad I’m getting old, and so probably won’t be around to see the outworking of this madness.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep saying it as loudly and as clearly as I can: Islam is very dangerous. It hasn’t been domesticated, like Christianity was, but Christianity itself is beginning to lose the good sense that had largely adopted in the last two hundred years or so, when it accepted that religion is a private game that some people choose to play. Christians have been allowed to play their games in private, though they’ve continued to have enormous influence in public space, but they’re beginning to go rogue, just like Islam still is. And if we don’t succeed in marginalising religion, we’re going to have to pay a terrible cost before this particular culture war is over. And given the killer instincts of a lot of the religious, and the willingness of liberals to pay for peace at any cost, I wouldn’t be too confident about the outcome of this war. But it is a war, and we’d better face up to the fact that that is just what it is, because, as Hitchen’s points out, pretty soon, if we don’t stand up for our rights, it’s going to be a case of Yemani or your life.
| OB | 2010-03-13 – 12:06:43 |
Actually, I think exploring the ideas behind apartheid is something that the liberal movement needs to start doing – otherwise we tend to think it all ended with “racism is bad.”
If people actually read the ideology behind the origin of Apartheid you would get that it wasn’t strictly race – it was also about culture.
The whole excuse that started the ball rolling with Apartheid was “Seperate development” – in which the indigenous cultures were supposed to be encouraged to develop seperately to the Afrikaaners.
This was complete, to a large extent, with giving tribal chiefs added legal power over their subjects. It is what the Bantu-stans were all about. Even education wasn’t to the same standard.
It was the original multicultural (As opposed to secular) government and my country is paying for it, and probably will be for a long time.
What Taner is talking about, looks to me to be shoving people into religious bantu-stans. Maybe it wouldn’t be with the same geographic seperation, but for all intents and purposes it is the same thing.
Something to consider: Taner Edis is just a guy with a website who feeds off the noise he’s generating. The more people respond, the more famous he gets. He can then say, “See, I even got [semi-famous] X to engage with me!”
There’s an Internet saying, “Don’t feed the trolls.” Edis is doing this in part to elicit emotional responses, which is the definition of a troll.
He’s not just a guy with a website – he’s written good books and articles. That’s why I have so much trouble getting my head around what he’s saying – and also why I bother.
Really, he’s not another Mooney.
Oh and hey – Russell may be semi-famous, but as for me, I’m not semi-famous, I’m totally totally just plain FAMOUS.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Bruce – yes – but by ‘explore’ in this context Taner meant what he’s doing – not look at, read about, discuss, but propose, suggest, defend, recommend. One can do the first without doing the second. (Taner may be confusing the two – I’m not sure.)
During the Cronulla beach riots in Sydney (between a band of militant Lebanese-led Muslims on one side and everyone else on the other) an inspired imam proposed a solution: segregate the beach on religious (‘communitarian’) lines: Muslims up one end and ‘Christians’ (ie everyone else) down the other. Needless to add, his idea sank like a brick.
The separation of British India (itself a colonialist creation) into modern India and Pakistan came about because religious “communities” could not live peaceably under the one government. Every step towards legal autonomy for “communities” enhances the local political power of each “community’s” leaders and spokesmen, who in the Muslim case are all clerics. So they self-servingly tend to encourage the process.
It is not hard to see the sort of bantustanised and balkanised world which would be the end product of such a process. So why do we not live in such a world already? After all, religious ‘communities’ have had the ball at their feet for most of the history of civilisation.
Part of the reason is the tendency for such ‘communities’ to distrust each other and to finish up in an endless cycle of war and reprisal. (The Israel-Palestine conflict can be seen on this basis as beginning with the Crusades, or even before.) Partly it is because every organised religion wants every OTHER organised religion to have a minimum of power and influence in proclaiming itself, as they all do, to be the one true way.
Globally, it has been an ongoing tussle between federation and balkanisation, with the economic high cards in the federation hand.
Moral high cards too, but I wouldn’t bet either moral or economic high cards if religious violence is on the table, especially if liberals are going to go all wobbly over the beauties of different cultures and traditions, and find this a convenient excuse for cowardice.
I suppose it’s my addled secular liberal mind here, but I can’t for the life of me understand the leap communitarians make here. You want to follow Islamic law, fine, you’re allowed to do so in a secular liberal society provided it doesn’t harm anyone else. Nothing is stopping you from doing so.
What secular liberal polities will do is prevent you from making other people follow Islamic law. If you don’t think you can follow your religious law without making everyone else observe it, well tough shit.
I just keep thinking of Joshua Leach’s excellent essay posted here a few weeks ago – 99.9999% of communitarian or group rights claims are easily (and in my opinion better) met in a secular liberal individual rights framework.
Ah, but woot, liberal democracy doesn’t benefit the 0.0001% who are the “community leaders” and clerics who are then deprived of the “right” to exercise power over everybody else’s lives, when the clerics themselves claim that enforcing their directives on their “flocks” is part and parcel of the religion that they, the clerics, have come up with! Without that power, they feel deprived and impotent — won’t you consider their hurt feelings?!? (Said with heavy sarcasm, of course…)
Wow, he really does say that blasphemy is a “despicable capital crime”.
I couldn’t be bothered following the link, but parts of what Lisa’s posted made me think of a school essay.
I wonder if the “intolerance in non-Muslim sectors of the Canadian population” that he perceives, rather than being due to “[l]ack of information about the religious needs of Muslims”, could really be due to awareness of the political ambitions of Muslim clerics.
[I have no first-hand knowledge of Canada.]
Exit procedures? Sensitively negotiated exit procedures? I had to read some passages several times to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood.
That is, short of life and limb, a community would still be able to impose significant costs on members violating internal norms.
As dzd points out, what makes life and limb so special if a ‘community’ can inflict ‘significant costs’?
Communal justice tends not to stop short of life and limb, once it has been given its head.
http://www.humanrightsfoundation.org/media/BolReportJan08.html
“Sensitively negotiated” exit procedures?
So, if I am sick of being a Muslim, I have to negotiate for the right to leave? With who? And why does Taner Edis and his multicultural society get to tell me that I have to negotiate with some imam or whoever, just because they’ve decided I’m part of this “community”?
Stephen, that’s something I found very striking about the article — Syed Mumtaz Ali, the Muslim cleric, continually conflates “what Muslims want” or “what Muslims find offensive” with “what my interpretation of Islam is.” He claims that “over one billion people (Muslims) worldwide consider those limits to the freedom of speech/expression to be reasonable” but I hardly see any evidence that he’s conducted a poll on the matter. It’s probably never even occurred to him that “what Muslims want” and “what I say Islam is” are NOT one and the same!
As has been mentioned over and over again, this is the problem with Taner Edis’s entire proposal — he never really addresses this matter of who decides what the religion is or whether the members of the group agree with this, and the tendency of clerics to conflate “what I think” with “what my flock thinks” or “what God thinks.”
I also note the not-so-veiled threat in a lot of those statements the cleric makes — “how dare you offend a billion people? Do what I say or Canada will look bad before the world!” If it were rephrased, “Do what I say or you’ll offend ME!”…well, who would care? The cleric, of whatever religion, is an impotent force if he (almost always a he) can’t call upon the size of his flock as an implicit threat (e.g., the Pope referring to “a billion Catholics” or a Christian talking about “two billion Christians” or whatever).
Exactly, Jenavir. Remember the Lina Joy case in Malaysia, where the shari’ah (syariah in Malaysian) courts said she couldn’t officially leave the Muslim community by having “Muslim” removed from her ID card, since only shari’ah and not civil courts can rule on such matters involving Muslims in Malaysia? Further, the court said, “a person cannot, at one’s whims and fancies renounce or embrace a religion.”
And THIS is somehow an “improvement” on liberal democracy?!? I think not…
I wonder if they’d be also saying this to stop someone from becoming a Muslim… Besides, by the time you’ve gone through all this trouble of legal suits, you can’t hardly call it a whimsical decision anymore, can you?
Well exactly, Lisa – I wouldn’t even call such a statement seemingly innocuous and meaningless – just as I wouldn’t call the mention of God in the ‘pledge of allegiance’ seemingly innocuous and meaningless – contrary to the 7th District Court the other day. (I think it was 7th – that might not be the right number.)
I just listened to “The Lottery”, and thanks for the tip from me as well. It and its author are both new to me. There’s a podcast available from the New Yorker at:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/11/17/081117on_audio_homes
Hope I can find “The King’s Own Deserters” somewhere.
Excellent. That story’s a classic. And it is if anything even more to the point than it was when written.
Steve: the Gor series! Hah! That’s actually hilariously apropos, given how fond Edis is of allowing male elders to punish women and gays and other dissenters for “violating internal norms.”
Think of the Gor series as dystopian novels of our future should people like Taner Edis get their way.
Dammit! I lost some comments. At least one was Lisa’s, dammit. Very sorry. Blame the spammers – hundreds a day.
Drat drat drat.
… Bureau of Individual Rights in Communities or something …
With emphasis on the “or something”. It’s becoming more and more apparent as I read his posts that he has not thought this through in the slightest. At best it’s a masturbatory stream of consciousness exercise .
Or as one commenter, Bruce, said:
“Have you even considered what your ideas actually mean for the members of these communities? No, I don’t think you have. I think instead you arestroking your ego to some massive climax while the rest of us look on in disgust.”
If you want to get a sneak preview of what a real Bureau of Individual Rights in Communities looks like, you need go no further than the Canadian Human Rights Commissions.
With one federal and 12 provincial entities they are a massive experiment in social engineering that allow self professed “leaders” of communities to “impose significant costs on members violating internal norms” (not to mention non-members).
It’s been a surreal 30 year exercise of quasi judicial power free of the silly constraints of a real justice system that protects the individual from the state.
In the process the right of free speech has taken second place to the right not to be offended.
Re: Lisa’s point on the difference between “what Muslims want” and “what one cleric thinks Islam is” is precisely the reason believers should embrace secular liberal democracy. People advocating multiculturalism seem to have a lower opinion of believers – that they’re drones who can’t function without guidance from “community leaders” – than us secular liberals.
BTW, Lisa, you and Eric MacDonald should really start your own blogs – your comments are always fantastic.
Legally, I would guess that holding someone against their will, whether it is done by a ‘community’ or by an individual, amounts to wrongful detention. So in the scheme of things proposed by Taner, a severe modification if not abolition of this legal concept would be necessary.
Ironically, the people most given these days to making such claims of wrongful detention are Muslims. Just ask former US Attorney-General John Ashcroft.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/john-ashcroft-can-be-sued-for-wrongful-detention-20090905-fbzv.html
I agree with Lisa: Indonesia is a case in point. “Muslim” printed on your ID card? Then you are forced to wear a hijab, get caned, etc. The other catch is, you aren’t allowed to have “none” for religion. Edis’ conception of multiculturalism is a proposal to turn society into a patchwork of fascism. Horrendous.
And I second the motion: Lisa and Eric should start their own blogs. I would certainly be an avid reader. :-)
No, no, no, Lisa and Eric should keep commenting here!
:- )
You manage to comment hither and yon while writing your own blog, same with Russell. They could too!
No no no, they wouldn’t comment here as much, they mustn’t have their own blogs!