Book or no book?
Ed Husain takes Ayaan Hirsi Ali to task.
Just as Wahhabites and Islamists bypass scholarship, context, and history in the name of “returning to the book”, Hirsi Ali and others such as Robert Spencer and Ibn Warraq commit exactly the same error…Let’s take the question of apostasy. At an Evening Standard debate the other night, Rod Liddle had no qualms in declaring Islam, with a barrage of other baseless abuse, “a fascistic ideology”. Why? Because the Qur’an commands the killing of those who abandon it…[T]here is no verse in the Qur’an that calls for the killing of apostates…There is no stronger argument against religious fanatics than to illustrate the scriptural weaknesses of their case.
Well, maybe so, when you’re dealing with religious fanatics, but that still leaves you with the problem of having to argue over what’s in a 1400-year-old book – it still leaves you with the problem of worrying about what ‘scripture’ says instead of about what is best for human beings in the light of current knowledge and accumulated understanding and moral insight.
When ex-Muslims such as Hirsi Ali ignore the nuances, complexities, and plurality inherent within Islam…then she plays into the hands of extremists and allows their discourse to dominate one of the great faiths of our world. Worse, it creates a public space in which attacking all Muslims and Islam becomes acceptable, even fashionable.
Attacking Islam is and should be acceptable, and even fashionable. Attacking all Muslims of course should not, but attacking Islam (and any other religion) should. Attacking people is bad, attacking ideas and beliefs is not.
Timothy Garton Ash is also pondering the issue.
When a Muslim letter-writer in yesterday’s Guardian tells us, with the aid of Qur’anic references, that Islam, properly understood, supports “the vital principle of freedom of speech”, what possible interest have we non-Muslim liberals in arguing against him?
None in arguing against his support of free speech, certainly…but there are risks in basing that support on claims that the Koran is really liberal after all, because there are always going to be plenty of people who will offer up different Koranic references to support the claim that it’s not.
Nick Cohen disputes Garton Ash’s view.
Garton Ash met Hirsi Ali at an electric meeting in London on Wednesday. Unlike Buruma he had the good sense and good grace to think again and he gave her a public apology. Nevertheless, he stuck to the argument that there was no point in liberals treating her as a heroine because her abandonment of Islam and embrace of atheism meant her arguments carried no weight with Muslims. Instead he told us to encourage those Muslims who reject the stoning of women because they dispute its scriptural authority. Religious debates about whether the Prophet Muhammad really approved of stoning may be ‘gobbledegook’, but, he cried, ‘We must support gobbledegook that is compatible with liberal democracy.’
Well there’s a stirring call. There are risks either way, so I’m not attracted to the ‘support bullshit’ version.
I’m not sure how he can be certain that Hirsi Ali has no influence. How does he know what seeds she is planting in the minds of Muslim women? I know one former jihadi who thought again after reading Salman Rushdie…Ayaan Hirsi listened to Garton Ash and had two questions. If liberal secularists, like my heckler, didn’t have pride and confidence in their principles, why should they expect anyone else to take them seriously? And if, like Garton Ash, they turned away from democrats and insisted on treating European Muslims as children who can only be spoken to in the baby language of gobbledegook, what right did they have to be surprised if European Muslims reacted with childish petulance rather than the broad-mindedness of full adult citizens?
Two damn good questions, if you ask me.
It’s asshats like Timothy Garton Ash who seem to have convinced Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she has no home on the left – despite all the many, many reasons she SHOULD be embraced by genuine progressives – and instead ended up at a right-wing think tank. Which makes me think that there are few or no genuine, thoughtful progressives in positions of real influence on the left. Which makes me sad.
My disappointment with the left does not make me think I have any genuine allies on the right, however. So I’m still puzzled by Hirsi Ali’s move, because everything she says makes me think she is (a) at least as smart as I am, and probably a lot smarter, and (b) as committed to progressive values as I am. I wonder how much it came down to who offered her a position at the right time? I suppose we’ll never know, because she certainly has every reason to keep that to herself – and she’s smart enough to know it. Even when she leaves the think tank, I suspect she’s enough of a politician to say nothing but good things about them – not burning bridges and all that.
I may be mistaken, but Garton Ash seems to be suggesting that we should not challenge scriptural authority as long as it is advocating something we agree with.
As far as I know, all major religious texts advocate giving to the poor. So we should agree that giving to the poor is a good thing because it is mandated by scripture?
So we must accept (or diplomatically pretend to)that sacred texts do possess moral authority?
What leg, then, does Garton Ash have to stand on when these texts unequivocally demand a course of action his liberal soul finds abhorrent?
Exactly – no leg at all. And it’s not as if these texts never do that – so cherry-picking the okay bits is just a trap, and a very dangerous one.
I have a theory about Mr. Garton Ash (not knowing him personally in any shape or form doesn’t allow me to test it, but here goes anyway…)
He gives me the impression of being a “Decent Chap” (DC), of the sort who used to trot off and administrate the old Empire, genuinely believing he was acting in the best interests of the natives. Passionate believer in democracy and al that, dont’cher know, but awfully interested in local culture, fair play, etc,etc. So, being a DC, his inevitable “thorough decentness” leads him to bypass logic, reason, evidence, etc from time to time.
It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?
Or maybe I’ve just been watching “Ripping Yarns” too much recently? :-)
One possible clue – I am curious as to why he styles himself TGA, rather than just plain Tim Ash? Is there a disappearing hyphen somewhere in his past? Would it’s absence make him more palatable to Grauniadistas…??? ;-))
(note to non-UK readers, “double-barrelled” surnames are still more-than-slightly indicative of family position in the social structure over here…becoming less so, but…)
Poor TGA!
In one single post he has been characterized as a toff AND a class traitor AND everybody’s favourite bungling uncle. Talk about killing with kindness!
Now Andy, you just have to give him his own P.G. Wodehouse novel and we won’t have to listen to his arguments ever again!
Arnaud –
I’m just desperately casting around for a good reason why someone as well travelled, and seemingly well-researched and intelligent as Prof. TGA is can then be so illogical and cavalier with their non-evidence-based reasoning…
:-)
Anyway, I did say he was a “decent chap” at least…
:-)
And c’mon, you must admit, the “missing hyphen”
IS of some small interest, when the gentleman is portraying himself as a man of the (nowadays nebulous) “left”…