Wot valuable lessons?
Boris Johnson said a fatuous thing.
“There are valuable lessons people of all backgrounds can learn from Islam, such as the importance of community spirit, family ties, compassion and helping those less fortunate, all of which lie at the heart of the teachings of Ramadan.”
Obviously meant to be a very kind inclusive generous outreachy thing, but fatuous nevertheless, because if that were true, wouldn’t it show up somewhere? Wouldn’t there be at least one country run according to ‘Islamic principles’ or just plain sharia that was unusually good at compassion and helping those less fortunate? A city on a hill, a beacon to the rest of the world? Or at least a well-known and much-discussed example of compassionate and egalitarian governance? And as far as I know there isn’t. Do correct me if I’m wrong. Sudan? No. Pakistan? No. Afghanistan? Don’t make tasteless jokes. Malaysia? No. Northern Nigeria? No. Saudi Arabia? Please.
So the question becomes, what exactly are the ‘valuable lessons’ that ‘people of all backgrounds can learn from Islam’ about compassion and helping those less fortunate? I don’t dispute that there are words about compassion and helping those less fortunate in Islamic sources, but one, do they say anything unique to Islam? And two, have they made any difference to ‘Islam’ as it actually plays out in the world?
As far as I know the answer is no and no. Do correct me if I’m wrong. In the meantime I will go on wishing political figures would stop sucking up to religion in this way. Be kind and inclusive and generous and outreachy to people, by all means, but skip the religion-flattering.
I suppose that Mr. Johnson wants to be re-elected and seeks the support of Muslim voters. For a politician, to say that there valuable lessons to be learned from Islam means no more than for a politician to say that he or she loves Chinese food, in the case that there are many Chinese in his or her electoral zone.
Politicians will be politicians.
I don’t know about cities on the hill. But we can at least answer what countries aren’t among the worst third of existing nations (i.e., the bottom 100) as far as human rights abuses are concerned. America, Japan, South Korea, and Australia were on the list. Meanwhile, the Muslim countries of Oman, Brunei, Mauritania, Bangladesh, and Qatar were not.
Cheers to that I guess?
From the page Benjamin linked to.
“This table ranks human rights abusers in descending order; the figures in the right-hand column are obtained by multipying a weighted score of abuses by the Human Development Index. “
Which abuses? Who did the weighting? What formula was used? Is it really possible to quantify human rights abuse to four significant figures. Do opinions cease to be opinions when rendered in tabular form?
Sorry, I’m calling this one bogus. (So sue me.)
Francis: You may have missed ‘How the tables work’ at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/oct/24/humanrights2
“The Observer has compiled the Human Rights Index 1999 in two ways. The first – the simple ranking – represents the incidence of 10 headline abuses given a score that relates to the intensity of the abuses in each country. The controversy of this method of scoring is that it does not take into account the relative development and wealth of individual countries pushing some of the world’s most disadvantaged countries to the top.
“For this reason we have also calculated the data in a second way, doubling the score for the three most serious abuses – extra-judicial executions, disappearances and torture/inhuman treatment. In this weighted table the individual countries’ so-called Human Development Index (HDI) has also been factored in. The use of the HDI, which is calculated by the UN on factors such as the country’s economic status and literacy levels, has the effect of scoring wealthy abusers of human rights more harshly than countries with deep economic and social problems. In other words it penalises countries that should know better.
“The tables were compiled by the Observer from the following sources: Amnesty International Report 1999; Amnesty International Country Reports; US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights 1999; United Nations Human Development Report (Human Development Index 1997)”
That follows on from http://www.guardian.co.uk/rightsindex/0,,201749,00.html where we read:
“Observer foreign editor online
Peter Beaumont, foreign editor of the Observer, will be here at 1pm on Wednesday 27 October to discuss the human rights index and other foreign news issues. You can start posting questions for him here.”
More of their data is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/Tables/4_col_tables/0,,258329,00.html and onward.
But I incline to agree with you. Their ranking procedure rates my native Australia as being worse than:
Chile
Dominican Republic
Mali
Niger
Paraguay
Singapore
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Zimbabwe and
Kazakstan
in that order.
Give us a break! My message to Peter Beaumont is: Can do better; Must try harder; Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
“Their ranking procedure rates my native Australia as being worse than”
That’s because they expect more from you (and from the other “more developed” nations). That’s what they’re doing when they multiply by the HDI; incorporating the “you should know better” factor.
I’m from Chile, and I don’t see why Chile could not have a better ranking than Australia. Chile today, not Chile under Pinochet, whose reign ended 20 years ago. Chile’s chief human rights problem today is probably the treatment of Native-American people, and I suspect that Australia’s chief human rights problem is also the treatment of the native population.
Their weightings sound like a ploy to ensure that some western-style democraces – USA, Australia, Israel – are on the list, in order to satisfy their ideological bias.
If ‘you should know better’ really is a factor, then it undermines the whole exercise, and any pretensions it might have to objectivity (as well as being rather racist in its assumptions).
I think there’s also another factor, which is simply that in open democracies with a free press, abuses are far more likely to come to light than in more authoritarian regimes. Even when we know the latter are offenders, their abuses will always be understated numerically due to lack of information.
It would be interesting to know in which countries the compilers of the report would really rather live.
Hmm… it would surprise me to no end if Chile’s human-rights bona fides bettered Australia’s.
Deen – what is “islamophobia”?
People who both think and claim that “all Muslims take over our country”, are anti-Muslim bigots… islamophobia is really a terrible term, it really muddies the waters.
Obviously that quote is meant to read “all Muslims want to take over our country” – apologies.
CW, From the Observer quote above: “For this reason we have also calculated the data in a second way, doubling the score for the three most serious abuses – extra-judicial executions, disappearances and torture/inhuman treatment.”
This assumes that hauling a raped woman before a court in say Saudi or Iran, finding her guilty of ‘adultery’ and then stoning her to death is somehow better than simply garrotting her down a back alley on a dark night. But I’ll let that pass for the moment.
I would argue that neither Australia (nor the US, Canada, or New Zealand for that matter) sprang fully formed out of nowhere onto the world historical scene. As nations whose European founding populations were drawn mainly from Britain, we had our own black nights of tyranny in the periods of Henry VIII, Cromwell, and the Restoration. We went through early what a lot of other countries are going through now. It is not as if we somehow dodged it.
Likewise, most of Latin America has a heritage which includes the Spanish Inquisition.
Amos, I have never been to Chile, but fiends who have tell me that it is an extraordinarily beautiful and diverse country. However, as far as I am aware – and please correct me if I am wrong – those responsible for all the ‘human rights abuses’ (read murder and torture) of the Pinochet years have never been brought to justice, and the armed forces not only vowed to stage another coup if they ever saw the need for it, but have secured themselves a source of substantial revenue independent of the state through direct control of the copper mines. If true, that is not a good situation, and needs correcting.
As for the Australian Aborigines, I have gone into that question extensively on my own blog ‘Noah’s Rainbow Serpent’; a hell of a problem, but I would like to see how it was factored into Australia’s ranking (worse than Zimbabwe (!)) in this dodgy Observer exercise.
Belated thanks to Benjamin Nelson for the link.
Ian: That’s not true. Pinochet, as you know died, but almost all the military men involved in human rights violations, that is, those who are directly responsible, who did the actual dirty work, have been tried and convicted and are serving long prision terms: most, given their age and given multiple sentences, will spend the rest of their lives in prision. The armed forces have never vowed to stage another coup and are unlikely to do so, since no sector of the population would support that: the 1973 coup was supported by the right, some sectors of the political center and by the Nixon administration. 10% of the sales of the state copper company, Codelco, go to finance the armed forces, but the armed forces do not control the state copper company, which is under civilian control. There is currently a bill in congress, which will probably pass, to include military spending within the normal national budget.
Sorry, Deen, but I think “Islamophobia” is a really crappy bit of manipulative jargon that should be avoided like the plague. It is used to conflate all criticism of Islam with what you call “the irrational fear of Islam” as well as to conflate all criticism of Islam with hatred of Muslims. It’s a terrible bit of shut up-speak.
If you want to talk about irrational or excessive hatred or fear of Islam I think you should just call it that.
“as a critic of Islam, you’d probably end up getting a lot of support from people you really don’t want to be associated with.”
You do indeed. But (in my view) you have to persist anyway, doggedly making the necessary distinctions but not being bullied or shamed into silence about Islam.
One more point about Chile. Sometimes people believe that coups in South America are the result of ambitious or power-hungry generals, who seize control for the sheer joy of being tyrants. While ambition certainly plays a role in any coup, coups in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, or Chile in the 20th century only took place because they had civilian support, generally from the elites and the political right against leftwing governments.
The support of the US government against left-leaning governments was another key factor. There’s a old joke:
question: why has there never been a military coup in Washington?
answer: there’s no U.S. embassy there.
Deen, I think OB is right about “Islamophobia” being a deliberate construct to inure one section of society from critique, including internal critique. It’s not just the Left who throw this term around, I have met young Muslims who are convinced 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy mainly to inspire “Islamophobia” because “real” Muslims aren’t terrorists. On one hand, there is racism, and then on the other there is a rational critique of Islam: they shouldn’t be conflated.
Ah, yes, “‘real’ Muslims aren’t terrorists” — nor any “true” Scotsman, I imagine.
Amos, according to Human Rights Watch in 2008,(1) 38 “former [Pinochet era] military personnel and civilian collaborators” out of 482 convicted were actually serving prison terms: about one in thirteen. This is not to disparage progress made in Chile.
You are right that military dictatorships do not hold power without the support of a significant section of the domestic population. (Burma would have to be the greatest exception to this.) Unfortunately though, most democratically-elected regimes are made up of people who are not themselves democrats. Henry Kissinger would have to be a classic example.(2)
(1) http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79211
(2)http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/CaseAgainst1_Hitchens.html
Ian: Those 38 include Manuel Contreras, head of the secret police (DINA); Pedro Espinoza, his number 2; Alvaro Corvalán, operating head of the CNI (the secret police which replaced the DINA); Marcelo Moren Brito (director of the main torture center), etc., etc. That is, the principle figures of the dictatorship are in jail. Pinochet, given his age, just stalled all legal proceedings against himself (through the aid of good lawyers), knowing that he was going to die soon. Furthermore, some investigations are still in progress, and there will be more convictions. You have to realize that during the first 8 years of democratic government (1990-1998), Pinochet still headed the army, so that it was difficult to investigate his crimes and those committed during his dictatorship. In any case, the figure of 482 convicted people sounds high to me: I’ll have to check that somewhere. That could be 482 people accused by human rights organizations, including some against whom it is very difficult to prove criminal responsibility, that is, the civilians.
Ian: HRW says that 482 people face charges. 256 have been convicted. 83 have had their convictions confirmed by higher courts, and 38 are in prision. So it’s 38 in jail out of 83 final sentences, since they always appeal to higher courts.
I have racked my brains but I cant think of anything that could be learned from islam,can anyone else think of anything?
Deen, it’s not so much that other people have started using the word improperly, it was used improperly from its inception – it has always been used to mean hatred of Muslims more than, or as well as, fear/hatred of Islam. Its meaning has always been at best ambiguous, and as such it is guaranteed to sow confusion or just plain obfuscate.
It also implies that dislike of Islam is fundamentally irrational, and that’s a ridiculous notion. It implies a kind of universal requirement to like Islam. I don’t think such a requirement should exist.
The root worry is that dislike of Islam shades into dislike/fear/hatred of all Muslims, and that of course is a valid worry and a genuine risk. But I don’t think deployment of in inaccurate ambiguous confusion-sowing word is the remedy for that.
Sorry, I thought it was reasonably clear what I meant by it – especially after giving an example. I suppose I can use other ways to describe the same behavior.
But all of this distracted from my main point: educating people about Islam, or what the Muslim family that lives down your street actually believes – not just the bad, but also the good – can never be a bad thing. A lot of the hatred and fear is based in ignorance, and this needs to be combated.
As far as the term goes… I think Deen makes a good case for the term, “Islamophobia” as irrational fear based on ignorance. Of course politics interferes with this concept, but what else is new.
It’s a practical threat because there’s no specific term used to describe the enlightened rejection of Islam on emancipatory grounds. If you could introduce a handy distinction on the fly, i.e., “I’m not an Islamophobe, I’m an x, and they’re different”, then of course the term will seem to be only there to group all critics of Islam (irrational and rational alike). Perhaps “anti-theocratic” might get the message across, if the need arises.
Maybe someone has said this before. If so, my apologies, but it seems that the term “Islamophobia” is modeled on “homophobia”, which definitely is an irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals. It’s a category error of sorts. Islam is a religion or doctrine; homosexuals are a group of people, etc.
amos: “I’m from Chile, and I don’t see why Chile could not have a better ranking than Australia.”
Removing the HDI multiplier, gives Chile a total Human Rights Abuse score of 8 while Australia is lower at 7. Of course, the United Arab Emirates has a total score of 6; so I think the scores lack some credibility.
Amos, I’m not sure I agree with the idea that it’s a category error. There’s a phobia for everything, including cultural stuff. i.e., Anglophobia. You’d have to say more.
Unlike homophobia fear of islam is a totaly rational fear?
The valuable lesson I’ve gleaned from Islamic believers in the past few years is that I can blow up people I disagree with, and then intimidate them into not publishing satirical cartoons about me. Cool!
Keith: it seems that the score does lack some credibility, as you say. In any case, it is difficult to quantify and rank human rights abuses: how many censored books are equivalent to one act of torture?
Ben: I’ll take your word for it: there may even be pencil-phobia or computer-phobia.
Fear of computers is listed as “cyberphobia”. No fear of pencils on record yet — but there is fear of public writing (scriptophobia) and writing in general (graphophobia).
This mere list provides me with countless hours of entertainment. Genuphobia is fear of knees. Lolbot.
“It’s a practical threat because there’s no specific term used to describe the enlightened rejection of Islam on emancipatory grounds.”
Well no, not entirely; it’s a practical threat mostly because it is used to refer to any criticism of Islam, and that is not accidental but intentional. It’s a word designed to draw a magic circle of “respect” around Islam and to shield it from critical examination. It’s not a once-benign word that has been hijacked; it was never a benign word. (Why is there no comparable word for other religions? Nobody talks about Christianityophobia or Hinduismophobia – what’s up with that?)
Probably because Christianity is the norm in our society, and Hinduism a negligible minority. And we do have a word for hatred of Jews.
Yes, I know, we have a word for hatred of Jews, but not a word for hatred of Judaism. ‘Islamophobia’ is not, literally, a word for hatred of Muslims, but it is used that way, but it is used that way by being applied to all criticism of Islam; that’s why it is such a poisonous and misleading word!
Anti-semitism is not a synonym for Judaismophobia and Islamophobia is not a synonym for Muslimophobia.
I agree that “islamophobia” is ambiguous in the sense that it is often used almost interchangeably for fear of Islam on the one hand, and distrust or hatred of Muslims on the other. However, the two are very obviously linked – Islam would not be a problem without Muslims believing in it, and acting on it. But you have me convinced on this point, I can see this particular problem with the term.
What I still don’t see is your claim that the fact that “islamophobia” is used against all criticism to Islam is the fault of the word itself. It’s not a property of the word “islamophobia”, but simply a tactic used by people to defend their position, which could be used with any term or phrase that could mean “bigotry against Muslims”. Isn’t “antisemitism” used in the same way? For instance, haven’t many people who criticized the Israeli settlement programs been accused of antisemitism?
I’m quite willing to drop a term because it’s imprecise, but I’m very reluctant to drop it simply because some will use it against us. What’s going to stop them from doing the same with the term we replace it with?
Although we don’t find Christophobia on the linked list, we don’t find Islamophobia listed there either. Both are evidently relatively new terms… no doubt mutually reinforcing, given the endless holy war that the Bushes and Clinton started.
However, we do find Christophobia in the UK’s House of Commons. MP Mark Pritchard evidently created a debate on what he takes as rising “Christianophobia” in 2007, or anti-Christian sentiment. Evidently this has been picked up by the bishops. So the term is out there, puttering along. And it’s not all necessarily vacuous narcissism like the sort you find on O’Reilly; take the Soviets’ attitude for example.
Deen, well dropping it because it’s imprecise at least stops people from using the imprecision to make the word mean something it doesn’t mean.
Anyway, probably nothing will stop people misusing language that way, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth pointing out that that’s what’s going on.
Ben, I didn’t say ‘Christophobia’ and that’s not the comparable word. The word has to be Christianityophobia – not Christophobia, not Christianophobia, but Christianityophobia.
That sounds really stupid. Yeah – and it is – and so is ‘Islamophobia.’ The whole idea is stupid.