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The standard collectivist critique of individual rights has been with us a long time. It was best formulated in its classic outlines by the Catholic Church during the nineteenth century, amidst a great many cries for social and political change. The line the Church took at the time was essentially to say that rights cannot be understood without respect to “duties,” and that suffering and self-sacrifice are great virtues against which the individual should not be protected. As the classic statement on Catholic social teaching, the Rerum Novarum (1891), puts it, “The… pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts.” Rights guarantees, and efforts at social reform, therefore, prevent individuals from properly suffering. By endlessly insisting on individual rights, the document goes on to state, our modern societies tear apart the harmony of the community and lead to unrealistic calls for equality. “The great mistake… is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict… Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order.”

To summarize the religious objection to individual rights, then, such rights guarantee too much to the individual. They destroy social solidarity in the long run by fulfilling the avaricious whims of each person and by accepting as unavoidable endless conflicts of competing rights claims. They leave individuals free from collective constraints: free, that is, to be self-centered, even callous.

This is the most baffling sort of criticism human rights activists have to face. On the surface, in fact, it may appear utterly nonsensical. The argument is that by protecting people from injustice, human rights leave individuals free to pursue selfish objectives. If this is true, and standing up for the wellbeing of others furthers selfishness, then any opposition to oppression throughout human history has been done in the name of selfishness. To take an example close to the religious opponents of individual rights, we might say that by this logic, Jesus and St. Francis of Assisi were promoting selfishness when they gave all they had to the poor, since the poor could then spend whatever they received on self-centered objectives.

The ways in which such an ideology is useful to the powerful have been made only too obvious by history. Women’s liberation in the 19th century was condemned as viciously self-centered, because it emphasized a woman’s freedom to make autonomous choices. What religious opponents of early feminism insisted was that suffering and self-sacrifice were virtuous, so patriarchal domination must be encouraged. But of course, in a patriarchal system, the ones doing the suffering are women, particularly lower class women, while powerful men are more capable than ever of pursuing selfish objectives. The entire doctrine of selflessness and self-sacrifice therefore gets turned on its head, becoming the perfect cover for all varieties of greed and domination.

This is all clear enough. Strange as it may seem, however, it must be said that many of the major intellectuals who have criticized human rights as overly selfish have been anything but friends to injustice. It is these more humane arguments which we must examine and refute if we wish to defend human rights.

One might debate the merits of Karl Marx as an historical prognosticator, but his vision of the ideal society was a desirable one. It was intended to be a society in which human individuals related to one another in a fundamentally affectionate and noncoercive way. Tied in with this was a serious critique of human rights, or what Marx would have dismissed as “bourgeois rights.” This is the line of thinking advanced in his “On the Jewish Question,” which derides rights as being useful only to “egoistic man.” It is only because people are self-interested and alienated from one another in capitalist society that such societies require rights guarantees. Once people get in touch with their more elementary human affections and natural solidarities, such rights won’t even be necessary, according to Marx.

Simone Weil, the French intellectual, pursued a similar line of attack. One might have thought that human rights would be an unlikely target for a Resistance fighter and a participant on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War, yet Weil eventually came to feel that rights only made sense in a world of privilege and inequality, even when those rights were meant to be equal rights. She felt that rights turn people out of their traditional communities and make them into autonomous dupes obsessed with their own self-interest and greed. When people are driven by motives such as these, the only possible result can be cruelty, narcissism, and inequality. Rights, even equal rights, are therefore simply an attempt to extend “privilege” to the underprivileged, writes Weil, which is fundamentally absurd because privilege can only ever be the product of inequality.

Common to these and similar ideas is the belief that rights serve the self-interest of the individual and diminish her love and affection for other people. If this were true, rights would have a great deal to answer for. But I think that common sense and the political conscience of most people tells them that it is not true at all, which is why the human rights movement enjoys a great deal of moral esteem.

The most important thing to insist in the face of Marx’s and Weil’s criticisms is that human rights are not a self-interested doctrine. We know this to be true because people devote their lives and livelihoods every day to defending the human rights of others. Bertrand Russell declared that the motivating force in his life was an “almost unbearable pity for the sufferings of mankind,” and this could be said, in greater or lesser degrees, of every major social reformer in history. Many of these held secular or humanistic views—the very same that are erroneously associated with selfishness and materialism—yet they were the ones on the front lines of every struggle for greater compassion in human affairs. The bishops and deacons of their days, meanwhile, were often nowhere to be found, or else complacently siding with the powerful.

This is a truth commonly understood: that people fighting for human rights are not animated by self-interest or callous self-regard. In fact, human rights arise out of our most fundamental collective moral imperative: namely, to protect the weak and vulnerable from harm. Empathy is where they begin and end.

According to Lynn Hunt’s fantastic book, Inventing Human Rights, rights language grew up in tandem with eighteenth century epistolary novels, such as Richardson’s Clarissa and Rousseau’s Julie, which introduced empathy into fiction and extended human feeling across class boundaries. By presenting the lives and needs of servants and governesses (women at that!) these novels made possible a kind of affectionate identification that traditional literature could not provide. Even if modern readers have a hard time relating to these sentimental eighteenth century novels, we can see the same sort of effect at work in Charlotte Bronte and other later writers. The goal of the author is clearly to present the hero or heroine as an individual worthy of respect, dignity, and personhood. As Jane Eyre declares at one point to Mr. Rochester: “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings?… Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart!” This is not a self-interested or individualistic ideal—precisely because it insists on the rights of individuals!

However, Weil might respond that even as human rights activists compassionately struggle for the rights of others, their efforts to do so will ultimately set back their own goals. Once rights are guaranteed to all people, those very same rights will turn the world into a cesspool of greed, with each autonomous citizen pursuing her own goals at the expense of everyone else.

I think we would agree with her that sadism and callousness can exist even amidst a robust human rights regime. If you doubt it, just read Martin Amis’ Money. New York and Hollywood do well compared to Zimbabwe when it comes to human rights standards, but if we recognize any piece of reality in Amis’ novel, we see that these places are no strangers to greed and depravity.

We also experience on a daily basis the fact that human beings can still be degraded even while their legal rights are respected. Modern societies are notoriously prone to coupling equal rights with savagely unequal social realities. People are degraded by inequality on both sides of the barrier. The poor obviously suffer all sorts of indignities, but they are not alone. The well-off are also degraded by the nature of ruthless competition. Marx pointed out that if you build a castle next to a cottage, the cottage becomes a hut. This sets off an endless struggle for greater and greater success, not to procure some useful end, but to outdo one’s peers. Build an even bigger castle next to the first and it becomes a hut as well.

Human rights such as those embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) cannot solve all of the world’s problems. They do not promise an antidote to these forms of degradation or oppression. To argue that they can be used as the sole basis for a complete theory of human flourishing is a bad idea, because it might encourage the notion that our only moral duties are to respect minimal human rights. If we want to live in a more compassionate, egalitarian society, we need to find ideals of life which don’t base the worth of the individual on success or material gain. Our ideal of life should be that of self-sacrifice for the goal of social betterment, compassion, and justice.

All this being said, however, Weil is ultimately and unforgivably wrong when she denounces human rights. Rights can coexist, as we have seen, with inequality and degradation, but they are goods in and of themselves. They may not alone produce perfectly compassionate societies, but they still take us a few steps in the right direction And if we ever want to go further, toward even more egalitarian and compassionate social arrangements, we at least need to start with these minimums. People can’t be expected to start caring about everyone all at once or lavishing love and compassion on the world if they don’t at least begin by respecting others enough not to torture or kill them.

As for greater goals of equality, these aren’t necessarily part of the human rights movement, and human rights activists may feel quite differently about them. Someone like Michael Ignatieff embraces human rights while being perfectly sanguine about capitalist inequality. Meanwhile, I would identify more with democratic socialism and wouldn’t find anything good to say for any form of inequality. I also feel that in order for equal rights to ever be respected, we are going to have to have equal social relations at home and abroad. However, a human rights activist might not necessarily agree, yet we would both support human rights and make common cause for their advancement. This does not mean that the differences between capitalists and democratic socialists are insignificant. But any humane person must recognize that regardless of one’s ultimate social goals, the starting place for the betterment of society is to do away with unjust practices and achieve basic human rights. Our ideals as to how to behave justly in our personal lives should certainly be far more comprehensive, but that does not diminish the value of legal minimums.

We may blame inequality for the modern worlds’ callousness and self-centeredness. In the United States, we see legions of “tea-partiers” and right-wingers today desperately clinging to privilege: small wonder that they do so when privilege is what seems to define a person’s self-worth in our societies. It is inequality which accounts for such pathological worldviews. But we cannot by any stretch of the imagination blame human rights. The effort to do away with all inequality must begin with rights. They are the starting-point, if not the end-point, of egalitarian justice.

Let us take this one step further, and state that the UDHR is in some ways a collectivist document. In its first article, it does not insist that people should behave callously or selfishly toward one another while respecting a bare moral standard: it insists rather that they should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood. It is collectivist, therefore, but not in a way that any oppressive collective would recognize, because it sees that a truly affectionate and egalitarian community cannot have outsiders or “others” deprived of rights. We might even go so far as to declare that this sort of community is inextricably bound up with human rights.

Circumcision, or for non-believers “genital mutilation”, is in some societies one of the most ancient rituals still practised. The historical background of this old ritual, as to when and why it started, is not precisely known. The practice varies from region to region and from epoch to epoch in its total or partial removal of the foreskin or clitoris.

Circumcision, in its different forms, is practised in a big part of the world. The Jews were the first to adapt it as a sign of religiosity; it is mentioned in the Old Testament as a religious ritual and preserved its practice into our times. Circumcision was banned by the ancient Romans and Greeks considering it as an act of barbarity. Also the early Christians took a strong stand against it.

Benefits of circumcision are believed to maintain genital organs in hygienic conditions for males whereas it is practised to reduce the sexual appetite for females. Removal of a functional, sensitive, healthy, and normal foreskin or clitoris with many nerve fibres, nerve endings, strictly speaking is a genital mutilation. Medically speaking, it has no relevant healthy benefits that can objectively be used to justify its practice. And as such, this heritage of passed rituals violates the principles of modern morality and the very principles of sciences.

Our universal law respects parents’ “ownership rights” over their children to protect them, to the extent that their decisions are in the child’s benefits. A child’s right to maintain the integrity of her/his healthy body should not be violated by any religion.

Some businesslike or religious doctors, as modern circumcisers, cut off a functional healthy and normal part of human body, a business or religious treatment which is in contradiction to their professional morality. This is akin to removing an eyelid which protects the eye or to cut off a finger of a child as a pseudo-healthy treatment.

Circumcision would have died out long ago, along with leeching, skull-drilling, and castration, if it were frankly motivated by purely medical reasons. The fact is that the “reasons” were later invented and stereotyped to justify the ritual act of circumcision. Pseudo- intellectuals of the religious industry have been long brainwashing innocent people to blindly practise such rituals.

The religious mission is to avoid rising general awareness of scientific, reasonable, and beneficial reasons for medical procedures, and in this light, much has been cooked up about the nonessential ritual of circumcision. The supposed advisability of circumcision, contrary to immunisation, is merely rooted in cultural customs, religious and social myths, not in therapeutic treatments.

Psychological studies have shown that all individuals, regardless of religion or gender, who have genital cutting imposed upon them as non-consenting children, bear different degrees of physical, sexual, and emotional wounding. The cutting is mostly the first painful and bloody trauma for a child. Many people from circumcising cultures can attest to the harm this practice inflicted on them. Religious and cultural influence reinforces denial of these consequences and makes it taboo for people to talk openly about their harm. The fact that religious pressure forces people to adapt to and cope with this wounding or to remain silent, does not justify the wounding.

No medical evidence about the effectiveness of this wounding in reducing the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS or penile cancer or genital diseases has been shown. Only speculations, mostly loaded with religiosity, justify this practice.

No health organisation in the world currently accepts circumcision as a preventive procedure or advocates its practice for both sexes; even if female circumcision is in some areas absent, it is immorally perverse to excuse one cruelty by invoking a worse one. The genitals of both sexes, as the products of evolution, should be left intact.

Since 1996 female circumcision has been considered violence against women in the US and thus has become illegal, but the “civilised world” ignores the practice of it in many circumcising cultures. In Egypt, a US ally, more than 90% of women are victims of female circumcision.

The legitimisation of this painful and barbaric act, which can rarely be imagined without shuddering or being sick, is mentioned in a Hadith reported by Umm’Atiyya:

A female circumciser in Madineh was told by the Prophet of Islam, “When you circumcise, do not cut a big part of clitoris as that is better for a woman and more desirable for her husband.” The narration, ignoring the image of pain and sufferance, is one of the fundamental religious sources, allowing not only circumcision of boys (Khitan), but also circumcision of girls (Khafd) in Islam.

For less conservative Islamic scholars, the narration is a “modest” reason that only the outer part of the clitoris should be cut off and not as is done in some other African Muslim countries cutting off all the clitoris. Cutting away a part or a young girl’s entire clitoris is a ritual practice in parts of Islamic Africa. However, even the “modest” image of such a removal of the prepuce of a young girl’s clitoris seems still odious enough to call it a barbaric maiming of innocent girls. It practically is to inflict a despoiling of ability to enjoy sexuality. It means that sex for women is not much more than a procreative act.

Besides the idea of reducing all of the female extra-marital affairs, another dominant idea of female circumcision has been claimed to diminish the risk of rape. As such, the entire clitoris is cut off. The tissue are then sewn together, leaving a narrow hole for the flow of urine or menstrual blood (a second procedure is necessary to allow sexual intercourse). This typical patriarchal and misogynist idea does not consider the male rapist as the main culprit, but implicitly the female uncircumcised victim!

The brutality of female circumcision brought some Islamic scholars to modify their judgement about its practice, arguing that female circumcision has been regarded by the Prophet as an act of merit, not as an obligation. This is why female circumcision is less practised than male circumcision in Islamic societies.

Circumcision however is not mentioned in the Koran and has been initially inspired as an act of purification (Taharah / Taharat) for both sexes. This has been based on a narration from the Prophet who classifies circumcision as one of the five acts of Fitrah (purification), namely shaving the public hair, trimming the moustaches, clipping the nails, plucking the armpit hairs.

Circumcision was imposed on Iranians through the Islamic invasion in the 7th century. (The pre-Islamic Iranians, Zoroastrians, were not circumcised). Circumcision for both sexes, along with female infanticide, were old tribal traditions practised by the primitive patriarchal pagans in Arabia; the advanced culture of Persians did not adopt such atrocious rituals. Islam adopted circumcision and changed its status into an Islamic ritual. And as such, it was imposed upon the conquered territories, including Iran.

Female circumcision, apart from some cases in southern areas and Kurdistan, is not practised in Iran, but the Shiite sect considers male circumcision obligatory and tends to lean toward the extreme side on the issue. Associated with a typical ceremony (Khatneh Soorun), a reminder of a sacrificial ceremony, the Islamic circumcision is in perfect harmony with the feast of the sacrifice in Islam.

Circumcision in Sharia is an order to cut the skin that covers the male genital and /or to cut the upper end of the skin that covers the clitoris on the female genital part. It has been considered by Islamic scholars that circumcision is compulsory for both males and females.

Sacrifice like cannibalism and infanticide is older than all the main monotheist religions. It has been an act of worship. Human / animal sacrifice was a routine ritual ceremony, in which young human victims were killed to please their gods or spirits. In exchange for the wanton sacrifice, the human victims were baptised martyrs and were promised holy rewards like the paradise in the next world. The human victim was not only offered to satisfy the gods and consequently the group, but also as a martyr, became a promoted status of sacred. This concept of divine victim is very similar to the concept of martyrdom in Shiite traditions.

In early ancient cultures human /animal sacrifice was a routine ritual in times of natural disaster; even for the rise of the sun a person would be sacrificed. Human sacrifice or mutilation still happens today as an underground practice in some traditional religions in South Africa.

The occasions of human sacrifice and human mutilations are associated with some ritual ceremonies. In ancient Egypt, as brutal as widow-burial, the ceremonial and sacrificial circumcision, for both sexes, was practised to please their god of fertility. In ancient Mesopotamia there were festivities in which the genital organ of a young boy was brutally cut off and was offered to the goddess of fertility.

Some scholars believe that all of the monotheist Prophets were born circumcised, while some others claim that Prophet Abraham was the first to practise (self) circumcision to please God. No need to mention that today’s judgement about such an act of “pleasing” can be reduced to the rank of pathology.

Another aspect of circumcision, besides the purification and the sacrificial character, can be regarded as an act of punishment (a means of humiliating to mark captured enemies and slaves, or as a patriarchal means of reducing the mother’s authority over her child).

The punishment which religiously often means a ritual purification is attributed to a need to tone down sexual pleasure. Human sexuality has been seen in many primitive cultures as immoral and impure and thus in need of ritual purification. Circumcision, in this case, was the obvious way to “purify” the believers. In this light, sex with an uncircumcised man is not allowed for a Muslim woman.

A very important factor in circumcision is self-injury. This is a pathological practice to relieve overwhelming emotional tension. It can be practised from a little common cut of skin to the collective practice of self-flagellation or self-stabbing in the Shiite mourning rituals. As witnessed in the period of the mourning month of “Moharam”, self-injury in Shiite ritual is widely practised. In this case, the practice is usually a symbolic act to connect the individual to the group of believers.

Some practices like piercing and tattoos, or in this case circumcision, are also socially preconditioned. These practices are done to identify with a particular group, religion, and collective identity. So, the social respect of collective practice can turn into a practice of self-injury like circumcision, and its harm is socially justified for the members of that society.

Self-injury in its ritual practice often focuses on the sexual organs and can be regarded as a copy mechanism for the origin of circumcision.

To conclude:

Circumcision, an old practice, has no clear references concerning its history, motive and origin.

Circumcision is a ritual practice of primitive cultures and can be rooted in the factors of sexual punishment, ritual sacrifice and self-injury.

Circumcision has no preventive or medical benefits.

Circumcision, as an act of genital mutilation for both sexes, cannot morally be permitted.

I need help. I need help to understand how and why someone would write a story about how Canadian Women are forcing their beliefs upon Muslim Women. I pasted this chunk below:

At the heart of the relationship between feminism and imperialism is an Orientalist logic that posits Western women as exemplary and emancipated in relation to “Other” (Afro-Asian/colonized) women, thereby charging the former with the responsibility of saving the latter from their backwards (i.e. Muslim), uncivilized cultures.

And even though I don’t understand at all the words Orientalist or feminism theory, I do understand what this chunk means, and now I want to speak my truth.

I am the founder of Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan. I founded this organization 3 years ago, when I was 9 years old. In the fall of 2006, I found out that the privileges that I have, other girls in our world don’t get. I learned about this when I went with my Mom to listen to journalist, author and human rights activist, Sally Armstrong speak about Afghanistan. She told stories about the terrible things that happen to little girls in Afghanistan. I was so moved. It was so upsetting to me that these girls weren’t able to exercise their rights. They were not able to go to school and sometimes they didn’t go to school because they were afraid they would be hurt or even killed.

I have just turned 13 and I know there is a lot for me to learn but I am sure of this one thing. Education=peace. To me that means that once everybody is educated, peace will follow. In Afghanistan, girls don’t have the chance for that. Less than 10% of girls in Afghanistan are able to attend school and 11,000,000 Afghans are illiterate. The schools that are operating don’t have running water or bathroom facilities. There is a very low number of qualified teachers so people are not getting educated and when people aren’t educated, they fear the unknown, they are unable to support their families and they become desperate. I believe this creates violence and war, and supports beliefs that violate all human rights. I believe that education is the most powerful tool we have to move towards peace.

I am very passionate about my work, which along with raising awareness is funding education projects in Afghanistan. I do this with support from Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. The author told a story about an organization that does not exist. CW4WA are Moms and Sisters and friends who work together side by side because they have listened to the girls and women in Afghanistan and heard them plead for help. Unlike so many who hear about human rights violations and shake their heads and do nothing, they did not. They took action. I can’t think that the person that wrote this stuff could have ever been to Afghanistan. I have not either. Honestly, I want to go so bad but I am scared that I could get killed and just imagine living in fear like that every day. I know it’s different for adults when they think about human rights and how much we should interfere, but in the words of my great inspiration Sally Armstrong,

“There are no Western rights or Eastern Rights, there are only human rights.”

No one will ever tell me that Muslim women or any women think it’s ok to not be allowed to get educated or to have their daughters sold off at 8 years old or traded off at 4 years old because of cultural beliefs. No one will tell me that women in Afghanistan think it is ok for their daughters to have acid thrown in their faces. It makes me ill to think a 4 year old girl must sleep in a barn and get raped daily by old men. It’s sick and wrong and I don’t care who calls me an Orientalist or whatever I will keep raising money to educate girls and women in Afghanistan and I will keep writing letters and sending them in the back pack of my friend Lauryn Oates as she works so bravely on the ground helping women and girls learn what it is to exercise their rights. I believe in human rights so I believe everyone has the right their own opinion, I just wish that the energy that was used to write that story, that is just not true, could have been used to educate a girl in Afghanistan. That’s what the girls truly want. That’s what the Women in Afghanistan truly want. I have a drawer full of letters from them that says just that.

PS, I was at the same “photo op” that Lauryn Oates was at on Parliament hill with the Prime Minister and Minister Oda. That day they matched all the money Little Women was raising to pay the salaries of Teachers and support education projects in Afghanistan. That means that 100% of $250,000 is now going to education projects in Afghanistan so I am thrilled and proud to be in that picture.

Education=peace,

Alaina Podmorow

Founder

Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan

March 29, 2010

‘He looks my age,’ says my nine-year-old son. ‘He looks sort of like me.’

There’s a picture on my screen: a small, slight boy who, for legal reasons, we’ll call M. He’s being cuddled by his 17 year old big brother Z. Both boys are smiling. They have been reunited after a long, hard separation.

Back home in war-torn Afghanistan their parents and a sister were killed. Big brother Z was first to come to Britain, traumatised, in November 2008. He has refugee status, studies for his GCSEs at school in Leicester.

This past October little brother M made his way here. Despite M’s size, his vulnerability, his boyish looks, officials said, you’re not 14, you’re an adult.

Instead of being taken into care, M was bounced around between three different adult hostels and a house-share with older men — and refused asylum.

Welsh Refugee Council staff were baffled and concerned. To them he looked every inch a traumatised boy.

Across the Afghani community and Red Cross networks, word rippled out: a boy called M badly needs to find his big brother Z.

The boys were reunited in February — and just in time, for if the big brother was, by official assent, just 17, then surely it must follow that the younger, smaller, slighter brother must be… younger.

M’s solicitor told his UKBA case-worker the good news and made an appointment. ‘I felt relieved,’ says Sabina Hussain, Welsh Refugee Council’s child advocacy officer, ‘I was looking forward to some stability for the brothers, and reuniting them for good.’

Last Monday, a bright, sunny St David’s Day morning, Sabina went with M to help him lodge his fresh asylum claim at the Border Agency’s Cardiff office.

M was arrested, and locked up in Cardiff Bay Police Cells, in extreme distress, dwarfed in man-sized padded clothing to protect him from self-harm. His seat was booked on a flight bound for Afghanistan, Tuesday 9 March.

In the dark early hours of Tuesday 2nd March, M was taken with an adult detainee by caged van on the 109 mile journey from Cardiff to Oxfordshire and Campsfield House, an adult detention facility run by the government’s commercial partner Serco. He shared a dormitory with seven men.

Welsh Refugee Council instructed solicitors, spearheaded an emergency campaign. Concerned citizens lobbied MPs and the Home Office. On Thursday morning, just days before the flight, Sabina said: ‘M is crying, “please help me, I’m scared, this place is no good, no sleep, no eat, I want my brother”. We are gravely concerned for his welfare.’

Solicitors appealed to the High Court to block M’s deportation. Sabina joined him in Campsfield House to await the Court’s decision.

Meanwhile, up in Glasgow, university professor Alison Phipps was asking friends to testify that she and her husband Robert Swinfen love their foster daughter Rima, that she loves them and that Rima really is 17, and not, as the authorities insist, over 20.

Fleeing religious persecution in Eritrea, shipwrecked off Italy, Rima Andmariam had sheltered in a derelict Milan squat, gone hungry, lost a finger, made her way to Britain and Cardiff — aged 15, according to her papers which Cardiff UKBA and social services refused to accept, insisting she was an adult.

Rima fled, moved from house to house, lived rough until twelve months ago when Alison and Robert took her in as their natural daughter. In May last year Rima was seized and locked up in Dungavel, a former prison.

When Rima’s solicitor lodged an application for judicial review, the Border Agency swept her out of its range, taking her 356 miles south by caged van to Yarl’s Wood, Serco’s notorious Bedfordshire detention centre. Another application for review, deportation averted. After seven days in Yarl’s Wood Rima was home again.

And then, last month, the day after Valentine’s Day, the government told Rima she would be forcibly deported to Italy within weeks. The family campaigns vigorously for clemency, fearing that each new dawn will bring the Border Agency’s arrest squad to their door.

Last Thursday afternoon the Hon Mr Justice Cranston stayed M’s deportation, ordered UKBA to free him and instructed Cardiff Council to provide accommodation suitable for a 14 year old boy, pending a full judicial review hearing. That night an exhausted M was released from Campsfield, driven back to Cardiff and placed with foster carers.

M’s fate and Rima’s hang in the balance — here, in Britain, a country where asking for sanctuary is a right, not a crime, and where, according to the government, every child matters.

8 March 2010

First published at Open Democracy.

Do atheists have any spirituality? A certain internaut wracked his brain about this problem in a comment to one of our articles, and he was not alone. I used to get this question at various meetings and was met with astonishment when I asked for a definition of spirituality.

Spirituality seems to imply a soul. It is not mentioned in a passport, but if there were a place for it, in mine I would have to write: N/A. But can there be a soulless spirituality? An atheist has consciousness, but you may search and search for a soul. Moreover, he/she is skeptical about the existence of a soul in a believer as well, and this skepticism shades into irony or even mockery. Indeed, various investigations and measurements have been carried out, with nary a result.

If this spirituality, as some desire, should be associated with activities of supernatural forces or with some “dimension” of the psyche which differentiates us from the animal kingdom and therefore (for some unknown reason) comes from a being that is more intelligent than we are, then this type of spirituality is nothing more than a clumsy profession of faith and, indeed, an atheist has no business having it.

Spirituality based on a foundation of souls and ghosts requires a belief in ghosts. So, can spirituality acquire a more solid foundation? Maybe, but more about this later.

Let us consider another version of spirituality – spirituality as spiritualism. Here ghosts and spirits are even perceptible. We sit down at the appropriate table and with the help of an appropriate medium we cry: O spirit, speak to me! From a suitably spiritual wall comes a spirit visible only to the medium and sometimes even to the equally spiritual participant of the spectacle. This type of spirituality is profitable (but then, so are others). This is a spirituality connected to parapsychology, telekinesis, occultism and the like.

There is also an existential spirituality, the spirituality of philosophers and poets. Among the former it seems to be linked to elation about a thought, sometimes eschatological, sometimes narcissistic. Sometimes philosophers’ spirits jump out of their skins, sits beside them and wait for applause. A poet’s spirituality tends to be different; more often it is a product of sensual delight, sometimes caused by a muse’s bosom, sometimes by a sunset enhanced by a hangover.

The market for spiritual practices seems to be older than a creative attempt to give us some explanation for our raptures. Our internaut ponders whether an atheist can be capable of raptures, if he/she can love mama, refrain from biting off children’s ears and distinguish between good and evil. With a spiritual rapture he concludes that, no, never ever, because spirituality in his opinion is “the exchange of thought with a being of higher thoughts”. He continues with a slightly more intelligible text: “Atheism is empty and naked, it is a bird which pulled out all its feathers and is running around claiming that it flies, but you have to kick his ass for him to fly”. Apparently the thought of “kicking ass” makes him feel more spiritual.

Evolutionary psychology is not going to help in this discussion, because first you have to agree that evolution of life exists. Meanwhile the arguments of science cannot be accepted (what’s more, it is forbidden) because of a toxic spirituality.

I encountered the notion of toxic spirituality on “The Catholic Guide” website, where those inspired by the spirit of a St. John Bosco are writing about the regions of activity of contemporary evil spirits, listing: “Antrovis, Hare Krishna, Himawanti, Jehovah’s Witnessess, Raelians, scientology, Moonies, Heaven Family and Amway as well as psychomanipulative movements and groups and New Age ideology”.

I totally agree with the thesis of the said text, though I have a feeling that this list of vehicles of toxic spirituality is overly modest. I would put Islam in the most prominent place on a list of toxic spirituality. After all, both quantity and quality count, and Islam is a great religion and it’s spirituality is as toxic as Hell.

There is a double problem with toxic spirituality, for we have here two words fuzzily defined. Toxicity, when related to living organisms that really exist, is well defined. Not so well when it comes to toxic spirituality, i.e. poisoning something which is difficult to grasp with something which is equally difficult to determine.

As with mind so with spirituality – we know what a brain is, we can put it into a jar and place it on the mantelpiece, we know more and more about the brain, we understand better and better how it works. Not so with mind, and the question of how the mind works is not the same as how the brain works.

It is mind which seems to be a footbridge to spirituality. I can’t take a mind into my hand, but still it exists. We are dangerously close to the soul here. Can we talk legitimately about the mind of a dog, a cat, a mouse or a crocodile? There is a huge difference between the mind of a crocodile and that of a cat. A cat’s mind is capable of processing a much greater amount of information (which also translates into higher emotions like attachment, jealousy, and analytical ability). A cat’s mind is a wonderful computing machine but also a center of emotions. While the crocodile’s mind is limited to simple emotional reactions, to the need to “kick somebody’s ass”, a cat is more spiritual and is capable of slightly more unbridled calculation.

But let us return to the toxic spirituality. If we say, for the sake of argument, that the concepts of spirituality and mind are close to each other in meaning, that spirituality is merely (and exclusively) a product of the complex brain, capable of social bonds not based on instinct alone, then toxic spirituality leads to a scrambled mind.

A mind scrambled by toxic spirituality is worthy of study. Following the ideas of “The Catholic Guide”, we usually have psychomanipulation here which normally starts in infancy, is continued through the formative years, and maintained in maturity. In the case of Islam (as well as any other religion) it can lead to such strong faith in the afterlife that it triggers the desire to autodestruct in order to gain access to 72 imaginary virgins, waiting for a martyr dripping with blood – both his own and his victims’. In this case scrambling a mind by toxic spirituality attains the level of an absolute.

The spiritual interpretation of good is interesting here. Religions speak, quite in concert, about the divine (or spiritual) origin of morality. The holy books of different religions recommend, quite in concert, murdering infidels, and they similarly formulate the first and most supreme moral commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me”. Gods are tribal, therefore morality is tribal as well. To begin with, the order not to kill was related to a clan—a kinship group—so it was wrong to kill a member of the same clan and right to kill a member of a neighboring clan. (It was the same with stealing goods—material and living—like wives). The development of morality went in tandem with the development of a social organization and with the transition from a kinship society (i.e. clans) to a broader society based on an abstract kinship in which the “brotherhood” was symbolic. A spirituality which strengthened social bonds entered the phase of symbolic spirituality, i.e. it was based on symbols, usually simple ones and stemming from a totem in one way or another.

None of it would be possible without a language. Language plays a very special role in the history of spirituality. A myth about ancestors, based on a dream about ancestors, would not be possible without a way to describe that dream about ancestors. Animals dream just as we do, and anybody who has observed a dreaming dog knows that those dreams are often very complex. However, a dog who dreams about a huge menacing barking rabbit has no way to share his dream with anybody. A chimpanzee watching a film featuring an enemy whom he murdered after a hard struggle, is terrified.[1] But he can’t describe this experience to others. The presence of dreamed spirits becomes a social fact only when the dream is the subject of a narrative, which in a blink of an eye can become the subject of psychomanipulation. It is safe to assume that religious spirituality was begotten by a spirit and this spirit was the creation of a dreaming mind.

But is religious spirituality always toxic? It can be said that already on the clan-religion level religious spirituality could contribute to the reduction of the number of killings inside a clan and to raising morale in order to increase the number of killings (also rapes, plunder, and kidnappings) of other clans. The commandment by a symbolic supreme being gave a moral sanction to slaughtering inhabitants of a neighboring village, town, and—in time—country, while calling for (at least verbally) a toning down of cruelty inside one’s own society. Because we can observe fights between neighboring groups of chimpanzees in nature, we can tell that together with language and religion came the spiritualization of behaviors that also exist in the animal world.

Our internaut and other theologians try to convince us that morality comes from God and is transmitted orally by religious instruction. Divine instructions in the matter of morality are doubly dubious. First, there are serious reservations concerning their origin: do they really come from God (or gods) or from usurpers claiming that they recently had a meeting with God and industriously wrote down all His words? Second, the quality of those instructions gives rise to huge reservations of a moral nature, and theologians themselves generally do not recommend a too serious adherence to the purported words of God. (Sometimes it is recommended to omit commandments about gouging out eyes, beheading, cutting off hands, selling into slavery, stoning and the like.) Nonetheless, an intelligent interpretation of those divine commandments can lead to the conclusion that many religions promote similar moral directives and that they are also compatible with normal decency. Those are directives that recommend sympathy for a fellow human being, and empathy, co-operation, and help instead of enmity. This openness, or rather kindness towards another human being, is also thrown into the same ragbag of religious spirituality. If any religion really produced kindly humans, we could start wondering about it. (The successes of Quakers are very interesting here, but unfortunately their attempts to base a state organization on their moral system collapsed.)

The ubiquity of a positive assessment of moral norms appealing to sympathy, protectiveness, and friendship prompts us to look for patterns of those behaviors in nature. One of the most interesting instincts shaped by evolution is the maternal instinct. There is a strong correlation between the degree of an organism’s complexity and the development of the brain and the lengths of necessary parental care. The maternal instinct can lead to sacrificing one’s own life for one’s offspring in exceptional circumstances, and always leads to a long-term and dedicated sacrifice of one’s own interests for the sake of one’s children. Is the maternal instinct the “mother” of all other moral impulses? The matter is more complicated than that, but there is a great deal of evidence pointing to the fact that God got attached to moral questions very late indeed.

Adoptions are extremely intriguing in animal behavior. Among more developed mammals adoptions take place very often among relatives. But some absolutely stupefying adoptions also take place. The film about a lioness that adopted a baby oryx is well worth watching. The domestication of many species of animals most probably was not the effect of a divine plan but a consequence of the protectiveness instinct towards everything which is small and helpless. The observation of sexual selection in social animals also shows a peculiar competition between the attraction of naked power and the attraction of tenderness, co-operation and loyalty. Research shows that in many species brawn and brutality do not guarantee to the tough guys the greatest number of offspring, and character is often competitive with purely physical features. Researchers have also noted numerous cases of inter-species friendship in nature. (One of the most beautiful I have ever seen is a story about a friendship between an orangutan and a hound.)

Since spirituality is also associated with such emotions as friendship, love, and admiration of beauty, we can without difficulty prove that this type of spirituality manages perfectly well without religion, and that the tendency toward such behaviors (as well as toward cruelty) can be derived from biology. Evolutionary psychology tells us much more about the bases of morality than all the religions of the world. But if we assume that both kindness and cruelty are in nature, what was the role of religion in strengthening the positive assessment of those behaviors we judge as moral? The answer is simple: a complex one. They encouraged moral reflection and served as a tool to enforce social order. They strengthened equally behaviors we describe today as morally positive, as well as behaviors which are today morally abhorrent. They supported gentleness and they supported cruelty.

When I write “equally” it could be interpreted as a researched and measured phenomenon. No, we cannot quantitatively describe religious spirituality: was it, historically speaking, more often toxic or was it more often conducive to moral progress, reducing killings, violence, and promoting cooperation instead of fighting? But a claim that it strengthened good behaviors only is a plain falsehood.

If we base spirituality on a grounding of biology, if we connect it with sensitivity, altruism, friendship and co-operation, curiosity, and admiration for beauty, there is a place for spirituality without religion and without a belief in souls, ghosts and spirits.

We are still left with a question: can the spirituality of an atheist be toxic? Many believers think that it is toxic just because it is bereft of faith in God. Those I can only ignore. But let’s remember that atheism as such means only that I treat a God hypothesis as one that is very poorly backed up and with so small a probability that it is not worth bothering with. Here, though, atheism ends and its combination with other ideas, such as rationalism, humanism, and democracy begins, and so it can also appear in conjunction with totalitarian ideas, which can push it towards secular toxic spirituality.

Atheism, contrary to religion, does not insist on its moral superiority. An atheist’s spirituality manages without a soul and without ghosts, it takes advantage of the beauty our mind allows us to discover, but discovering our biological heritage – our tendency both to altruistic and cruel behaviors – we live in fear of having our minds scrambled by spirituality either based on kitschy religious instructions or kitschy little red books with the thoughts of Chairman Mao. We are threatened not only by the temptation of spiritual villainy but also spiritual obtuseness. The toxicity of barbaric spirituality restricts the possibilities of our perception and communication with others.

Atheism does not eliminate those threats, it can merely lessen them.

Notes

[1] Franz de Waal describes this situation in one of his books.

Translated by Małgorzata Koraszewska and Sarah Lawson

It took a Bertrand Russell to first notice that political ideologies tend to evolve over time into their polar opposites; and it took a George Orwell to point out that words which today nearly all people embrace, such as freedom and democracy, can mean very different things to different people. Today, however, most people are jaded enough to accept and even expect these sorts of insincerities. To point them out at all has become banal.

But every once in a while it is incumbent upon honest people to go back to the drawing board and remind themselves what ideologies represent and what words really mean. Nowhere is this more necessary than in the debates surrounding group rights and multiculturalism.

There are a great many liberal political theorists who still maintain that there are no such things as group rights, only individual rights (I would count myself among them). Yet there are far more theorists now who consider themselves “liberal culturalists” and who use the word multiculturalism to refer to political support for “minority rights,” by which they really mean group rights. These people remain committed to the values of liberal democracy, equality, and individual freedom, at least in theory, and do not admit of any group or cultural rights which would threaten human rights (such as the “right” to commit honor killings or genital mutilation). They simply feel that if members of minority cultures are to have equal access and true personal freedom in diverse societies, they must be accorded special group privileges. I will attempt to show the problems in this line of argument, but one has to respect these self-described liberals for remembering what it means to be liberal in the first place: individual human rights must always trump the demands of the group or the outside culture.

But there is another strand of culturalists thinking which does not even bother to include this stipulation about human rights and individual freedom. Some of these theorists began life as liberal culturalists, but have since apparently dropped the first half of that formulation and become simple culturalists. This is where Russell’s remark about doctrines becoming fused with their opposites seems most apt. Yael Tamir, for instance, was once upon a time a liberal, but has since become responsible for the deplorable article “Hands off Clitoridectomy.” This begins with an assault on liberals and goes on to declare that clitoridectomy is morally commensurate to putting teenagers through braces. While Tamir rejects the practice of female genital mutilation as undesirable, she also declares that those who seek to end the practice reveal a “patronizing attitude toward women, suggesting that they are primarily sexual beings.” Meanwhile, the practice may be painful, but so are braces, she writes. Perhaps both should be done away with, or neither.

One does not know where to begin with such an argument. At any rate, to argue that a woman’s genitals should not be cut apart does not imply that they are of primary significance, but simply that they are the property of the individual woman. To argue against having a slave’s arm cut off as occurred in the Belgian Congo is not to imply that her arm is the most important part of her body, but that it is a part of her nonetheless to dispose of as she chooses. Braces, meanwhile, though widely resented, do not deprive young people of a part of their selfhood.

Tamir is only one example of a school of thought which now privileges the demands of groups, cultures, and identities over the freedom and autonomy of the individual. Bhikhu Parekh, another political theorist, embraces even harsher conclusions. His book, Rethinking Multiculturalism, does not in fact rethink anything at all; it merely pursues the most illiberal tendencies in communalist thinking to their obvious conclusions.

It is my goal to defend liberal political theory from these particular enemies: namely, those who subscribe to multiculturalist or group rights theories. Admittedly, liberalism has many enemies, most of whom, including the most belligerent culturalists, are on the right. But the conflict of these thinkers with liberalism is obvious enough. My goal is to argue against those who consider themselves liberals or leftists but who nevertheless embrace culturalist assumptions. Hypocrisy is, we would all admit, more irritating than honest cruelty.

First of all, let it be said that I do not mean to attack a certain variety of multiculturalism and pluralism which has always been a part of liberalism. Liberalism itself was born out of cultural conflicts: namely, conflicts between rival religious sects. If people were all similar or held the same beliefs, liberalism would not be necessary. But because people have different cultures, practices, and worldviews, the only thing a fair society can do is allow each individual as much freedom to pursue any one of them as is consistent with the freedom of everyone else. I can think of no other way to manage difference and diversity that is not coercive or unjust. It is this liberal freedom which allows Yael Tamir to publish nonsense about clitoridectomy but does not allow anyone to practice it. The former is Tamir’s right as a free agent, while the latter compromises the rights of others.

These are rather obvious and banal conclusions, perhaps, but they allow for tremendous multiculturalism and diversity. They allow for free religious practice so long as such practice does not involve unjust impositions. They allow for a society in which states respect the beliefs and opinions of others and do not try to silence them. Finally, because liberal societies rely on a notion that all people are equally human and of equal moral worth, they tend to encourage those “political correct” behaviors which upset conservatives so much. Some politically correct taboos can be detrimental, of course, such as those which insist that all cultural practices must be treated with equal respect, even those which violate rights. But most of the P.C. taboos against sexist, racist, or homophobic remarks are part and parcel of liberalism. As Martha Nussbaum has pointed out, they are ways of getting us to recognize the humanity of those we might otherwise denigrate. This is a venerable and worthy variety of liberal multiculturalism. But it has been hijacked by liberal culturalists and defenders of “group rights,” much to its own detriment.

Are there really any such things as “group rights?” I think not, at least within a liberal conception. Rights belong to individuals for the obvious reason that an individual is made up of a single mind in a single body. This mind is either free to think what it wants or it is not. A group cannot be either free or unfree in quite the same way, because whatever condition it may be in as a whole, there may still be unfree individuals within it. Nations, for instance, may escape from foreign rule, but there could still be oppressed people within them. Wole Soyinka has chronicled the oppressions of both colonial despotism and post-colonial dictatorships in Africa, famously concluding that the boot of oppression is the same, regardless of the color of the foot that wears it. His memoir Aké describes the anti-colonial struggle in Nigeria and the cruelties it faced, but it also does not turn a blind eye to the injustices of traditional African cultures. The young Soyinka recalls, for instance, young children being beaten and publicly humiliated, and an old woman being accused of witchcraft and driven out of the community, where she is assaulted and abused by passing rascals. African nations are now thankfully free of colonialism, but such practices as these continue, and cannot be said to produce free individuals.

Of course, groups are quite often oppressed, whether by colonial dictatorships, racist governments, or patriarchal practices. Yet this is undesirable precisely because it restricts the freedom of the individual members of the group and cruelly harms their interests. The answer, therefore, is not to speak of “group rights,” but to speak of human rights. The defenders of multiculturalism seem to be under the impression that they alone are concerned by the oppressions faced by minorities and other groups. They forget how long and how arduously liberals have been fighting against racism and unequal treatment. Their reason for doing so, however, is not that minorities have special rights, but that they have the same rights as everyone else.

No multiculturalist has to remind me of the cruelties faced by immigrant populations, to take only one example. The enemies of immigrants are not restricted to far-right and openly racist groups such as the BNP, but can be found in every level of society. They are represented by those in the United States who advocate an enormous fence across the Mexican border or who spit venom every time they have to “press 2 to speak English” on the telephone. In Europe, meanwhile, anti-immigrant tendencies may be even more widespread. Human Rights Watch has documented that over the past year, one in three Muslim immigrants has experienced discrimination, while one in ten has suffered a racially motivated assault or threat. These are not purely the concerns of multiculturalists.

Some group rights theorists would say, however, that even if universal human rights were achieved, the claims to neutrality and equal treatment of the liberal states which honor them would still be a sham, because immigrants face more challenges than natives. Even if liberals succeeded in their goal of doing away with all racism and discrimination, in other words, we would still not be living in fully equal societies. Most liberal countries, after all, have a single national language in which business is conducted. Those immigrants who do not speak it are at an automatic disadvantage. Multiculturalists also point to cases such as a law in Britain declaring that all construction workers must wear hard hats. This seems like a mild, egalitarian ruling, yet they point out that hard hats restrict the ability of Sikhs to wear turbans. Is this not discrimination, they ask?

There is a certain amount of legitimacy to these points, yet I do not see how they lead one to believe in “group rights” necessarily and to reject the paradigm of one law for all. If immigrants should have equal opportunity, it is not because they constitute a group and all groups must have certain privileges. To believe that people can be so easily defined by their ethnic or religious identity is profoundly illiberal. Rather, individual immigrant people have a human right to equal treatment.

A liberal state has a commitment to neutrality, and if one can see in it signs of unfair treatment, these are not failings of liberalism, but vestiges of old cultural biases. For instance, liberal states may have official government holidays around Christmas but not around Hanukkah. This is fairly mild, as discrimination goes, but there is an argument to be made that it is discrimination nonetheless. Clearly, however, culturalist paradigms get us nowhere. To state that government holidays should not be specific to one religion at the expense of others is to make a claim for “difference-blind” liberalism rather than multiculturalism. Meanwhile, the culturalists insist that we are all hopelessly “culturally-embedded” and that each religious or ethnic background must achieve “recognition.” If they are correct, and culture really has such a legitimate claim to determine policy, then majority Christian countries would be perfectly justified in defining their holidays by their Christian culture: religious minorities be damned. It is precisely because culture has no prior claim over individual rights, and because liberal states are committed to neutrality, that ancient Western traditions and holidays should not determine the policy of modern states.

There is something to be said for multiculturalist arguments that people should not have to adapt their beliefs and practices to the dominant culture if they don’t want to. Sikhs, if they would like to wear turbans, should be free to do so in all circumstances. Just as Dickens regrets in Great Expectations that Pip has to turn against his working-class roots in order to succeed in the world of London business, we should regret any instance in which people feel ashamed of their background. But again, this has nothing to do with “group rights” or the public recognition of “difference.” It has to do with the liberal commitment to transcending difference.

As Brian Barry argues in Culture and Equality, the debate over turbans and hard hats should not revolve around whether or not certain groups have a privilege to their own headgear. It should be between two universal standards which apply fairly and equally to all people: either freedom of religion for all people, including the freedom to refuse to wear a hard hat if one chooses, or universal hard hat requirements. Both, again, are laws which would apply equally to all people, which is the only sort of law which makes sense in a liberal society.

But as I said earlier, we can at least count liberal culturalists as allies on the issues that really matter. They may support some special privileges, but they do not allow group rights to interfere with the basic individual freedoms of members of communities. For Will Kymlicka and similar thinkers, for instance, genital mutilation would not be a group right, because it sacrifices human rights and human dignity to the whims of the community.

The reasons for including this caveat about individual rights is clear enough. It is why Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House or Ghosts, the former depicting the courageous decision to transcend Victorian morality and the “good of the community” and the latter showing the horrible effects of sacrificing one’s autonomy to both. It is why Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter and “My Kinsman, Major Molineux.” These also engage with perennial human conflicts between the individual and the collective.

Individual rights are not Western prejudices; nor can they be thought of as simply one more culture among many. They are a way of transcending culture, including Western culture. Historically, Western traditions have been just as opposed to human rights as any others, and liberal humanitarians still struggle to see rights and equal treatment realized in Western societies. People all over the world are capable of responding to demands for human rights, because such demands appeal to primal moral concerns we all share: concerns about weakness, vulnerability, and unrestrained cruelty.

But what is one to make of those political theorists who, despite these rather obvious points, insist on sacrificing individual rights to the claims of culture—the Parekhs and Tamirs of the world? At least such thinkers admit to the full illiberal implications of their beliefs. This makes them honest, but difficult to argue against, as one cannot prove categorically that they are wrong. But one can ask them whether or not they would truly like to live in a world in which individual rights were not respected. As a woman, would Yael Tamir like to live in a society in which her genitalia might be mutilated? As a human being with a free mind and a free conscience, would Bhikhu Parekh like to have his beliefs regulated by the will of the majority? I believe that neither could answer that they would.

But if we do not perform this test and simply accept their views at face value—even then, are they consistent? Parekh seems to embrace a certain amount of cultural relativism. He claims that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is “admirable” but he regrets its “liberal bias.” He maintains that there are a few universal human values, such as respect for human life and dignity, yet he also maintains that different cultures have very different understandings of what such respect entails. When it comes to the right to human dignity, Parekh maintains that liberals foolishly cling to a notion of individual autonomy as the only way to maintain dignity, whereas in some cultures, to have one’s parents choose one’s marriage partner, say, would be profoundly dignified.

This is one of many occasions on which Parekh fails to understand the implications of liberal freedom. In a liberal society, one is perfectly free to ask one’s parents advice when one is getting married: one could even ask them to choose a suitable match. Yet one is also free to escape from their decisions and marry a person of one’s choosing. The fact is that most people, given the option, would like to make their own decisions in life, which is the real source of the reluctance of traditionalists to grant it to them, but they may still choose not to do so in a liberal society.

As for conceptions of what “respect for life and dignity” entails, no doubt many cultures differ, but their conceptions are not all equally legitimate. US Army general Philip Sheridan notoriously declared that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Sheridan clearly had a normative idea of how to best grant human dignity to Native Americans: by killing them. Such racist views were no doubt “culturally-embedded” in the nineteenth century; would our modern defenders of “difference” declare that they are therefore valid?

Parekh is not a complete moral relativist. He at least justly condemns racism and the imposition of cultural norms on the unwilling. He clearly believes that he is fighting against both by fighting against liberalism. Yet is there any truth to this claim that a rational person could accept? Clearly, if we really should divide every society by culture and recognize no universally valid rights or norms other than those which can be slowly realized by endless dialogue, then Parekh would have to accept that the traditional, culturally-embedded racism of white majorities could very well win out in such a dialogue, and he would have no universal standards of human rights and decency to appeal to. As for the imposition of cultural norms, surely the people who do that most often in today’s world are the representatives of “communities” who try to maintain control over the thought and expression of individual members.

Only liberalism and human rights allow one to freely practice one’s culture and tradition (as well as to abandon those cultures and traditions with which one no longer wants to be associated). The only limit on liberal freedom is that one respect the freedom of others. This is really a very small claim to make; and yet it is amazing how much cruelty and suffering it helps us avoid.

The oppression and discrimination faced by minorities, meanwhile, is very much a concern, but liberalism and a belief in human rights are what make it a concern in the first place. It is because people have equal moral worth that one should care about their mistreatment.

This sort of old-fashioned liberalism is often derided by both right and left, who maintain, with De Maistre, that one can find many different culture-bound communities in the world, but “as for man, I declare I have never in my life met him.” Many feel that the old belief that regardless of religion, ethnicity, or skin-color, people are really not so different from one another at a basic level, is somehow painfully naïve. They maintain that liberal universalism was weighed and found wanting in the twentieth century and ought to be discarded. I, however, would argue that the incredible potential for human compassion and creativity which arises out of universalism has never come close to being fully realized. To abandon it now is to give up on humanity.

The lack of a strong and united democratic and secular movement in Iran has left the way clear for the Islamic regime for the further destruction, plunder, and bloodshed of our country. Although the panic-stricken bullets of Islamic mercenaries would suffocate any voice of protest, people are brave enough to resolutely claim their freedom despite any risk of torture, rape, and execution as “Mohareb” (heretic).

Unfortunately, the worst-ever conditions of our people have not enough stimulated responsible reactions among all democratic and secular activists to form a united movement to free the country from the plague of the Islamic regime.

Sadly, yet the people of Iran must wait; such a liberation movement has long been deemed illusory. It is however expected that this movement should simply be formed without further delay. It should learn from all historical experiences of both our past and all peoples of the world who achieved movements to free their countries. It should realistically use any tactical method and independently accept any international assistance to hasten the fall of the IRI because each day of the IRI parasitic life destroys lives.

A democratic and secular movement’s programme consists of forming a democratically elected new state in Iran, in which all political authorities will be directly elected by the people. Such authorities must be secular and democratic; their political background must be clean with no ties or sympathy for any religious or unelected form of state. Dictatorial regimes will have no place in the future of Iran. All authorities of free Iran must swear an oath to unconditionally respect Human Rights and democracy; they should be competent and independent — our national interests should never be bargained away by whims of any foreign power.

Our society is not a lab for another Islamic or extremist experiment. National leaders should be the fruit of the Iranian people’s struggles for freedom from any kind of dictatorial regime. Our society is strong enough not bow to any ideology, religion of submission, or domination of an elite class.

An Iranian democratic and secular movement now is needed to be nationally present in the scenes of people’s protests. This of course will spontaneously surface in the process of revolution; however, an immediate formation of it will hasten the revolution itself. Such an opposition movement should immediately present its programme which comes in practice after the fall of the IRI. The programme must contain effective solutions to free Iran from the yoke of backwardness and dictatorship.

The programme should explain how to prepare the conditions for the unconditional democracy, social justice, gender equality, question of Islamic hijab, development of national economy, rehabilitation of an Iranian identity, reviving of art and culture, negation of Islam as state religion, elimination of all religious institutions, removal of all religious influence from education, judiciary, calendar, language, and all aspects of social life in a democratic and progressive process.

Any new regime after the IRI is expected to bring all criminals of the IRI, since its inception, and all their collaborators before an international court for crimes against humanity. However, we should not ignore the fact that an essence of such a process is not the individual punishment but the reestablishment of justice and rehabilitation of victims of the IRI. As such, the process should emphasise the following tasks:

No Iranian woman is worth half the value of a man, no Iranian can be punished for political or religious belief. From now on, Iran will never possess dungeons, torture, and political prison. From now on, no Islamic law will be ever permitted to commit stoning, amputation of limb, lashing, or any human humiliation. By condemning the judiciary of a medieval belief system which has been imposed on our country in a very violent and long process, it is time that our generation transmit our lesson to the next generations and those Iranians who need practical proofs to quit the imposed cult of Islam.

As we know, the key powers are traditionally interested in economic issues. The EU still ignores the fact that their barrels of Iranian oil cost many lives extinguished by the criminals of the Islamic regime. We should demand an adequate policy from the EU. For the moment we must forget Russia and China, because of their dictatorial past and present undemocratic states. In fact, these have never learnt an integration of Human Rights and human ethic into their policy. The US, despite the rhetoric of regime change under the Bush administration and the appeasement policy of the Obama administration, can be ultimately satisfied with some reforms within the regime. An Iranian democratic movement should not rely on the agenda of any foreign power that tries to influence their politics toward the illegitimate IRI.

US conflicts with the IRI have nothing to do with the fact that the IRI is trampling on the basic elements of democracy and Human Rights in Iran. US concerns are derived from the fact that the IRI is stirring sectarian conflicts in Iraq, and its nuclear ambitions can be a future danger for Western interests in the region especially if it threatens the existence of Israel.

Neither the US nor our heroes will topple this despised Islamic regime in Iran. People with their raised fists, roars, and red blood need to be organised to crush this regime. Only the organised people will sow seeds of freedom and secularism in a free Iran.

Occasional human rights violations in Iran are not the main concern of the West. Also, these accusations are true of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and many other allies of the US. The US has arranged notorious compromises with Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden’s Islamist movement, Islamists in Pakistan, and corrupt Sheiks in the region. This can be also done in the case of Iran. As a matter of fact, if today the bellicose IRI refuses to enrich uranium for its nuclear programme and does not disturb the US in Iraq, a likely sympathy of the Obama administration for “Green Movement” can be overnight forgotten.

In the ongoing critical conditions, and under pressure of a chain of crises, the ruling IRI can be further divided into many cliques and factions. Secular and democratic opposition should be vigilant by avoiding accepting any variation which keeps the IRI or one of its Islamic factions in power. The least demand of our people is “no” to all models of the IRI.

The fact that a nuclear Iranian regime will have greater bargaining power to use as a lever to intensify its dictatorship must be recognised by all freedom-loving Iranians; therefore an opposition movement should take part in any international campaign against the IRI nuclear ambitions. However, it should not be forgotten that the greatest danger is not the regime’s nuclear programme but the IRI’s parasitic existence itself.

What practically can be used from this atomic conflict is to internationally isolate the regime. Therefore, along with condemning the IRI’s dangerous nuclear programme, we should always put the priority on the question of defending the basic rights of people. The basic rights of our people cannot be guaranteed under this regime or one of its factions led today by “reformists” such as Moussavi and Karrubi.

The nuclear conflict is intentionally propagated by the IRI and its factions to mask the totalitarian character of the whole regime; it is a cover-up to associate its parasitic existence with the alleged “national” right of having a nuclear programme for the “peaceful” needs of the nation.

It is wrong to reduce the whole legitimacy of the IRI to the nuclear conflict; for Iranians the problem is the existence of the IRI itself with or without this conflict. In the nuclear dispute, both the IRI and the West are adding fuel to the flames and making nonessential assertions to attempt a dangerous escalation. This is however not our main problem, one should argue that the IRI is a totalitarian regime with a capacity of thousands of brainwashed jihadi who can blow up any “enemy” of God. So, nuclear technology in the hands of such Islamists means a new weapon for jihadis; only because of this jihadi and anti-human character of this regime, a nuclear arsenal should not fall into the hands of IRI authorities.

There are no military solutions to the nuclear ambitions of the IRI. Economic sanctions cannot solve our real problems with this regime. Not only these are immoral, but also counterproductive and even exacerbate the activities of both Mullahs’ mafia and state repression in Iran.

Nevertheless, more than 40% of the domestic consumption of gasoline is now mainly imported in Iran from India. If this delivery is timely and temporarily stopped, not only will a shortage of Iran’s domestic consummation create a series of uncontrolled popular riots, but it will mainly affect the repressive machine of the regime so that it will be in a short while paralysed and vulnerable. In such a case the heroic people of Iran can do the rest by sending the whole regime into the dustbin of history.

India supplies a great part of the needed gasoline which helps the Mullahs’ regime to survive. If Russia and China, as close accomplices and partners of the IRI, are undemocratic states, India is known as the greatest democracy of the world. We, all freedom-loving Iranians, solemnly expect India to suspend its delivery of gasoline to the IRI.

The IRI must be internationally isolated, all diplomatic, cultural, and sport contacts with it must be suspended. All foreign accounts of IRI officials must be frozen. Their mafia activities in the Persian Gulf and around Iran must be internationally controlled and the IRI Mafiosi must be internationally prosecuted.

International mandates must be issued against IRI officials for their crimes against humanity. So, there are many other sanction regimes that can be imposed on the IRI, but neither military nor economic sanctions can be yet accepted by a majority of Iranians.

The outstanding point is the illegitimacy of the IRI: it is illegitimate because its Supreme Leader is unelected, and its repressive organs permanently violate Human Rights. Therefore, the UN and the Council of Europe must demand resolutions which put the IRI and political Islam on an equal status as fascist, racist, and criminal organisations. Such resolutions are not beyond judicial facts, but legal contributions to elaborating a charter of principles for the totalitarian IRI.

Once an Iranian democratic and secular movement is officially formed and internationally recognised, this movement must try to represent the Iranian people in the UN and any international institution as the only legitimate delegation of that people.

In short, although a common platform is difficult to specify for all opposition groups, at least such a movement must respond to the following four major aspirations of most Iranian people:

• Organising and leading Iranian people’s struggles to sweep away the IRI and all its Islamic relics, institutions, and suppressive organs.
• Forming a temporary government to organise a constitutional assembly for a new constitution. The new constitution is only legal when it is approved by the majority of people in a referendum supervised by the international inspectors.
• Preparing conditions as quickly as possible for a democratically elected parliament and government based on the right that people can elect and dismiss all key authorities.
• Transferring the power to the hands of the new government without monopolising or influencing on the military or political apparatus.

The tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, and the near miss by underwear bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, are being analyzed by the chattering classes as a failure of intelligence. In one sense, that’s right.

The army psychiatrist charged with the murders is seen as a closet terrorist whose deployment orders drove him over some psychological edge. He has a record, we’re told, of being argumentative, self-righteous about his religion, unwilling or unable to locate his religious ideas in any context that would limit their effect, and devoted to the jihadist philosophy of the Yemeni cleric Anwar al Awlaki.

Umar Abdulmutallab on the other hand is a sad instance of a privileged upbringing in which fundamental personal and educational questions went unresolved. It didn’t matter. Islam stepped in where reasonable voices feared to go.

Of course, like covering the aftermath of a hurricane, it’s a bit late for that information. Most reflective people find it difficult enough to listen to news “analysis” even when the story is as simple as the saga of a missing child. The infusion of pure intellectual swill, piety, prejudice and ignorance of a world beyond America from the cable networks makes these stories of pathetic characters who found salvation in violence (or intended violence) hard to digest.

When American media get hold of the story, the only relevant details will be (a) We almost got hit again. (b) Who let that happen? (c) People who don’t care about America and probably want us to pray toward Mecca. That is as low as it gets and as low as it is.

Whatever is being said about the peculiarity of these episodes, Major Hasan and the Underwear Bomber (a horrible enough fate to be seared on your soul for eternity) are not unusual. Their so-called radicalism is not based on attitudes unusual among the majority of Muslims, despite what is being said by vast numbers of religious people who have been appalled at this outbreak but still hold that violence is always an aberration of “religious” values, whatever their source and whatever the doctrine.

Whether people actually believe that most Muslims are “soft,” moderate souls, I have no idea. What true is that many Muslims are genial, intelligent people. Until it comes to religion.

The easy equation between religion and goodness (or good-will) is a relatively modern invention, not the legacy of the Middle Ages or Wars of Religion, not the legacy of Zionism or Islamic Jihad, possibly the outcome of post-enlightenment Christianity as promoted on Victorian greeting cards.

At any rate, it corresponds in the West to the decline of doctrinal and biblical certitude and its replacement by ethical Protestantism, relativism, and liberal religion, a movement for which there is simply no Quranic equivalent. But the judgment that religion is the source of amicability between nations and people, that it is not, at heart, comprised of systems of doctrine that are bloodily competitive, intolerant of one another and willing if necessary to defend their claims violently—that is the historical lesson that Mr Hasan’s and Mr Abdulmutallub’s behavior can help us with.

To treat it in any other way is to pat a certifiably bad dog who has just caused serious damage on the head, give it a biscuit, and say “He’s really a good dog most of the time.” Religion has been a bad dog so often that telling it simply to lie down and do no further harm is to miss the point. The tragedy of the Hasan case is that we seem intent on missing the point yet again.

Since 2000 I have been a university teacher in two predominantly Muslim universities. There is nothing wrong with identifying the staff and student population in that way, even though the word “Muslim” does not appear in the name of either. The students are bright, ambitious, economically but not politically pro-western, intellectually engaged, industrious, and curious–mainly about the way in which their countries are portrayed in western media.

In both places, one in the Middle East, the other not, both faculty and staff have resigned themselves to the belief that while their countries and thus their visa chances are ontologically hopeless, they have arrived at that state through systematic injustices, and incomprehension of cultural differences perpetrated by foreign governments and media. This is not entirely untrue of course, but it is not entirely true either.

When a particularly bloody attack in a string of bloody attacks was launched on a police training camp near Lahore, presumably by Taliban fighters or sympathizers early in 2009, an earnest student appeared at my office door, visibly annoyed rather than upset over the day’s headline (there would be a similar headline the next day) and said with the politeness that is still customary in the former colonial world, “Sir, that is not Islam.” “What is?,” I asked – genuinely curious.

It is a question everyone is asking, but one to which the contradictory answers of adherents do not seem especially problematical. Everyone seems to know: it is what they think it is, or what family tradition or the mosque says it is. It is what a liberal imam says it is and it is what Anwar al Awlaki or the almost consummately vicious cleric (rip?) Baitullah Mehsud says it is. All anyone needs to know is that a definition that does not conform to their own is, basically, wrong.

As with other faiths, Muslims can point to scripture, tradition and enshrined opinion (dogma in the west) as a way of defining the essence of their religion. But increasingly this is not good enough. While supporters of interfaith dialogue go out of their way to say that “all” religions can turn violent–have turned violent under certain conditions—it is simply untrue to say that the world has seen this kind of contest before.

More important, there is some truth to the suggestion that when religious warfare was prominent the world was a more religious place, a less scientific place, and a more intellectually continuous place in terms of what was known, unknown, and feared. It is no longer continuous in the same way: the world Mr Hasan was willing to kill for is, in many ways, a world that has been dead to the west for centuries.

The Crusades were fought for largely secular motives, to shore up the temporal claims of the papacy, and they affected the more-accessible Jews en route to the Holy land as much as (eventually) Muslims. They remain a paradigm for Muslims largely because it is the last time the civilizations clashed on equal terms. When they met again, centuries of dynastic quarrels had impoverished Islam intellectually and vulnerated it through regression, nostalgia and colonial power. The religious wars in Catholic Europe, following close on the early Reformation, were as much about the assertion of political and secular authority and economics as religion.

After physical and then purely intellectual struggle between the seventeenth and nineteenth century, secularism (occasional outbreaks of religiousness in America notwithstanding) won the day. No religious state was created, no religious constitution was framed, and every religion, including Catholicism in Italy, lost prestige and ground.

The growing tide of secularism was unparalleled by anything in Islamic nations prior to the creation of secular Turkey on the ruins of Ottoman empire. To glimpse the world that Mr Hasan and Imam Underwear see threatened and dying—a view dwarfed by the statistic of 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide—requires us to look at a battlefield discontinuous with what most westerners regard as the outcome of historical data, a dischronologous narrative which only one side feels is worth fighting over.

But in fact, the invocation of historical data is insignificant because we are not living in the Middle Ages nor in the aftermath of a religious reformation, but in a world where the ascendancy of secularism is at least as widely acknowledged as the importance (less and less in a doctrinal form) of religion.

If Christians in the west have become either agnostic or minimalist in their belief, if they believe, to save breath, that God is good and loving your neighbor is a generally good idea, other things (like taxes) being equal, they need to know that the same premises from the mouth of a Muslim imply no such minimalism–no such negotiation.

The sense that the west doesn’t “get” Islam is not a neutral proposition that can be left to one side as we discuss global warming, but a situation that needs to be rectified before we can decide who a “neighbor” is. With the exception of a few thousand very non-violent missionaries roaming the jungles of Bolivia to bring souls to Christ, the “west” has no equivalent for the Muslim belief in its own finality.

At least none it is anxious to defend with the blood of young men. Whatever the “west” may mean (surely not the turgid jumble of a concept offered up by the late Edward Said), it isn’t weakness of faith or moral certainty that makes this mythical region—only eight years after 9/11—uneager about revenge or unwilling to engage in endless struggle: it is that almost no American or European soldier regards vengeance as a prize.

No European or American soldier regards any alternative to a justice now so long delayed as to be meaningless worth fighting for. Whatever else may happen in Israel, Christians as “Christians’ will not fight for Jerusalem—or a final definition of God or to avenge a perceived insult to their holy book. Muslims will, and do.
That is why the question “What is Islam?” is a questions that begs has to be answered before we can send the dog back to its crate.

Justice, they say, is the first condition of humanity. That means justice is imperative for human existence and coexistence. Justice is necessary for any society to grow, develop and flourish. Any movement that gives primary consideration to the human being must take the quest for justice- the enthronement of a just society- seriously. Millions of people around the world are living, languishing, suffering and dying under unjust conditions imposed on them by fellow human beings. And this is particularly the case in Africa.

The humanist outlook cannot thrive in a situation of so much injustice and deprivation. Humanism cannot take a firm hold on a society where unjust institutions abound and oppression prevails.

So for humanism to flourish in Africa, humanists must take the quest for justice and human emancipation seriously. In fact humanists must take part, contribute to and advance this important struggle for the realization of human happiness and well being in this world. Part of the reason why Africans are deeply religious, spiritual and supernatural in outlook is because the people have given up hope of achieving justice and happiness in this life and in this world. Humanists must be involved in changing and challenging unjust institutions, customs, and traditions. Humanists must work to dismantle all machineries of oppression, exploitation and dehumanization in Africa.

The humanist movement must lobby the governments or petition them before international bodies so that they would take action against injustice.

Humanists must be involved in marshalling ideas for social change and transformation.

They must champion the cause of addressing and redressing cases and instances of injustice against all persons. Humanists must strive to ensure that justice, equality and human rights are enjoyed by all no matter the age, race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief. To achieve this, humanists must be ready to speak truth to power and be the agents of the change they desire. Because very often, in Africa, power is used to oppress, exploit and dehumanize the people. Power is employed to victimize poor and defenceless citizens. Power is used against vulnerable groups and minorities.

Justice is light and injustice is darkness. Eradicating injustice is an enlightening and illuminating process. So tackling unjust systems is critical to the growth and development of humanism in Africa. Today Africa is a dark continent not because there is something fundamentally wrong or lacking or extraordinary with the regional geography and weather conditions. Africa is a dark continent because of so many acts of injustice that reign supreme in the region. Africa is mired in darkness because of the reign of anomie, the terror of barbarism, the ubiquity of impunity, criminality and savage acts.

Unfortunately, Africans always point accusing fingers on colonialism and imperialism for injustices on the continent. As if there were no unjust acts or systems in Africa before its contact and ‘corruption’ by the outside world. When it comes to analyzing and addressing Africa’s problems and predicament, colonialism is always a cop-out or an alibi. Imperialism is a reason or an excuse Africans always tender to avoid responsibility- accepting or taking responsibility for their mistakes and failures.

Africans always comfortably prefer blaming the West and the whites for their woes and troubles. Surely, injustices predate and post date colonialism in Africa. Unjust acts have been going on in Africa for ages.

Humanism is a philosophy of hope, reformation and rebirth. Humanism is an outlook of liberation, emancipation, intellectual awakening and enlightenment. So humanists cannot afford to look away or turn a blind eye on the suffering and oppression of the people. They must strive to correct and reform systems and institutions responsible for human suffering and misery in this world. Above all humanists must show compassion, empathy, solidarity and goodwill. For these values encapsulate humanism par excellence.

This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.

Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.

The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.

I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.

The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should. The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.

I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners. I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg. Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights. Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.

As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.

I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.

February 7, 2010

Amnesty’s Statement.

I want you to remember two names – Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour.

They were two young men who were executed by the Islamic regime of Iran at dawn this past Thursday, January 28 for the ‘crime’ of ‘enmity against god’.

Yet another two beloved, murdered for protesting medievalism and theocracy…

And whilst this act of barbarity will leave many of us outraged and ‘speechless’(see writer Jim Herrick’s act of solidarity against the executions), we can only do them justice if we keep the pressure on.

The Islamic regime of Iran is on its last legs and will do anything it can to maintain power just a while longer. It is flexing its muscles to intimidate and threaten and we need to flex ours.

It plans to execute at least another 66 people that we know of in the coming weeks.

But we just cannot – no, we will not – let them.

Those on death row, languishing in prisons and who dare to come out onto the streets of Iran every opportunity they can represent the undefeated even after thirty years of Islamic rule. We must come out in full force to stop the executions and support the people of Iran in their struggle to get rid of this regime.

We mustn’t let up until we win. The future is ours.

In solidarity,

Maryam

Maryam Namazie
Coordinator
Iran Solidarity

Notes:

Things you can do:

1. Send a letter of protest to the Islamic regime of Iran over recent and impending executions. For details, click here.

2. Support Iran Solidarity and its demands by signing up to our petition.

3. Sign up to the Manifesto of Liberation of Women in Iran.

4. Join our daily acts of solidarity with the people of Iran. Since Monday July 27, we have organised acts of solidarity EVERY SINGLE DAY. It is easy to join in – just videotape or photograph yourself doing something and send it to us to upload to our blog. You can see other acts here.

5. Join rallies and events in various cities against the executions and the Islamic regime of Iran, including every Saturday. You can find out about such protests on our blog.

6. Set up Iran Solidarity groups in your neighbourhoods, workplaces, universities and cities. So far we have groups in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK. Like the solidarity committees during the anti-apartheid era, these committees can be instrumental but we need many more in every city in the world for that to happen.

For more information or to send in your daily acts of solidarity, contact:
Maryam Namazie
Iran Solidarity
BM Box 2387
London WC1N 3XX, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 7719166731
iransolidaritynow@gmail.com
www.iransolidarity.org.uk

There is a limit to the legitimate interference of political opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

J.S. Mill, On Liberty, Chapter One.

It can be said of only a very few texts that they are touchstones for important discussions across many generations. John Stuart Mill produced such a text in 1859, and friends of freedom would do well to celebrate the sesquicentennial of On Liberty. At a time when challenges to human rights and freedom of expression continue around the world, the message of this relatively short work remains a clarion-call for liberty and the supreme dignity of the individual. Mill himself was insightful and modest enough to realise that the 19th century liberalism he virtually incarnated was but a progressive stepping-stone to a future in which, he hoped, the dignity and liberty of the individual citizen would develop to new heights. For all of its at times long-winded exposition and brevity of justification on certain key points, its style is consistently clear and even moving. Most importantly, its ideas reverberate still.

The background to On Liberty is best understood in the context of Victorian social and intellectual history, as well as Mill’s eccentric upbringing. Victorian Britain was a society in which opinion was sharply divided on domestic topics such as the extension of the franchise beyond the category of propertied men to the entire population (of men and yes, women), the relation between religion and politics, and educational reform. As a philosopher, political editor, and MP in the 1860s, Mill consistently advocated what he took to be the cause of freedom. This entailed, he believed, the substitution of educational qualifications for those of property for the right to vote, the enfranchisement of women, and the provision of a wider range of options for primary and secondary school education; all of this in the cause of a better educated and freer citizenry. Mill saw himself clearly as carrying the torch of European liberalism that had been handed down to him by two thinkers: Wilhelm Humboldt of Prussia and France’s Alexis de Tocqueville. Their commitment to freedom in the face of reactionary autocracy on the Continent was a key inspiration for On Liberty, in addition to his own political struggles and commitments. Humboldt’s belief that liberalism and self-development go hand in hand, as well as de Tocqueville’s wariness of mass conformity resonate throughout the text.

Mill was furthermore a philosophical prodigy, infamously and sternly tutored by his distinguished father, James Mill, and his godfather Jeremy Bentham. The excessive control and manipulation that he details in his celebrated Autobiography caused him a nervous breakdown as a young man, and left him with a profound appreciation of the importance of individual liberty and self-expression. Rather than seeing human beings as something to be perfected by the state, he saw, in true liberal form, the need for the individual to be defended against excessive encroachments of the state. This did not lead him to reject the possibility of progress—on the contrary, he saw that the need for human development is a constant across both historical and cultural lines. As an ideal, he offers at the end of On Liberty the traditional New England wards and town hall assemblies, a kind of communal participatory democracy bound only by the most general of national laws.

Whatever liberal model might triumph, Mill saw the real threat to freedom as the forgetting or denial of the supreme value of the reflective individual over the collective. This he wisely saw as the common feature of all forms of dogmatism, bigotry, and overly perfectionistic views. His commitment to the liberty of the individual was also in keeping with his methodological individualism in social science, according to which group categories such as the state or nation are to be seen purely as the sum of many parts, with no transcendental power. The avoidance of the Procrustean bed of collectivism and autocracy in favour of the encouragement of human development through education, democratic debate and limited state intervention is the key challenge addressed in On Liberty.

In On Liberty, Mill depicted the ideal human life as maximally free in its choices, truthful and tolerant in its attitudes and individualistic, even to the point of eccentricity. So what can we learn from all of this in an era of concerns about democracy and civil liberties, religious tensions around the world and at home, and persistent conformity? A great deal, I would say.

Firstly, let us acknowledge that it is likely that a very high proportion of citizens of democratic countries, like Mill, accept a broadly liberal conception of the individual citizen. By ‘liberal’ I mean a perspective in politics that affirms the rights and dignity of the individual against excessive state encroachments. That we define the role and limits of the state variably is ultimately a debate within liberalism as opposed to the consideration of other options such as totalitarianism or theocracy. In that sense, it is a supreme tribute to the congeniality of On Liberty’s conception of the citizen that it is only among extremist political minorities and radical fundamentalists that one encounters militant opposition to Mill’s sketch of the value of the individual. We are almost all, in a sense, Mill’s children, even though we retain important disagreements on state intervention with reference to issues such as health care, national security and corporate regulation. And although Mill’s celebration of individualism and eccentricity may rankle some, we tend to prefer it to abject conformity, and with good reason.

It is on this last point, the threat of conformity, that Mill strikes a prophetic note. Influenced by Tocqueville’s notion of the ‘tyranny of the majority’, he warns us to beware of the power of majorities over unpopular and dissident minorities, even in advanced democratic societies. He furthermore cautions us astutely that custom is only to be respected after critical scrutiny, and slavish complacency may well be the death-blow of individual liberty, no matter how democratic our institutions. He stresses continually that we cannot afford to be complacent in the face of a natural tendency towards fitting in and doing the done thing, because in so doing we forget the need for an honourable opposition to keep us on our intellectual toes, and to remind us of the values of critical thinking and tolerance. Such complacency will also lead to the stifling of genuinely creative individuals who are the true motor of progressive change—not the state.

Furthermore, mass culture, as he already noted long before celebrity culture, can lead to dreary uniformity, and the loss of the dynamic give and take of genuinely democratic debate and culture. Contemporary critics of the worst inanities of reality TV. can take inspiration from Mill’s claim in Chapter Three that:

The circumstances which surround different classes and individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated….they now read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects….

Mill feared that abject conformity can occur by a natural social process of complacency and cultural adaptation, without an autocracy or a tyrant to impose it. Such a ‘soft despotism’ (the term is Tocqueville’s), he thought, can prove as great a threat to the freedom of the individual as the repressive state. We, who have witnessed the enormous toll of twentieth century totalitarianism would do well to be wary of a blurring of the distinction between democratic society and tyranny. Nonetheless, we must not be complacent about subtle threats to freedom from within even the most open of societies.

When did Mill think that the state can intervene to limit freedom of expression? Only when what has come to be known as the ‘harm principle’ is violated. Your freedom ends where my rights begin, and vice versa. This has come to be seen as a core principle of liberalism, without which the entire edifice of modern democratic society and its attendant individual rights and freedoms must collapse. He was arguably narrow on the precise applications of this view, suggesting that unless a direct incitement to violence along the lines of a lynch mob is involved, it is best to allow opinions, however noxious, to circulate freely. In such cases, individual citizens thus remain free to express their disapproval in the strongest possible terms, but the state ought not to intervene through force of law ‘short of injury to others’. This seems clear enough in his own example of a potential riot outside the home of a member of a disliked group (Corn dealers were his example in Chapter Three), but may not cover adequately injury caused by cases of slander and incitement to group hatred, such as Holocaust denial and the promotion of terrorism.

Furthermore, Mill’s related belief that even countering false opinions is a valuable exercise in logical debate may have its limits in dealing with such extreme cases. Some views are so clearly pernicious and illiberal that at the very least, their unimpeded circulation can be seen as a threat to liberalism itself. In an era when we are confronted with ongoing threats from fanatical extremists and recalcitrant authoritarians, defenders of liberty cannot afford to be too complacent about the truth prevailing in the end, as Mill believed it likely would. In our public and business dealings, we accept wisely the need for standards and laws regulating truth in many areas. These include upholding transparency in bargaining, as well as advertising standards, and laws against slander and fraud. Also, the legitimate persistence of laws in liberal democracies related to sedition and conspiracy are an institutional testament to the real need for a liberalism that can defend itself against both external and internal threats. Balancing this with the equally real need to defend civil liberties at home and abroad will require great resolve and sensitivity. For all of its limitations, On Liberty remains one of the best touchstones for this important philosophical debate.

Eric B. Litwack is a philosopher on the faculty of Queen’s University’s Bader International Study Centre, in East Sussex. His book Wittgenstein and Value: The Quest for Meaning was published earlier this year by Continuum.

On Tuesday January 5, at about 7.00am some police officers and soldiers led by two crime merchants in my community, Edward Uwah and Ethelbert Ugwu stormed my family compound in Mbaise in Imo state in Southern Nigeria. They arrested me and my aging father. We were detained briefly at the local police station in Ahiazu before we were transfered to the zonal police headquarters in Umuahia. The officers threatened to beat us when we asked them to allow us to clean up and change our clothes. One of the soldiers brought out his gun and threatened to shoot my father when he wanted to make phone calls to alert other family members of our arrest. The police held us throughout the day without giving us food and water.

At the zonal police headquarters in Umuahia, a police officer read a petition by Ethelbert Ugwu who alleged that in September 2009 I with my father, three brothers and one Mr Gregory Iwu conspired, murdered and attempted to conceal the murder of one Mr Aloysius Chukwu who died in September last year. According to family sources, Mr Chukwu died in a local hospital after a brief illness. We made statements in response to the allegations and were later released on bail.

Since 2007 I have been working to ensure that Daberechi Anomgam and her family get justice following the rape of the 10 year old girl by Edward Uwah(55), a university teacher, in 2006. Since 2007, both Edward and Ethelbert have brought several police actions and framed allegations against me and my family members; against Daberechi and her family and a few members of the community opposed to their criminal schemes. My father, who is over 77 years old and with a failing health (he is diabetic), has been detained six times at the local and zonal police stations in connection with this case. Two of my brothers have been detained three times. And on one occasion in 2008, one of them was beaten and brutalized by soldiers and mobile police officers brought by Ethelbert Ugwu.

Both Ethelbert and Edward have filed three civil suits against me and my family members including Daberechi’s father at three different courts claiming damages of over 500 million naira(3.3million dollars). They have written petitions calling for my brothers to be sacked from their jobs and expelled from the college. The police officers in Ahiazu and Zone 9 in Umuahia have aided and abetted these atrocious and criminal acts by their irresponsible handling of the case and their readiness to arrest and detain any one as long as they are given some money.

On a particular occasion in 2008, my father was arrested by police officers sent by Edward Uwah as he was leaving the court premises after attending a sitting of one of the civil suits also filed by Edward Uwah. I got the information about 10.00pm the same day. I flew in from Ibadan the following day and on getting to the police station I was also detained. I never knew I was among those accused by Edward Uwa of breaking in and stealing. He alleged that we broken into his house and stole some items, and after that, scattered some juju and charms of the floor! I was released on bail. The petition ended there. Edward never produced any witnesses and the police never charged him for providing them with false information.

As a result of my efforts and those of other humanist and human rights activists and groups in Nigeria and across the world, Edward Uwah is currently standing trial at a local court for indecently assaulting Daberechi. So far, the plot by Ethelbert Ugwu to undermine the prosecution has failed. Last year, he obtained through a backdoor a fiat to prosecute the case against Edward Uwah. When I was informed about this, I got a lawyer to help Daberechi’s family apply for a withdrawal of the fiat. And in November, the Director of Public Prosecution in Imo state cancelled the fiat.

Unfortunately the police have refused to arrest and investigate Ethelbert Ugwu despite several petitions against him at Ahiazu and Zone 9 (Umuahia)police stations. When it comes to this case the police are part of the problem. Because most police officers do not carry out their duties with intergrity. When it comes to police arrest and investigation in Nigeria three things matter most: MONEY! MONEY!! MONEY!!!. In most cases, police officers carry out their investigation to favour whoever ‘mobilises’ them or gives them a bribe. The way you are treated at police stations is determined by how much you pay or are ready to pay the officers whether as a complainant or a suspect. And in my community like in other rural communities in Nigeria, most people are poor and cannot afford to bribe the police. Hence criminal minded individuals are having a field day with police officers and soldiers.

And this nonsense must stop.

Pressure must be brought to bear on police authorities in Nigeria so that they would stop all acts of harassment, intimidation, illegal detention, extortion of money from the members of my family and community including the family members of Daberechi Anomgam. Pressure must be brought on the police authorities so that they can carry out their jobs responsibly and immediately arrest, investigate and prosecute Ethelbert Ugwu, Edward Uwah and their partners in crime including the police officers and soldiers whom they have used over the years to raid my community, assault innocent citizens and obstruct justice.

And I want to state that no amount of intimidation, police action, extortion, harassment, legal suits, trump-up charges, fictitious and malicious allegations, petitions against me and my family members will stop me from fighting for justice for this girl child and for humanity at large.

Leo Igwe, Owerri, Imo State, January 7 2010

The Nigerian author, Ben Okri in his book, A Way of Being Free, said, “There are many ways to die, and not all of them have to do with extinction. A lot of them have to do with living. Living many lies. Living without asking questions. Living in the cave of your own prejudices. Living the life imposed on you, the dreams and codes of your ancestors.” I quite agree with him. The author did not make specific reference to any nation, race or continent. But any time I read this piece, it seems to me as if he is addressing Africans. Because I think Africans are dying in so many ways, in ways that many of them do not know. And some of them who know, do not care. Or they think that the situation is too bad to make a change.

Africans are dying but have not gone into extinction, and may not in the foreseeable future. So Africans are dying while they are living. Sounds like a contradiction? No, not at all. As Ben Okri said, dying in this case has to do with living. Africans are dying because Africans are living many lies. Africans are living without asking questions. Africans are living in the cave of their own prejudices. Africans are living the life imposed on them by others. I would like to explain this further.

Africans are dying because most people in Africa are living false lives. People are afraid of being themselves, of living their own lives, and of asserting their own uniqueness and originality. Many people are living under illusions and deceptions. The real tragedy is that over the years, these lies and illusions have been institutionalized and normalized to the extent that no one dares change them or challenge them. They have become a way of life. Many people are unwilling to tell the truths, face the truths and live the truths about themselves. Since Independence, most countries in Africa have not made significant progress because Africans have been living in the paradise of lies – lies about why they fought for independence and opposed colonial rule; lies about why they want democracy and self-government. African economies have been in tatters because Africans and their leaders have been living many lies about their ability to manage their resources and about whom to hold responsible – erstwhile colonalists or our homegrown dictators and inept politicians – for the mismanagement and underdevelopment in the region.

Africans are dying because most people have refused to ask questions about themselves, about the policies, programs, institutions, and ideologies that guide and govern their lives. Many people in Africa have refrained from critically examining their cultures, religions and traditions even when there is an obvious need for critical evaluation and revision. Instead, people prefer holding onto already made answers and solutions, even when these answers no longer answer their questions. And these solutions no longer solve their problems. Many Africans are afraid of asking questions because they think when they do so, they will die or they will lose the little privillege they enjoy – not knowing that the real death or loss is in not asking questions, in swallowing everything hook, line and sinker. So Africans are dying because in most communities virtue lies not in critical inquiry or exmained life but in a life of dogma, blind faith and conformism.

Africans are dying because, over the years, the people have transformed the continent into a cave of prejudices and misconceptions. And these include prejudices about themselves and others. Prejudices about what they have and want and what others have and want. Prejudices about anybody or anything new or different, any lifestyle new or different from what they know and what they are used to. Africans continue to judge themsevles using the biases and misjudgement of those who do not see anything good or noble in them, or those who are out to exploit them. Africans are dying because their prejudices cannot allow them to think and to reason clearly. Their biases cannot allow them to know their value and understand the worth of what they have and how to relate what they have and what they want with what others have and want. Prejudices cannot allow Africans to harness their talents and fully realize their potentials and promises. Instead the continent continues to waste most of its talents, and fritter away the little resources they have And these are resources they lay claim to as a result of the value placed on them by those who want the resources, not by those who own them.

Africans are dying because most people are not living their own lives. People are living others’ lives, alien lives and fake lives. Africans are living lives imposed on them by their fathers and forefathers. Many people do not strive to realize their own dreams, but those of their ancestors. Hence Africa is mired in the past. People look back to the ancient days with nostagia and to the future with despair. People oppose any initiative that will mark a radical departure from the past. They denounce any dream that is not in line with the dream of our ancestors. Africans are dying because they are living lives imposed on them by prophets, imams, gurus and marabus, pastors, bishops, sheikhs and sangomas; lives sanctioned and sanctified by outdated holy books particularly the Bible and the Koran.

Africans are dying due to lack of foresight, insight and thoughtfulness.

Leo Igwe is is Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Humanist Movement.

New York, NY December 4, 2009—The Center for Inquiry (CFI), an international organization that fights for science and reason, launched an anti-superstition campaign in May 2009 to highlight and combat the abuse of alleged child witches throughout the African continent. Now witch hunter Helen Ukpabio, head of the Liberty Gospel Church in Nigeria and a frequent target of criticism by CFI, has filed a lawsuit in Nigerian federal court against Leo Igwe, CFI’s representative in Nigeria.

A mob of about 150 members from Ukpabio’s Liberty Gospel Church attacked Igwe and others during a “Child Rights and Witchcraft” event in Calabar, Nigeria on July 29, 2009. At the end of the frightening event, Igwe found his eyeglasses smashed and his bag, phone, camera and a copy of his planned speech stolen. Police finally broke the mob up and arrested one person.

The complaint filed by Ukpabio essentially alleges religious discrimination on the part of Igwe, who has been a tireless, vocal critic of Ukpabio’s claim that many of Nigeria’s children and women are witches. “Ukpabio has repeatedly targeted and persecuted the most vulnerable members of society. She is the one who should face justice and answer for her crimes,” said Igwe. “She should be ready to pay damages to the thousands of children who have been tortured, traumatized, abused and abandoned as a result of her misguided ministry.” Igwe said that many homes and households across Nigeria have been damaged by Ukpabio’s witchcraft schemes and other questionable activities.

The suit, scheduled for a hearing on Dec.17, is seeking an injunction preventing Igwe and other humanist groups from holding seminars or workshops aimed at raising consciousness about the dangers associated with the religious belief in witchcraft. The suit aims to erect a legal barrier against rationalist or humanist groups who might criticize, denounce or otherwise interfere with their practice of Christianity and their “deliverance” of people supposedly suffering from possession of an “evil or witchcraft spirit.” The suit also seeks to prevent law enforcement from arresting or detaining any member of the Liberty Gospel Church for performing or engaging in what they say are constitutionally protected religious activities. These activities include the burning of three children, ages 3 through 6, with fire and hot water, as reported by James Ibor of the Basic Rights Counsel in Nigeria on August 24, 2009. The parents believed their children were witches.

Ukpabio is seeking damages of 200 billion Nigerian Naira, more than $1.3 billion, for supposedly unlawful and unconstitutional infringement on her rights to belief in “God, Satan, witchcraft, Heaven and Hell fire” and for the alleged unlawful and unconstitutional detention of two members of her church.

Along with the full support of the Center for Inquiry, Igwe has been offered legal representation from Stepping Stones, a charity registered in the UK dedicated to defending alleged witches, primarily in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

CFI’s anti-superstition campaign is continuing strong. The campaign began May 29 of this year with a groundbreaking seminar titled “Witchcraft and its Impact on Development” in Ghana. Campaign organizers say that they hope to educate the public about the dangers of superstitious beliefs while highlighting the abuse of children and exposing the “false prophets” who spread dangerous misinformation.

“The persecution of alleged child witches underscores the importance of our anti-superstition campaign in Africa,” said Norm R. Allen Jr., executive director of African Americans for Humanism and CFI’s Transnational Programs. “Superstition has dire consequences to individuals and societies, and often contributes greatly to gross human rights abuses. Those who continue to view superstition as benign must think again.”

Allen says that plans are underway to lead marches aimed at combating superstition and to work with governments, NGOs, traditional rulers, and women and childrens’ groups to promote rationality and universal human rights.

Igwe remains optimistic and full of resolve. “I am convinced that at the end of the day, reason, justice and human rights will prevail,” he said.

The Center for Inquiry/Transnational is a nonprofit, educational, advocacy, and scientific-research think tank based in Amherst, New York. The Center for Inquiry’s research and educational projects focus on three broad areas: religion, ethics, and society; paranormal and fringe-science claims; and sound public policy. The Center’s Web site is here.

One compelling reason not to believe the standard-issue God exists is the conspicuous fact that no one knows anything at all about it. That’s a tacit part of the definition of God – a supernatural being that no one knows anything about. The claims that are made about God bear no resemblance to genuine knowledge. This becomes immediately apparent if you try adding details to God’s CV: God is the eternal omnipotent benevolent omniscient creator of the universe, and has blue eyes. You see how it works. Eternal omnipotent benevolent omniscient are all simply ideal characteristics that a God ought to have; blue eyes, on the other hand, are particular, and if you say God has them it suddenly becomes obvious that no one knows that, and by implication that no one knows anything else either.

We don’t know God has blue eyes – we don’t know God has red hair – we don’t know God plays basketball – we don’t know God drinks coffee. We have no clue. But then, how do we “know” God is omnipotent, or eternal? We don’t. It’s just that the monotheist God is supposed to have certain attributes that make it a significant grown-up sophisticated God, better than the frivolous or greedy or quarrelsome gods like Kali or Loki or Athena. (Oddly, this does leave room for one particular: we do “know” that God is male. God is more ideal and abstract and generalized than Aphrodite and Freyja and he’s also not that particular, earthy, blue-eyed, coffee-drinking sex, he’s that other, general, abstract sex: the male.) We don’t know that God is omnipotent, we simply assume that anyone called God has to be omnipotent, because that’s part of the definition, and we know that God is called God, so therefore God must be omnipotent. That’s a fairly shaky kind of knowledge. It also provides hours of entertainment when we ask ourselves if God has the power to make a grapefruit that is too heavy for God to lift.

The knowledge is shaky, yet it’s common to hear people talking as if they do know, and can know, and have no reason to think they don’t know. A lot of people think they know things about “God” which they have no good reason to think they know, and even which seem to be contradicted by everything we see around us. It’s odd that the discrepancies don’t interfere with the knowledge.

People seem to know that God is good, that God cares about everything and is paying close attention to everything, and that God is responsible whenever anything good happens to them or whenever anything bad almost happens to them but doesn’t. Yet they apparently don’t know that God is responsible whenever anything bad happens to them, or whenever anything good almost happens to them but doesn’t. People who survive hurricanes or earthquakes or explosions say God saved them, but they don’t say God killed or mangled all the victims. Olympic athletes say God is good when they win a gold, but they don’t say God is bad when they come in fourth or twentieth, much less when other people do.

That’s the advantage of goddy epistemology, of course: it’s so extraordinarily flexible, so convenient, so personalized. The knowledge is so neatly molded to fit individual wishes. God is good when I win and blameless when I lose, good when I survive the tsunami and out of the equation when other people are swept away and drowned.

This is all very understandable from the point of view of personal fantasy – there’s not much point in having an imaginary friend who is boring and disobliging and always picking fights – but peculiar when considered as a kind of knowledge, which is generally how believers treat it. The winning sprinter doesn’t say “I think God is good,” she says God is good; the survivor doesn’t say “I believe God saved me,” he says “God saved me.” Claims about God are treated as knowledge. Hence the frequent thought – “but you don’t know that … .” If one is rude enough to make the thought public, the standard reply is that God is mysterious, ineffable, beyond our ken, hiding.

And that’s one major reason I don’t believe in the bastard, and would refuse to believe even if I did find God convincing in other ways. I’d refuse on principle; I’d say: “All right then I’ll go to hell,” like Huck Finn.

Because what business would God have hiding? What’s that about? What kind of silly game is that? God is all-powerful and benevolent but at the same time it’s hiding? Please. We wouldn’t give that the time of day in any other context. Nobody would buy the idea of ideal, loving, concerned, involved parents who permanently hide from their children, so why buy it of a loving God?

The obvious answer of course is that believers have to buy it for the inescapable reason that their God is hidden. The fact is that God doesn’t make personal appearances, or even send authenticated messages, so believers have to say something to explain that obtrusive fact. The mysterian peekaboo God is simply the easiest answer to questions like “Why is God never around?”

The answer however has the same flaw that all claims about God have: nobody knows that. Nobody knows God is hiding. Everyone knows God is not there to be found the way a living person is, but nobody knows that that’s because God is a living person who is hiding.

Nobody knows that, and it’s not the most obvious explanation of God’s non-appearance. The most obvious, simple, economical explanation of God’s non-appearance is that there is no God to do the appearing. The “God is hiding” explanation has currency only because people want to believe that there is a God, in spite of the persistent failure to turn up, so they pretend to know that hiding is what God is up to. The wish is father to the thought, which is then transformed into “knowledge.”

It’s a pretty desperate stratagem, though. The fact that we wouldn’t buy it in any other context shows that. If we go to a hotel or a restaurant and everything is dirty and falling apart and covered in broken glass, we want a word with the manager; if we’re told the manager is hiding, we decamp in short order. We don’t forgivingly hang around for the rest of our lives: we leave.

We’re told, in explanation of these puzzles, that we’re merely humans and we simply don’t understand. Very well, but then we don’t understand – we don’t know anything about all this, all we’re doing is guessing, or wishing or hoping. Yet we’re so often told things about God as if they were well-established facts. God is “mysterious” only when sceptics ask difficult questions. The rest of the time believers are cheerily confident of their knowledge. That’s a good deal too convenient.

It’s too convenient, and it produces a very repellent God. It’s odd that the believers aren’t more troubled by this. (Many are, of course. It turns out that even Mother Teresa was. We’ll find out that the Pope has doubts next.) It’s odd that the confident dogmatic believers don’t seem to notice what a teasing, torturing, unpleasant God they have on their hands. A God that is mysterious, yet demands that we believe in it (on pain of eternal torture, in some accounts), is a God that demands incompatible things, which seems like a nasty trick to play on a smaller weaker species.

It all turns on faith. God doesn’t want us to know God exists the way we know the sun exists; God wants us to have “faith.” But why? That’s perverse. It’s commonplace, because it gets rehearsed so often, but it’s perverse. That doesn’t fly in human relations, and it’s not obvious why it should fly in any other relations. A kind friend or sibling or parent or benefactor doesn’t hide from you from before your birth until after your death and still expect you to feel love and trust and gratitude. Why should God?

As a test of faith, comes the pat answer. Well God shouldn’t be testing our faith. If it wants to test something it should be testing our ability to detect frauds and cheats and liars – not our gormless credulity and docility and willingness to be conned. God should know the difference between good qualities and bad ones, and not be encouraging the latter at the expense of the former.

But then (we are told) “faith” would be too easy; in fact, it would be compelled, and that won’t do. Faith is a kind of heroic discipline, like yoga or playing the violin. Faith has to overcome resistance, or it doesn’t count. If God just comes right out and tells us, beyond possibility of doubt, that God exists, that’s an unworthy shortcut, like a sprinter taking steroids. No, we have to earn faith by our own efforts, which means by believing God exists despite all the evidence indicating it doesn’t and the complete lack of evidence indicating it does.

In other words, God wants us to veto all our best reasoning faculties and methods of inquiry, and to believe in God for no real reason. God wants us not to do what we do in all the rest of life when we really do want to find something out – where the food is, when the storm is going to hit, whether the water is safe to drink, what medication to take for our illness – and simply decide God exists, like tossing a coin.

I refuse. I refuse to consider a God “good” that expects us to ignore our own best judgment and reasoning faculties. That’s a deal-breaker. That’s nothing but a nasty trick. This God is supposed to have made us, after all, so it made us with these reasoning faculties, which, when functioning properly, can detect mistakes and obvious lies – so what business would it have expecting us to contradict all that for no good reason? As a test? None. It would have no business doing that.

A God that permanently hides, and gives us no real evidence of its existence – yet considers it a virtue to have faith that it does exist despite the lack of evidence – is a God that’s just plain cheating, and I want nothing to do with it. It has no right to blame us for not believing it exists, given the evidence and our reasoning capacities, so if it did exist and did blame us, it would be a nasty piece of work. Fortunately, I don’t worry about that much, because I don’t think it does exist.

This article appears in 50 Voices of Disbelief, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk, Wiley-Blackwell 2009, and is re-published here by permission.

Had William Hazlitt written his essay “On Persons with One Idea” today, he would surely have found room for the field of postcolonial studies. It is a field with only one idea: namely, that imperialism and racism are such dominant features of modern life, and had such a foundational role in the construction of our present society, that they inform every aspect of our ideas, culture, and history. Postcolonialism is, in theory, anti-hierarchical and anti-oppressive. But because it has only one idea, it can easily become oppressive in practice, and to quite a large extent. To show that this is true within the context of one postcolonial scholar’s book, The Intimate Enemy by Ashis Nandy, is the purpose of this essay.

Ashis Nandy might seem an unlikely candidate for such an accusation. He is a political activist and a major commentator on contemporary affairs, known for his championing of nonviolence and tolerance. One of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals, he has written about communal violence, particularly Hindu-Muslim riots and the emotionally charged landscape of nationalism. He is no friend to the Hindu right, which he has accused of being itself a product of British colonialism. All varieties of chauvinism are subjected to fierce criticism at Nandy’s hands, and he is a member of numerous human rights and civil liberties groups.

These views are decent and humane, and Nandy is no friend to injustice. Yet he is very much a member of the postcolonial movement, and it often leads him to support a blinkered traditionalism for no other reason than that it seems to be anti-Western and anti-modern.

His book, The Intimate Enemy, appeared in 1983, at a time when postcolonialism was flourishing and when its arguments must have appeared fresh and controversial, although they have now gone quite stale. In essence, Nandy is making a case against modernity, and against the entire project of secular liberal rationalism, which he sees as more or less inseparable from colonialism, capitalism, and all the aspects of modernization and development he finds objectionable.

Many of Nandy’s concerns about the modern world are quite understandable: it is what he would put in their place that is less clear. Nandy is mostly concerned with bureaucratization and the diminishing of individuality it entails. He is horrified by modern hierarchies of wealth and privilege, by the inequities of modern societies and the gruesome contrast between wealth and poverty which prevails in contemporary India. Most important of all, he recognizes that modern science, modern weaponry, and modern efficiency have made mass murder all the more easy and warfare all the more deadly. All of these criticisms are certainly valid and ought to be taken into consideration. What is less valid is the accusation that liberalism, secularism, or rationalism are responsible for these problems, and the corollary position that the Enlightenment experiment is bankrupt.

Nandy implicates the entire liberal worldview in aiding and abetting imperialism, and therefore sees fit to reject it. Its talk of equality and justice is a despicable lie intended to cover up its secretly hierarchical, patriarchal dimensions. It is an essentially inegalitarian doctrine masquerading as the very opposite, or so Nandy would have us believe. The liberal worldview privileges reason over tradition and superstition. In this sense, therefore, it puts power in the hands of an educated elite or a scientific, Westernized bureaucracy. It also can be used to justify imperialism as a humanitarian attempt to bring justice, knowledge, and scientific modernity to the backward regions of the world. That liberalism does these things is the crux of the postcolonial argument, and Nandy wholeheartedly embraces it.

In responding to this, we will leave aside the bizarre fact that Nandy is himself an active supporter of global liberalism, at least in some limited sense. Liberalism is the founding ideology behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), after all, which Nandy must theoretically support. He is, indeed, a member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, which is the most well-respected civil rights group in India and has been working for decades to protect democracy, secularism, and human rights, all of which Nandy criticizes stridently in his writings! This contradiction is something Nandy will have to work out for himself. What concerns us here are his arguments.

Nandy has erected a certain number of barriers to any successful refutation of his points: mostly in the form of bizarre evasions. One might like to accuse Nandy of being unfair in his attacks on liberals, of spreading misinformation, but this he admits to at the very beginning! His framework, he claims, explain his “partial, almost cavalier, use of biographical data and the deliberate misuse of some concepts borrowed from psychology…. The aim is to make sense of some of the relevant categories of contemporary knowledge in Indian terms.” (xiii, emphasis added).

Nandy’s own training is as a psychologist, yet here he announces his intention to misuse this training so that Indians might understand his points. It seems difficult to me to imagine anyone not finding this rude and objectionable. Surely the individuals whose biographies are about to be misrepresented have a right to feel angry, but so do all the Indians in the world who would insist that they can tolerate truth and fact, and don’t need to have important concepts in psychology misused for the sake of their understanding. What would Amartya Sen or Romila Thapar say to such a claim?

The above quote may be an instance of surprising honesty on Nandy’s part, but it makes it difficult to engage with his later arguments. One cannot be sure which of them are even accurate or properly documented. It also makes the entire task of criticizing Nandy seem absurd. I live on the other side of the world, after all, and come from a different cultural background than that of Nandy. Does this give me the right to misrepresent his life or his views? Should I rewrite the above to suggest that Nandy does not have reasonable criticisms of modernity but is rather a mindless reactionary? This latter would not be true, but it would make more sense to a Western audience, I have no doubt. On what ground would Nandy object to my doing so?

Another evasion on Nandy’s part appears later on in the preface, when he declares that “a purely professional critique of this book will not do. If you do not like it [I am, I’m afraid, very much in that camp] you will have to fight it the way one fights myths: by building or resurrecting more convincing myths. However, even myths have their biases.” (xiv).

Perhaps I am being dense, but I have a great deal of trouble understanding what Nandy could possibly mean when he says that even myths have biases. If I plan to construct a series of falsifications in order to attack Nandy’s book, which he seems to be suggesting I do, how could such an account be anything but biased? Had Nandy said that even facts can be biased, that would be a remarkable assertion, but to say that it is possible for lies to be biased is almost a tautology.

At any rate, I prefer to attempt a non-mythological critique of Nandy that engages seriously with his arguments, even if he does not regard such a critique as possible. This is because Nandy’s criticism of liberalism is now so widespread in academia and has formed the backbone of postcolonial scholarship. Those of us who would like to see a more liberal, tolerant world, in which people are not subjected to irrational cruelties and injustices, therefore need to be able to respond to it.

First of all, it must be said that some liberals, namely James Mill, but also John Stuart Mill and the other utilitarians, were supportive of imperialism, and that liberal theories of progress lent a certain credence to imperial designs. However, Western imperialism preceded liberalism by a long while, and such liberalism actually provided the first voice of opposition to it. In fact, imperialism is incompatible with liberal, universalist principles, if one truly takes them seriously. Montaigne, a proto-liberal if there ever was one, was driven to a profound hatred of cruelty and injustice by the deeds of the Spanish in America. The Conquistadors were not motivated by the principles of liberal humanitarian intervention, meanwhile, but by God and king. If any ideologies justified imperialism, they were belligerent, proselytizing religion and the chauvinism of monarchs. It was both religious intolerance and absolute monarchy, meanwhile, that the Enlightenment went about debunking, and that liberalism has always opposed.

Liberalism presupposes that all human beings are endowed with reason and conscience: this is on the first page of the UDHR, which Nandy supposedly defends. People may come from different backgrounds and may embrace different identities, yet they all may be approached on a basic level as reasonable creatures capable of treating one another decently and humanely. From this extends all of liberalism, right down to democracy. If one takes this seriously, as I said, imperialism is unthinkable. After all, imperialism is inherently undemocratic and authoritarian, and is based upon the assumption of unalterable differences between cultures which can only be overcome through force: Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is the perfect example of how illiberal anti-universalism plays into the hands of militarists and chauvinists.

Universalism may make power-motivated imperialism illegitimate because it insists on the equal dignity and rights of all people. Yet, what are we to do when other societies commit grave injustices? Montesquieu’s The Persian Letters is a classic of liberalism. It is revolutionary in its criticisms of European societies and traditions, but also in its implicit assertion that both East and West can be criticized from the standpoint of reason and conscience. France may be heavily assaulted in the book, but the narrative’s true personal drama revolves around the Persian Usbek, and his relations with his numerous wives. The brutalities of the Persian system of government and of Islamic gender roles are criticized just as harshly as European societies in the book.

Even this early work of liberalism expresses the essence of the universalist outlook. We have a moral stake in all of the injustices of the world; we are just as implicated in those of other societies as we are in our own, and we must intervene to protect the victims from cruelty and injustice. This intervention must not come from Western ethnocentrism, but from a pan-civilizational awareness of shared humanity.

Certainly authoritarian imperialism and various realpolitick schemes which masquerade as humanitarianism are impositions, and involve regarding members of other societies as less than human. This, in turn, often results in grave human rights abuses (we may regard the massive civilian causalities of the Iraq war as a recent example), which are the very things liberals are attempting to avoid. If one were to truly approach global intervention with humanitarian goals in mind, however, such things could be avoided. The imperialistic tendencies of the Mills and of other 19th century liberals were a distortion of liberal values that could have been avoided: all these writers had to do was look to their liberal anti-imperialist master, Jeremy Bentham!

What is important to realize, however, is that imperialism is not the only evil in the world, even though it is a serious one. The failure to see this rather elementary fact characterizes a great deal of postcolonial scholarship. One must avoid imperialism, but one must not be so desperately fearful of intervening in other countries that one seals off the victims of cruelty within their respective nations and refuses to promise aid.

Nandy criticizes “Western universalism” and suggests replacing it with an “alternative universalism” based on traditional Indic concepts. What he fails to understand is that “Western universalism” is a contradiction in terms, as is “alternative universalism.” Universalism is simply universalism: it cannot be associated with a particular culture. Liberals use whatever traditions and sources are available to defend universalism, whether Western, Indian, or something else entirely. Certainly Amartya Sen, in his defenses of liberalism, refers not only to Western Enlightenment figures, but to the Buddha, various South Asian traditions, deliberative politics in Africa, and so forth. If Nandy were truly committed to universalism, he would make an argument similar to that of Sen. But instead, he attacks all those who have espoused universalist values and openly defends traditional, pre-modern societies. His alternative universalism is really, therefore, only a glorified particularism. It may legitimately attack the evils of modernity, yet it has nothing to say about the horrors of the pre-modern world, the caste system, traditional gender roles, or the superstition and narrow-mindedness of small communities.

But if one embraces this particularism, then why should one attack imperialism? Nandy criticizes egalitarian ideologies, the ideals of democracy and human rights, etc. as mere hierarchies and oppressions in disguise. In this he follows the lead of Foucault and similar postmodern thinkers, who find in liberal institutions little more than disguised bureaucratic power relations. But how does one know that such hierarchies are reprehensible if equality is not a goal? If egalitarian ideologies, democracy, and self-government are not legitimate ideals, why should it be the case, as Nandy maintains, that imperialism is so wrong? Along with the postcolonial theorists, he begins with the unexplained premise that imperialism is the greatest evil in human history, then proceeds to insist that the ideologies which might provide a grounds for attacking it—namely, the equal rights and dignity of all people and the value of self-determination—are themselves imperialistic! If equality, human rights, and democracy are not actually valuable goals, then Nandy should proceed to applaud imperialism, authoritarianism, and the triumph of might over right. Foucault at least was honest enough to pursue these ideas to their horrible conclusion, eventually backing the Ayatollah Khomeini and his reactionary movement. This is the end result of the assumption that equality and democracy can somehow be implicated in inegalitarian, undemocratic abuses.

Within The Intimate Enemy, there are many bizarre interpretations and discredited assertions, just as Nandy promised there would be. To take only one blatant example, here is his brief discussion of the 19th century social reformer Rammohan Roy: “Rammohan had introduced into the culture of India’s expanding middle class… the ideas of organized religion, a sacred text, monotheism, and, above all, a patriarchal godhead. Simultaneously, he had… [suggested] a new definition of masculinity, based on a demystification of womanhood and on the shifting of the locus of magicality from everyday femininity to a transcendent male principle.” (22) It may take one more time than it is worth to decipher that sentence, yet once one does so, one realizes the full extent of Nandy’s misrepresentation.

I know less about Roy than many, I am sure, and I would not doubt that there are legitimate criticisms to level against him. However, he was a decent person who was seeking to abolish the practice of sati, which involved the ritual self-immolation of a woman after her husband died, and to guarantee women some basic inheritance rights. While I’m sure he did not go far enough in his proto-feminism, he did attempt to guarantee a few basic human rights for Indian women. Yet according to Nandy, Roy was imposing a “masculine” worldview on a society which respected the “mystical” side of femininity. What this mystical side is is unclear, but Nandy seems to assume that rationality and critical thinking are distinctly male—I know many a feminist who would beg to differ!—while irrationality, tradition, and “magicality” are all female. Therefore a society in which women are subjected to irrational injustice and cruelty is deemed “feminine” while a post-Roy society in which women have a small degree of power and agency is a male imposition, by Nandy’s account. Would he declare Afghanistan under the Taliban to be a “feminine” society? Certainly femininity was properly “mystified” there, since women were so successfully sealed off from the rest of society!

Nandy is tempted, thanks to the entire spirit of postcolonialism, to attribute all of the world’s evils to imperialism. And because of this, he ends up tacitly condoning all of the world’s injustices which predate imperialism, such as patriarchy, religious intolerance, and the violence of tradition. Given Nandy’s personal views in his public life, he would no doubt be shocked to be accused of defending such things. But he has in fact fallen victim to the postcolonial trap: he has focused so exclusively on one injustice—imperialism—that he has rendered himself inured to all the other injustices in the world which are also crying out for redress.

“It is not the belief in witchcraft that we are concerned about…..we acknowledge people’s right to hold this belief on the condition that this does not lead to child abuse.” Gary Foxcroft

I get the sense that some of us in the humanist and human rights communities try hard to placate religious people amongst us by insinuating that it is okay to believe in witches and witchcraft, so long as no one gets hurt. While this may be considered reasonable to some it does seem to suggest a certain level of patronisation towards people who hold superstitious beliefs, to the effect that they simply cannot be convinced of the folly of their convictions. Our assumption that others are unable to comprehend certain facts should not preclude us from offering opposing opinion about their beliefs. We are doing many such people a disservice when we choose to keep certain information to ourselves, perhaps because we favour a gradual “softly softly” approach towards eradicating the stigmatisation of innocent people in the name of witchcraft. It is really vital to expand the debate beyond the dangers of belief in witchcraft to the dangers of belief in all forms of superstition, however innocuous they may appear. I say this because I sense that many otherwise highly educated people in Nigeria still harbour some belief in supernatural beings and forces, perhaps linked to their religious or cultural suppositions. I once asked a highly knowledgeable friend of mine whether or not he believed in witches and his answer to me was that “there are good spirits in the world helping people, therefore there must be evil spirits aiming to hurt humans”. Notice his use of deductive logic to grant some form of scientific legitimacy to an otherwise empirically baseless assertion. Such a belief system in more ways than one seems to inoculate those better educated ones from the actions of the believers of a much more toxic strain who are often impoverished and less well educated. The complacency of educated believers in superstition towards the actions of believers of this toxic strain will surely not help in the fight to eradicate abusive child witchcraft practices.

I want to take this point to introduce my hypothesis as to why we believe in witches, and I shall group the reasons for belief in witches into two categories: the first group includes those whose belief in witches arise from poverty and lack of the things which give modern life meaning; while the second group are those “enlightened” people who do not necessarily face the same existential challenges as those in the first group but who believe in witches and other superstitions nevertheless because they are based on scriptural teachings and certain cultural norms.

The title of this paper is framed as a question; however my dear friend Leo Igwe had suggested that it should be titled more like a proposition instead, as in “Why we believe in witches”. While there are many well researched examples to explain why certain humans retain belief in witches and other superstitions, it is not my intention to add to that academic debate. I am much more interested in understanding why it is that belief in witches still persists after it has been proven that the world is round not flat; that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way round; that irregular craters caused by colliding meteors and not an image of an old woman with a pestle and mortar dot the surface of the moon; that lightning is caused by excited electric charges in the atmosphere and not by the iron staff of an iron god; that all living things evolved over hundreds of millions of years and not within a period of six days about 6,000 years ago (I’m sure by now you catch my drift). Why is it that in spite of mankind’s ability to decipher the vast array of conundrums that challenge us through time-tested scientific means, very many people still believe in witches and supernatural beings?

As an aside there is something I find very hard to fathom about people who harbour beliefs in witches: if witches are so powerful, why do they seem to bother themselves only with small fry like the downtrodden in Akwa Ibom state and across many other impoverished areas across Nigeria and the developing world? Wouldn’t it be a lot more profitable to attack those who pose a far greater threat than some poor farmer in Eket? What comes to mind immediately is the prospect of harnessing witchcraft to help find Osama Bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world. There is literally a fortune of over $100 million to make! And just in case you think witchcraft only works for evil purposes, why shouldn’t Osama instead seek to use witchcraft to infect the backside of George W. Bush, his sworn enemy, with the bites of a thousand fleas? That surely would sound like the evil act of a most vile person from the point of view of the vast majority of dyed-in-the-wool bible-toting conservative Americans. I really don’t understand the pleasure witches get from causing misery to already miserable souls. But I think I have a hunch as to why this is so.

There was a time in Europe between 700 AD and 1200 AD when it was actually a crime to believe in witches, because according to the bible, Jesus had defeated all evil and so there were no supernatural forces left on earth to bother mankind. But by 1300 AD the belief in witches had begun to flourish and led to the infamous witch hunts that saw hundreds of thousands of people murdered after being accused of witchcraft. It is also instructive that this period in Europe coincided with the great plague, which led to mass deaths on a scale never before seen. Humanity had not fully understood the cause of the Bubonic plague from a scientific point of view, and as is typically the nature of humans in the absence of scientific knowledge, there had to something supernatural to blame for all the deaths and suffering. Witches would have been top of the list in their minds as the logical cause of the plague, and so began the bloodletting, which only ended after over 300 years, around the 18th century, which was also the beginning of the period of Enlightenment, when rationalism and empiricism gained ground as means through which we gain understanding of our world. In summary I’m trying to suggest, without sounding too banal, that belief in witches and other superstitions flourishes during very difficult times, times when humanity seems overwhelmed by perils of the natural world which we live in, and I cannot imagine a time more perilous than the present time in which we find ourselves in Nigeria: very high and worsening levels of infant mortality; endemic pauperism with the vast majority of Nigerians living below the poverty line; some of the highest levels in the world of preventable and curable infectious diseases such as Malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, polio and so on. There are few countries on earth with a more challenging environment than we have in Nigeria. It is in this most challenging environment that many impoverished people turn to morally derelict pastors for hope of a solution to their numerous problems. I have a Rule and Exception precept which I apply to analysing and explaining problems; applying it to the problem at hand, I prefer to accept that it is the rule that most people, when offered a chance to chose between modern, effective science-based healthcare and the village pastor, will chose the former over the later. It is the exception not the rule that people living in a society where the hazards of Hobbesian life are absent still hold on strongly to superstitious beliefs.

So we proceed to flesh out the answer to our question: why do we believe in witches? For the first group, i.e. those who turn to low life village pastors, I hypothesize that they believe in witches because they have no other option. In the absence of a system which guarantees access to decent modern healthcare to all and provides a safety net for those who are indigent, people often turn to supernaturalism for comfort and hope. And if ever the belief in witches and the harm it causes were to be eradicated, the surest means of achieving this would be to solve the underlying reason for its existence. We are baffled that such practices thrive only because few of us know and have taken advantage of an alternative which works more efficiently and effectively without causing pain and suffering to others. Those who still hang on to such beliefs do so simply because they know of no other solution or are unable to access such solutions even if they were aware of their existence. We can have hundreds of conferences and awareness programmes every year, and we may achieve some success, at least in the short run. But the problem will continue to fester so long as people who believe these things continue to face a hazardous existence that is life for many on earth today. And the problem will only become a bigger one as the disparities between the haves and have-nots continue to widen. To eradicate the problem of child witchcraft and other abusive forms of superstitious belief, we must create societies which care for their citizens by providing a meaningful and worthwhile existence.

Superstitious beliefs have a real capacity to spread as suffering and anguish becomes more commonplace. There is every reason to believe that the particular brand of witchcraft/Christian evangelical lunacy ravaging Akwa Ibom and Cross River states originated from the Central African region comprising several countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), a nation ravaged by war and disease for nearly all of its 50 years of independence and a fertile ground for the flourishing of thoughts about evil spirits and witches and other supernatural beings.

Let me in typical fashion digress to bring you another one of my interesting anecdotes. The manager of a very popular market in Abuja once told the story of how incidences of “penis snatching” were becoming a really pressing concern for him and his staff at the market. On a particular day an accused “penis snatcher” was about to be given “jungle justice” by a crowd of concerned market citizens when the market management staff and police intervened. In order to placate the crowd baying for blood, it was agreed that the “hapless” victim would be taken to a local brothel to establish the extent of the loss of use of his member, and if he was determined that he was unable to perform his “normal duties” the suspected penis snatcher would be charged to court (for only God knows what crime!). So off the party went to the brothel where a candidate was found who was willing to contribute her quota towards the advancement of “jungle science” (of course for a fee which was eagerly paid by one of the more lecherous members of the lynch mob who made it all the way to the brothel from the market: even candidates in conventional science tests receive some kind of reward!). Midway through the testing exercise the police called out to our victim and asked whether all was well, to which in the heat of passion he inadvertently muttered in a somewhat blissful tone “it is working but not as good as it was before!” Suffice it to say that the person who made his scientific endowment felt like he had been had; here was a man who barely a few minutes ago had called upon the heavens and the earth to his rescue now caught up in the throes of passion with a prostitute! The police had the decency to wait and let him finish and then someone finally suggested a proper examination at a hospital after which it was established beyond doubt that our victim was suffering from a lifelong case of micropenis, a medical term for a small penis caused by a range of factors including inadequate growth hormones. Our “victim” ended up in court himself!

Now the above story although highly comical has some relevance because it illustrates the power of a simple test to change the perception of once ignorant people. Nobody in that lynch mob up until then had ever made any attempt to establish the veracity of the claim of the supposed victims. The crude but effective test had the effect of making such people sceptical about such claims, so that they were less likely to act on impulse when next they heard a cry for help from a supposed victim of “penis snatching”. The market management now used this crude test time and again until the message got around: if you scream for help about the loss of your private part, rest assured that you will have to undergo some test to verify your claim. This led to a dramatic decline in cases of missing private parts, to the point where the market for several years running has recorded zero incidences. Perhaps those of us fighting this child witchcraft scourge could develop some equally crude test to verify the claims of the diabolical pastors carrying out these nefarious activities. Perhaps if they are exposed and shamed in public it could help to curb their activities and make their prospective victims more sceptical about their claims.

My other main concern, as I stated earlier in the paper, is with the group of believers in witchcraft who are neither impoverished nor illiterate but who hold on to their beliefs because of their scriptural relevance or due to their local customs. If a survey of educated people in Nigeria is taken on this issue I fear that the study will show that the vast majority of educated Nigerians, possible in the region of 90%, hold unto some superstitious belief. And yet these same people are exposed to all the modern conveniences of life: electricity (whenever it’s available of course), mobile phones, cars, the internet, television and so on and so forth. I also noted earlier that holding such beliefs creates a sense of complacency in the minds of educated people and blunts the sense of outrage which you would naturally expect that they would express over the proliferation of the child witchcraft saga. However some individuals will go beyond just giving tacit approval to the activities of the characters in this tragedy but will explicitly support their despicable actions. Below is an excerpt of a comment posted on the Sahara Reporters website in response to a story about the ransacking of the CRARN house in Calabar earlier in the year. I tried for the sake of brevity to edit portions of the comment but almost all of it was too juicy to let go!

Akpan Akpan, whoever you are, you always seem to be very explosive in certain published documents. You are from Akwa Ibom and it is therefore surprising that you are writing ignorantly. Are you saying that there is nothing like witchcraft? Then you are saying the writings of the Bible are lies and every man must be a liar, for God alone to be true, so you are a liar. My wish for you, note ,not my prayers, because since you are obviously in denial, I wonder who you will pray to; my wish, is that you show kindness to a child, who has been given witchcraft by your darling mother, or father, or grandparents, and then you sleep at night and you are whipped in your sleep and if you are strong spirited, you see all the people who did it to you, and when you wake up, that child opens its mouth to confess that you were attacked because you were Christian enough to pray with them the night of the attack, and then starts spilling so much, including mentioning your lovely mother, and so many others you have helped, including telling you of the plans they have made to end your life…Akpan and all you so called human rights activist who are probably neck deep in one cult or society practising wickedness, which I call a different type of witchcraft; that white reporter, in whose country, parents give hard drugs to their children and also belong to one fraternity (sic) or the other….is that a subtle name for their own cult???..will you sit back and let the date come and you are no more there to say it was all a lie? or will you go and find a solution? That is left for you all, like I said, that is my wish for you.

It may sound like fantasy to every reader, but it happened to me and my family. Suffice it is to say (sic), leave the things of the spirit to the “Spirit “, remember the Bible says suffer not a witch to live. Why do you not go and conduct a private investigation on those allegations first, before resorting to castigations? Well if our Lord Jesus Christ was called names, how much less shall servants of God be called? Those “innocent children as you refer to them as are EVIL (emphasis not mine). Why would a parent carry a child for months and then abandon them, or believe what only one pastor has said???, hell no,..its after so many confirmations that stringent measures are usually taken. They are not tortured to confess but through prayers, they start talking by themselves. I am not a pastor or a prophetess, but a woman who has been befallen with these circumstances. That bill that was passed by the Governor of Akwa Ibom portrays the desecrated society we live in without the fear of God. If not why give witchcraft a legal ground to operate?

I can deduce a few things that should immediately be apparent to anyone who cares to observe. First, the writer is educated to at least secondary school level judging by her writing skill and use of language. Second, this individual doesn’t seem to be a highly indigent person, because she at least has access to the Internet. Finally, this person is a Christian who by all indications takes the bible for its literal meaning. So we can say with some level of confidence that she snugly fits into our second category of believers, that is those who are educated and not poor and who base their belief in superstition on scriptural injunction. I can almost imagine some Christians in our midst visibly squirming at the idea that this person represents what they stand for. But let’s try not to dwell too much on that. Instead let us focus on challenging her assertion on the basis of what the bible says.

I will borrow my friend’s system of logic to analysis the issue: “there is a voice coming out of that object, therefore there must be someone or something with supernatural powers (possibly evil) inside that object”.

Those of us who rely on the “infallible” words of a book written over 2000 years ago will agree with me that if we were to somehow transport a cell phone back in time to that period, people alive then would most likely make the above assertion, at which anyone living in our time would very rightly scoff with an amused sense of bewilderment. And so it is that we accept that such people with very limited understanding of the natural world should provide us with guidance on how to live our lives 2000 years later, in the age of paracetamol and cars and newspapers and the Internet. We live in a world where we have developed all of the above stated items not by some magical act known by only a few, but by careful and measured control of the physical and natural forces that exist in our world. If malaria could be blamed on witchcraft 2000 years ago we can safely say today that we know that the natural cause of malaria is the plasmodium parasite and so we don’t need to accept that it is caused by supernatural forces beyond our understanding, nor do we have to rely on any magical prayer possessed only by the “Lord’s appointed” prophet or prophetess to drive out the evil spirit of sickness from our bodies. All we need do is go to the local pharmacy and buy a few pills.

In conclusion, what I am simply trying to say is that the solution to tackling the child witchcraft scourge should be two pronged: first try to get educated people to think more critically about some of their belief systems, and second endeavour to create a better life (with the use of everyday science-based tools available) for the vast majority of Nigerians who are under the spell of the diabolical scam artists or child witchcraft because they have no one or nothing else to turn to.

Mr Okechukwu, a humanist, lives in Abuja. Hean be contacted at ik_okey@yahoo.com.

One Law for All campaign is organising a rally on Saturday 21 November 2009 at 1200pm in London’s Hyde Park. The rally aims to oppose religious laws in Britain and elsewhere, show solidarity with people living under and resisting Sharia, and to defend universal rights and secularism.

Simultaneous acts of solidarity and support for the rally and its aims will take place in countries across the world including Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Kenya, Nigeria, Serbia and Montenegro and Sweden.

Moreover, winners of the campaign’s art competition exposing the discriminatory nature of religious law and promoting freedom and equal rights will be announced at the event.

One Law for All Spokesperson, Maryam Namazie, commented, ‘Sharia law is becoming a key battleground, particularly because it is an extension and representation of the rising threat of Islamism. Sharia matters to people everywhere because it adversely affects the rights, lives and freedoms of countless human beings across the world. Opposing Sharia law is a crucial step in defending universal and equal rights and secularism and showing real solidarity with people living under and resisting it everywhere. November 21 is yet another important day for further strengthening the mass movement needed that can and will put a stop to Sharia once and for all.’

Notes

1. The One Law for All campaign rally marks Universal Children’s Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women:
Date: November 21, 2009
Time: 1200hrs – 1400hrs
Place: North Carriage Drive, in-between Stanhope Place Gate and Albion Gate, Hyde Park (closest underground Marble Arch).

2. Speakers at the rally include: Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain’s Asad Abbas; Poet ‘AK47;’ One Law for All’s Yasmin Atasheen; Musician Fari B; International Humanist and Ethical Union’s Roy Brown; Singer/Songwriter David Fisher; Philosopher AC Grayling; Women Against Fundamentalism’s Rahila Gupta; Journalist Johann Hari; Poet ‘Lilith;’ Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq’s Houzan Mahmoud, Lawyer Cris Mccurley; Lawyer Rony Miah; Campaigner Maryam Namazie; Writer Taslima Nasrin; Southall Black Sisters’ Pragna Patel; British Humanist Association’s Naomi Phillips; European Humanist Federation’s David Pollock; Iranian Secular Society’s Fariborz Pooya; National Secular Society’s Terry Sanderson; Poet Selina aka ‘Jus1Jam;’ Activist Muriel Seltman; Equal Rights Now’s Sohaila Sharifi; Organisation for the Defence of Secularism and Civil Rights in Iraq’s Issam Shukri; Iran Solidarity’s Bahram Soroush; Human Rights Campaigner Peter Tatchell and National Secular Society’s Keith Porteous Wood.

3. Art competition judges are Philosopher AC Grayling; Singer Deeyah; Journalist Johann Hari; and Columnist Polly Toynbee.

4. Responses to Frequently Asked Questions including the affinity between the far right and the Islamists, the issue of secularism, whether Islamic states are a threat to humankind and the need to defend the right to asylum for those who have fled Sharia law can be found here.

5. One Law for All campaign was launched on 10 December 2008 – International Human Rights Day. It has since received the support of over 20,000 groups and individuals.

6. For further comment or information, please contact Maryam Namazie on +44 (0) 7719166731 or onelawforall@gmail.com or visit its website.

After the sacking of its chairman, Prof David Nutt, it seems likely that many of the remaining members of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will resign in sympathy and that nobody of any standing will serve on it unless the government repents. This it is unlikely to do for reasons that, I believe, have more to do with Britain’s relationship with the USA than with more strictly national considerations, never mind pharmacological or scientific ones.

Prof Nutt is one of our most distinguished neuroscientists, and the views for which he was dismissed are founded on good evidence. They are also neither new nor particularly radical and he has been expounding them for several years. I know him professionally rather than socially (we both had walk-on parts in a bit of research led by one of his colleagues [1]) and in 2001, I bumped into him in the House of Commons, where both of us had been invited to give evidence to a Home Office Select Committee[2] that was reviewing the law relating to ‘drug abuse’. (One member was a young and recently elected Conservative MP called David Cameron.) The reason that I insist on the quotation marks is that our main drug of abuse – by a very long way – happens to be alcohol, but it’s the one drug that consistently gets sidelined or entirely ignored in most discussions about ‘drug abuse’, a point that Prof Nutt has also made. It’s also the drug most popular with, and most likely to be visibly abused by, the politicians in both chambers who make our laws. A few years earlier, a couple of MPs actually complained to the Speaker of the House of Commons because I had suggested, in a newspaper article, that some Honourable Members were too drunk, at times, to legislate properly. That was before the late Alan Clark’s now celebrated admission that after a bottle or three of decent claret, he had once been too intoxicated even to read his ministerial brief properly. It might even be helpful if we could stop talking about ‘drugs’ and use the word ‘intoxicants’ instead. It is much more helpful for telling us what these substances do, why many people take them and why they can cause problems.[3]

Prof Nutt argued even then that the dangers of illicit drugs have often been overstated and sensationalised. He did not say (though he may possibly believe) that Prohibition is ineffective and worse than useless but I said exactly that, among other things of a more technical nature. I also pointed out that in Victorian Britain, many people used and abused opium and cocaine and yet despite their legality and ready availability, the British Empire did not grind to a halt. Rather to my surprise, the committee summarised this opinion in their final report and did so in what seemed to me a rather balanced and sensible way. They said that they did not agree with my views but that if the situation didn’t change within a few years, they deserved to be looked at again. As everyone – including the government – knows, the situation has not changed significantly. Since the 1960s, sizeable numbers of adolescents in most western countries have tried one or more illicit drugs and still do. A much smaller but far from negligible proportion of those adolescents go on to use them repeatedly in ways that cause problems for them and for society. Many more, it needs to be said, use alcohol in damaging ways. Happily, many – perhaps most – of them grow out of it, usually without any professional or other help. It is interesting and surely relevant that the drug whose use has declined most in Britain since the 1960s is tobacco, despite the fact that it remains legal and the lack of much in the way of anti-smoking campaigns until relatively recently.

With all intoxicants, taking large doses repeatedly, using them in concentrated form, or injecting them, can increase the likelihood of problems. The invention of distilling around 900AD (ironically, by Islamic scientists) led to the production of brandy, whisky and other eaux de vie, which were much stronger and more toxic than beer or wine. Similarly, pure morphine and heroin can cause more problems than crude opium or its liquid version, laudanum, though they are still far less damaging to the body than alcohol. Pure heroin, even when regularly injected, does not damage the liver or other vital organs, though injecting can damage veins and adjacent tissues. And of course, the excessive use of any intoxicant (other than coffee and tobacco, which are in a different league when it comes to effects on behaviour) can damage your reputation. All these relatively new effects of the over-use of intoxicants are essentially the consequences of technical progress, like car accidents compared with horse-drawn transport. We should remember that the amphetamine-like drug cocaine – the active ingredient of coca leaves – has been used for thousands of years by the precursors and descendents of the super-efficient Incas with relatively little obvious harm and some apparent benefit.

Prohibition of alcohol was an obvious failure in the USA. Any modest and transient falls in alcohol-related conditions were soon reversed or greatly outweighed by the growth of organised crime, of political and judicial corruption, and of widespread and often lethal poisoning from the adulteration of illicit alcoholic drinks. And all this even though an individual ‘drug dealer’ could hardly carry more than a bottle or two of spirits at a time. To prohibit the trade in illicit intoxicants that are so much more potent, gram for gram, than alcohol is even more difficult. The amount of crude opium (containing 10-20% morphine) obtainable from even two or three heads of the opium poppy would probably supply the needs of an average opium addict for a day or two. Does anyone think that the opium fields of Afghanistan are going to be defoliated any time soon?

Apart from the diminishing number of lawmakers and public figures who still support it, Prohibition has spawned whole industries and organisations for whom decriminalisation represents a major threat to their influence or existence. They include large chunks of the prison system, the police, and the vast drug-testing outfits that have sprung up in some countries. The whole methadone maintenance system would become almost entirely superfluous if opiate addicts were able to maintain themselves – and thus avoid incapacitating withdrawal symptoms – by buying opium (or its longer-acting pharmacological analogues, such as methadone or buprenorphine) at a pharmacy or some other dedicated supplier, as they were able to in Victorian times and as alcohol addicts still do.

Prohibition has also created a highly productive hypocrisy industry, of which the suspension of the former England team captain Ian Botham from first-class cricket for his admission, a decade or two ago, that he had smoked cannabis, was only one of many splendid examples. Several people pointed out at the time that he was suspended by a board that included at least two members who had been convicted of drunken driving – a type of behaviour considerably more dangerous to the health of the nation than the smoking of marijuana. While this lunatic dichotomy continues to dominate official thinking, it is useless to expect any improvement. Any country that honours and enriches the pushers and manufacturers of alcohol and tobacco while giving heavy prison sentences to the manufacturers and pushers (and consumers) of other intoxicants, surely deserves all the problems it gets.

Unsurprisingly for a long-established super-power, what America wants, America quite often gets, and even when what America gets is proving a disaster, it doesn’t give up easily. Consequently, those of us who question Prohibition in the 21st century, like those who questioned the existence of God in the 17th century, know what we are up against and do not expect rapid changes in public and institutional behaviour. The USA (as well as the force of legislative habit) is one of the main obstacles to sensible discussion. Another is the fact that Prohibition is mandated by various international treaties that are much more difficult to dismantle than the legislation enacted by individual countries. Nevertheless, an increasing number of solid, serious public figures and officials are now saying things that are much more challenging, in this respect, than anything that Prof. Nutt has so far said in public. They include senior judges and policemen, neither group famous for their bleeding hearts or radical politics. I believe that those of us who wish to see Prohibition put into the dustbin of history have a duty to spell out our practical proposals for a post-Prohibition era and many of us have done so. (The main British organisation in this field is ‘Transform’ and their website is a valuable source of information.) We should not, however, be too inhibited by the claim that repeal would be an experiment and that it might go terribly wrong. Prohibition itself was a massive experiment (even if it was described at the time as a ‘noble’ one) and almost every one of the predictions made by its promoters has been disproved. In contrast, many of the predictions voiced by its opponents have been confirmed by history.

I have spelled out my own slightly heterodox proposals in some detail[3] but the first point to make is that ending Prohibition does not mean ending controls. On the contrary, it means, at the very least, that control could pass from the gangsters, drug-barons and other ‘hard men’ to the community and its representatives. The legal regulation of production and supply and controlled availability at prices that do not make acquisitive crime almost inevitable should return us to something like the situation that existed in the late 19th and early 20th century. It would probably not have any immediate effect on the numbers of people using and abusing the various illicit intoxicants but it would remove a very important incentive for such people to steal or worse to pay for them. Appropriately taxed, the sale of these decriminalised intoxicants would, as with alcohol and tobacco, add significantly to government revenues. The realisation in the US, in the early years of the post-1929 depression, that Prohibition was depriving the government of very large amounts of tax revenue, and that its more prosperous citizens were paying much higher income taxes in consequence, was a powerful reason for its repeal a few years later. The reduction in prosecutions and incarceration would also save significant amounts of singularly unproductive expenditure. There is even an argument for taking the manufacture of these intoxicants out of the normal capitalist framework and entrusting it, at least partly, to a nationalised industry. This has happened with alcohol in some countries, including Britain, which set up a government brewery to supply the comparatively well-paid munitions workers of Carlisle during the First World War. (It survived until the 1970s.)

In some ways, the excessive use of intoxicants by a smallish minority of people is not so much a drug problem as a youth problem. Most of the hard-core group of problem users started using powerful intoxicants when they were still of school age, were legally obliged to attend school and, most importantly, were not regarded as meriting full adult rights and freedoms. That is why I differ from many of the people who, like me, argue for decriminalisation but who also argue against the idea of increased or random drug testing. It seems to me that by not testing school pupils up to the age of 16 (or whenever education stops becoming compulsory) we ignore a very valuable opportunity to influence the age at which intoxicant use starts. At the very minimum, a few controlled studies seem indicated but my eminently testable hypothesis is that if 15 or 16 year olds knew that their choice and use of intoxicants of all kinds would be measured and made known both to the school and to their parents as routinely as their height, weight, eyesight and school grades usually are (or used to be) it might – might – deter many of them from starting to use them until they could do so without making the fact semi-public. Especially if there were some sanctions against persistent non-compliers, such as having to attend somewhere for work, instruction or merely for detention on Saturday and/or Sunday afternoons.

Testing – both random and focused on pupils who appeared to be intoxicated – might greatly improve the attendance and performance of many pupils who at present come to school in an acutely or chronically intoxicated state and thus leave school considerably less literate, numerate and socialised than they might be. They are thus immediately at a strong disadvantage in the market for satisfying jobs, not to mention satisfying relationships or further education, when they leave school. To maximise this benefit, of course, we need to take very seriously the massive problem of truancy, but truancy is even easier to detect than the use of intoxicants, and the resources freed up from ending the generalised war on drugs could profitably be redeployed in a much smaller, simpler, more focused and probably more winnable war against under-age drug use – of all kinds – and the truancy that is often associated with it, both as cause and effect. Too many of the relatively small but disproportionately troublesome core group were already heavy users at an age when they could have been identified and, in at least some cases, possibly diverted from lives that too often turn out to be truly nasty, brutish and short.

And if, as we are regularly told by Prohibitionists, the War on Drugs is against such a serious threat to civilisation that it requires and justifies the major erosion of some basic civil rights, then let us at least try focusing this erosion on a part of the populace – children up to the age of 16 or so – who are universally agreed not to merit the same range of civil rights that adults take for granted in Western societies. In this respect, incidentally, scientific and technical progress has made life easier for the monitors and more difficult – but also more dignified – for those who would rather not be monitored. For urine tests, the collection of the specimen needs to be directly observed if cheating is to be prevented and discouraged. This is undignified at best and raises obvious additional problems when the private parts of young, sexually aware and sometimes very manipulative pupils have to be observed by adults. Fortunately, while urine testing still has an important role, testing of saliva, breath, sweat, hair and blood from a tiny finger-prick are alternatives that not only minimise indignity but also increase the range of potential intoxicants that can be detected.

Naturally, these testing programmes should cover alcohol and nicotine, for if we do not take cigarette smoking seriously, we are in effect saying that we do not much mind if a pupil of 10 or 13 gets addicted to a habit that is more likely than any other choice of intoxicant to damage his health and shorten his life. Hair testing, in particular, has a unique ability to detect intoxicants that have been used not just in the last few days but in the last few weeks or months, even if only occasionally. When people know that they are very likely to be detected and held to account for actions that are widely deemed unacceptable, the incidence of the actions in question usually falls, often sharply. It should be much easier to deter and reduce the incidence of under-age intoxicant use than of under-age sex. But, as I say, that is a testable hypothesis and as we approach the centenary of Prohibition, it should take very much less than a hundred years to complete this particular experiment.

Meanwhile, just as good secularists should not accept lessons on the sanctity of life from the leaders of religions with a bloodstained history, so British governments should quietly but firmly distance themselves from an America that apparently sees no inconsistency between waging a brutal war on ‘drugs’ and trying to compensate for falling tobacco and cigarette sales at home by promoting tobacco addiction in third-world countries. The USA has a long history of bullying and blackmailing countries that challenge the principle of Prohibition, or even propose small modifications that the USA doesn’t like, such as providing injecting rooms or heroin maintenance for refractory addicts. Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US (so special that, as they say, most Americans don’t know about it) may be an important reason for the Home Secretary’s defenestration of Prof Nutt but must we really, in this instance, always keep a hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse? Surely it is time to look at some of those Victorian Values again.

REFERENCES

[1] Daglish MRC, Weinstein A, Malizia AL, Wilson S, Melichar JK, Britten S, Brewer C, Lingford-Hughes A, Myles JS & Nutt DJ. Regional cerebral blood flow changes elicited by craving memories in abstinent opiate dependent individuals. American Journal of Psychiatry 2001;158:1680-6

[2] Report of the Select Committee on the Home Office, Cmd. 295. 2002.

[3] Brewer C. Social and economic benefits of ending the ‘War On Drugs’. In: (Ed; M Motlagh) Health Capital and Sustainable Socioeconomic Development. Taylor & Francis. 2008.