Category: Articles

Many hundreds of migrant women who have suffered domestic violence and were facing removal from the UK, have benefited from the advice and support provided by SBS. SBS have over the years helped numerous women facing removal from the UK after leaving their violent partners, set up anti-deportation campaigns, all of them successful.

Demonstrate 26th February 2008, 6:00pm to 7:00pm, Ealing Town Hall, Uxbridge Road, Ealing W5 2BY

Southall Black Sisters under threat of closure

We are writing to you to request support for our organisation. We are currently facing threat of closure as a result of our local authority’s (Ealing) decision to withdraw our funding as of April 2008.

Our campaigns in such critical areas of work as forced marriage, honour killings, suicides and self harm, religious fundamentalism and immigration difficulties, especially the ‘no recourse to public funds’ issue, will have to be drastically cut back.

7:00pm onwards we need to pack out public gallery in the Liz Cantell Room (Ealing Town Hall) on the Ground Floor to support Southall Black Sisters.

Bus: 65, 83, 207, 297, 607, 112, E1, E2, 37, E8, E9, E10, N23, N2. British Rail & Underground – Ealing Broadway. Other transport: nearest major roads, A406, M4, M40, M25. Parking at rear after 5pm Mon-Fri. A Small charge applies between 8am and 6pm at weekends. Large multi-storey car parks within a five-minute walk at Springbridge Road and Ealing Broadway Centre.

What you can do to help:

Email: Jason Stacey, Leader of Ealing Council.

Please let SBS know of any emails sent: southallblacksisters@btconnect.com

Please contact us if you are intending to come, as we need an idea of numbers.

You can call us on: Southall Black Sisters on 020 8 571 9595

Email: southallblacksisters@btconnect.com

What characteristic do neo-conservative Norman Podhoretz, hard left-wing political magazine The Nation, conservative-without-qualifiers The National Review and liberal commentator Eric Alterman all share? Despite their bald divergences in political ideologies and opinions, they are, without exception, hedgehogs, as identified by Isaiah Berlin in his 1953 essay on Tolstoy, “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” Berlin saw in the words of the Greek poet Archilochus—“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”—the two essential perspectives from which thinkers interpret the world. Hedgehogs are those that “relate everything to a single central vision,” while foxes are wary of grand truths and embrace a diffusive, pluralistic outlook. To put it another way, Hedgehogs think centripetally around a central organizing principle and foxes centrifugally, recognizing that some values can both be moral and contradict each other.

Of course any abstract dichotomy risks sacrificing accuracy for theoretical neatness. As Robert Benchley remarked, there are two groups of people in the world: those that divide the world into two groups and those who do not. The question then is whether a categorization can reveal aspects of our world that previously were hidden or merely adds an artificial and unnecessary interpretative layer. Spectacles improperly used distort and blur, but when accurately prescribed they bring surroundings into sharper and clearer focus.

It is true, for example, that one can better understand American writers by peering through Philip Rahv’s classification of Palefaces (e.g. Washington Irving, Henry James) or Redskins (e.g. Mark Twain, Walt Whitman), just as one can more readily grasp an artist’s creative personality by knowing Friedrich Schiller’s binary division between the “naïve” and “sentimental” artist. One can even distinguish between the fine shades of idiocy through Vladimir Jabotinsky’s bifurcation of the winter and summer fool: The former is one so bundled up with clothing that only after time does this characteristic become apparent (aka the cable-news pundit), while the latter parades around in beachwear, all too happy to flaunt this quality to any passerby (Paris Hilton comes to mind). Berlin’s formulation also has an elegance and richness that illuminates rather than darkens. Dante, Plato, Hegel, and Nietzsche all bear the monistic outlook of the Hedgehog, while the ambiguity of the Fox is obvious in Goethe, Shakespeare, Balzac and Aristotle.

The Fox/Hedgehog division is especially helpful in framing the current political discourse in the United States, which, despite its heated rhetoric, shows remarkably little biodiversity in Berlin’s terms. Hedgehogs, to mix metaphors, rule the roost. Opinions have narrowed to the point where knowing the stance of a periodical or commentator is to know their conclusion, almost eliminating the bother of reading what once was quaintly referred to as “the argument.” If one is anti-administration and anti-war, or for that matter the opposite, then ipso facto his or her claims, facts, and conclusions flow directly from this starting position. In many ways, the hedgehog’s “organizing principle” now performs a role similar to the “prime mover” in Aristotle’s cosmological argument—every position is causally linked back to this original source. If one supports principle A, then when discussing subject B, inexorably he or she will arrive at conclusion C.

There is no admission of the fox’s view that a principle might not apply in all cases or that values we hold dear can, at times, contradict each other yet still remain equally valid. To use one of Berlin’s examples, liberal democracies subscribe to both equality and freedom. Yet in reality there is a necessary trade-off between the two, with either’s full realization excluding the other. The key point of divergence between the two species is that a fox embraces the world’s wonderful complexity on its own terms and recognizes good ends can conflict with each other. However, the fox is not a relativist—a rough hierarchy of values is obtainable so that a liberal democracy is not simply another political system, but is clearly superior to a totalitarian regime. The former’s ability, imperfect though it may be, to allow its citizen the freedom to choose their own path and route to happiness absolutely trounces the latter’s efforts to dictate the same effect, regardless of any noble or utopian pretensions.

To translate into a contemporary example, if one emphatically criticized the current administration’s handling of the Iraq War, a fox would still acknowledge the prospect that the administration might have acted correctly in handling a different international or domestic issue (even possibly some aspects of the War) without an a priori dismissal. Whether one counters that a situation has not arisen to test this proposition is immaterial; what is important is that such an outcome is at least a conceivable possibility. How many American commentators, periodicals, or newspapers today would subscribe to such an outlook?

The current dominance of hedgehogs, however, is particularly surprising considering that the rise of the Internet, along with the “democratization” of the media that it ushered in, seemingly would have favored the plurality of the fox. Back when the word blog still appeared in quotation marks (i.e. the 1990s), there was a measured optimism that the Internet’s ability to enable individuals to easily access, share, and publish information would reinvigorate civil society. The halcyon days of the Greek forum where all could speak and all could participate had ostensibly returned on a global scale—Agora 2.0 if you will. However, the cracks in this ideal were already apparent well before the tech bubble went belly-up in 2000.

The Internet did level the playing field and introduce more opinions and news sources, itself an impressive accomplishment, but it also allowed us to easily filter those same sources. One can now quite happily subsist on a diet of Power Line, Frontpage Magazine and the Wall Street Journal Online, or, if you prefer, Daily Kos, Salon and The New York Times Online. Both approaches often refer to the same events and discuss the same issues, but each interprets them differently—and the twain shall never meet. The Internet, rather than producing a flowering of civic culture, let a hundred little Pravdas bloom, with each reinforcing its own hedgehog-like view. We have lost the sentiment that archetypical fox George Orwell expressed when he said that some things remain true, even if Lord Halifax and the Daily Telegraph say they are true.

In a recent issue of The New Republic, Jonathan Chait identified a sliver of this phenomenon by recognizing how the ideology of the liberal “Netroots” mirrors that of the conservative movement. He argued that in the Netroots, a “measure of an idea is its rhetorical effectiveness, not its truth.” But this sentiment—the core of the hedgehog’s view—is not confined to these two groups alone. It would be more accurate to see the Internet as reinforcing and aggregating a trend that already infused our entire political discourse and has become increasingly bitter as we approach the fifth anniversary of the American intervention in Iraq.

In time of war, however, this state of affairs is to some degree understandable. Since the stakes cannot be higher, a polarizing, black-and-white attitude is not only predictable, but arguably reasonable. With lives on the line, who wants to hear from foxes who pepper their positions with too many qualifiers, constantly positing “however,” “on the other hand,” or even “while there is some merit in my opponent’s argument.”

But understanding why this occurred leaves unanswered the key question: So what? What if hedgehogs have squeezed out foxes? Before we can attempt a reply, it is important to emphasize that there is seemingly little intrinsic superiority to being either a fox or a hedgehog. They are simply empty frameworks from which to view the world, with the deciding factor being the content that we pour into them (which is why comparing President Bush to Osama Bin Laden, even if both are avowed hedgehogs, is a particularly odious example of intellectual laziness). Therefore, if the hedgehogs currently packing our political discourse are all committed to liberal democratic principles (admittedly a generous assumption), then why shouldn’t foxes go the way of the dodo?

Well for one thing, academic research favors the fox. Philip Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment, for example, utilizes Berlin’s terms to categorize political pundits and shows that foxes are significantly more accurate in their predictions than hedgehogs. Hedgehogs’ ideological fervor predisposes them towards dramatic “boom or doom” scenarios, which simply materialize much less frequently than the measured, nuanced developments envisioned by foxes. From an empirical standpoint, foxes cleave more closely to, and thus sketch a more truthful picture of, our messy reality.

The Iraq War itself is an excellent case in point of how hedgehog-like our discussions have become and why this clouds our understanding of what is actually happening. The need of many commentators to justify their “organizing principle” of either supporting or opposing the US invasion in 2003 has led to a peculiar, one-eyed approach. One good example would be the contradictory interpretations given to the situation of Iraqi refugees in mid 2006, before it was clear that there was a wholesale exodus from the country. Amir Taheri, arguing for the achievements and accomplishments of the American intervention in the June 2006 issue of Commentary, pointed to a general return of refugees. He noted, “Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2 million mark.” However, when we examine a hedgehog from the opposing camp we receive a contrary picture—Tom Hayden on The Nation’s Website in August 2006 points to a large exodus of Iraqis as a sign of the abject failure of American efforts. He states, “At least 4 million Iraqis…have become refugees since 2003, with 3 million sheltered in Syria, 1 million in Jordan and many thousands more living in various places from the United Arab Emirates to Europe.”

While I am suspicious of the figures cited by both (the UNHCR’s April 2007 report stated that 300,000 refugees returned between 2003 and 2005 and that two million have left the country with another two million internally displaced) the issue is more than a vapid “the truth lies somewhere in the middle.” A hedgehog’s need to have the evidence fit their conclusions, rather than the reverse, means they are unable to acknowledge what Max Weber labels the “inconvenient facts.” As a result, a skewed picture is produced from which we are likely to draw even more flawed recommendations. A more nuanced depiction of the seemingly contradictory positions above could have described how immediately following the toppling of Saddam there was a sizable return of Shiites and dissidents, but with the deteriorating security situation there was a larger exodus of mainly Sunnis and members of the middle class. From this basis, we can more accurately frame the consequences of toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime and add content to the sometimes simplistic notions of “success” and “failure.” In other words, foxes are necessary because they offer something more than a thin realism; they embody a willingness to subject all arguments to a vigorous and often ironical skepticism, accepting that it might lead to unexpected—or even unwanted—conclusions.

But stopping at this level of analysis misses a larger point—both foxes and hedgehogs are indispensable. Foxes stress prudence, but left unchecked they risk becoming entangled in a morass of details and qualifiers, unable to see approaching icebergs that will upend the entire system. The hedgehog’s retort to the fox is that of Pindar, “in ways of single-heartedness may I walk through life, not holding up a glory fair-seeming but false.” Or to use 9/11 parlance, a fox can suffer from a “failure of imagination.” Revolutions, innovations, and transformations, while more infrequent, reorder our world. It is the single-minded focus of the hedgehog that recognizes the approach of these discontinuous changes, as well as provides the determination and sustained effort necessary to actualize them. John Stuart Mill, an unmistakable fox, described the power of the one-eyed observer in his essay “Bentham,” a tribute to his hedgehog utilitarian mentor Jeremy Bentham. He noted, “If they saw more, they probably would not see so keenly, nor so eagerly pursue one course of inquiry. Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.”

Today, however, we find ourselves in the opposite situation. The triumph of the hedgehogs has meant that American political discourse, whatever the partisan stripes, is concerned primarily with ideological purity and vanquishing opponents. Without the fox’s focus on dull reality the risk is more than rushing over looming precipices, but once over the edge continuing to blindly pump our legs, heedless to the fact that we long ago left the ground behind. Yet there is a funny thing about reality; no matter what our beliefs it will eventually make itself heard. Like a dentist’s appointment that is continually pushed off to avoid a filling and ends up requiring a root canal, the longer the wait the more severe and painful the corrective action. For everyone’s well-being, not least of all the hedgehogs, let us hope that the fox shares more in common with the phoenix than the dodo.

Perhaps Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury thought his statement about Sharia Law would be received enthusiastically as well-intended and an effort to reduce racial tensions in the society. However, his proposal got him into trouble. He was attacked from right and left. Those who saw their “white Christian culture” under threat asked for his resignation. Women rights activists, secularists and such like attacked him for the negative effects of Sharia Law on human rights, particularly the disastrous effects of such a practice on women in so-called Muslim communities. In response to harsh criticism he tried to qualify his proposal by stating that he did not mean the whole Sharia Law, but only in family matters. He has just missed the point.

The status and rights of women in Islam is the Achilles’ heel of this religion, and I must add, ideology. Misogynism is the trade mark of Islam. The veil is its banner and gender apartheid its main pillar. Moreover, today a very active reactionary political movement has based its ideology on Islam, namely political Islam. Anywhere they gain power they first and foremost victimize women, strip them of all their rights, force them under the veil and segregate them in society. The same movement that laments lack of tolerance for Sharia law in western societies is terrorizing the population in societies under its rule to obey Sharia Law, observe the veil and gender apartheid and punishes the defiant by flogging, cutting their limbs and execution.

One main reason to oppose Sharia law is the way it treats women. Rowan Williams’ promise that he only means the family code of Sharia law is no comfort to any woman living under the threat of losing her rights, nor to any girl who is frightened by “honor violence,” forced marriage and veiling. In fact it only exposes his ignorance.

It may be argued that the Archbishop’s intention is to combat racism. Let us examine whether the Archbishop’s proposal is anti-racist. One might argue that he has taken Muslims’ demands and culture into consideration, particularly when Muslims are increasingly being stigmatized. This assumption is false. Historically, the fight against racism has meant fighting for equality, not for differentiating; equality before the law and in the social, economic and political spheres. Anti-racism has been about integration not segregation. The civil rights movement in America was not about creating a set of different laws for blacks, but treating blacks and whites equally. The essence of the long battle against racial apartheid in South Africa was to create one system and one law for all citizens, which treated them equally.

However, it is not only the Archbishop who espouses this upside-down approach to racial equality. This is a political trend. For this trend the meaning of anti-racism has changed from equality to differentiation, from integration to segregation. We owe this falsification to post modernism, which gave rise to cultural relativism and eventually giving such high socio-political status to the concept of multi culturalism in this deformed interpretation of it.

Some misguided section of the “intelligentsia,” academia and political institutions have played a significant role in defending these concepts as progressive, libertarian, egalitarian and anti-racist. Reactionary political forces, such as political Islam have been the only beneficiaries of this trend. For decades gross violations of human rights in societies under Islam were neglected and even justified by these mal-formulated theories. Only when these brutal practices made an inroad into western societies in the form of terrorism, particularly after September 11, some outcries began to be heard.

Multiculturalism is racism; cultural relativism is racism; this should be recognized once and for all. By defining different laws for different citizens on the basis of such arbitrary concepts such as culture or religion, we leave the lot of the weakest sections of that so-called “cultural community” to the mercy of the self-imposed leaders of that community. We deprive these weakest sections the protection of the law and society. Women under Islam are down trodden and deprived of any rights. Leaving them under Sharia law will only victimize them further.

There are many fallacies involved in such an approach. One which is seemingly very liberal is the assumption that members of the “Muslim communities” will voluntarily resort to Sharia law. If Muslim women or children had any choice or voice, they would tell the Archbishop, to keep these proposals to himself. The question of choice is non-existent in a hierarchical and deeply male chauvinist community. Allowing Sharia Law to be practiced will cut off the poor voiceless women from any protection and make life much more difficult for the young women who struggle with backward traditions at home.

Giving the Archbishop’s intention the benefit of the doubt is the best case scenario. The other, to my opinion most probable scenario is that he is cunningly trying to strengthen the grip of religion and religious institutions on the society as a whole. By assigning a stronger position to Islam in “Muslim Communities” he is trying to foster the position of the church and Christianity in the wider society. If one accepts the role of Islam and Islamic laws in one community, by the same token, they should accept the role of Christianity and Church of England in the larger community. His defence of Sharia Law is a clever step towards revitalizing the role of Church in the wider society.

And finally, as a veteran women’s rights activist and one who has suffered first hand under a brutal Islamic state, as an activist who has fought hard against Islam and political Islam for liberty and equality, I am very indignant by Rowan Williams’ proposal. We do not need to establish Sharia law in any form or shape. We need a secular, free society, free from racism, misogynism and inequality. We need to rid the society from religion and religious establishment, be it Muslim, Christian, Judaism or the like.

14 February, 2008

Sung by a chorus of dancing mullahs:

SHARIA

She’s by a tree with young Ali

Her husband is away.

We see here there

And grab her hair, she knows she’s going to pay–

And poor Ali he had to flee his parents couldn’t bear

To see him stoned for doing what is natural…..

She doesn’t seem repentant,

So we choose the largest stones;

The Prophet calls it mercy

(plus they’re good for breaking bones)

And young Ali has joined us

As a witness on his own;

We’re going to make her pay for what seems natural….

—I’d like to say a word before we throw….

Then say it Mullah Ibrihim

–Sharia says ‘Aim low.’

(Chorus)

O, How do you solve a problem like sharia?

How can we make the heathen understand….

How do we make the devils know sharia–

Is coming your way and soon will rule your land!

Oh great is the wisdom found in our sharia

Such wisdom cannot be equaled on the earth–

But how do we make you stay,

And listen to what we say–

Why do you spurn our Prophet and our God?

Oh how can we make you learn to love sharia–

Why does it always have to end in blood?

(Recitative)

When I read it I get chills

Paradisaical thrills

Emanate from every page my eyes do scan.

Full of justice full of love,

Full of vengeance from above,

It can only have been written by a man!

Just as fair as fair can be

Plain for everyone to see

Tit for tat and quid pro quo and eyes for eyes!

It ‘s amazing how it rings–

Allah’s wrath to all it brings

Swords on fire smiting liars for their lies!

It is truthful, it is just

It’s a mouthful, it’s a must–

It’s alarming—It’s disarming (giggle)

It’s the law!

Your daughters had better learn to love sharia.

The mullahs have said they ought to wear hijab

It’s all very clearly written in Sharia:

A snip of the clit by kindly Doc Hallab.

Your women will be protected by sharia

It keeps them at home and faithful in their bed.

The husband is smiling greatly for sharia

Says “Better off faithful to your vows than dead”

(Process to centre stage)

Oh great is the wisdom found in our sharia–

Such wisdom cannot be equaled on the earth.

But how do we make you stay

And listen to what we say–

Why do you spurn our Prophet and our God?

Oh how can we make you learn to love sharia–

Why does it always have to end in blood?

In commemoration of the 8 March centennial, OWL is organising a conference against religious and traditional misogynist practices. Violence against women justified by defence of family honour, forced marriages and imposition of the veil on underage girls are only a few brutal examples of such practices. In light of the Islamist movement’s offensive on women’s rights and lives, not only in counties under the rule of Islam but also in the west, and a global campaign to promote Shalria law, OWL feels the urgent need to mobilize a global force to counter political Islam and promote secularism in order to safeguard women’s rights and safety. Secularism is an important pillar of a society free of misogyny. This conference is a step towards this goal.

Veteran women’s rights activists, secularists, experts in socio-therapeutical work aiding victims of violence, and artists are coming together to make a memorable evening in defence of women’s rights and secularism, and against political islam, Islamist offensive and the new wave of religious movements.

OWL will also like to use this important occasion to bring to the attention of the world the lot of many imprisoned opposition activists in Iran, among them women’s right actvists, labour and student activists. A well-known Iranian poet and playwright, who has launched an important campaign to free student activists, is invited to read some of his poems.

Come and join us to celebrate the 8 March centennial together and join forces to push back the religious offensive and build an international secularist movement for women’s rights and a better world.

The conference will be in English, Swedish and Persian.

Speakers and guests:

Homa Arjmand, Coordinator of Campaign against Sharia Law

Diba Ali Khani, women’s right activist and organiser of 8 March events in Sanandaj, Iran

Rasool Awla, sociologist and psychologist, from Organisation of Men Against Violence Against Women

Maria Hagberg, social worker and the chair for a shelter for girls threatened by “honour violence”

Iraj Janati Ataei, poet, playwright and human rights activist

Azar Majedi, Chair of Organisation for Women’s Liberation- Iran

Houzan Mahmoud, spokes-woman Organisation of Women’s Freedom-Iraq

Sara Mohammad, Chair of Never Forget Pela and Fadme (two victims of honour killings)

Mitra Iranian, modern choreographer and dancer, performing a dance entitled Freedom

Venue: Gothenburg, Sweden

Lundby centrum, Wieselgrensplatsen ovanpå Coop Forum

Date: Friday 7 March 2008

Time: 19:00-23:00

Contact: Shahla Noori, phone: +46- (0)737 262622

Azar Majedi, azarmajedi@yahoo.com

If you have any queries, do not hesitate to contact us. If you would like to participate, please register.

Organisation for Women’s Liberation

Rowan Williams is not a bad man. He is certainly not a stupid man. He is an Oxford scholar and one in a long train of academic bishops who are as comfortable at High Table in Balliol or in lecture halls on the High Street as they are intoning the tropes of Elizabethan liturgy in clouds of incense at Canterbury.

Why then has the good bishop failed to be fitted for a new mitre, since the one he is wearing has clearly cut off circulation to his brain?

In an address from Lambeth Palace on February 7th, Williams delivered a lecture entitled “Islam in English Law: Civil and Religious Law in England.” I cannot imagine that anybody confronted with the choice between reading the BBC summary of an interview based on the lecture, and the lecture itself, would choose the latter. My own reason for slogging through 8 single-spaced pages of badly reasoned mud has to do with a piece I am doing on another of his pet projects–increasing the number of “faith schools”—schools tied to a religious tradition—throughout the UK. But slog I did, and I have come away feeling that I know the bishop better and like him less.

Williams belongs to a generation of starry-eyed ecumenists whose early theology was shaped by the hope of reconciliation with a liberated and embracing Post Vatican II Catholicism. Had he studied church history instead of theology, he would have known that the cycles of such movements are decidedly against Catholicism ever becoming open to real rapprochement. The ordination of women in the Anglican communion in the 1970’s, the elevation of women to Episcopal office in the 1990’s, followed quickly by the ordination of gays and lesbians, and gay bishops—well, the pinking of Anglicanism in general—made the last two decades a great period of ecumenical retreat for Roman Catholics, and the 1990’s an era of retrenchment, a hunkering down on the Tiber expressed in the reaffirmation of the male priesthood, the broadening of the use of the Tridentine Mass, and a new tolerance of old dogmatics in the person of Benedict XVI.

As the Anglican tradition opened its doors ever wider, virtually enshrining political rectitude as a new article of faith, Rome shut the door in its face. After all, it had its own sexual issues to deal with, and the huge cleanup operation occasioned by 35 years of doctrinal drift–and, in the last five years of his life, a senescent pope unable to deal with the complexities the Curia laid before him. (When the jury comes in on John Paul II, it seems his biggest achievement will be that he was good at making cardinals and saints, and thus will become one himself.)

Anglicanism became the True Church of the Postmodern Era, committed along with other declining Protestant denominations to multiculturalism as a mantra, to interfaith dialogue as a position, to liturgical experimentation and religious inclusivism as a cause. As Anglican numbers dropped (out of 26 million Anglicans in the UK, 1.7 M describe themselves as churchgoers) so did the Church’s influence worldwide: the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA is a woman, Katherine Schori, and a disproportionate number, without prejudice to interpretation, of women priests are lesbians. In fact one would be forgiven for thinking that the greatest theological controversy of the twenty first century has to do not with the things of God but with whether same-sex marriages are ordained by Holy Writ. The English Church is threatened with schism from an area of the world—Africa—it once regarded as its religious dominion because of ongoing controversies about sexuality and apostolic succession. Threatened with such irrelevance and loss of prestige, the Church might have decided to go away quietly.

Instead, Archbishop Williams feels he has something to say:

“The Muslim communities in this country,” he said in his lecture, “seek the freedom to live under sharia law.”

Well, why not. They are now 3% of the British population (about 1.6 M), 40% of whom live in London (14.3 in Birmingham). That means, allowing only for sliders and drifters who think of themselves as secular, they outnumber the Anglican churchgoers by a healthy fraction. There are about 4.5 million Roman Catholics in the UK (half of whom are professed churchgoers), many of them in the past ten years part of an influx from “Catholic Europe,” mainly Poland. There are roughly 267,000 Jews (about 0.5% of the population).

All of which is beside the point since according to ReligiousTolerance.Org, only 14.4% of British Christians identify with a denomination. What the Bish is doing ecclesiastically is not different from what bonnie Prince Charles did a few years ago when he, presumably earnestly, suggested that the monarch should be known as the “Defender of Faith,” rather than “Defender of the Faith” in recognition that Britain was truly a multicultural society. The former Archbishop, Lord Carey, encouraged him in this fatuous notion by saying that the next coronation “should be an interfaith event,” in recognition of the “very significant changes” in British society. Only problem is, the major shift has not been very positive for the Christian population, so the appeal (naturally) is to those recalcitrant groups who, unlike the Anglicans, aren’t very happy about giving up their religious law and melting into British society.

The Archbishop’s appeal strikes me as terribly political. A terrible thing to say about I man I have already called smart and good. It is dishonest in its view that all religions belong to a genus of a sort that can be labeled universally good. In his lecture, he carelessly drags Islam into a stream of tradition out of which English civil law grew. Okay—fine—let’s recall that when Hobbes composed The Leviathan (1651) he was as concerned about the laws of ecclesiastical polity in the kingdom as Hooker had been in New England (1636). There is no doubt that both of these thinkers had a profound, almost simultaneous influence on what we now call constitutionalism. And there is no doubt among serious historians that constitutionalism—by Locke, by Jefferson—leads to the neutralizing tradition in government that we call secularism. That means get religion out of politics, because religion has never been a constructive force for political good.

Rowan Williams runs the risk of missing the great lesson of western history, by missing the lesson his own political-national tradition has bequeathed to the world. He loads us down with the preposterous idea that we need to respect communities within communities. “[Danger arises] when secular government assumes a monopoly in terms of defining public and political identity.” What danger? What secular government in the British style demands is – according to Hamilton – that the majority cede their prejudices and national and religious preferences to a secular authority so that government can function equitably. (And he begins this deposition with a memorable phrase: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary…”).

Dr Williams talks about “overlapping identities.” He writes “The rule of law is thus not the establishing of priority for the universal abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone in which is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such independent of membership in any specific community or tradition, so that when specific communities or traditions are in danger of claiming finality for their own boundaries of practice and undertaking, they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity.”

Oh, dear Bishop. That’s too much. “Space accessible to everyone”? Where is that in Saudi Arabia. In northern Nigeria, in Sudan, in the southern reaches of Beirut, or the ethnic borders of Iraq?

“Human dignity?” Sure, cliterodectomy, stoning, suicide bombings, beheadings of the innocent, and turning retarded women into human bombs. “Claiming finality?” well—Christianity used to do that; Judaism did it before Christianity.

But Islam as I read it is unique in not having undergone the tests and challenges and disaffirming events to which Muslims as Muslims seem immune. After all, the messiah did not come for the Jews; and Jesus did not come again (at least not on time) to the Christians. But Muhammad, the prophet without anything new to say, or anything to prophesy, created no opportunity for the disconfirmation of his teaching. What he produced was totally absorptive, like those weird tentacles of Christian tradition that see the hand of God in every act that proves them wrong. In general, Judaism and Christianity had to learn to exist and co-exist in history, in society—and in that laboratory western politics and even secularism (and the see of Canterbury, so vital to the separation of royal and religious power) was born. The Archbishop of such a see should know and teach that. Or he should resign for not knowing it.

Islam contributed nothing to that process. Islam, given the state of its critique of the west, will continue to oppose secularism as its natural enemy.

This debate should not be about “creating space” where the tolerant should be expected to give way to traditions of intolerance.

And “Finality?” It’s an interesting word. But its most obvious application is in the Islamic doctrine that Muhammad is the final prophet. That the Qur’an is the final revelation. That no other tradition holds a candle to the straight, narrow, and suffocating truth that Islam claims to possess. I can think of no religious tradition that has less use for diversity, and more regard for “finality.”

If the Anglican Communion needs to appeal to the burgeoning growth of intolerance in the United Kingdom as a means of survival, of legitimacy, what, dear Bishop, does that mean for your own tradition?

‘Islamophobia’ may be a very fashionable disorder these days but I’m pretty sure that I don’t suffer from it. Islamorejection and even Islamohilarity I will cheerfully admit to but only as part of a simple rationalist dismissal of all supernatural religions. Our bible-waving enemies – and Islam, in particular treats atheists as extremely dangerous heretics – are not exactly extinct but most of them have been in retreat or confusion ever since superstition and biblical literalism started to acknowledge science, however grudgingly. The main exceptions have been those religions that didn’t have much contact with science and the modern world until quite recently – like much of Islam, after its promising mediaeval start. That’s why, at one level, I can’t get too excited about things like the subjection of women and the executions for blasphemy or homosexuality in some Islamic countries, as long as they don’t try to re-introduce them here or claim any moral high ground at the UN. After all, the Pope put out a contract on Elizabeth the First and it’s barely three hundred years since young Thomas Aikenhead of Edinburgh became the last person to be executed for atheism in Britain. Aggiornamento takes time. Some day, Islam too will probably have its Reformation and its Evolution Crisis, though given developments in the technologies of death, its Wars of Religion could be a whole lot nastier than even ours were.

My own Muslim friends are mostly fellow-physicians. Like other British doctors, they are not much given to religious fundamentalism (ubi tres physici, ibi duo athei, as they used to say) and I know there are many more Muslims like them. Maybe some Islamic Luther is even now finishing a list of complaints and looking for his hammer, though I think Islam – at least in Britain – also needs its own Bradlaugh to stand at Speakers’ Corner and repeatedly challenge Allah to strike him dead within five minutes. Though perhaps with an armed police guard to prevent some Islamist enthusiast from trying to do Allah’s work for him.

It was with this mildly hopeful attitude that I found myself walking past the East London mosque in Whitechapel. Next to the main entrance was an Islamic bookshop and one of the volumes in the window was called ‘Guidelines and fataawa [rulings] related to sickness and medical practice’. The cover design looked quite modern, depicting a state-of-the-art stethoscope, a syringe, assorted pills and capsules and a fever chart. Hoping that the sentiments between the covers might be equally up to date, I bought it.

The work was published in Britain in 2004 as part of a series called ‘Invitation to Islam’; its compiler, Dr Ali Ar-Rumaikaan, aims to present to ‘the English reader’ a translation of an Arabic book which is ‘a collection of rulings and legal verdicts concerning many…medical issues’. The Koran features prominently but most of the ecclesiastical rulings are quite recent. Some concern ethical issues largely restricted to Muslims. There is for instance a 1986 ruling on assisted fertility that allows a wife’s ovum to be fertilised externally by her husband’s sperm and replaced in her own womb but not in the womb of one of the husband’s other wives.

Many chapters focus on sexual or reproductive matters. Abortion, according to a 1975 Committee of Eminent Scholars in Riyadh, is allowed for serious medical conditions affecting the mother and also for serious foetal abnormalities but not for social or psychological reasons except for ‘certain types of lunacy, such as schizophrenia’. This point is made even more strongly in the section on contraception, which is generally a no-no but ‘…completely forbidden…if the motive behind it is a fear of poverty since that involves harbouring evil thoughts towards Allah’. Who, in case you hadn’t noticed, always ensures that there is enough of everything to go round. Indeed, the growth and defence of Islam require a pro-natalist policy. According to the Muslim World League; ‘Provision is with Allah and is taken care of; natural resources are many in Muslim countries; the fields of work are wide, and the places for resettling people extensive’. Of course, as with Catholicism, many Muslims (including Muslim governments) ignore these ‘rulings’. There may even be some thoroughly modern mullahs (one tries to imagine a sort of Islamic Hans Kung or David Jenkins) but if so, Dr Ar-Rumaikaan isn’t letting on.

Some rulings will strike a sympathetic chord in those of other faiths. For example, what do you do if you are a preacher whose sermons and prayers are interrupted by frequent emissions of – er – wind? Interestingly, the Prophet himself had something to say about this delicate problem. The Imam should keep preaching ‘until he hears a sound or smells an odour’. On this issue at least, Dr Ar-Rumaikaan is evidently a modernist who thinks we may legitimately look beyond mere sounds and odours to social context. You can continue to be an Imam, he advises, ‘if you are better than the rest at recitation, so long as the impurity is not a continuous one but comes [only] at certain times’. Other Muslims apparently want to know what to do next if their wife is possessed by a Jinni [evil spirit] which does not respond to beatings. Can they burn her in order to drive it out? Absolutely not, for: ‘…only Allah has the authority to punish with fire’.

The most worrying rulings relate to circumcision. For chaps, it’s best to get it over with early because ‘A baby is born with numbness in all of its body and cannot feel pain for seven days’. That’s not true. I performed a few circumcisions myself (without anaesthetic) when I did some GP locums in Australia long ago and while I don’t think any of the newly-delivered sprogs will remember it or hold it against me, they certainly weren’t numb. For female circumcision, we are given – unusually for this book – three divergent views. ‘Some scholars…hold that it is obligatory… The majority…hold that it is prescribed for women and is recommended… Others hold that it is not prescribed for them. And this is a weak opinion’ (My italics.) So, not very divergent after all. Still, though Dr Ar-Rumaikaan evidently thinks that female circumcision is a Good Thing, he warns against the truly dreadful Pharaonic method still widely used in Egypt and Sudan. This often blocks off most of the vaginal opening with dense scar-tissue that must be ruptured by the bridegroom on the wedding night. (I was once consulted by a Sudanese gynaecologist, only too aware of what was involved and worried that he would fail this ultimate test of machismo.) The Prophet himself, as Dr Ar-Rumaikaan reminds us, ‘said to a woman who used to circumcise women “When you circumcise, do not cut severely”.’ So that’s all right then, even though girls are circumcised much later than boys. And without the benefit of that reassuring ‘numbness’.

Is one to laugh or cry at this bizarre anthology, openly displayed for the enlightenment of passing ‘English readers’ like me? Even if the intended readers are mainly English Muslims, it is still pretty depressing, while as a public relations exercise, it suggests a complete failure to understand that virtually all non-Muslims in Europe regard female circumcision as barbaric, as surely many Muslims do. And that even male circumcision (which, interestingly, is evidently a useful factor in reducing HIV infection in southern Africa) has a lot of critics and is now rare in Britain outside Moslem and Jewish circles. A free press means that a bookshop sharing a building with a leading British mosque has a perfect right to put such a volume on its shelves. However, to put it prominently in the window indicates – assuming someone at least glanced at it beforehand – either a disturbing level of arrogance in the shop-owners and the clergy of the mosque or a worrying lack of awareness and understanding of the society in which many of its worshippers have ‘resettled’.

Another Islamic institution that could do with a bit of basic PR advice is Dr Majid Katme, who describes himself in some correspondence I had with him as ‘Spokesman: Islamic Medical Association UK on Medical Ethics’. Since he is also apparently the secretary of the association, it may actually be a rather thinly-populated entity but that doesn’t excuse his curious views on embryology. This is what he told me when I enquired about Islam’s (or at least the IMA’s) line on abortion. The capitals are in the original.

At 6-7 weeks pregnancy, the SOUL is breathed in, in the body of the foetus. DIVINE/HUMAN life starts when the embryo turns into a foetus. At this critical stage it is absolutely forbidden to interfere with this new sacred life. One can call the foetus here: A PERSONA: human and divine. However, there is a wide Muslim opinion in the Muslim world, which considered by many Muslim Scholars in the past and today as wrong, and which states that ensoulment does occur 120 days after conception (4 months). Personally I and other Muslims, do not agree with this view, as it is based on some wrong Arabic interpretation of one Saying of the Prophet!

By way of clarification, he added “this important Saying of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) ‘When 42 nights (6 weeks) have passed over the Nutfa (fertilised egg), ALLAH (THE GOD) sends an angel to it who shapes it and makes its hearing (ears), vision (eyes), skin, muscles (flesh) and bones, then he says: O Lord is it male or female? and your Lord decides what He wishes and the angel records it’. (Ref: HADITH/ Sahih Muslim/Qadr)”

So there it is. Forget all that ludicrous stuff about Y-chromosomes and gender selection in embryos; it’s Allah wot does it. But maybe someone should ask the Muslim Council of Great Britain if they really want this clown advising them on medical matters, as he apparently does.

Gina Khan would like to introduce Paul Sikander, the author of this article. A lawyer who grew up in London and the West Midlands, he has also observed the rise of Islamism in Birmingham at close quarters over the last twenty years.

As British Muslim women, we struggle from within to raise our voices and to be heard, we are looking through bullet-proof glass windows as we watch the MCB and other bodies manipulate the media or the government; we never get consulted. It is encouraging to find another voice who breaks his silence today on Islamists and the hypocrisy, control and Islamism that Muslim women and children can be subjected to in Britain. I hope every governing body in our schools, every teacher, headmaster, secularist, parent, artist, dancer, reads this…

Akram Khan is arguably the most original and significant British dancer and choreographer of his generation. Born to working class Bangladeshi immigrants in 1974, he was awarded an MBE for services to Dance in 2005. His work is in many ways an expression of his diverse cultural roots, influenced both by contemporary Western dance and his training in the classical Indian form of Kathak. He has collaborated with some of the most notable dancers, artists, sculptors, writers and musicians of our time and won numerous international awards for his artistry, and he is sought out by Dance Companies from around the world.

Given the originality of his art, rooted in his many cultural influences, it almost seems vulgar to make a subject of the religious tradition that he was born into. At a time in which individuals and groups are being reduced to stereotype, in which assumptions based on religious identity disable many people’s minds and their perceptions of others, it may perhaps violate the spirit of his art, as well as offend his own conscience, to even briefly place him in this narrow context. But on a simple level, as an example of what a British man born of working-class Muslim immigrants can achieve, reflecting through his always innovative and restless art the cosmopolitan reality of his experience, Akram Khan is exemplary.

It therefore disturbs the mind greatly to learn that if the Muslim Council of Britain were to have their way Muslim schoolchildren with an aptitude and enthusiasm for dance and other art forms would have their talents and dreams aborted at birth. It further horrifies that the MCB, a body that claims to represent the Muslims of the UK, and wields considerable influence in the media and has the ear of the government and influential academics and politicians, believes that its duty encompasses the dictating to the state of what Muslim children can participate in at school in terms of artistic and intellectual expression. That they would snuff out at the earliest point possible to them the hopes and dreams of any young Muslim boys or girls who have a talent in art, drama or dance. That they would ask the state to conspire in the prevention of future Akram Khans emerging from amidst young Britons of Muslim background, and that they would do this whilst using the rhetoric of ‘social inclusiveness’, and even claiming their oppressiveness and separatism to be ‘an agenda for integration’.

This attempt to smuggle a subtle sharia code into the fabric of British schooling can be read in a report that contains some common-sense and legitimate advice to schools regarding aspects of Muslim practice. It was published in February 2007 by the MCB in a paper called Towards Greater Understanding – meeting the needs of Muslim pupils in state schools, Information & Guidance for Schools. But rather than being an agenda for integration, the report reflects the divisive, authoritarian nature of the MCB, and shows how it is attempting to entrench a particular kind of Islamist thinking into the very structure of the British educational system under the banner of ‘good practice’, and does so within the stream of a wider abuse and mangling by the MCB of the very rhetoric and idea of ‘multiculturalism’. In part 7 of the document, they say:

Dance is one of the activity areas of the national curriculum for physical education. Muslims consider that most dance activities, as practised in the curriculum, are not consistent with the Islamic requirements for modesty as they may involve sexual connotations and messages when performed within mixed-gender groups or if performed in front of mixed audiences. Most primary and secondary schools hold dance in mixed-gender classes and may include popular dance styles, in which movements of the body are seen as sexually expressive and seductive in nature….

….However, most Muslim parents will find little or no educational merit or value in dance or dancing after early childhood and may even find it objectionable on moral and religious grounds once children have become sexually mature (puberty). Some parents may consider it to be acceptable within a single-sex context provided the dance movements have no sexual connotations. As dancing is not a normal activity for most Muslim families, Muslim pupils are likely to exhibit reluctance to taking part in it, particularly in mixed-gender sessions. By the same token, dance performances before a mixed gender audience may also be objectionable.

This puritanical, narrow and restrictive interpretation of Islam and what is suitable for Muslim children to participate in at school is reflected elsewhere in the report when the MCB extends its gaze to other areas of the British school system. In section 12, the report says:

Art: In Islam the creation of three dimensional figurative imagery of humans is generally regarded as unacceptable because of the risk of idolatrous practices and some pupils and parents may raise objections to this. The school should avoid encouraging Muslim pupils from producing three dimensional imagery of humans and focus on other forms of art, calligraphy, textile art, ceramic glass, metal/woodwork, landscape drawing, paintings, architectural representations, geometric figures, photography and mosaic art.

Dramas: plays and artistic works for Muslim pupils are encouraged for educational purposes. However, parents may have reservations regarding participation in theatrical plays or acting that involves physical contact between males and females, the encouragement of gender role-reversal (girls dressing as boys and vice-versa) or performing in a manner that may encourage sexual feelings. Physical contact with someone of the opposite sex, to whom one could be legally married, is to be avoided as this is not considered acceptable according to Islamic social norms. Schools should avoid placing Muslim pupils in situations where they may feel uncomfortable and believe they are having to compromise their religious moral norms. Muslim pupils should not be expected to participate in drama or musical presentations associated with celebrating aspects of other religions, such as nativity plays or Diwali, as some of these are likely to involve playing roles which are considered to be inconsistent with Islamic beliefs and teachings.

For an organization that clothes in the rhetoric of integration and social cohesion a set of puritanical ‘suggestions’ for the state’s compliance in the oppression and closing down of artistic , social and intellectual possibilities of British Muslim children, and elsewhere in the report talks about the need to spend public money to educate the British public on their concerns about representations of Islam, it is striking that they should be so hostile to the engagement of Muslim children with aspects of other religious traditions. In their example, the Christian nativity and the Hindu and Sikh festival of Diwali. In the eyes of the MCB, ‘integration’ it seems is a one-way street, in which non Muslims must be educated on Islam, whilst Muslim children are to be protected from the contamination of non Muslim religious traditions. So much for multiculturalism.

The MCB offers us a vision of a world in which a Muslim boy or girl who wishes to paint a human face will be denied that wish because the men of the MCB have said it is forbidden in Islam, and have attempted to entrench this religiosity by injunction into the British state education system. A world in which Twelfth Night cannot be performed as a school play because the men of the MCB object to drama featuring ‘gender role reversal’. A world in which an atmosphere of extreme puritanism prevails, in which boys and girls are segregated to a neurotic degree, in which Muslim girls at primary school are forbidden to take part in fun and nourishing dance classes that their White, Black and Indian classmates participate in joyously. Where the whole of British society is painted as a den of ‘Islamophobia’ requiring mass corrective action through education and public expenditure, but Muslims are to be absolved of any requirement or impulse to understand other faiths and cultures, and are to be prevented from fully participating in the full range of educational subjects and experiences.

It is no wonder, then, that many British Muslims, especially women, are horrified by the attention and resources that the MCB command, and are horrified at their continual sugar-coating of a reactionary vision of society and human possibility by using and abusing the words of cultural understanding, harmony and integration. When employed by followers of the extreme Islamist writer and ideologue Maulana Mawdudi, the ideological ‘Godfather’ of the leadership of the MCB, multi-cultural rhetoric becomes an inverted, degraded and sometimes sinister kind of Orwellian double-speak, in which separatist special pleading, religious and political Puritanism, oppressive attempts at religious social-engineering, and a particular impulse towards Islamist mono-culturalism are presented in the guise of ‘integration’ and ‘social cohesion’.

The MCB is attempting to pressure Muslims as a whole to concede to their own Islamist-inspired vision of religion and society. When Muslim women and moderates see that the MCB has the ear of the media and government they despair and feel horrified and hopeless. A well-oiled lobbying machine, born out of the campaign against Salman Rushdie, the MCB is very savvy in networking and exploiting the disastrous and unfair impulse amongst politicians and the media to seek out a singular interlocutor from the Muslim community. They are very conscious of how to cynically use the rhetoric and ethos of ‘multiculturalism’ to advance their mono-cultural and reactionary agenda in the mask of social cohesion and integration.

They know which buttons to press, and how to scare off critics and Muslim dissenters with blunt and paranoid rhetorical weapons by claiming that Muslim critics of them are ‘Uncle Toms’, and non Muslim critics of the Islamist agenda are bigots suffering from a malaise called ‘Islamophobia’. To a large extent their success in this has been through conflating their politics and agenda with the whole of the Islamic religion and the entirety of the needs of the Muslim community in the UK. Their vision is bleak not just because it seeks to deny Muslim children the aspiration of art, dance and music, and to deny them the happiness of full participation in British society in all its exciting, cosmopolitan glory; but because it also actively attempts to bully out all difference, plurality, and variety of belief, conscience, and practice from within the Muslim community in Britain. Following the agenda of Mawdudi, it campaigns to entrench their vision of life and possibility in the very structures of British institutions and Muslim society, and most shockingly, it has done so for the last few years through the funding of public money.

The cosmopolitan possibility that many Muslim individuals in Britain aspire to and represent, from Akram Khan to the average hard working Muslim man and woman, is betrayed and violated when we allow those with an Islamist ideology to present their agenda as the path to social cohesion and integration. The double-speak and mendacity of the MCB and other Islamist organizations cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged: for the sake of British society, but most of all, for the sake of present and future generations of Muslims whom they seek to oppress, bully and coerce out of mainstream British life, into mental ghettoes patrolled by reactionary disciples of Mawdudi who spit in the well of multiculturalism and then call it pure, healthy and drinkable water for all.

1. Introduction

Muslims claim that the text of the Quran is of such a quality that no human can match it, and that this property provides proof that the author was the Biblical God (see e.g. [1]). This essay reviews this claim and the evidence cited to support it. If it cannot be supported, then Islam is founded on nothing more than the assumption that the voices and visions experienced by Muhammad were not the products of his imagination. It is a flimsy basis for such a demanding system of belief.

The Quran is referred to by committed Muslims as ‘glorious’, ‘sublime’, ‘perfect’, possessing ‘superb clarity’ and ‘perfect order’. Indeed, when one reads Islamic descriptions of the Quran, one gets the impression that there is no complimentary claim which would ever be considered an exaggeration. Muhammad al-Nafzawi, in his erotic work ‘The Perfumed Garden’ even suggests the use of the Quran as an aphrodisiac ([2], Chapter 7).

In contrast, the Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was less enthusiastic, considering the Quran to have been: “…written, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was“ [3]. My own views on the Quran are closer to those of Carlyle than to those of al-Nafzawi, whose recommendations have proved disappointingly unfounded.

What is going on here? How can a book which is ‘perfect’ with ‘superb clarity’ simultaneously be as bad as Carlyle describes? Does the relentless torrent of superlatives from Muslim commentators imply that this is a truly unique written work, if only we had the knowledge of Arabic to appreciate it, or are these commentators simply behaving like the courtiers in the story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’: sycophants locked into an ever-rising spiral of denial and flattery? These are the questions that we shall try to answer in this article.

2. Characteristics of the Quran

If you were to begin reading a book which you understood to be composed by an all-knowing, all-powerful deity and to be intended for all mankind for all time, you would not be surprised if you discovered that it displayed an awareness of all the earth, of all its peoples, of their past and of their future development. You would also not be surprised if the book showed exceptional clarity of expression and was well-organised, succinct, precise, complete and consistent in its approach.

You might then be surprised to discover that the Quran possesses none of these qualities. Its scope, outside the many references to Biblical tales, is limited to events contemporary with its origin and to the peoples, flora and fauna of the Arabian peninsula. It has no clear structure and its style and tone change markedly between the early and later Suras – obvious even in English versions. It is long and repetitive, yet incomplete. Passages can be vague to the point of incomprehensibility. Despite claims to the contrary, all the verifiable information it contains was readily available at the time.

It is necessary to provide examples of the above, in order to forestall any accusations that these are just cursory insults. The limitations of scope, lack of structure, and change of style are evident even to the casual reader. Repetition may be readily seen by (for example) searching for such words as ‘chastisement’ or ‘unbeliever’ in the text. Incomprehensibility and incompleteness are less obvious. However, there should be no dispute regarding the former, since (Q3:7) (i.e. Quran, Sura 3, Verse 7) acknowledges it, though describing it, in the Arberry translation at least [4], as ‘ambiguity’:

It is He who sent down upon you the Book, wherein are verses clear that are the Essence of the Book, and others ambiguous….

The remainder of the verse, which suggests that those who point out the ambiguities are just troublemakers:

… As for those in whose hearts is swerving, they follow the ambiguous part, desiring dissension, and desiring its interpretation; and none knows its interpretation, save only God

may appear to the non-Muslim reader as a fairly transparent attempt by Muhammad to exploit his followers’ credulity.

The problem of incomprehensibility in the Quranic laws of inheritance was discussed in [5]. Further examples are as follows. Twenty nine of the Suras begin with groups of Arabic letters: Sura 2, for example, begins “Elif, Lam, Mim” (i.e. A.L.M.). No one knows what these mean, but they are recited reverentially as an integral part of the Sura they introduce. The verse (Q77:30) clearly presents a considerable challenge for the translator. Arberry expresses it as:

Depart to a triple-massing shadow

whereas Shakir [6] tries

Walk on to the covering having three branches

and, as summarised in [7], other translators have made a variety of guesses, all equally baffling. As a final example here, Bell [8] states “Sura 89 begins with four clauses so cryptic as to be unintelligible”. Other examples of words and passages which are not understood, as well as examples of many other peculiarities, are given in [9].

Muhammad, in (Q3:7) above, had already suggested that the incomprehensible verses had deeper meanings. Muslim scholars continued to build on the idea. According to [10]:

Zamakhshari and Fakhr al-Din Razi [two respected 12th century Muslim scholars] do not consider the existence of the allegorical verses as a defect but as a mark of aesthetic excellence and as being conducive to the development of culture and science.

Rather than the ‘ambiguous’ or ‘allegorical’ verses being interpreted as evidence that the Quran has a human author, they are treated instead as something virtuous. The concept that incomprehensibility = profundity was therefore in existence for nearly a millennium before it was rediscovered in the 20th century by the French.

Next, incompleteness: as mentioned in [11], some Islamic laws do not appear in the Quran and derive instead from the Hadiths, a collection of anecdotes about the things Muhammad did and said. Since Muslims do not consider that he made up this information himself, he must have had communications from God which did not make it into the Quran. Furthermore, some of the Hadiths; the Hadith Qudsi or Sacred Hadiths [1] are considered to contain God’s words; words which again were not incorporated into the Quran. The Quran cannot therefore be complete, if necessary divine pronouncements occur outside of it.

2.1. So, why the superlatives?

The above features of the Quran seem to be imperfections; what other interpretation can there be? So why is the Quran described by Muslims in a manner which implies that it is flawless? The answer lies in the Islamic view of the nature of the Quran. Muhammad’s fellow Meccans, who doubted his claims [11], challenged him to perform a miracle. His response was that the Quran itself was the miracle that they sought. The Bukhari Hadith (B6:61:504) reports [6]

The Prophet said, ‘Every Prophet was given miracles because of which people believed, but what I have been given is Divine Inspiration which Allah has revealed to me.’

As a consequence, Muslims regard the Quran as a miracle. It should therefore be recognised that, when Muslims describe the Quran, the purpose is not to present an accurate description of what is seen in the text, but to bestow a degree of acclaim commensurate with the exalted status of the book and its alleged author. However, there is more to it. Muslims also describe the Quran in glowing terms because that is how the Quran describes itself. An example: the Quran is described as ‘clear’: easy to understand. This is not because the Quran actually is easy to understand, but because the Quran repeatedly says so, in (Q11:1), (Q36:69), (Q15:1), (Q54:17) and (Q28:1) with other compliments to itself arising in (Q6:115), (Q15:87), (Q36:2), (Q50:1), (Q56:77), (Q72:1) and (Q85:21).

To expand upon this for a moment: Muslims are normally on safe ground within Islam when adopting and expressing opinions which correspond closely to passages in the Quran. However, non-Muslims sometimes make the mistake of assuming that such opinions are based on empirical evidence; in fact, the opinion and the available evidence may markedly conflict. The description of the Quran as ‘clear’ is but one example. Another is the description of Islam itself as a ‘perfect’ religion. This is a view which has its basis in (Q5:3) “Today I have perfected your religion for you”, not in any assessment of Islam against a set of criteria. Perhaps the most misleading is the claim, based on (Q2:256): “There is no compulsion in religion” (alternatively translated as the rather different “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (Yusufali [6])), which holds that Islam does not coerce anyone into conversion, and never has. Not only is this demonstrably untrue, and on a vast scale (e.g. [12], [21]), it is actually inconsistent with Islamic law on jihad ([13], Section o9.8), the payment by non-Muslims of the jizya tax ([13], Section o9.8) and the punishment of those who renounce Islam ([13], Section o8.1), all of which contain substantial and explicit elements of coercion.

Returning to the main subject: yet another disincentive to critical assessment of the Quran is the implied contempt for those who waver, as expressed in (Q3:7):

It is He who sent down upon thee the Book….and those firmly rooted in knowledge say, ‘We believe in it; all is from our Lord’; yet none remembers, but men possessed of minds.

For those who have begun to feel that the analogy with ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ is perhaps an apt one, please compare the above verse with the claim, made by the swindlers in that famous story, that “this material has the amazing property that it is invisible to anyone who is incompetent or stupid”.

3. The Muslim claim of proof

Perhaps the main factor underlying Muslims’ certainty in their religion is the perception that there exists proof of the divine origin of the Quran. If the proof is believed to exist, then all appearance of imperfection can be dismissed without further consideration. Based on the work of the Muslim theologian Abu Abdullah al-Qurtubi (?-1273), the claim of proof lies in the following assertions (as condensed slightly from [1]):

1. The Quran’s use of the Arabic language is superior to all other works in Arabic
2. Its comprehensiveness cannot be matched
3. Its legislation cannot be surpassed
4. Its statements about the natural world can only have been produced by divine revelation
5. Its prophecies have all been fulfilled
6. Its effect on the hearts of men fulfils human needs

It is clear that 2 and 3 are simply wishful thinking. The Quran is not complete even within its own terms, as discussed above. Its legislation can be seen to contain simple errors [5], inexplicable rules (why can’t Muslims eat pork?) and to lead to examples of obvious injustice [14]. Claims 4 and 5 will be discussed, and shown to be groundless, in a later article. Islam does not fulfil human needs, since most of the world’s population evidently gets on perfectly well (to be honest: much better) without it and it shares an ‘effect on the hearts of men’ with a whole host of other religions, all of which it maintains are false.

How, then, do we investigate Claim 1? I know no Arabic and, being an engineer, possess primitive abilities in the field of literature. Yet, it is necessary to attempt to assess the claim, since it lies at the heart of the Muslim belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong. The basis of Claim 1 is that:

(a) the literary qualities of the Quran self-evidently exceed those achievable by humans, and
(b) doubters have been challenged to write something equal to the Quran and have failed.

We shall now try to examine both parts of the claim.

3.1. Literary excellence?

Part (a) represents an argument so ill-defined that it is difficult to know where to begin the task of assessing it, as it places the judgement of its validity firmly in the realm of the subjective and, because of the need for the assessor to be at least fluent in Arabic, beyond the reach of most of the Earth’s population. Fortunately, a claimed proof of the miraculous nature of the Quran based on (a) above, written by the 9th century Muslim scholar al-Baquillani, has been translated in part by the Islamic scholar G.E. von Grunebaum [15]. Al-Baquillani tries to show that the Quran is superior to two of the then most famous classical Arabic poems by means of a line-by-line critique of the latter. His views on both celebrated works are lengthy and unflattering, but the following give a flavour of his opinions. The first poem possesses “…diction which at one time splits a rock and at another time melts away, changes colour like a chameleon, varies like passions, whose grammatical construction teems with confusion”. A selected aspect of the second “…comes closer to incompetence than to eloquence and closer to barbarism than to excellence”.

Unfortunately, in [15], the Quran is subject to no such scrutiny, its supposed superiority merely being asserted by means of the familiar gush of superlatives coupled, in this case, with complete gibberish. The Quran “..is uniformly pure, splendid and brilliant. Its heterogeneity is homogeneous, its homogeneity is oneness, what seems remote in it is near, its original elements are familiar”. The style is also “…uniform, despite its variety” and the composition is “ ..beyond human imagination and thought”. Other parts of al-Baquillani’s work are quoted, and his main arguments summarised, by Aleem [18]. While there is no doubt that the man had a way with words, his arguments (at least, as represented in [18]) are little more than florid but vacuous assertions of the superiority of the Quran over everything else, in all possible ways. His claim that even the words of the Quran, when transplanted to other compositions, ‘shine like jewels’ might strike the uncommitted reader as ludicrous.

The review of the poems in [15] is hostile; that of the Quran, servile. This ‘proof’ of the superiority of the Quran is therefore seen, on closer inspection, to be a sham. It must reluctantly be accepted that the Islamic world is an unsuitable place to search for critical assessments of the Quran. Instead, we must call upon the writings of Western Islamic scholars.

The first opinion cited is that of Richard Bell (1876-1952). He explains [8] how the Quran is written in a form which is subdivided into verses which end with either rhymes or assonances which are largely produced by the use of the same grammatical forms or terminations, and observes that

The structure of the Arabic language, in which words fall into definite types of forms, was favourable to the production of such assonances.

Ref. [6] supplies a transliteration of the Quran, by which the reader may obtain a feel for the type of rhyming or assonance used. Bell describes how the content of the verses is sometimes manipulated in a rather pragmatic way:

…so that we get phrases like ‘one of the witnesses’ instead of simply ‘a witness’ because the former gives the rhyming plural-ending, while the latter does not.

Occasionally, a phrase is added at the end of a verse that is really otiose as regards sense but supplies the assonance, as in (Q12:10, 21:68, 79, 104). Sometimes the sense is strained in order to produce the rhyme, such as in (Sura) 4, where statements regarding Allah are inappropriately thrown into the past….the accusative ending on which the rhyme depends being thereby obtained.

Bell also observed the presence of excessive repetition in Sura 55, noting that the phrase “O which of your Lord’s bounties will you and you deny?“ occurs eventually “in practically each alternate verse, whose sense they frequently interrupt.

Another early reviewer was Theodor Noldeke, who writes [16]:

The Muslims themselves have observed that the tyranny of the rhyme often makes itself apparent in derangement of the order of words and in the choice of verbal forms which would not otherwise have been employed, e.g., an imperfect instead of a perfect. In one place, to save the rhyme, he calls Mount Sinai Sinin (Q95:2) instead of Sina (Q23:20); in another Elijah is called Ilyasin (Q37:130) instead of Ilyas (Q6:85, Q37:123). The substance even is modified to suit the exigencies of rhyme. Thus the Prophet would scarcely have fixed on the usual number of “eight” angels round the throne of God (Q69:17) if the word thamaniyah, “eight” had not happened to fall in so well with the rhyme.

The paragraph continues with another comment on Sura 55:

And when (Q55). speaks of ‘two’ heavenly gardens, each with ‘two’ fountains and ‘two’ kinds of fruit, and again of ‘two’ similar gardens, all this is simply because the dual termination (-an) corresponds to the syllable that controls the rhyme in that whole sura.

and he continues:

In the later pieces, Muhammad often inserts edifying remarks, entirely out of keeping with the context, merely to complete his rhyme. In Arabic it is such an easy thing to accumulate masses of words with the same termination, that the gross negligence of the rhyme in the Qur’an is doubly remarkable.

Julius Wellhausen [17] points out another oddity with the ‘two gardens’ passages in Sura 55: there are two examples of the two gardens: seemingly a simple case of two alternative versions of the same text, placed next to one another by a post-Muhammad copy editor. The first version starts at Verse 46 and the second, at Verse 62. The reader is invited to verify Wellhausen’s observation using any available Quran.

Sura 55 therefore comes in for criticism for content which has been manipulated in order to fit the rhyme, for excessive repetition and for the sequential occurrence of what seem to be two alternative versions of the same thing; the last two features being as obvious in English as they must be in Arabic. Again, we ask: by what possible argument could one claim that these are not flaws? Part (a) of the above claim is therefore seen to be without foundation. Part (b) is discussed below.

3.2. Imitators of the Quran

In addition to the books written in support of the claim of inimitability such as that by al-Baquillani, there are accounts of attempts by Arab poets to equal or surpass the Quran, particularly in the second century after the death of Muhammad. According to Aleem [18]:

It is a most remarkable phenomenon in Arabic literary history that many of the best prose writers and also some poets of the early times are accused of trying at one time or another to rival the Quran. But the stories always end on the same note, namely, that they were obliged to abandon the attempt finding it beyond their power.

However, Aleem seems unenthusiastic about the truth of these stories, commenting “The stories sound very circumstantial….” and he follows this comment with the perceptive observation that “…the passage of time turns vague rumour into established history”. These words were published in 1933; one cannot help wondering if Aleem (a Muslim, presumably) would feel comfortable displaying such objectivity today.

Another review of supposed imitators is presented in the Islamic Awareness website [19]. However, on closer inspection, these claims are not so convincing. Indeed, most seem either to represent attempted parodies, to be merely in the style of the Quran, or not to be attempts at bettering the Quran at all. As with other ‘proofs’ such as that of al-Baquillani, the supposed evidence simply evaporates upon close inspection.

Nevertheless, there is a more objective version of the claim of inimitability consisting, first, of a challenge, made in the Quran itself, to produce even one Sura equal to those in the Quran and, second, the assertion that the challenge has never been successfully met.

3.3. The ‘Sura Like It’ Challenge:

There are four verses in the Quran which present a challenge to unbelievers. They are:

Produce an alternative Quran:

(Q52:33-34) “Or do they say, ‘He has invented it?’ Nay, but they do not believe. Then let them bring a discourse like it, if they speak truly.”

No? Then produce ten Suras:

(Q11:13-14) “Or do they say, ‘He has forged it’? Say: ‘Then bring you ten suras the like of it, forged; and call upon whom you are able, apart from God, if you speak truly.’ “

No? Then produce just one sura:

(Q2:23) “And if you are in doubt concerning that We have sent down on Our servant, then bring a sura like it, and call your witnesses, apart from God, if you are truthful.”

with a similar challenge in (Q10:38).

The challenge seems to provide an unusually objective means for deciding a religious dispute, though the Quran gives no indication that anyone responded to the challenge during Muhammad’s lifetime. Nevertheless, the challenge is still open! As an encouragement, it is worth noting that some of the early Suras (near the back of the Quran) are less than 5 lines long. Sura 108 (in the English version) contains just 23 words. It seems implausible to claim that to write a Sura like 108 is impossible, so what is the catch?

The first catch is that, since the Quran is in Arabic, the challenge must be met in Arabic also. Even on the most generous estimate, the number of Arabic-speaking non-Muslims amounts to less than 0.5% of the world’s population, leaving the vast majority of potential challengers unable to participate. Then, for the aspiring participants, the requirement that the imitation verse should be ‘like’ the real one is a Catch-22. The Quran and the Hadiths give no clue as to the criteria, leaving the decision entirely to whoever judges the challenge. If the verses are too alike, then copying can be claimed. If they differ to a degree such that this accusation cannot be made, then the imitation can be rejected on the grounds that the resemblance is insufficient.

Who would judge an imitation Sura? Muslims would be unlikely to accept non-Muslims as judges. If qualified (i.e. devout, scholarly) Muslims could be persuaded to judge the challenge, the comparison could not be done ‘blind’, since anyone judging the contest would know that ‘God’ wrote Sura A and an unbeliever wrote Sura B. Even if the judge was, despite himself, impressed with a contribution, he would almost certainly consider it blasphemous to compare it favourably it with God’s work. A fair contest could never take place, and never has.

4. Final remarks

Muslims maintain their belief in the miraculous inimitability of the Quran in the face of obvious and abundant evidence that the book is not the masterpiece that it is claimed to be. There is no way in which the text of the Quran can be considered to be flawless. Quite obvious imperfections exist in the style, in the content and in the layout of the Quran and to recognise them requires not a fluent knowledge of Arabic, but merely an open mind.

The idea that the Quran is miraculously inimitable was not developed by observation, but merely inferred from statements to that effect uttered by Muhammad, either as part of the Quran or in reference to it. Muhammad’s fellow Meccans, when in receipt of the early verses of the Quran, were unimpressed to such an extent that Muhammad achieved only around 100 converts in the first 13 years of his mission (see [11]). This suggests that any miraculous properties of the text were so inconspicuous as to be overlooked completely by its target audience. If, as Aleem states in [18], the Islamic doctrine of inimitability took more than a century to establish, this must surely be some kind of clue to its credibility.

The supposed divine strategy of providing inimitability (of all things!) as a ‘miracle’ contains an obvious flaw. Not only is the message of the Quran inaccessible to most of the Earth’s population because of the exclusive use of Arabic [11], the claimed proof of its authenticity is therefore inaccessible also. This implies that Muslims, mindful of their duty to spread Islam to all the corners of the Earth, are given absolutely nothing with which to persuade non Arabic-speaking peoples of the truth of their religion, which may explain their reluctant use of conquest, slaughter and plunder as alternative means to the same end ([20], [21]).

It is difficult to be impressed by the much vaunted Sura Like It challenge. Even if this had a history of objective criteria, unbiased judges and documented rulings (it has none of the above), Muslims should still keep a sense of proportion about the value of a contest in which at least 99.5% of those who may be motivated to compete are effectively barred due to an accident of birth. Moreover, one must ask why there are three successive challenges in the Quran when the last, alone, is sufficient? If the author was God, why should He, knowing that humans could not produce even a single Sura like the ones in the Quran, waste time with the earlier challenges to produce ten or more? At the very heart of the Muslim ‘proof’ of the divine origin of the Quran lies a subtle but unmistakeable clue to human authorship.

The evidence which has been reviewed is admitted to be incomplete. However, it is noteworthy that, in Muslim reviews of the subject ([18], [19]) where the evidence could and should have been presented, it is absent. It is therefore suggested here that the existence of proof of the inimitability of the Quran is merely an Islamic myth. If the supposed primary evidence for the truth of Islam is simply not presented to the non-Muslim world when the opportunity arises, the only possible conclusion is that it does not exist.

5. References

1. Ahmad von Denffer. Introduction to the Quran. Studies in Islam and the Middle East ePublishing Series.

2. Muhammad al-Nafzawi. The Perfumed Garden.

3. T. Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.

4. Arthur Arberry (Translator). The Koran Interpreted. Touchstone Books. 1996.

5. Adrian Reddy. The Islamic Rules of Inheritance in the Quran.

6. USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts. University of Southern California.

7. Versions of the Quran

8. R. Bell and W.M. Watt. Introduction to the Quran. Extracts published in [9], also available in book form or online at Introduction to the Quran.

9. Ibn Warraq (Editor/Translator). What the Koran really says. Prometheus Books. 2002.

10. The Tawil of the Quran Known Only to God?

11. Adrian Reddy. A plan? A man? The Quran.

12. Ibn Warraq. Why I am not a Muslim. Prometheus Books. 1995.

13. Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368), Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, (rev. ed., trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Beltsville, Maryland: Amana, 1994)

14. Dan McDougall. Fareeda’s fate: rape, prison and 25 lashes. The Observer. 17 September 2006.

15. G.E. Von Grunebaum. A Tenth Century Document of Arabic Literary Theory and Criticism. University of Chicago Press. 1950.

16. Theodor Nöldeke. The Quran. An Introduction.

17. J. Wellhausen. On the Koran. As published in [9].

18. A. Aleem. Ijazul-Quran. Islamic Culture. Jan 1933. Pages 64-82 and 215-233

19. M. S. M. Saifullah. Topics Relating To The Qur’an: I’jaz, Grammarians & Jews.

20. S. Majumdar. Jihad. The Islamic doctrine of permanent war. Voice of India. New Delhi.

21. S.R. Goel. Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD). Voice of India. New Delhi.

One of my favorite moments in the current series of atheist versus Christian debates occurs when the defender of the faith – confronted with contradictions and crimes in Holy Writ – drops the Christian identity and begins championing a vague form of Deism (much like the Rev. Al Sharpton in the Sharpton-Christopher Hitchens Debate). Suddenly all talk of the resurrection and the miraculous vanishes, supplanted by faith in a celestial watchmaker who created this complicated but cockeyed timepiece of a universe, wound it up and then went about His business for the next 13 billion years.

Less amusing is the part where the Christian proponent attempts to blame the worst 20th century atrocities on atheism, which, to my mind, shows only a sad and unwitting lack of scholarship. In particular when the Christian attempts to lump fascists, Nazis, communists and agrarian utopians into the same bloody basket.

Even the most cursory review of the literature reveals how many 20th century Catholic or Protestant parties openly supported fascist regimes, often contributing clergy to leading government posts. If it is examples you want, there is the PPI in Italy, the Ustashe in Croatia, National Catholicism in Franco’s Spain, the Iron Guard in Romania, the Rexists in Belgium, and the movements of António Salazar in Portugal, Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, and Jozef Tiso in Slovakia, all Christian, all supporters of fascist governments.

Throughout World War II it was Vatican policy to go to extraordinary lengths to further the destruction of the godless communists and protect the foundations of Christendom – a policy reminescent of American support for right-wing dictatorships during the Cold War. Not least was Rome’s decision to remain virtually silent on the Holocaust as long as the Hitler government was useful in destroying the Red Army. This policy continued post-World War II, as the Rome-based Hitler supporter Bishop Alois Hudal (a very close friend of the Pope Pius XII, according to Jakob Weinbacher, auxiliary Bishop of Vienna) smuggled hundreds of Nazi war criminals to South America. War criminals like Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic (responsible for 700,000 deaths) would also flee to Rome before being smuggled to Peron’s Argentina.

Why shouldn’t Rome support the Nazis? With the exception of Hitler they were in the main spiritual, church-going Catholics and Lutherans. According to Klaus Barbi’s biographer, there was no more devout Catholic than the Butcher of Lyon. And while Goebbels was eventually excommunicated, it was not for crimes against humanity, but for marrying a protestant.

But what of der Führer himself?

For reasons that should be obvious, atheists are seldom, if ever, heard invoking God’s name in their public statements. Yet one would be hard pressed to find a speech in which Hitler did not summon divine providence:

I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work. —Mein Kampf

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith…. We need believing people. — Speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933, April 26, 1933

I go the way that Providence dictates for me with all the assurance of a sleepwalker. — Speech of March 14, 1936, Munich

God has created this people and it has grown according to His will. And according to our will it shall remain and never shall it pass away. — Speech of July 31, 1937, Breslau

I believe that it was God’s will that from here a boy was sent into the Reich and that he grew up to become the leader of the nation. — Speech of April 9, 1938, Vienna

[W]e National Socialists have resolutely championed belief in our own people, starting from that watchword of eternal validity: God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves. — Speech Nov. 6, 1938, Weimar

We pray to God that He may lead our soldiers on the path and bless them as hitherto. — Hitler’s Order of the Day, April 6, 1941, Berlin

Pius XII seems to have regarded Hitler, not as a godless tyrant, but as a crusader. So too did the bulk of the German people. Hitler may have believed privately – after Nietzsche – that the “Judeo-Christian slave morality” was a malignancy infecting the West, and one that should be cut out, or at the very least transformed into a form of “Positive Christianity” which stressed Christ’s strengths, rather than his weakness, but that is not the same as being an atheist. Indeed Hitler believed in a strong Nordic God, one his SS troops honored with the prayer “God is with us,” etched on their belt buckles.

Marxist-Leninists or egalitarian-utopian despots were another matter. No doubt Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot were skeptics, but if there is a legitimate link between a lack of supernatural beliefs and a propensity to commit atrocities it is not to be found in the actions of 20th century dictators. Of the worst 20th century government-backed genocides or mass killings four were carried out by states with officially atheist states (Communist China, USSR, North Vietnam, Khmer Rouge Cambodia), and six were carried out by non-atheist states (Nazi Germany, Chinese Nationals, Turkey, Imperial Japan, Poland and Pakistan[1]). One could find many things these latter regimes had in common—radical nationalism, the perceived need to eliminate the enemy–but one thing they definitely did not have in common was atheism. Rather to understand the communists’ genocidal actions we must look to the ideologies they espoused, beginning with Karl Marx.

Raised in a Jewish family that nominally converted to Lutheranism, Karl Marx believed religion was an expression of material realities and economic injustice, and was one of many factors or traditions keeping the masses docile, benumbed and complacent, thereby maintaining the status quo, and thus delaying the revolt of the proletariat. Marx’s unbelief was an offshoot of his economic theories, which held that religion, once a rather harmless superstition, had become a tool of the ruling class. Yet once the socialist nirvana had been attained religion, like the state, would wither and die. (Later, a rift would develop between those Bolsheviks who thought the death of religion should take its course naturally, and those who felt it needed a push. Not surprisingly the pushers won out.) Ultimately, what Stalin objected to was not so much the complacency that religion caused, but the influence of the Church and in particular its hierarchy. There was room in Stalin’s Soviet Union for but one patriarch.

In his essay “Socialism and Religion,” Lenin argued that, “Religion is a sort of spiritual booze.” This notion was adopted by the Bolsheviks, but a similar idea had been that of the French revolutionaries before them. During the French Revolution the Legislative Assembly set about dechristianizing France. The Assembly anticipated the communists in its confiscation of church property, legalization of divorce, and its shuttering of churches. In each instance the confiscation also served as a land grab (in France the Catholic Church was the largest landowner, taxed crops, controlled monopolized education). The most radical of these revolutionary groups, the hébertists (after Jacques Hébert), established a cult of reason, and in a ceremony in 1793 at Notre Dame in Paris, crowned a courtesan “the Goddess of Reason.” When the Catholic Church was seen as being counter-revolutionary, there followed a bloody massacre (now known as the September Massacres) during which angry mobs massacred three bishops, including the Archbishop of Arles, and more than two hundred priests.

The atrocities of the French revolutionaries were caused not by their new-found atheism, so much as by their hatred of the ancien regime and its close alliance with the Church, coupled with their desire for liberty and justice and a desire to access the wealth of church property and to minimize the power of the clergy. Likewise the atrocities committed by communist dictators were the result–not of a fanatical unbelief in God–but of a fanatical belief in the doctrine of communism, which required collectivization, the stamping out of dissent and perceived enemies of the state and an irrational hatred of intellectuals and the petit bourgeoisie.

Under Stalin’s rule an estimated 7 million died during the 1932-33 forced famine to stomp out the Ukrainian independence movement. Again, what had atheism to do with the deaths? The simplistic argument is that Stalin was an atheist, Stalin created the conditions that led to mass starvation, therefore, atheism leads to mass starvation and genocide. Apparently a religious person would have been incapable of such barbarities. Yet the historian knows otherwise.

Indeed until Lenin’s rule – and with the very brief exception of Revolutionary France – all leaders would have been religious, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or, like Hitler, pagan. Most would have considered themselves divine. Their religion or divinity, however, did not seem to have had much of an impact on the frequency of massacres, pogroms and genocides. In history’s worst case of genocide, scholars estimate that China’s population was halved in a half century of Mongol rule, from 120 million to 60 million people, in 1300. What is more, about half of the Russian and Hungarian populations died during the invasions. While beseiging a Genoese trading post in the Crimea, the Kipchak Mongols, led by Jani Beg, catapulted plague infested corpses into the city infecting the population with bubonic plague in the first documented instance of biological warfare. The Geneose returned to Italy carrying the plague with them. Over the next three years an estimated 40 million persons died on the continent. Jani Beg was no atheist. Rather he forced Islam upon all of his subjects, and sought out Saint Alexius of Kiev to cure his wife’s blindness (which he supposedly did). Indeed all of the Mongol leaders were religious. Genghis Khan practiced Shamanism, and his daughter in law was a Christian.

Contemporary accounts by European diplomats of the Armenian Genocide (1915-16) note that the massacres were “perpetrated in the context of a formal jihad against Armenians who had attempted to throw off the yoke of dhimmitude by seeking equal rights and autonomy, notes Andrew G. Bostom, MD, author of The Legacy of Jihad. “The Ottoman Turkish destruction of the Armenian people, beginning in the late 19th and intensifying in the early 20th century, was a genocide, and jihad ideology contributed significantly to this decades long human liquidation process,” notes Bostom. Most scholars now agree that the genocide was both racially and religiously motivated.

In Rwanda where 90 percent of the population was Christian, “numerous priests, pastors, nuns, brothers, catechists, and Catholic and Protestant lay leaders supported, participated in, or helped to organize the killings,” writes Timothy Longman in the essay collection In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, which documents the religious motivations behind the Armenian, Jewish, Rwandan and Bosnian genocides. Meanwhile Charles de Lespinay charges the Rwandan clergy with being “propagators of false information tending to maintain a climate of fear, suspicion and hatred.” Prominent clergy refused to condemn the mass killing (characterizing it as wartime self-defense or “double genocide”), and even excused the murders as a sort of delayed justice for past wrongs. In Rwanda, Lespinay concludes, “the exacerbation of past and present rivalries is entirely the fault of the missionary-educated intellectual `elites.’ Of course, not only did most of the Christian clergy do nothing to prevent or stop the genocide, the “Christian” West did nothing either.

With Mao Zedong was added the necessity of stamping out traditional Chinese and foreign influences. When Mao declared war on religion it was part of a larger war on everything associated with traditional Chinese culture (Daoism and Buddhism, being at the top of the list) and Western influences. As in pre-revolutionary France and Russia, religion had been institutionalized in China with the Emperor praised as the “Son of Heaven.”

Finally, it was at the Wat Botum Vaddei Buddhist monastery, and not in the pages of Das Kapital, that the young Pol Pot learned about the suppression of individuality and abandonment of personal ties, essential elements of his political credo. Later he attended Catholic school, learned French, and, despite his poor scholastic record, won a scholarship in 1949 to study radio electronics in Paris. It was in the City of Lights that he was introduced to Marxism. Fleeing the U.S. backed Cambodian government, he moved his base to remote northeastern Cambodia, where he was influenced by the tribes of “original Khmers” who had no experience with Buddhism. Pol Pot’s vision of a Khmeresque agrarian utopia meant emptying the cities, butchering intellectuals and bourgeoisie, abolishing money and markets, private property and religion and setting up rural collectives. Presumably Pol Pot would not have turned out so badly had he remained a practicing Buddhist. Though an atheist radio electrician, who had not been exposed to Marxist thought, probably would not have had to flee into the jungles of Cambodia and would never have met the Khmers. It was an anti-Western, anti-urban and pro-nativist ideology that defined the Khmer Rouge, not atheism, which was but one aspect.

Communist countries that lacked a history of government entanglement with religion were another story. Poland is a case in point. Rather than being seen as an institution of the state, the Catholic Church remained a refuge, indeed a bulwark of nationhood, particularly during the partitions at a time when the Polish state was carved up by Protestant Prussia, Orthodox Russia and Catholic Austria. With Polish independence following World War I, the Church remained an entity separate from the state and thus became the Poles lone refuge during Nazi occupation. In the post-war period Stalin had no choice but to allow the Catholic Church to retain a (admittedly diminished) place in Polish society–doubtless a mistake as it would become one of the government’s greatest critics and eventually help undermine the legitimacy of the Soviet Union. Indeed it was mainly in kingdoms like pre-revolutionary France and Russia where the church was institutionalized or intertwined with the corrupt regime that it was regarded as a mortal enemy of the masses.

Contrast Poland with another former communist state: Albania. Until the end of the Ottoman Empire, Albania was a sultanate, with power in the hands of a titled Muslim class of pashas and beys endowed with both large estates and extensive political and administrative powers. Under communist rule, Albania became the only nation to officially ban religion and today the majority of Albanians claim to be atheist or agnostic, according to a US government report.

Doubtless the reason Americans remain so devoutly religious today has to do with their tradition of separation of church and state. Thus the citizenry, when disenchanted with the government, have had little reason to turn against the church. The lesson is not, however, that communist dictators’ lack of religious belief drove them to commit atrocities in the name of atheism. The lesson is that the best, most sure-fire way to eliminate religious belief in the U.S. is to do what the religious fundamentalists want done, that is to institutionalize religion.

1) Chinese Nationalists (1928-49) Purges of communists, etc. 10,214,000. Japan’s military (1936-45) Nanking massacre, etc. 5,964,000. Turkey’s Young Turks (1909-18) Slaughter of Turkey’s Armenians 1,883,000. Poland killed ethnic Germans 8 million fled Poland (1945-1948) 1,585,000. West Pakistan (1958-87) E. Pakistan Hindus killed or expelled 1,503,000. Figures from Death by Government by Rudolph J. Rummel, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994.

Christopher Orlet is an essayist and book critic. He can be emailed here.

Thirty years ago I watched my mum cry when Zulfiqar Bhutto was executed, today I cried for the daughter of Pakistan’s destiny.

Benazir Bhutto was a more than a beacon of light for mobilising Pakistanis against Islamism and instilling Pakistan’s democracy. She had the same fire, passion, commitment that her father had for his country, and for the tenets of democracy. In 1986 after years in jails and then exile, she left the safety of England to return to Pakistan and took on dictatorship, she bravely ignored death threats and achieved her ambitions to become Pakistan’s first woman Prime Minister.

In her autobiography Daughter of Destiny in 1988, she was the first to identify the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan and the reversed
rights and freedoms of Pakistani women under President Zia who engaged with Islamists in the 80s. She was a threat to Islamists and Jihadists who deploy an anti-democracy propaganda with violent terror, and yet she returned from exile again, knowing she faced death threats, only to be assassinated in a barbaric Jihadist’s attack. She was a threat to Islamists and Pakistan’s only glimmer of hope of restoring full democracy.
She gave her life for Pakistan and was self determined in her quest to establish democracy again, as she once did on the first of December 1988.

I hope she now becomes the inspiration that British Pakistani women aspire to, so that we too can fight the extremism
in Britain that Jihadists have embedded into our communities; I hope that British Pakistani women stand up for the tenets of democracy that we live in. I hope that British Pakistani women take off the black headscarves and veils to adapt the true Pakistani style and dress that represents Pakistani culture as she did and oppose the cult Jihadism represents. I hope we can collectively oppose the ‘ideology’ that she alone as a woman opposed without fear. I hope we break our silence now to honour her memory and aspirations.

Benazir is an inspiration and Icon for Pakistani men and women. Jihadism opposes democracies, opposes women
leaders, reverses the equality and the freedom of muslim women. I hope British Pakistani women stand up with the same passion and bravery that Benazir demonstrated, against an extreme global ideology. Islam hasn’t just been hijacked, it has been blacklisted by Jihadists and Islamists…who aim to destroy democracies and people who want to live in a civilised world. I hope British Pakistani women in Britain take the first lead against the suicide human bombs created by Jihadists and their mentors.

I hope for a lot, but more than anything I hope Benazir becomes our symbol of inspiration, never to be forgotten.

Pakistan has lost a daughter, a sister, a mother, but she will remain forever in our hearts…as there won’t be a Pakistani woman
of her calibre and class to inspire British Pakistani women or people again.

27th December 2007 will be remembered as the saddest day in the history of Pakistan for generations to come.

She will always be our hero.

Gina Khan, Birmingham

Aqsa Parvez is another victim of honor killing, She, too has been tried and sentenced to death by her family’s belief, for not honoring the backward culture and traditions which are promoted and guarded by religious movements in particular the Islamist movement globally. Amongst all other girls and women who have been victims of honor killing, Aqsa Parvez, a sixteen-year-old, studying in grade 11 at a high school in Mississauga, Ontario – as well as Heshu from England, Fadima from Sweden and Hutun from Germany – were murdered in so called Islamic communities in Western countries, for not honoring the inhuman tradition. These victims had the desire to live in a modern society, and all wished to determine their own lifestyle and they were not willing to compromise for less.

The death of Aqsa Parvez at the age of 16 is just a tip of the iceberg in Canada, where respect for backward cultures and religions comes before women’s and children’s rights, where cultural ghettoes have become an ideal heaven to crush any desires in women. In the case of Aqsa Parvez, a brave girl who put herself at the forefront of the struggle for a well deserved human life, the Islamic groups that promote Islamic law and Islamic school and are looking for more shares in power should be held responsible the most. They are the ones who push for enclosed and regressive communities in the heart of Canada and who have created little Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia or Pakistan. They are the ones to blame for convincing families and individuals to accept the barbaric rules and regulations, and for not having any mercy for their own children and family members.

This cruelty to our children and women should not be tolerated and must be condemned strongly. Harsh punishment must be considered for those who abuse or victimize children and women as so-called ‘Islamic action.’ The advocates of freedom and secularism should come forward in full force for the principle of the rights of the child. The fact that religion is the private matter of the parents and should not be imposed on the child and infringe on the child’s civil rights is confirmed and established as a social norm.

We need to come forward in full force against any policies that pursue a cultural and social segregation, against any practice that undermines the rights and wellbeing of the child. We need to promote integration. The state needs to take an active part in providing intense education to women and children who suffer from abusive relationships, especially where enforcement of tradition is involved. A very strong support network is needed for the youth and women who are seeking protection from parents and partners; and to prevent honor killing, Canada also needs to stop promoting and funding religious groups.

Homa Arjomand
NoSharia
416-737-9500

Pyrrho: Mr. Romney, thank you for speaking to us today. Some are saying that this is the most important political speech since John Kennedy’s “Separation Speech” in the 1960 election.

Romney: “There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adam’s words: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.”

Pyrrho: Well, surely Mr. Romney, you’re arguing for the entanglement of religion and politics. Kennedy argued a faith-neutral stance for the President. He would have been cooked and eaten for dinner by the Southern Baptists if he’d called himself a Man of Faith. Do you see a conflict there? And that bit about the founders, a little on the sly side, wouldn’t you say? Adams also argued against penal laws for those critical of the Bible and free thought. And many of the founders were more concerned about freedom from religion than freedom of religion. So you’re quoting out of context…..

Romney: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

Pyrrho: Well, Governor, those are very instructive words. That’s a chiasmus, isn’t it? I love a good chiasmus. John Kennedy was good at that, too. Are you saying there’s something about religion that promotes freedom? Religion in general? But you can’t be talking about Islam, now, can you. The freedom of Christianity? Not sure that Christianity has traditionally supported freedom of conscience. Mormonism in particular? Well, since Mormonism wasn’t around during the time of the Founders, I’m not sure that works with your analogy. But many people would doubt that religion and freedom have anything to do with one another. And during whole periods of human history their relationship has been bloody. Never mind– that line about “opening the windows of the soul…” really gorgeous. Did you get it from the Fashion Heaven website? What about the Presidency—how does that relate to religion?

Romney: “When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God. …No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.”

Pyrrho: Right. To God? And to cite an ancient dilemma passed down to us by Plato, how do you know you’re doing the will of God, and if you represent all faiths, which God is it you’re promising, and whose will are you doing? America’s a lot messier than it was in George Washington’s day, religiously speaking. And if you require prayer to do your job properly, shouldn’t we really be looking for somebody who can do it without divine intervention?

Romney. “It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it’s usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.”

Pyrrho: But governor, it’s not just theological differences between churches, like whether you sip wine or slurp grape juice at communion. (“I like Ryvita, but you like the Pita.”) Where do I look in my local library for the Common Code of Moral Convictions? You can’t mean the Bible. The moral convictions there include holding slaves, selling daughters, stoning sons, and driving out foreigners, not abolition and civil rights. I like what you say about speaking to the convictions of religious people. I assume you mean their stubborn insistence that only religious people have values. Are you saying that secular and non-religious people will be able to challenge those convictions under a Romney presidency? What about secularism?

Romney: “In recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong…We are a nation ‘Under God’ and in God, we do indeed trust.”

Pyrrho: Gosh, did I have that wrong! Sort of Back to God, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes is it? But does this “trust” thing bother you at all? I mean, it isn’t fiduciary. The dollar hasn’t been buoyant against the pound and Euro lately. In fact it’s taking a flogging. You wouldn’t want a faith based Treasury, or a faith based stock market or faith based trade. So exactly at what point does this Trust thing kick in? Maybe in war? Hasn’t helped much since 9-11 though, has it? And the Muslims who trusted God against American aggression and Taliban who trusted God to deliver them from the American Devils didn’t get very far—or is that your Different God? You mean the American God, the one with the red, white and blue crown.

Romney: “We should acknowledge the Creator as did the founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from ‘the God who gave us liberty.’”

Pyrrho: I missed that day in my American History class. I thought we were fighting the British and whupped them fair and square at Yorktown. I guess it was more biblical eh? Yahweh’s armies leading the hosts into combat against the Hittites? –By the way, I could have sworn a menorah was Jewish. And would you also advocate the use of Crescents during Ramadan dangling from city lampposts, or a savory Wiccan fire outside the local PO? What about Mitt Romney, personally, you and your lovely wife?

Romney: “My faith is grounded on these truths. You can witness them in Ann and my marriage and in our family. We are a long way from perfect and we have surely stumbled along the way, but our aspirations, our values, are the self -same as those from the other faiths that stand upon this common foundation. And these convictions will indeed inform my presidency.”

Pyrrho: Oh good. Then you have stumbled. But basically your lovely marriage pretty much expresses your family values. And family values are as American as pizza, a lot of the candidates are saying. Mormons are known for their commitment to marriage. I suspect their family values were so intense at first that they decided the more marriage the better. But leaving that aside, is there any place for diversity in your faith?

Romney: “The diversity of our cultural expression, and the vibrancy of our religious dialogue, has kept America in the forefront of civilized nations even as others regard religious freedom as something to be destroyed.

Pyrrho: Gosh, that’s pretty. And here again, I thought it was our art, science, technology and economy that put us at the forefront. I didn’t recognize the importance of religious dialogue until you mentioned it. How does that work exactly? Is our religious dialogue better than German and French religious dialogue—like California wine? But if you’re right, just point me to the ones who want to destroy religious freedom and I’ll spank them silly. I’ve learned more in this hour than in all of college about our history and our values.

Romney: No, thank you:…” we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day. And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.”

Pyrrho: Amen, Mitt. Can I be first chair violin, or are you looking for a Jew?

Amherst, N.Y.-Experts at the Center for Inquiry (CFI), America’s largest think tank defending reason, science, and freedom of inquiry, were dismayed to learn that Texas has forced a distinguished educator out of her job because she spoke favorably of evolution and forwarded messages about lectures on evolution. Christine Castillo Comer, with more than three decades of experience as an educator, was forced out of her position recently after she forwarded an e-mail message about a talk to be given at CFI-Austin by Dr. Barbara Forrest, a critic of intelligent design. Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, is a fellow at the Center for Inquiry. A copy of the forwarded e-mail that cost Comer her position is available upon request.

CFI’s director of research and legal affairs, Ronald A. Lindsay, believes that Ms. Comer may have a cause of action against the state. “The facts are not entirely clear yet, but if Comer was forced to resign because she expressed a view on a matter of public concern, she may well have had her legal rights violated,” Lindsay observed. “Moreover, regardless of the legality of the state’s actions, it is incredible that in the 21st century an educator would be punished for saying something favorable about evolution. Does an educator have to be silent about the existence of pathogens or about the truth that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not vice-versa? It appears that the Texas Taliban now controls education in that state.”

Forrest authored a position paper titled “Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement.” The paper was released by CFI this past July. In the paper, Dr. Forrest provided an insightful analysis of the intelligent design (ID) movement. She demonstrated convincingly that the ID movement is simply a continuation of creationism. Experts at CFI warn that Ms. Comer’s recent experiences with authorities from the Texas Education Agency may indicate an insidious agenda on the part of certain parties within the Austin educational system to introduce students to Intelligent Design via the science curriculum. Ms. Comer pointed out to the New York Times (December 2, 2007) that “.state education officials seemed uneasy lately over the required evolution curriculum.”

Paul Kurtz, chairman and founder of the Center for Inquiry and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says that the foundations of our democratic society are now under attack. “The social and scientific progress we take for granted has been advanced by a basic scientific philosophical point of view: scientific naturalism,” said Kurtz. “The methods of the sciences, and the assumptions upon which they are based, are being challenged culturally in the United States today as never before. Despite its success in providing us with unparalleled benefits, religious fundamentalists seek to inhibit free inquiry and to misrepresent the tested conclusions of scientific naturalism. This is a highly charged political issue – both science and secularism are under political attack. We seem not to have come far culturally since the Scopes “monkey” trial if educators risk their jobs promoting academic lectures on scientifically uncontroversial topics.”

Interviews with CFI experts Paul Kurtz and Ronald A. Lindsay are available by contacting CFI’s director of communications Nathan Bupp at (716) 636-4869, ext. 218, or e-mail at nbupp@centerforinquiry.net.

The Center for Inquiry is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, comprising the Council for Secular Humanism, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER). Headquartered in Amherst, New York, the Center for Inquiry strives to promote rational thinking in all aspects of life. The organization’s Web site can be found Center for Inquiry.

Islamists have become good at their own kind of PR. Every once in a while they find something to raise hell over and threaten the world. The charade over cartoons of Mohammad is still lingering on in the Media, and now they have started another bizarre show of offended feelings and indignant masses over a teddy bear called Mohammad in a class room of 7-8 year old kids in Sudan. The timing of this teddy bear show puzzles me greatly. Is the concurrent teddy bear saga and Annapolis conference merely a coincidence or does the timing tell us something?

It is irrelevant whether the English teacher has done this deliberately or it is just “an innocent mistake.” Whatever the reason, the action of the Sudanese government must be categorically condemned. This is a deliberate political action with a political aim. I do not believe that the Sudanese government is alone on this. In my opinion this is a well planned and well coordinated action by the Islamist movement. This is an Islamist style PR action.

Every once in a while we get to witness a show of so-called fanatic Muslim frenzy. These serials of soap opera-like reality shows are creating a real dilemma for the international world. Questions are raised in perplexed moods. In the West people are divided. Some, out of fear or frustration, feel Islam should be left alone and free from any criticism and satire. Others get vengeful over the so-called “Muslim communities” and vent their anger in a racist manner on them. These reactions are wrong and will not solve the problem.

We must get to the root causes. Two basic questions must be asked: Is this really a spontaneous demonstration of people’s indignation and hurt feelings, or is it an orchestrated political demonstration to intimidate and terrorize the world? Is compromise and compassion with the angry mob the solution?

In my opinion this is a political demonstration orchestrated and organised by political Islam. The civilized and humane world must stand against it. We must condemn all such actions and expose them as they really are: a political stage-managed demonstration by the Islamist bullies. However, this is only one part of the solution.

The Islamists have been helped by the actions of the USA, Britain and their allies. The Iraq war, Afghanistan, the war on Lebanon, and the fate of the Palestinians and the injustices they suffer play into the hands of Islamists. People in the Middle East and North Africa are increasingly becoming indignant, angry and frustrated over these wars and injustices. This is no soap opera. It is real. It is justified.

To stand against the US-led aggression is another part of the solution. Islamists are exploiting this real anger; they are manipulating people’s frustration. They pose as their spokesperson. Islamists are not representative of the people. They are merely cashing in on real sufferings, real anger and real frustration felt by millions of people. We must stand against both poles. We must not fall into the trap of “Easterners” and “Westerners”, Muslims, non-Muslims. This is not clash of civilization. This is not a cultural war. This is a real political war with deep roots. And we must address the roots.

As long as we explain the complicated issues with oversimplified dichotomies, such as moderates vs fundamentalists, Muslims vs non- Muslims, West vs East we will not be able to tackle the real problem. The real problem is over political power and political supremacy between the USA and the Islamists. Religion, culture, race and colour happen to be convenient tools for distorting the real war, for falsifying the real interests. This is a political war as well as an ideological war. We need to fight it in both battlegrounds. A world free from aggression, injustices and religious frenzy depends on this.

Greg Palast is a radical campaigning journalist and author. He broke the British ‘Lobbygate’ scandal of 1999, which revealed that the Labour government was twisting policy to fit the needs of its financial backers. He revealed how George Bush stole the presidency in 2000 and continues to make the case that Bush stole the presidency in 2004. He is one of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq war.

He encountered British MP George Galloway in 2003 and initially defended him:

I sought additional material from Galloway and other sources to bolster that defense and to my surprise, found more that damned him than supported him. As a journalist, I could not bury the findings.

Throughout his career, Galloway has been accused of a large amount of financial skullduggery. From his days at the charity War on Want and the Dundee Labour clubs, to the Mariam Appeal and the Oil for Food programme, he leaves a trail of empty wallets and bitter recrimination. Yet what emerges is nothing so grand as fraud or embezzlement; it’s missing taxi receipts, mysterious break-ins, the chiselling and cutting of corners. Galloway’s life, on paper, is a murky fog through which transactions and motives can occasionally be discerned.

The difficulty for Galloway’s biographer and every other writer is that it is almost impossible to discuss the evidence against him. Galloway is fond of the British libel laws, that friend of the ruling class that places the burden of proof entirely on the defendant. David Morley knows this and, wisely, keeps things nebulous. His book states that, ‘when journalists ask [Galloway] questions about his lifestyle he will sometimes jokingly refer to the help he has had from Fleet Street.’

In her published diaries, House Music, Galloway’s opponent Oona King says that:

For legal reasons, I have had to leave out many interesting sections of this diary relating to George Galloway… When either he or I is six foot under, they can be exhumed. Until then, suffice to say, there is more than enough in the public domain that gives pause for thought about the way George Galloway chooses to operate.

So let’s follow King and Morley in sticking to the public domain. What do we know about George Galloway?

Galloway has said that ‘the disappearance of the Soviet Union was the biggest catastrophe of my life.’ To Saddam Hussein, he said, ‘I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem!’ We know that Galloway signed a petition demanding the release of Saddam’s number-two Tariq Aziz, with whom Galloway once danced in a North African nightclub. The Iraqi ‘resistance’, jihadis who kill civilians, socialists and aid workers, is ‘defending all the Arabs, and they are defending all the people of the world from American hegemony.’ When trade unionists broke down in tears at their recollections of torture under Ba’athists, Galloway sneered that their visible emotion was ‘a party trick’. He called Iraqi trade union leader Abdullah Muhsin an ‘Iraqi Quisling’. He said of the Syrian dictator that ‘Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.’ We know that he described Hamas as a ‘Palestinian national resistance movement, analogous to the organisations fighting for freedom in Kashmir,’ and said at a London antiwar rally that ‘I AM HERE to glorify the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah, and I AM HERE to glorify the resistance leader, Hassan Nasrallah.’ He has also said that ‘in poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians… only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together.’

All this makes Galloway’s alleged financial corruption seem almost irrelevant.

Yet his reputation in the West was of a principled maverick, speaking truth to power. And this is the approach that Morley takes. His preface states that, ‘In broad terms, I am on the same side as George Galloway regarding the Middle East… In my view, Galloway was right that invading Iraq was the wrong decision.’ Galloway comes across as a bit dodgy and a bit extremist but right about one big thing.

Although Morley is a little naïve about his subject, he provides bang-on insights. The nickname, ‘Gorgeous George,’ comes from a 1985 press conference at which Galloway was being grilled about his adventures at War on Want. In particular, he had claimed a £186 bill from a Mykonos restaurant as expenses for a trip to an Athens conference. Journalist Brian McCartney asked, ‘Obviously, there is some interest that you travelled to Greece in the company of someone else, presumably a female. Is that the case?’ Galloway’s current partner was also at this restaurant; what McCartney was driving at was that he had been drinking sangria with his girlfriend at the expense of a humanitarian charity.

After some flapping and dodging, Galloway said this:

I travelled to, and spent time in, Greece with lots of people, many of whom were women… some of whom were known carnally to me. Some of whom were known carnally to me. I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece.

It was classic Galloway. There were a few days of tabloid headlines and he looked foolish for a while. But being known as a womaniser does not do your long-term reputation any harm. And the relevant issue – that Galloway may or may not have diverted charitable funds for his own personal use – was blown out of the water.

Another anecdote stands out. In 1988, Pakistan’s dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq died. Galloway described the event, accurately, as the ‘death of a hangman.’ Bad move. Several imams condemned Galloway’s attack. Although other Pakistani Muslims agreed with Galloway’s criticisms of Zia’s rule, the lesson was learnt: ‘Since then,’ Morley says, ‘he has been very careful to cultivate his relations with ethnic groups, particularly in Bethnal Green and Bow.’

Too right. Out of all the government MPs who voted for the war, Galloway chose Oona King to defeat in the nastiest campaign of the 2005 general election. Oona wasn’t a Blair Babe. She was a serious leftwing politician who voted against the government’s anti-terror laws on civil liberties grounds. When interviewed, she would agree to talk on only two issues: housing and genocide. A hardworking constituency MP, King was sidelined by New Labour because she refused to write an article condemning Ken Livingstone, who was then running against the party for London Mayor.

She agonised over the vote for war and finally backed it on humanitarian grounds. That was enough. Galloway could tell Bethnal’s 36% Muslim population that Labour were making war on Muslims abroad and making war on Muslims at home. His party workers drove through the streets, shouting through megaphones, ‘Every vote for Labour is a bullet in the back of an Iraqi child.’ The campaign turned into a referendum on Iraq. Local Labour man Josh Peck gives this account of a typical ‘debate’:

Oona and George both agreed to speak in a public meeting, the first head-to-head. There were about twenty residents and another forty or fifty Respect supporters who booed, heckled and jeered Oona whenever she spoke. It’s a very effective technique… There were another couple of teachers there who were well-known SWP [Socialist Workers Party] activists. They said things like, ‘If it wasn’t for you killing Iraqi babies, we could afford to keep that fire engine.’ Even this came back to the war.

Galloway’s Respect party was an alliance between the SWP and conservative Muslims. To keep its new friends on board, the party threw out its commitments to secularism, female equality and gay rights, which SWP leader Lindsey German dismissed as a ‘shibboleth.’ That is Galloway’s legacy, if nothing else: he has brought the communalism of the BNP into left-wing politics, and brought religious reaction into left-wing politics.

Yet these are hard times for Galloway. He has been discredited by an ill-advised appearance on a game show, in which he made light of a fellow contestant’s alcohol problem and declared that he was the most famous person on the programme because ‘1.5 billion Muslims know who I am.’

His Respect party has descended into internal warfare. The SWP expelled many of Galloway’s supporters, and activist Rania Khan spoke at a meeting of ‘the excitement she felt when first joining Respect and how she looked forward to attending meetings, now she is scared of the arguments, the bullying and threatening behaviour.’ In response, Galloway shouted, ‘off you go – fuck off, fuck off the lot of you,’ and later locked the SWP out of Respect’s offices. It’s a long, hilarious story, and you can read the whole thing on Harry’s Place.

This kind of internecine farce seems to be a pattern. Oona King says:

Once the press reported that Galloway was suing me in December 2004, more and more people contacted my office with information about past events, many of them still incandescent with rage at Mr Galloway’s behaviour – even years later. I had been unaware that his career trajectory often followed a pattern: initially received with open arms by a group or organisation placing great faith in him, they then felt betrayed, and denounced him in the strongest terms.

Now, we on the Euston left are often accused of being a little obsessed with George Galloway; ‘turning,’ in Johann Hari’s words, ‘towards Galloway to give him another deserved – but increasingly irrelevant – spit in the face.’

There’s some truth in that, but interest in Galloway goes beyond his actual influence; he fascinates as a symbol, a freakshow, a grotesque parody of leftwing politics. And one of the qualities I admire about Galloway is his resilience, and his ability to make a comeback; he walks away from the smoking ruins, whistling, cigar in hand, already thinking of the next opportunity, and planning his next big score.

There are murmurs that Galloway may stand for the Poplar seat. It looks as if Gorgeous George isn’t done yet.

Gorgeous George: The Life and Adventures of George Galloway, David Morley, Politicos 2007

Imagine you found a pretty crystal while on a hike at a park. Suppose that a few hundred meters further on the hike, you ran into another hiker and struck up conversation. In that conversation, you show them your pretty crystal: “Hey, look at this neat-o quartz I found!”

Suppose your new hiker acquaintance responds by saying, “Actually, that’s not quartz at all, it’s feldspar. When I’m not a nature hiker, I’m a geology professor and a licensed gemologist.”

Naturally, your reaction (assuming you are not yourself a geologist or something) would be to say, “I don’t think so. I still say it’s a quartz. It looks all… quartz-y!”

What? That wouldn’t be your reaction?

No, of course not. Such a response would be perfectly ridiculous. Disagreeing with someone who knows much more than you about a subject, based on nothing more than your own feelings or intuitions, would be the height of foolishness. Right?

So why are there so many evolution doubters and global warming deniers and other self-styled “skeptics” who feel perfectly comfortable rejecting the well-supported conclusions of the overwhelming majority of scientific experts based on nothing more substantial than their own uninformed convictions about the matter?

Whether it’s evolution or neurobiology or climatology, when someone has some preconception or emotional obstacle to accepting some conclusion or implication of scientific investigation – that is, when they just plain don’t like it – they often feel perfectly free to reject the conclusion for the flimsiest of reasons, or no reason whatsoever. As someone who cares about science in specific and expertise in general, I find this…irritating, to say the very least.

Of course, I fully realize that rationalization is a pretty nearly universal feature of human nature. (More, there is good evidence that rationalization is a trait shared by other primates as well – which is exactly the sort of scientific finding some people reject out of hand, circularly enough.) But the whole point of science – or at least one of the major features of science – is to serve as an artificial construct that filters out various sorts of prejudices and rationalizations as much as possible. Rationalization can’t stand up to the process where we do the math, do the experiments, subject it all to peer review (i.e. criticism by other experts, usually rivals), and repeat endlessly. That’s pretty much the whole idea.

Yet, when it comes to some pet belief they don’t want to give up – some conclusion at odds with a vested personal interest or emotional conviction – a vast proportion of people feel free to just toss that whole process out and stick with the flimsiest rationalizations imaginable for their preferred beliefs. Faced with the weight of all the evidence and arguments provided by all the experts who know a hell of a lot more than they do about a given subject on one side – and the weight of what they personally want to be true bolstered by some bullshit arguments generated by some guy on the internet who shares their prejudices on the other side – a frightening majority of people seem to go with their wishful thinking and against all the expertise in the world every damned time. (Don’t believe me? Go look at polling data about belief in creationism, astrology, psychics, and other patent nonsense.)

Of course, nothing in what I’ve said here implies that science is flawless, perfect, or that its conclusions are always correct. Science reaches wrong conclusions all the time, and fails to reach any conclusion at all on a given question even more often than it reaches the wrong conclusion. But errors and gaps in scientific understanding aren’t corrected in any way by people disagreeing based on their preconceptions, preferences, and feelings: Errors and gaps are corrected by more scientific inquiry! That’s how science works to correct itself, and that’s how human knowledge has expanded so vastly over the past few centuries.

All scientific findings are provisional, but that doesn’t constitute any kind of justification for someone who isn’t familiar with the relevant science to reject any given scientific finding. To say that a scientific claim is “provisional” means that we have sufficient justification to accept it as true until some further evidence and reasoning comes along which overrides the evidence and reasoning we’ve used to date. “Provisional” most definitely does NOT mean “I don’t have to accept it as true if I don’t want to ‘cuz it’s just provisional! So there!” Experts may sometimes be wrong, but who else besides other experts – and sometimes the very same experts at a later time, with more data or better methods – gathers the evidence to show where and how experts are wrong?

Moreover, the fact that scientific opinion does change over time is its greatest strength, not a basis for doubting or criticizing any given scientific opinion. It baffles me when people selectively fail to understand this: I have heard more than a few global warming skeptics – even some very bright people – use the argument that climate scientists were predicting the next ice age a few decades ago, and now they’re all talking about global warming, so why should we listen to them now?

Well the first answer to such a doubter is this: You should listen to the climate science experts because they know something about climate modeling and prediction and you know nothing whatsoever about it. I could also point out that the two predictions are not contradictory because they are on completely different time scales: The next ice age is expected to descend some time in the next few thousand years, possibly in the next few hundred, whereas global warming is a current and ongoing trend expected to get much worse over the next few decades. But aside from all that, there is a deeper confusion behind this criticism, and that confusion is worth addressing.

People used to think that the sun moved around the earth. Presumably, even the “skeptics” I’m addressing here look at the change to a heliocentric model of the solar system – a change in scientific opinion – as part of the progress of knowledge. To them, I say this: If you accept that knowledge progresses over time with new evidence and understanding, how can you possibly justify rejecting some particular change in scientific opinion simply because opinion has changed? Even if climate scientists were predicting global cooling thirty years ago and global warming now, don’t you think three decades of advances in measurements and computing power and all that jazz, not to mention three more decades of ongoing climate data, might just make the basis for current scientific opinion a little stronger than the basis for the former opinion? Any argument with this general structure – Experts used to say this, but now they say something else, so why should I believe any of them? – is the most anti-scientific, illogical nonsense imaginable. Such an argument can only be made based on the assumption that changing conclusions based on new evidence is a bad thing!

While it is certainly foolish to place more trust in your own uninformed opinions than in the hard-won knowledge of masses of experts, it is even more foolish to go around thinking that experts changing their minds is a sign that experts shouldn’t be trusted at all. Surely the people whose claims ought not be trusted are those who never change their minds when confronted with new evidence!

Here’s the real crux of the problem: If a given person (1) doesn’t participate in that process of asking and answering important scientific questions, and (2) has not developed the expertise to do so, and (3) has not even bothered to read what the actual experts have to say, then it quite naturally follows that (4) that person’s “skepticism” is not in fact skepticism or critical thinking or anything along those lines – it is pure, unadulterated ignorance.

These self-styled skeptics often reveal this ignorance with the quality of their “criticisms” and “hard questions” they direct at the conclusions they don’t like. For example, take the ever-delightful “If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” No, please. Take it. I’ve had quite enough of it.

Not all the “skeptical” criticisms are so transparently moronic.”But if temperatures go up, won’t that just cause more evaporation and more clouds, which reflect sunlight?” seems like a plausible sort of question to ask about global warming. But the problem here is that such criticisms are being offered by people who are not themselves experts – who are generally not even vaguely knowledgeable – in the field whose conclusions they are criticizing. Here’s a hint for self-styled doubters: If you can come up with a few “criticisms” or “tough questions” about evolution or global warming or whatever off the top of your head, maybe the thousands of working scientists who’ve spent a significant chunk of their lives developing expertise, gathering data, refining models, and arguing with each other about all of it might just have asked those questions as well – if they’re worth asking. (Do you honestly think climate scientists don’t account for evaporation and cloud reflection in their studies and models? That working biologists are unaware of the existence of monkeys?) Not only have the collected mass of experts probably asked your questions, they probably have a few answers, too. And those answers have led to more detailed and specific questions, which they have also answered, or are continuing to try to answer. And so on.

When whatever opinion you cling to about evolution, or global warming, or whatever other science findings you don’t like is based on near-total ignorance, why should anyone care whether you are convinced or dubious? More importantly, why do you care about your own opinion? Why do you feel entitled to have any kind of firm opinion on scientific theories and facts about which you know nothing whatsoever?

And no, experts don’t always agree. But when you aren’t well-informed enough about a subject to distinguish between a real expert and a two-bit hack with an agenda, then your uninformed choice of which expert opinions to embrace as your own has no more worth than your own uninformed opinion on the matter.

If someone is not in any way engaged in the process of scientific inquiry – not even to the point of reading up on what’s said by science experts who do their valiant best to explain science to the lay public – then that person’s opinion is completely worthless. No, actually, “worthless” is too hasty: Such a person’s opinion does not merely lack value, it actually has negative value. The endless repetition of completely baseless, uninformed opinions is an obstacle to and distraction from the process of inquiry and growth of understanding in any and every field.

The only worse crime against the progress of humanity is to be one of the pseudo-experts who actually have some knowledge in a given area, but use their expertise to generate and spread bad arguments and cheap rhetoric that feed the ignorance of the “skeptical” masses. Take, for example, any and everyone affiliated with the Discovery Institute, or the anthropogenic global warming skeptics discussed here, or Leon Kass (the link is to a recent speech, but his entire career qualifies).

Really, I don’t blame the individual confused, ignorant “skeptics” so much: As I said, rationalization is a part of human nature, and is not easily overcome. But people who have all the tools necessary to overcome rationalization and instead embrace it, who actively choose the path of willful ignorance and lies – and further, devote their life to spreading ignorance and lies – I don’t have the words to express my utter contempt for their character. If there is anything of substance lurking within the vague concept of “human dignity” that Leon Kass is so fond of tossing about, surely his own obscurantist, anti-science, emotional-button-pushing claptrap is amongst the gravest offenses against it.

George M. Felis is a bipedal primate with ill-adapted feet and an over-developed neocortex. He is also a Ph.D. student in philosophy at The University of Georgia whose dissertation attempts to get ethical theory and evolutionary biology talking to one another (despite their often difficult relationship history). Religion and himself are two of the many things he doesn’t take all that seriously. Philosophy and science are two of the several things he does take seriously, at least sometimes.

The story so far: In 2003 the US Public Broadcasting Service first broadcast the documentary “Einstein’s Wife” (co-sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), which purports to present evidence that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, was a brilliant mathematician and scientist who co-authored his epoch-making 1905 papers, and whose major contributions to his work had been carefully concealed throughout the twentieth century. In fact, as Alberto A. Martínez has demonstrated,[1] the film is a travesty of the historical record. I belatedly came across the film and accompanying PBS website in late 2005, and, following a close examination of the historical evidence, in March 2006 I submitted a complaint to the PBS Ombudsman, providing documentation of the falsehoods, misconceptions and tendentious misrepresentations in the film[2] and on the website[3].

After numerous communications over a considerable period, and following the Ombudsman’s throwing his weight behind my criticisms in a lengthy column,[4] PBS commissioned the author Andrea Gabor, who had appeared in the film, to rewrite the “Einstein’s Wife” web pages. PBS was, from its own point of view, playing safe with this choice; in a book published in 1995 Gabor had devoted a chapter to Marić in which she had portrayed her in much the same inaccurate and tendentiously misleading terms as did the film.[5] (I have drawn attention to Gabor’s serious deficiencies in historical scholarship elsewhere.)

In the meantime, in July 2007 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation took the principled step of disowning the “Einstein’s Wife” film.[6] Unfortunately, PBS has decided to take an entirely different tack, one which enables it to continue to promote the meretricious film, the blurb for which describes Mileva Marić as a “brilliant mathematician [who] collaborated with Einstein on three famous works: Brownian Motion, Special Relativity Theory and Photoelectric Effect, which won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921”.

In September PBS posted its revised “Einstein’s Wife” web pages,[7] minus the extensive school Lesson Plans (designed to be worked through closely in tandem with the DVD of the “Einstein’s Wife” film from which co-sponsors ABC has now dissociated itself). While no longer claiming that Marić provided major contributions to Einstein’s scientific work, Gabor portrays her as having contributed to it in the course of “longstanding give-and-take” discussions of his ideas, which “almost certainly yielded some help with mathematical proofs”. The main burden of the revised website is that the true story of Mileva Marić’s appreciable contributions to Einstein’s work was deliberately concealed from the public, and that she was “a brilliant and ambitious woman” whose desire for a scientific career was thwarted by “formidable institutional and social barriers” and Einstein’s “disregard” for her ambitions. I shall examine each of these contentions in turn.

Let’s first consider her academic achievements. Marić’s early promise was encouraged by her father, who arranged for her to continue her secondary education at the Zagreb Royal Large High School (1891-94), where she achieved excellent grades, including in mathematics and physics in her final year. She then transferred to the Zurich Higher Girls’ School to obtain her Matura(school-leaving certificate), the examinations for which she successfully took in the spring of 1896. Marić’s biographer, Trbuhović-Gjurić, does not record details of her grades in these Matura exams. However, we do have Marić’s grades for her entrance examination for Zurich Polytechnic taken in the same year, for which she was tested only in mathematics. Her grade average for these exams, on a scale 1-6, was around 4.25, which was hardly outstanding. Nor did her intermediate diploma exam results at Zurich Polytechnic live up to the “brilliant” description so often used to portray Marić’s academic abilities; her grade average of 5.05 placed her fifth of the six students in her group of mathematics and physics students. Finally, she failed the final diploma exam in 1900, with a grade average
(scale 1-6) of 4.00, achieving only 2½ in the mathematics component (theory
of functions), and she again failed when she retook the exams in 1901
without improving her grade average (this time under the adverse
circumstances that she was three months pregnant).

What this all indicates is that, far from being the “brilliant mathematician” of current mythology, Marić was one of that large category of young people who obtain excellent academic results at school, but find University level work much more challenging, and fail to live up to their early promise. In Marić’s case this applies particularly to her prowess in mathematics: her grade in the Zurich Polytechnic entrance exam in 1896 was modest, and in the maths component of the 1900 diploma exam it was less than half of that of any other student in her group.

Gabor writes that Marić was “a brilliant and ambitious woman” whose desire for a scientific career was thwarted by “institutional and social barriers”. Marić certainly went out of her way to study physics in the last year of her education at Zagreb Royal Large High School, where she was given special permission to join the physics classes that only boys were normally eligible to attend. Following her gaining the school-leaving certificate from the Zurich Higher Girls’ School, she enrolled at the Zurich Medical School for the 1896 summer semester before transferring to the Zurich Polytechnic course for a diploma to teach mathematics and physics in secondary schools. (We do not know the reason she attended the medical school.) Towards the end of the four-year diploma course, Marić was provisionally offered an assistantship under the physics professor Heinrich Weber, but, according to her close friend Helene Kaufler, “she did not wish to accept it; she would rather apply for an open position as librarian at the Polytechnic”. However, her failing the diploma examination in 1900 upset whatever plans she had. Early in 1901 she informed Kaufler that Einstein wanted “to continue improving himself in theoretical physics, in order to subsequently become a university professor”, while, for herself, she wondered “whether I will really get a job in a girls’ high school”. In the meantime she continued to work on her diploma dissertation (on thermal conduction) while preparing to retake the exam in the summer of 1901. She failed on her second attempt, and shortly afterwards ceased to work on her dissertation, which she had hoped would serve as the basis for a Ph.D. thesis.

What is evident from the historical record is that, had Marić passed the diploma exam in 1900 and gone on to complete the Ph.D. thesis she began to work on in 1900-1901 (for which she was being supervised by Professor Weber), she would have had the opportunity to pursue a scientific career had she wished to take it. Neither Gabor, nor any other author, has demonstrated that, once she had moved away from Serbia in 1894, institutional barriers prevented her from following a scientific career. That she failed to do so should be attributed to her examination failures.

While it is clear from her aborted attempt at a Ph.D. thesis that Marić retained hopes for a career in physics up until 1901, there is little indication of the burning ambition to be a scientist portrayed by Gabor and others. The early letters Einstein wrote to her frequently contain enthusiastic reports of his ideas on the extra-curricular physics that he is engaged with, whereas in none of Marić’s surviving letters are there any of her own ideas on such topics. Even where we have direct replies to letters of Einstein’s reporting ideas that he is working on, she makes no comment on them. Her letters consist almost entirely of personal matters, with occasional comments on her Polytechnic coursework and, later, her diploma dissertation. Following her twofold diploma exam failure, it seems that whatever ambitions she had had were considerably diminished, and probably completely abandoned, especially after the tragic loss of their out-of-wedlock baby daughter Liserl in 1903. In the letters Marić wrote to Helene Kaufler in the first years of her marriage she expressed no regrets that she had not been able to follow a scientific career. What one finds is her joy at Einstein’s early achievements, and intimations of her contentment in her new situation, especially following the birth of Hans Albert in 1904. In none of the letters to Kaufler over many years is there mention of physics except in relation to Einstein’s career, and not the least intimation of any work she herself is engaged in with her husband. In this context the words of Einstein’s biographer friend and colleague Philipp Frank (presumably obtained from Einstein himself) provide an indication of the diminution of her enthusiasm for physics: “When he wanted to discuss his ideas, which came to him in great abundance, her response was so slight that he was often unable to decide whether or not she was interested.”

A passage that is especially revealing about their respective roles occurs in a letter written in September 1899 in which, after reporting ideas he was investigating on the motion of a body relative to the ether, Einstein added: “But enough of this! Your poor little head is already full of other people’s hobby horses that you’ve had to ride.” A similar glimpse of their roles is obtained from a letter Marić wrote to Kaufler in which she reported her joyful feelings on reading Einstein’s first Ph.D. thesis that he submitted (unsuccessfully) in late 1901, and expressed her “real admiration for my little darling, who has such a clever head”.

Another factor suggested by Gabor in relation to the supposed thwarting of Marić’s ambitions is that Einstein played an inhibiting role, treating her scientific ambitions with “disregard”. This is contradicted by the numerous letters in their student days in which he tried to interest her in his extra-curricular ideas in physics, and encouraged her in her studies, later urging her on in regard to the proposed Ph.D. thesis.

Gabor invites readers to “explore the known facts of Mileva Marić’s life and her role as a pioneer in the history of women in science”, thereby supposedly revealing Marić to have been an academically gifted young woman whose burning ambition to become a scientist was thwarted by institutional barriers and Einstein’s disregard for her interests. The historical record indicates otherwise: the “image” portrayed is manufactured and made plausible only by tendentious tailoring of the evidence to produce a predetermined morality tale, spelled out by Gabor as follows: “Mileva’s life – and frustrated ambitions – serve as a metaphor for the struggle and prejudice that women in science encountered well into the 20th century.”

The truth actually revealed by the documentary record is that, as is the case with a great many students, while Marić achieved excellent grades as a school student, she found University level work (especially in mathematics) much more challenging, and failed to live up to her early promise, and that this was why she was unable to follow a career in physics. No one disputes the struggle and prejudice historically experienced by women aiming for a career in science. But in order to use the case of Mileva Marić for her purposes, Gabor has included false assertions, unjustified surmises, and tendentious selection and misrepresentation of the evidence.[8] Whatever the worthiness of the cause, it cannot be acceptable to manipulate and distort the historical evidence in an inappropriate instance to make the individual in question fit into the requisite category.

Furthermore, as historians of physics Gerald Holton and John Stachel have both emphasized, it is demeaning to the memory of Marić to distort the historical facts in order to shoehorn her into a role she never claimed for herself. Her efforts to obtain higher education in science from the disadvantageous position of a girl growing up in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and her courageous struggles with a congenital hip disability, ill health, the break-up of her marriage, and the responsibilities of having a son with crippling mental illness in adulthood, make for a worthwhile story in its own right.

In her “Editor’s Letter”, Gabor claims that “in line with PBS’s commitment to making all changes ‘visible every step of the way’, pages that have been modified from the original website have been identified” by editor’s notes. This extraordinary claim, which is refuted by the fact that no one reading the current site would have the least idea of the previous contents, appears to be a transparent attempt to portray PBS as acting with integrity in relation to the complaints about the accuracy of much of the material in the original web pages. The same may be said in regard to the statement that “The site review involved interviewing and seeking feedback from physicists, including Einstein scholars, about the statements made and facts presented on the site.” This will no doubt be reassuring to readers, unaware that even Einstein scholars will have little knowledge of the historical record pertaining to Mileva Marić unless they have specifically undertaken a considerable expenditure of time and effort to obtain and examine the large volume of relevant literature. Gabor goes on to state that “the site was then edited to ensure that the site is historically accurate”, a claim that is at variance with the historical record, as I have documented.[9]

In contrast to the principled stand taken by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after it had received inadequate responses to my criticisms from the “Einstein’s Wife” film-makers, and only after the Ombudsman had posted critical comments about the film and website, PBS has come up with revised web pages that enable it to continue to propagate a tendentiously false story about Einstein’s first wife. Astonishingly, it is also still promoting[10] the dishonest pseudo-documentary “Einstein’s Wife” which is replete with falsehoods, misconceptions, and misrepresentations of the historical record.[11] This is in spite of the fact that PBS has been made aware that the three Einstein specialists whose tendentiously edited interviews appeared in the film have denounced it as a “sorry fiction” with “entirely false claims”, involving “distasteful manipulation of facts”, and containing a “whole series of entangled falsehoods”.[12]

PBS’s Editorial Standards policies include the statement: “Producers of informational content must exercise extreme care in verifying information.” Despite the fact that it is abundantly evident that no effort at all was made to verify even the most blatantly erroneous assertions in the “Einstein’s Wife” film and the original website, PBS has failed to acknowledge publicly that both of these contravened its Editorial Standards, thereby indicating that these can be breached with impunity. Moreover, by continuing to promote the film, and posting a revised website including numerous assertions that have been shown on several occasions in communications to PBS to be false, it continues to be in breach of them. Furthermore, though for some four years teachers were able to download the reprehensibly tendentious material contained in the PBS Lesson Plans, to my knowledge it has made no attempt to notify schools and unsuspecting teachers that it has provided them with material containing grossly misleading contentions masquerading as authentic historical information.

There is one other element in this sorry tale. David Davis, VP National Production, Oregon Public Broadcasting, who has been communicating the information about changes to the “Einstein’s Wife” website and on the policy in regard to the “Einstein’s Wife” film, has apparently been playing a major role in the decisions being taken. However, he was himself a co-Executive Producer of the “Einstein’s Wife” film, indicating a prima facie conflict of interest.

The current “Einstein’s Wife” website contains statements that purport to demonstrate that it has taken principled decisions in response to complaints about inaccuracies on the original web pages. In reality, the fact that the “Einstein’s Wife” film is still being promoted and sold, and that the revised website remains a source of gross errors and misrepresentations of the historical record in the interests of maintaining a predetermined story, demonstrates that PBS’s attempt to portray itself as having acted in a principled manner in this affair is a sham.

November 2007

NOTES

1. Handling evidence in history: The case of Einstein’s Wife
2. Einstein’s Wife: Mileva Maric 1

3. Einstein’s Wife: Mileva Maric 2

4. Einstein’s Wife: The Relative Motion of ‘Facts’

5. Critique of Gabor(1995)

6. In July 2007, the ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs spokesperson stated: “ABC agrees with a number of your contentions regarding errors and misrepresentations in the documentary. Due to the breaches of the ABC’s Code of Practice which you have identified, the ABC will not broadcast ‘Einstein’s Wife’ again. In addition, the ATOM ‘Einstein’s Wife’ study guide has been removed from the ABC website.”
7. PBS ‘Einstein’s Wife’
(Note: Following my documenting errors and misrepresentations on the revised website, PBS made a few token changes in October, but the great bulk of them remain.)
8. Critique of revised “Einstein’s Wife” web pages

9. Critique of revised “Einstein’s Wife” web pages

10. About “Einstein’s Wife”

11. Einstein’s Wife: Mileva Maric 1

12. Einstein specialists comment on “Einstein’s Wife”

References

Esterson, A. (2006a). Mileva Marić: Einstein’s Wife

Esterson, A. (2006b). Who Did Einstein’s Mathematics? A Response to Troemel-Ploetz

Frank, P. (1948). Einstein: His Life and Times. London: Jonathan Cape.

Gabor, A. (1995). Einstein’s Wife: Work and Marriage in the Lives of Five Great Twentieth Century Women. New York: Viking-Penguin.

Holton, G. (1996). Einstein, History, and Other Passions. Harvard University Press.

Martínez, A. A. (2005). Handling Evidence in History: The Case of Einstein’s Wife, School Science Review, March 2005, 86 (316), pp. 49-56.

Popović, M. (2003). In Albert’s Shadow The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s First Wife. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Renn, J. and Schulmann, R. (eds.) (1992). Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić: The Love Letters. Trans. by S. Smith. Princeton University Press.

Stachel, J. (1996). ‘Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric: A Collaboration that
Failed to Develop’ [pdf].

Stachel, J. (2002). Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’. Boston/Basel/ Berlin: Birkhäuser. Extract: The Einstein/Maric letters.

Stachel, J. (ed.) (2005). Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics. Princeton University Press. Appendix: Refutation of the Joffe story.

Trbuhović-Gjurić, D. (1988). Im Schatten Albert Einsteins: Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Marić. Bern: Paul Haupt. (The German language edition is an edited version of the book by Trbuhović-Gjurić originally published in Serbo-Croat in Yugoslavia in 1969.)

Trbuhović-Gjurić, D. (1991), Mileva Einstein: Une Vie (French translation of Im Schatten Albert Einsteins: Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Marić). Paris: Antoinette Fouque.

Roy Vagaries. I’m pleased to be here today with former world heavyweight atheist, Professor Antony Bird. Professor Bird stunned the world a few months ago in an article where he claimed to have experienced a religious conversion. Professor Bird, can you describe the experience for us?

Professor. Experience. Yes, very important. Believe nothing if you haven’t had one.

Roy Vagaries. Professor Bird, you are the author of several essays in which you claim that atheism is the only reasonable position. And you have changed your mind?

Professor. Mind – very important. Indeed. Believe nothing if you don’t have one.

Vagaries. So you have changed your mind?

Professor. Not so much changed as rotated. Literally speaking we don’t change minds like dirty nappies. It’s an orbital thing. Mine’s just swung round.

Vagaries. You used to write that the existence of God was “unreasonable” and that we should presume the non-existence of God in the same way a man is presumed innocent of a crime until the facts are in to prove him guilty. You no longer believe that, I presume.

Professor. Oh my, presume nothing young man. It’s a very nasty habit. I haven’t accused God of anything.

Vagaries. No, I meant by analogy. You made that analogy.

Professor. Mmm, no – I don’t think so. The biblical God is a very nasty chap. Only worthy of contempt. Not as bad as Allah. Allah is a perfect bastard. Imagine putting your bum in the air five times a day for that – unless they’re farting of course. If they were farting at him it would be all right.

Vagaries. Professor, let me draw you back to the subject of your conversion.

Professor. My what? I haven’t converted anything except a few quid when I went to the States last summer. Terrific rate. I like Americans. Treat you well, feed you well. Bloody religious though. Churches everywhere.

Vagaries. I take it the God you believe in is of a different – character – than, say, the God of the Pope.

Professor. Pope, splendid chap. Wrote Essay on Man and laid it all out. We can’t know everything. Of course he turned Catholic didn’t he and believed in God and priests and bells and all that nonsense, and wore five pair of socks to make him taller. Poor fellow. If he’d read Hume that would have put him straight. Not made him taller though.

Vagaries. Professor, reports in the press say you have been impressed with certain kinds of arguments – intelligent design for example – Behe’s idea of irreducible complexity.

Professor. Oh my. There are reports in the press? Complexity, eh? What’s irreducible about it. Haven’t they read Ockham? I shall have to look at them. Some chap came to the house a few months back and explained it all to me, and I said, ‘Yes I shall have to think about this’, and he said, ‘So you say there is something to it?’ and I said, ‘Yes there is something to everything,’ and he said ‘May I quote you?’ I do like being quoted. It makes one feel – useful. So I said , ‘Of course.’ I don’t read much anymore – difficult. But I do like being quoted.

Vagaries. So there is something to intelligent design – you think the universe was the work of an intelligent planner?

Professor. Oh my no, that would be Paley, wouldn’t it. Or something like Paley. He’s dead you know, since 1805. Do you know what I said about Paley? Perhaps not. I said that the acceptance of Darwin rules Paley out, and that the universe is a rather different thing than a watch washing up on some Caribbean beach. Of course if you have other reasons for believing in God then you will be fully justified in continuing to discern his hand and wisdom in everything, won’t you?

Vagaries. I don’t know, actually.

Professor. Well now you do because I just told you.

Vagaries. Professor, do you mind if I cut that last bit out? It doesn’t say what I had hoped you would say about God this afternoon.

Professor. I am sorry. No, of course. Come back tomorrow and perhaps I will say something different. What would you like me say? And whilst you’re writing it down, have some tea.

Would you say that the British have become aware of the danger of multiculturalists’ policies since the London terrorist attacks?

Azar Majedi: It is difficult to judge the British public opinion, as it is usually the media that makes and shapes the public opinion. As far as the British political arena is concerned, I must say no, it has not changed. The British government continues the policy of appeasement of the so-called “Muslim leaders,” who, to my opinion, are self appointed. Consulting with these religious men, in order to “win the hearts of the Muslim community”, is the British government’s key policy.

Unfortunately, an atmosphere of mistrust has developed between the so-called Muslim community and the general public. The Muslim community feels isolated and discriminated against. It has been stigmatized. This is the negative effect of the present tension. In the eyes of some, whoever considers themselves Muslim, has their origin in the region associated with Islam, or looks “Muslim” is considered a terrorist suspect. This attitude deepens the tension and friction in the society and deepens the existing separation.

On the left, perhaps with a good intention, to fight racism and stigmatization of the Muslim community, the general mood is to support Islamist movements, the veil, gender apartheid, and all the Islamic values which are deeply reactionary, discriminative and misogynist. This is very wrong. This is in effect racism, to say that gender apartheid and discrimination is ok for the “Muslims”. This is in fact double standards. We should first and foremost distinguish between “ordinary Muslims” and the Islamist movement. Second we should feel free to criticize Islam just as we feel free to criticize any other religion, ideology or set of beliefs. However, part of the left movement does not distinguish between these categories and accepts the proclamations of self appointed “Muslim leaders”. The Islamist movement is not the representative of Muslims, and is not the representative of Palestinians’ or Iraqi people’s grief. This should be stressed.

I believe we need a healthy debate. We need to criticize Islam and Islamist movements and at the same time fight racism and stigmatization and defend individual rights. Since the tragic event of September 11, many civil liberties have been eroded in the society, in the name of security. We should try and reverse this tide.

Has the Trotskyite SWP distanced itself from the Islamist fundamentalists or does it carry on openly in public with them as it did at the 2005 Social European Forum in London?

Azar Majedi: I must admit that I do not follow this party’s actions closely. As far as I know the SWP has not changed its policy towards the Islamists. I believe they still fully support this reactionary and terrorist movement.

What’s your opinion about Ken Livingstone’s Big Mosque project?

Azar Majedi: I am totally against it. We don’t need more mosques. There are already too many of them. What we need is better and more schools for the children and youth in the Muslim community, a better-funded education for them, more leisure centres and sports facilities. Much more funds have to be poured into these communities to improve the social environment. These mosques are the place for brainwashing of the children and the youth. Usually the underprivileged and marginalized youth are drawn into these mosques and being fed by hatred and reactionary and misogynist values. It is proven that some of these mosques, for example the Finsbury, have been used to train terrorists. We should also be aware that Islamic governments like the Islamic regime of Iran and Saudi Arabia are behind such monumental projects. This is quite telling about the goals for building such monuments.

You are hostile to Iran’s ayatollahs. What’s your stand concerning the war threats relayed by Bernard Kouchner?

Azar Majedi: Yes, I am a staunch enemy of the Islamic Regime in Iran. This is a brutal regime that has executed more than a hundred thousand people. It is a brutal dictatorship that oppresses the people and it is misogynist to its bones. I have been fighting this regime from the day it came to power.

Having said that, I must add that I am totally against the war. Military attack will be a catastrophe. It is the people in Iran and the region who will suffer as a result of this war. This to my opinion is a war of terrorists. There are two poles of terrorism, state terrorism and Islamist terrorism which are inflaming this war. Such a war has no positive result for humanity, for peace, or for the people of Iran and the region.

This war will strengthen the Islamic regime, just as the Iraq war strengthened the Islamists and the Islamic regime of Iran, just as the war in Lebanon strengthened Hezbollah and the Islamist movement. As soon as the threat of war becomes imminent, the Islamic regime will make more restrictions for the people. It would brutally crush any sign of discontentment. It would execute people even more mercilessly.

The war will also be an environmental catastrophe. Attacking the nuclear sites will mean a nuclear hell in the region. I am totally against the war. We should try and stop this war. It will create a chaotic situation, a black scenario, which will only be a breeding place for terrorism. Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon; the future for Iran will be if not more disastrous, just as catastrophic.

We must take the volatile political situation in Iran into consideration. People in Iran are resisting this regime. There is a great protest movement in Iran, workers’ and women’s rights and youth movement against Islamic restriction and for cultural freedom. There is a significant secular movement in Iran. The war will have devastating effects on these popular and progressive movements. I believe our slogan should be “no to the war and no to the Islamic regime!” International left and progressive movements must support these movements in Iran.

We should also expose the US’s warmongering propaganda. I should add that dismantling the Islamic regime’s nuclear power is a pure misrepresentation of the war’s aim, just as the removal of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a pure lie. The US government has been defeated in Iraq. To win back its position as the bully of the world it needs another war. The Islamic regime was the actual winner in Iraq. By attacking Iran the US will show the world it still has the muscles to fight this regime, to attack any country, or do whatever it pleases, for that matter.

How did you react when you heard about the Vosges case*? Do you think that forbidding the headscarf altogether is the best solution to the headscarf offensive throughout Europe?

Azar Majedi: This is a complex issue. I must first state that I am against the veil. I believe that the veil is the tool and symbol of women’s oppression and enslavement. Moreover, nowadays the veil has become the banner of the Islamist movement. Many women both in the west and in the Middle East and North Africa wear the veil as a political gesture. American aggression, the war in Iraq and Lebanon and America’s full fledged support of Israel vis-à-vis Palestinians have motivated many young women to wear the veil as a sign of protest against the US and the west’s policies.

I have been fighting against the veil and have tried to expose its nature. Moreover, I am for banning the veil for underage girls. I think no child should be forced to wear the veil. A child has no religion. It is the parent’s religion that is forced upon them. The veil restricts greatly the physical and mental development of a child and must be banned. I am also in favour of banning the burka in all circumstances. However I do not believe that other forms of the veil should be banned for adult women, except in public institutions and schools, as the French law has prescribed. I believe that beyond that we are restricting individual rights of citizens to freedom of clothing and religion. I have written an article on the subject of the veil, a shorter version of which was published by Respublica. I explained in depth my reason for this position.

I believe a complete ban on the veil would have more negative effects than positive ones and would create a negative backlash which will damage our goals for a free and secular society, and for the freedom and equality of women. Instead of a total ban on the veil, we should campaign strongly against the veil, the Islamist movement and American aggression. We should expose both poles of terrorism to open up the eyes and minds of those women who have “freely” chosen the veil as a political manifestation. The Islamist movement is trying to portray itself as the liberator of the people in the Middle East, the Palestinians, and the Iraqis. This is a big lie. We have to expose that. We need to fight against the Islamists and their banner, the veil, on the ideological and political sphere as well.

*If you haven’t heard about it, I’ll sum it up for you. A lady called Fanny Truchelut used to run a guest house somewhere in Eastern France. One day a woman booked a room for two and sent a cheque over. When the two women who had booked the room arrived, they were wearing the headscarf. Fanny kindly asked them to take it off in the common area. The Muslim ladies refused, claimed the cheque back, went away, contacted a newspaper, lodged a complaint against Fanny accusing her of racism.

A few days ago at the trial Fanny was given a four-month suspended sentence and she will have to pay a fine and an award (over 8,000 Euros).

Lots of people think Fanny was right because she doesn’t understand why we should be shocked by the burka in Afghanistan and not by any sort of head-scarf in France).

This interview, by Rosa Valentini, first appeared in Riposte Laïque.