Author: Ophelia Benson

What was Seyran Ates saying a year ago?

Why are a few particularly estimable, highly intelligent women and men in very prominent positions, blind in one eye when it comes to the protection of minorities? Why are they blind in that eye with which they have otherwise promoted equal rights for the sexes, and still do? The so-called minority protection with respect to Islam and religious freedom can only be had at the cost of the equal rights of women, and ultimately only serves to perpetuate and reinforce obsolete, archaic, patriarchal structures.

That’s what. That ‘minority protection’ and ‘religious freedom’ for some boil down to subordination and oppression for others; that you can’t have everything; that toleration and respect are good things, other things being equal, but not if they mean toleration and respect for subjection of women.

I want to know, and many thousands of Muslim girls and women have a right to know, why understanding and infinite tolerance is practised with particular cultural traditions that are clearly oppressive of women. Human rights are universal and unconditional. And that goes most certainly for religious objectives. It is only girls and women who are forced to wear head-scarves. And it’s also a majority of girls and women who are affected by forced marriage. I don’t want to enter into the debate about women and schoolgirls who wear the headscarf of their own free will, or about the difference between arranged and forced marriages. Just one note: silence cannot be understood as assent. But very many girls are brought up to be silent on such topics.

Silence cannot be understood as assent, and neither can non-appearance on radio and tv and in newspapers, especially when the people who don’t appear are to varying degrees prevented from appearing in such public fora precisely by their own subordination and segregation. It’s a vicious cycle. Part of the subordination consists of segregation and concealment, so radio producers and newspaper reporters don’t interview Muslim women as much as they do men partly simply because they’re not as visible and audible, they’re not in such conspicuous positions, they’re not as accessible, and perhaps partly out of a bashful idea of good manners or respect; so their voices aren’t heard; so silence keeps on being understood as assent. It’s something to watch for. If an oppressed group’s oppression consists partly precisely in being kept systematically out of the public eye, then that fact should be kept firmly in focus.

Many judgements have been handed down in Germany which have excluded Islamic girls from school classes. The arguments always tend in the same direction. The “others” don’t have to live like we do. For example, in its judgement of March 24, 1994 (InfAuslR 8/92, S. 269), concerning the exemption of an Islamic schoolgirl from gym class, the higher administrative court in Bremen ruled: “…it is irrelevant that adolescent Muslim women are prevented by the demands of their religion from achieving equal status as women in Western society…”

Ouch. Well, what a good thing Seyran Ates is staying. Go, sister.

Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner seems like a funny guy – especially for a justice minister, at least in a country that is fortunate enough to have a constitution.

Donner believes that if, some time in the future, two-thirds of Dutch citizens believe that Sharia, Islamic law, should be introduced in the Netherlands, then it must be allowed. That, says the minister, is the ultimate consequence of democracy…The minister’s remarks have caused uproar in parliament. His own Christian Democrat [sic] party is astonished…The largest Dutch party, the opposition Labour Party, also thinks the justice minister is on the wrong track. Labour point out that, in their view, Sharia is in conflict with the Dutch constitution on a number of points. For example, it could never be officially possible to discriminate against women or homosexuals.

Well, there you are. It’s rather basic. Democracy in the form of simple majoritarianism always carries the risk that a majority will decide (vote, want, choose) to persecute a minority or even (in the case of women) a majority, and that’s why farsighted people decided constitutions were a good idea. People aren’t nice, in fact people are crap, so pure majoritarian unhedged democracy is a terrible, terrible idea.

(And by the way, why is Radio Netherlands talking about the Christian Democrat party? Surely they haven’t picked up that rude habit of US Republicans of refusing to say ‘Democratic’ party or candidate because it sounds too complimentary…but why else would they be doing it? That’s not standard usage. I’ve noticed the World Service doing it lately, too, to my deep fury, but I’m astonished to see it’s made its way to the Continent. Christian Democratic party. Cut it out.)

Stewart translated an article about Seyran Ates’s change of mind for us, because there is no news in English yet. The article is in Neues Deutschland, by Peter Kirschey. I’ll paraphrase some and quote some, so as not to ride roughshod over copyright.

‘…the German-Turkish women’s rights activist Seyran Ates will continue to be active as a lawyer in Berlin. A week ago she said that she could no longer stand the ceaseless threats from violent ex-husbands of her clients. Therefore she was giving up her right to practice law.’ But parties, women’s organisations and fellow lawyers have expressed solidarity with her, and now they have to act. ‘First and foremost the Turkish associations and organisations must rise to the challenge of permitting her to receive the support she requires for the responsible task of defending oppressed and afflicted women.’ That can’t mean bodyguards or 24 hour protection from enraged ‘men of honour’. ‘This has to do with a climate in which violence within families will not be tolerated as a god-given right, nor macho posturings as gentlemanly delinquency. A civilised society is poor without people like Seyran Ates. Good that she let herself be talked out of it.’

Yeah; very good. Many thanks, Stewart.

Rupert Sheldrake again. What about those experiments he does? Pretty rigorous, are they? Well, here’s what he says in one paper:

The experimenter (either R.S. or P.S.) telephoned the randomly selected callers in advance, usually an hour or two beforehand, and asked them to call at the time selected. We asked callers to think about the participant for about a minute before calling…A few minutes after the tests, the experimenter rang the participant to ask what his or her guess had been, and in some cases also asked the callers. In no cases did callers and participants disagree.

Uh…that doesn’t count? Look – suppose you set up an experiment in which you phone me and tell me to fly from here to Calgary and back. A few minutes after the test, you ring me to ask me if I did it; I say yes indeed. Would you then rush to a scientific jamboree and say you’d conducted experiments that show people can fly? I don’t know, maybe you would, maybe you’ll do anything for attention. But you get my drift – asking people if they guessed correctly is not a very rigorous kind of experiment, is it.

Sheldrake thought deeply about this problem, and he has solved it.

What about deliberate cheating? Perhaps participants and their callers simply lied about the guesses, falsely reporting incorrect guesses as correct…The cheating hypothesis is implausible for three main reasons. First, it is very improbable that a large majority of the participants would have cheated.

Okay…so if you set up an experiment in which you phone 63 people and tell them to fly to Calgary and back and then a few minutes later phone to ask them if they did it – it will be very improbable that a large majority of the participants would have told whoppers; therefore, if 45% of them say yes, some people can fly. Hmm…I’m not sure I’m convinced.

He did get a clue eventually.

Third, as we describe in a separate paper (Sheldrake & Smart, 2003), we carried out further series of experiments in which the participants were filmed continuously on time-coded videotape, starting 15 minutes before each trial. We selected the caller at random only after the filming had started.

Bingo! Well done! But surely the experiments that were not filmed are just plain worthless. Phoning people up and asking them ‘Who’dja guess?’ doesn’t cut it.

Never mind, it’s all morphic resonance, maybe.

Sheldrake prefers teleological to mechanistic models of reality. Rather than spend his life, say, trying to develop a way to increase crop yields, he prefers to study and think in terms outside of the paradigms of science, i.e., inside the paradigms of the occult and the paranormal…He prefers a romantic vision of the past to the bleak picture of a world run by technocrats who want to control Nature and destroy much of the environment in the process. In short, he prefers metaphysics to science, though he seems to think he can do the former but call it the latter…In short, although Sheldrake commands some respect as a scientist because of his education and degree, he has clearly abandoned science in favor of theology and philosophy. This is his right, of course. However, his continued pose as a scientist is unwarranted. He is one of a growing horde of “alternative” scientists whose resentment at the aspiritual nature of modern scientific paradigms, as well as the obviously harmful and seemingly indifferent applications of modern science, have led them to create their own paradigms. These paradigms are not new, though the terminology is. These alternative paradigms allow for angels, telepathy, psychic dogs…

And the ability to fly to Calgary and back without breaking a sweat.

Hey, remember adventurism? That was a good word. Fred Halliday has a look at one kind.

It is striking, however, that – beyond such often visceral reactions – there are signs of a far more developed and politically articulated accommodation in many parts of the world between Islamism as a political force and many groups of the left. The latter show every indication of appearing to see some combination of al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbollah, Hamas, and (not least) Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as exemplifying a new form of international anti-imperialism…Many in the sectarian leftist factions (and beyond) who marched against the impending Iraq war showed no qualms about their alignment with radical Muslim organisations, one that has since spiralled from a tactical cooperation to something far more elaborated. It is fascinating to see in the publications of leftist groups and commentators, for example, how history is being rewritten and the language of political argument adjusted to (as it were) accommodate this new accommodation…The London demonstrators against the war saw the flourishing of many banners announcing “we are all Hizbollah now”, and the coverage of the movement in the leftwing press was notable for its uncritical tone.

A correspondent in Iran was asking me about that just the other day. How come they support Islamism and groups like Hizbullah? he asked. How is that happening? How indeed.

All of this is – at least to those with historical awareness, sceptical political intelligence, or merely a long memory – disturbing…For while it is true that Islamism in its diverse political and violent guises is indeed opposed to the US, to remain there omits a deeper, crucial point: that, long before the Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadis and other Islamic militants were attacking “imperialism”, they were attacking and killing the left – and acting across Asia and Africa as the accomplices of the west.

See, there are more than two possibilities, that’s the problem. There’s not just, on the one hand, the US and the west and imperialism and hegemony and wickedness, and on the other hand, everything good. No, things are not quite like that. People can hate George Bush just as cordially as I do and still be complete shits – bad people – people who oppress and push around and torment other people. So just seeing a bunch of people and noticing that they hate Bush is not quite enough reason to think they must be on the right track.

The modern relationship of the left to militant Islamism dates to the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution…Jihad was obviously a form of anti-imperialist struggle…Such forms of affinity were in the latter part of the 20th century succeeded by a far clearer alignment of Islamist groups: against communism, socialism, liberalism and all that they stood for, not least with regard to the rights of women…This melancholy history must be supplemented by attention to what is actually happening in countries, or parts of countries, where Islamists are influential and gaining ground. The reactionary (the word is used advisedly) nature of much of their programme on women, free speech, the rights of gays and other minorities is evident. There is also a mindset of anti-Jewish prejudice that is riven with racism and religious obscurantism…It does not need slogans to understand that the Islamist programme, ideology and record are diametrically opposed to the left – that is, the left that has existed on the principles founded on and descended from classical socialism, the Enlightenment, the values of the revolutions of 1798 and 1848, and generations of experience. The modern embodiments of this left have no need of the “false consciousness” that drives so many so-called leftists into the arms of jihadis.

Enough with the adventurism already.