Author: Ophelia Benson

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is having a hard time putting things together.

Among western elites – artistic, political, scientific, media – I notice more expressions of abhorrence of Islam and its diverse adherents than ever before…Influential anti-Muslim voices are no longer bothering with nuance. Douglas J Hagmann, director of the non-governmental Northeast Intelligence Network in the US writes: “The latest murderous rampage should be enough to illustrate that Islam is totally incompatible with freedom, democracy and the western culture.” I wonder how many of my British friends think exactly this…Radical Islamists peddle partial narratives about the Crusades, forgetting the Nato interventions to save Bosnian Muslims from genocide and the fact that millions of us would never leave the West where we have human rights we would not have in Muslim nations.

Okay stop right there. Stop there, and think about it. Alibhai-Brown should have, and she didn’t – she rushed on to make a different point, instead. She apparently didn’t even register what she’d said. If she had, she couldn’t have left the first part of the article as it was – she would have gone back and re-written it, or possibly abandoned it in despair. She needed to stop and think very hard about the implications of what she blurted out there: that ‘in Muslim nations’ she and everyone else would not have certain human rights. Well – why is that? Why is that the case? Why did even Yasmin Alibhai-Brown not say ‘in most Muslim nations’ much less ‘some Muslim nations’ much less ‘a few Muslim nations’? Why is it the case that ‘in Muslim nations’ in general, some human rights are not available? Is it not possible that that is because of something about Islam itself, which she doesn’t want to admit to? Because if it’s not something about Islam itself, it seems awfully surprising that it applies to ‘Muslim nations’ without qualification, and that even Yasmin Alibhai-Brown takes this for granted as a fact.

The horrible truth is that it is something about Islam itself that renders some human rights unavailable in places where Islam is entangled with the government, which is to say ‘in Muslim nations.’ Islam itself, as the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam makes so unpleasantly clear, does rule out certain rights, especially for certain people, such as women. This isn’t ‘extremist’ Islam, or terrorist Islam, or radical Islam, or any other minority or eccentric Islam, it’s just Islam. That fact could be different – it’s a contingent fact, as it is a contingent fact that some religions have learned to ignore the nastier parts of its holy books while others have not – but in the world as it is now, that fact is not different. Alibhai-Brown almost admitted that – but not quite. She clings to the idea of Islam’s ‘diverse adherents’ and fails to point out how much of the content of ‘Islam’ has to be ignored for that putative diversity to amount to anything.

John Denham really does talk the most rebarbative kack.

As communities secretary I am formally responsible for the government’s engagement with faith communities. Lacking some depth of knowledge I set about recruiting a panel of advisors (retained on an expenses-only basis) to advise me on relations with these communities.

And to encourage him to think in communalist terms and to use the word ‘community’ a minimum of six times whenever he opens his mouth, lest any foolish person somehow lose track of the fact that New Labour is obsessed with ‘communities’ to the point of insanity.

Outside of polemic is the real question of how a modern government should relate to the fact of faith. One view is that government should seek to marginalise faith as much as it can. The other, which I hold, is that something which is of immense importance to millions of people – the precise size of this minority or majority is not the real point – should not be lightly dismissed.

Note that – ‘the other’ – there are two and only two; there is one, and then there is the other. Bullshit, and coercive bullshit at that. It is not the case that the only alternative to thinking government should try ‘to marginalise faith as much as it can’ is thinking government should not ‘lightly dismiss’ anything ‘which is of immense importance to millions of people.’ That’s a false dichotomy, a bogusly limited choice, a stupidly narrow frame of reference, and a bullying piece of sentimentalism. It’s not a matter of what should or should not be ‘lightly dismissed,’ it’s a question of what the state should actively foster – particularly at the expense of alternatives, such as secularism, meaning neutrality among religions. Religion is important to lots of people, as Denham sagely points out, but he neglects to point out that freedom from religion, freedom of religion, separation of religion from government, is also important to lots of people. He simply plumps for the stupid retrograde intrusive notion that government should be sticking its nose into religion and shoving religion onto its balky citizens.

Over the past few weeks I’ve tried to set out a reasoned argument for government to take faith seriously. Firstly, the fact of faith for many of our citizens should be respected. Second, many issues which concern governments can not be tackled solely by regulation or spending. Governments and faiths share an interest in the values which lead people to act they way they do.

What does he mean ‘the fact of faith for many of our citizens should be respected’? That it should be acknowledged? But it already is, and that’s not a matter for government, and why should that fact be respected while the opposite fact is strenuously disrespected? That it should be respected in some substantive sense? If so, the hell with that. That it’s the governments job to go creeping around the landscape sucking up to various ‘communities’? That’s just absurd.

Campaigns for international development, peace, decent housing, living wages and many others have often been sustained by those of faith – not alone of course, but as key participants nonetheless. On these issues, and others including climate change and the values of our economy, faiths have views and values that deserve a hearing.

No they don’t. That’s flat-out nonsense. ‘Faiths’ have no views that are exclusively faithy that deserve a hearing – all they have are shared views that deserve a hearing for shareable reasons. ‘Faith’ as such adds nothing useful to views and values, and it often subtracts merit from views and values, by making them subject to threats and rewards, or predictions about some imagined other world.

Massimo Pigliucci is patrolling the borders again.

Take, for instance, my recurring argument that some (but not all!) of the “new atheists” engage in scientistic attitudes by overplaying the epistemological power of science while downplaying (or even simply negating) the notion that science fundamentally depends on non-empirical (i.e., philosophical) assumptions to even get started.

But if science depends on those assumptions why aren’t those assumptions simply part of science? Why aren’t the assumptions part of what is meant by the word ‘science’?

We already have science to help us solve scientific problems, philosophy does something else by using different tools, so why compare apples and oranges?

But if science rests on philosophical assumptions, then philosophy doesn’t (exclusively) do something else. If science rests on philosophical assumptions then the two are entangled to some extent.

Pigliucci goes on to say as much, in a way, but he also reverts to the border-patrolling.

So when some commentators for instance defend the Dawkins- and Coyne-style (scientistic) take on atheism, i.e., that science can mount an attack on all religious beliefs, they are granting too much to science and too little to philosophy. Yes, science can empirically test specific religious claims (intercessory prayer, age of the earth, etc.), but the best objections against the concept of, say, an omnibenevolent and onmnipowerful god, are philosophical in nature (e.g., the argument from evil).

But the argument from evil can be at least partly empirical – we wouldn’t know there was any ‘evil’ i.e. suffering apart from our own if it couldn’t.

Now why is it that so many people take sides on a debate that doesn’t make much sense, rather than rejoice in what the human mind can achieve through the joint efforts of two of its most illustrious intellectual traditions?

Well right – but if it’s a matter of joint efforts why worry so much about the borders?