Author: Ophelia Benson

I see on Tina Beattie’s page at Roehampton that one of her teaching interests is Religion and Human Rights. That’s a strange pairing, I thought – even stranger than those pairings of ‘Religion and Ethics’ that we see everywhere (such as at the BBC). Why religion and human rights? It is so often bishops or priests or mullahs who oppose human rights rather than supporting them – it seems odd to link them. The pairing of religion and ethics gives religion the credit for ideas and views that are often entirely secular; pairing religion with human rights would seem to do the same thing.

Human Rights Watch is aware of the tension.

Is there a schism between the human rights movement and religious communities? Essential disagreements appear increasingly to pit secular human rights activists against individuals and groups acting from religious motives. The list of contentious issues is growing: on issues such as reproductive rights, gay marriage, the fight against HIV/AIDS, and blasphemy laws, human rights activists and religious groups often find themselves on opposing sides.

Yes we do, and on the human rights side we find ourselves dealing with bad or no arguments from the religious groups. ‘We want to block these suggested rights, and we don’t have a real reason, we just know that God wants us to, so we’re more devout than you are, so we have the moral high ground, so you should give in to us.’

The controversy that hit the EU in October 2004 around…conservative Catholic Rocco Buttiglione illustrates some of the issues at stake. Unperturbed by the furor he was arousing, the candidate for Commissioner on Justice, Freedom, and Security—who in that function would have been in charge of fighting discrimination—affirmed in front of bewildered members of the European Parliament that “homosexuality is a sin” and that “the family exists to allow women to have children and be protected by their husbands.”

Well…maybe what we mean is ‘Liberal Religion and Human Rights.’ But that’s not what it says – and the sad fact is that most religion isn’t liberal. It’s a comfortable illusion of the safe middle-class in the safe developed countries that most religion is liberal and getting more so all the time – hence perhaps the bewilderment of the members of the European Parliament – but it is indeed an illusion. One of the perks of religion is being able to be dogmatically and arbitrarily opposed to lots of things you don’t happen to like, and most believers have no interest at all in giving up that perk. If it’s human rights you’re after, religion is generally the wrong place to look. (Yes there are exceptions; yes MLK was religious.)

About this exorcist guy…You know how the pope likes to put up this front of being rational and scholarly and reasonable? Well…the church he’s at the top of has exorcists. The Chief Exorcist of Rome is very emphatic on the point that Satan is for real and that anyone who says otherwise is engaged in ‘true heresy.’ Satan is not a metaphor, or an abstraction, Satan is a fella. Father Gabriele Amorth wants everyone to make no mistake about that.

Those modern theologians who identify Satan with the abstract idea of evil are completely mistaken. Theirs is true heresy; that is, it is openly in contrast with the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church.

So much for all those people who keep trying to say that the ‘New Atheists’ go after crude targets that no one actually believes in. I think the Catholic church and its hierarchy count as someone? Someone with a fair amount of influence?

The other interesting point here is the question of how the exorcist knows what he is so confident that he knows. Apparently because of the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church – but why does he think those are reliable sources of knowledge? Because he thinks God wrote or ‘revealed’ the Bible, presumably – but the question is why. Frankly I never really understand that – why grown-up people believe that with, apparently, no qualms. I don’t understand it because what would a Bible that wasn’t written or revealed by God look like? It would look the same. There is nothing about the Bible that makes it unmistakable that it’s a book by God rather than by humans. What is it that makes the exorcist and his friends so sure that it was? How do they know what they know? They don’t, of course, but why do they think they know?

And another thing. Why do we hear so much indignant complaining about ‘the New Atheists’ and so little about the Old Theists? Why do so many putative intellectuals treat unapologetic atheism as some kind of outrage and blithely ignore the combination of nonsense and mental torture that believers in Satan sprinkle around the landscape? Why does not Tina Beattie criticize the exorcist instead of talking stark nonsense about atheism?

The demonisation of religion that is perpetuated by a certain, very dull kind of anglo-american atheist materialism, allows us to escape our own responsibility for a burgeoning global climate of violence and confrontation.

Why does Tina Beattie say that kind of thing (and a lot more of it) instead of rebuking Father Gabriele Amorth? I’m genuinely curious. Why do people like Tina Beattie get outraged by explicit atheists and not by explicit demonologists and exorcists? Why does she think (apparently) that the former do more harm than the latter?

Shukria Barakzai seemed (cautiously) optimistic in 2005.

2002 was a splendid year for Afghan women, a year begun with the formation of the interim administration…As the country becomes more pacified, we receive more and more requests for Women’s Mirror throughout Afghanistan. Three years later, our goals, commitments, and principles remain largely the same: the development of Afghan women.

The BBC talked to her last June.

For the past three months, Afghan female MP Shukria Barakzai has been receiving a letter saying she may be targeted by a suicide bomber in the next six months. The cryptic government letter contains an intelligence warning that Ms Barakzai’s life is under threat and she should be careful. She is one of six MPs getting such a letter these days. “That is all that the government does – send a letter by mail once every month saying my life is under threat. There isn’t talk of even providing security.”…Barakzai says she is being targeted by “various elements” because of her speeches against the country’s warlords, her support for women’s rights and for her criticisms of Pakistan. “I am going crazy. My friends are telling me to leave the country.”…When you consider that two women journalists have been killed recently in and around Kabul, you realise that even women of influence and power in Afghanistan live and work in fear under threats from warlords, the Taleban and other insurgent groups. Six years after the departure of the repressive Taleban this is the paradox of women in Afghanistan. They now have a say and a position under the country’s constitution. But they have to work in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

With journalists getting the death penalty merely for downloading material about the role of women in Islamic societies – yes, I would call that an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

No blasphemy allowed. Blasphemers must be killed. What’s blasphemy? ‘Downloading material from the internet relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.’ That’s just one example of course – there are others. In fact, if truth be told, it would be simpler and quicker to say what is not blasphemy than it would be to give a complete account of what is. What’s not blasphemy? Ummmmmm…well to be honest that’s such a short list that there doesn’t seem to be anything on it. Let me put it this way – blasphemy is anything some pious group of thugs says it is at any particular moment when they want to shut people up by having them killed. It’s basically just any old thing; see? It’s whatever They say or do that We don’t like – that’s all.

So how that plays out is that in Afghanistan it’s a capital crime to download material relating to the role of women in Islamic societies. Why? Because if God had meant women to be treated like human beings then he would have told the Prophet (pbuh) that, and God must not have told the Prophet (pbuh) that, because if God had the Prophet (pbuh) that, we would treat women like human beings, and we don’t, so he didn’t. You see? Unbreakable chain of reasoning. Therefore it’s blasphemy to read anything that might possibly in a strong light suggest anything else, and since it is blasphemy, the blasphemer has to be killed, because we’re pissed off. See? Good.