Author: Ophelia Benson

Good grief, as if I don’t have enough to do, now I’m having to fend off the ravings of a reader who seems to have suddenly gone stark raving mad. Although there was, to be sure, always a whiff of madness…But now it’s more like an old overfull garbage can at the end of a hot August day. He’s pissed off because I wrote something (something very brief) about Ehsan Jami the other day; he’s been bombarding me with emails telling me how awful he thinks Jami is; the one he sent today was so rude and condescending and aggressive that I became irritated as well as bored, and told him to stop lecturing me. He sent an even ruder (and longer) reply, to which I replied sharply and, I would have thought and expected, terminally; now he’s sent me a sarcastic apology, and guess what the basic premise is? That I’m an overbearing woman who expects men to grovel at her feet. Honestly! This loon sends me a stream of scolding emails and when I tell him to knock it off, he plays the Angry Male card! It strains credulity.

I can’t resist giving you a sample, it’s so ludicrous. I don’t have permission, but he doesn’t have permission to keep pestering me, either, so the hell with permission. Read and admire.

And really, very humbly grovelling of course, touching the forelock, mistress, speaking for myself (if I may, with your permission), my gifts are not fit for being thus in public and so in private, as your magisterial self, if I may say so without seeming presumptuous, of course, can do so well. Us mere male servants, mistress, with your permission, find this almost impossible to do. It is a major weakness of mine, if you excuse my impertence of speaking of myself. A mere simpleminded male such as I has the shortcoming of saying what he thinks, presumptuous as that is, IMHO…However, if I DO make a sincere, humble effort, mistress, you see that even such a one as me, can be brought, humbly of course, to reason, and to adopt the proper position of a mere male when faced with a proud female, such as you, of such commanding presence also: cowering, crouching, crawling in sincere and humble supplication, thanking the powers that be for her kind attention…So it is truly most remiss of me to have doubted the noble words of the public spokeswomen of Ayaan the Blessed. And therefore I must most humbly beg for forgivenness, for daring to presume that one as I (a mere male, and a Dutch one at that, o horror) could possibly see (if I may breathe it: Dutch) things more clearly than you or Her, mistress, for stealing your time, for defiling your mood, for being the suffering subject of my tedious rudeness and relentless unpleasantness. I merely thought, humbly, that such a one as I – humbly begging forgiveness for the mere presumption mistress! – could conceivably be perhaps, humbly in supplication and on my bare knees, be able to, by the merest accident of time and place, of course without any reflection on my baseness, moved by the merest waft of coincident conjunctive chance of time and place – well, I beg forgiveness – … if truth matters, see things a bit more clearly, perhaps?

Pretty good, don’t you think?

Shiraz Maher escaped from Hizb ut-Tahrir
.

Islamism transcends cultural norms, so it not only prompted me to reject my British identity but also my ethnic South Asian background. I was neither eastern, nor western; I was a Muslim, a part of the global ummah, where identity is defined through the fraternity of faith. Islamists insist this identity is not racist because Islam welcomes people of all colours, ethnicities and backgrounds. That was true, but our world view was still horribly bipolar. We didn’t distinguish on the basis of colour, but on creed. The world was simply divided into believers and nonbelievers.

Identity defined through the ‘fraternity of faith’ is not racist, good, but it does divide the world simply into believers and nonbelievers (or infidels, kufr, apostates, heretics, misbelievers, traitors), which is at least as bad. Dividing the world into just two is both dangerous and malevolent for an obvious reason: it means that the not-us part is seen as The Enemy. That potential always exists for any kind of evaluation or preference or allegiance, but it’s a lot weaker when the allegiances are multiple instead of single. Beware the people who divide the world in two.

Why would a caliphate be such a nice thing?

Hizb ut-Tahrir regards this as the ideal form of government, because it follows what it believes are the laws of God as set out in the Koran, rather than laws designed by [humans].

Right. And that’s why we don’t regard a caliphate as the ideal form of government but rather as the ulitmate nightmare. It’s because the ‘laws of God’ are beyond appeal and rational analysis and reform in the light of new knowledge or improved morality, whereas laws designed by humans are not. In practice, of course, the ‘laws of God’ are sometimes revised or reformed, but in principle they can always be and often are declared inviolable as ‘God’ is inviolable. That’s what makes them so damn terrifying. They are, in principle, beyond rational debate. That’s not safe.

Buried assumptions at work.

I immediately begin trying out Dawkins’ appeal in polite company. At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. “Who here is an atheist?” I ask. Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, “I am!” But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: “You would be.”

“Why?”

“Because you enjoy pissing people off.”

“Well, that’s true.”

It’s clear enough what we’re supposed to get from all that. One, it’s almost always a man who pipes up because men are pugnacious and competitive and obnoxious, whereas women are more tactful and co-operative and sweet and kind. Two, atheists are atheists because they enjoy pissing people off. Three, atheism of course pisses people off. Well, fuck that. I’m a woman, and I am not more tactful and co-operative and sweet and kind, as anyone who knows me will knock over chairs and hatstands in the rush to confirm. More to the point, I’m a woman and I hate like hell the idea that women are too nice to be atheist or rational or skeptical or anything else in that department of the store.

But more significant (and silly) is the assumption that atheism naturally and automatically pisses people off. That’s a very parochial assumption. Atheism does piss off a lot of people in the US, but the US isn’t the world, and in some places atheism is more boring and taken for granted than irritating. The existence of this unexamined assumption is one reason the ‘new Atheists’ are right that atheists need to speak up more.