Author: Ophelia Benson

Mitchell Cohen in Dissent.

The left everywhere ought to be identified with both tolerance (this has not always been so) and with critical intelligence – the latter often means challenging religious precepts, ambitions and institutionalized power. The hard thing is to balance the tolerance and the criticism, to insist on pluralism but not to allow religion to privilege itself in the public realm. The left should always want people to think for themselves, but this cannot mean “you must be secular like me” since it also should not mean “you must be religious like me.”

That last sentence isn’t right. ‘Secular’ doesn’t mean not religious, it means not theocratic. Wanting people to think for themselves pretty much does mean ‘you must be not theocratic’ because theocracy is the end of thinking for oneself. Theocracy is about obedience and submission, and that’s not compatible with valuing thinking for oneself. You could change ‘secular’ to ‘atheist’ in that sentence, but then you would want to wonder why it’s a matter of ‘must’ rather than ‘should.’ Cohen is presumably talking about political persuasion and discourse, in which case, it seems unreasonable to say ‘this cannot mean “you should be atheist”‘ because political persuasion and discourse is all about shoulds; but it seems downright absurd to say ‘this cannot mean “you must be atheist”‘ because who would say that anyway and what would be the point?

This is an interview, so perhaps he just chose his words hastily – but all the same, we have to be careful not to concede too much. We do get to say ‘you must be secular’ and we do get to say ‘you should be atheist’; neither is illegitimate or comparable to saying ‘you must be religious.’

we cannot say often enough today that the modern liberal state was an act against civil wars created by societies dominated by religion; it is only as the domination of the public realm by religion ends that open, liberal, and social democratic (or socialist, if you prefer) societies become possible. When religious movements are triumphalist, when they believe that they can assert themselves inexorably in the public realm, liberal and social democratic values are jeopardized.

Exactly; that’s why we do get to say ‘you must be secular.’ It’s a precondition, like the First Amendment.

If I express my secular humanist ideas publicly, if I try to persuade fellow citizens of them, I must be open to criticism…But what happens when religious-political claims are open to the same challenge? If a Muslim friend, on the basis of his profound religious convictions, makes an argument for a law that is to govern me, shall I challenge his belief in Muhammad’s prophetic role? Anyone who knows some history knows it is likely to lead to religious wars. The alternative is to ask him (or her) to secularize the principles of argument.

As above. Expecting people to be secular does not entail expecting them not to be religious.

I am struck at how parts of the extreme left apologize for Islamic extremism in ways reminiscent of how an earlier generation found ways to apologize for Stalinism. The objects excused are different but the patterns of apologetics are sadly similar. It shows that there really is something I once called ‘the left that doesn’t learn.’ But there are others – liberals and conservatives – who haven’t learned either, or who suffer memory lapse when it comes to all the persecutions and religious wars in the fabric of Western history and seem to forget the historical importance of the domestication of religion within a liberal democratic framework. There has been excessive indulgence of aggressive political religiosity, whether it is the self-righteous Christian right in the U.S., belligerent political Islamism in the Mideast and beyond, or the fanatical religious nationalism of the Israeli settler movements.

So he’s pretty much saying ‘you must be secular’ (and not at all saying ‘you should be atheist’). That one sentence must have been an aberration.

Did Ian Buruma write this in ten minutes, or what? It’s all over the place.

It has become fashionable in certain smart circles to regard atheism as a sign of superior education, of highly evolved civilization, of enlightenment. Recent bestsellers by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others suggest that religious faith is a sign of backwardness…

Oh get over it for Christ’s sake. Is there no end to the market for people complaining about this overwhelming flood of atheist books that add up to all of five which is as a grain of sand to a beach compared to the flood of theist bestsellers? There certainly doesn’t seem to be. Is this the top item in The Lazy Editor’s Handbook or what? ‘If nothing else occurs, get some windbag to have a tantrum about the uncontrollable torrent of atheist bestsellers.’

Can religion also be a force for good? asks Buruma, dopily. Noooo – religion can never ever ever be a force for good, not nohow. Duh. Of course it can – we don’t need to be told that ‘sometimes religion can be a force for good’ – we know that.

But it’s too late, Buruma has to tell us.

[W]atching Burmese monks on television defying the security forces of one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, it is hard not to see some merit in religious belief.

You don’t say. And watching Saudi religious police send schoolgirls back into a fire to burn to death because they’re not ‘dressed properly,’ it is hard not to see some merit in atheism. So what?

[T]he monks and nuns took the first step; they dared to protest when most others had given up. And they did so with the moral authority of their Buddhist faith. Romantics might say that Buddhism is unlike other religions, more a philosophy than a faith. But this would be untrue. It has been a religion in different parts of Asia for many centuries, and can be used to justify violent acts as much as any other belief. For evidence, one need only look at Sri Lanka, where Buddhism is lashed onto ethnic chauvinism in the civil war between Buddhist Singhalese and Hindu Tamils.

Um, okay, but I thought you were saying religion is sometimes a force for good? What’s the subject again?

[T]he moral power of religious faith does not need a supernatural explanation. Its strength is belief itself, in a moral order that defies secular or indeed religious dictators. Active resisters to the Nazis during World War II were often devout Christians. Some sheltered Jews, despite their own prejudices against the Jews, simply because they saw it as their religious duty. Faith does not have to be in a supernatural being. The Nazis were resisted with equal tenacity by men and women who found strength in their belief in communism.

Oh, okay, so you’re not talking about religion after all, you’re talking about belief, including belief in communism? Only, I thought you were talking about religion, because that’s what you said at the beginning.

Despite the horrific violence of Islamist fanatics, it should not be forgotten that the mosque too can be a legitimate basis for resistance against the mostly secular dictatorships in the Middle East today. In a world of political oppression and moral corruption, religious values offer an alternative moral universe. This alternative is not necessarily more democratic, but it can be.

Or not. Usually not. So your point is…?

Nevertheless, faith has an important role to play in politics, especially in circumstances in which secular liberals are rendered impotent, as in the case of Nazi occupation, communist rule or military dictatorship.

Oh, man – now I’m really confused.

Liberals are most needed when compromises have to be made, but not as useful when faced with brute force. That is when visionaries, romantics and true believers are driven by their beliefs to take risks that most of us would regard as foolhardy. It is, on the whole, not beneficial to be ruled by such heroes, but it is good to have them around when we need them.

Yes no doubt, but you were talking about religion, remember? Remember the beginning of your article? It’s not that long – you could have checked back once or twice while you were writing it. You started out with a dopy whinge about atheist bestsellers #17,985, then you asked if religion can sometimes be a force for good. How did you end up with romantics and heroes?

Dang – I wish I’d been Buruma’s editor for that piece; I would have thrown it back and told him to re-write it. Actually, I would have just said No thanks; it’s banal at best and incoherent at worst. Try harder next time.

Funny what a hard time people have getting this.

Oddly, some of the people commenting on the UCU decision on the Engage website have expressed disappointment that the boycott proposal has been defeated through legal means rather than by a popular union ballot. This is a puzzling response. The Jim Crow laws in the United States were overturned in the 1950s and 1960s through Supreme Court decisions and civil rights legislation, rather than by popular referendums in southern American states. The civil rights movement did not attempt to argue with segregationists to give up their misguided commitment to discriminatory practices. It invoked legal authority in order to compel them to respect the human rights of African Americans. In a liberal democracy the rights of individuals and minorities against racist exclusion are ensured by legal guarantee. They do not depend upon the consent of groups who refuse to acknowledge these rights as indefeasibly binding.

In fact it’s not so much funny as alarming. The more people don’t get that, the more at risk we all are – unless we can be absolutely sure we’re not a member of any possible minority at all; and who can be absolutely sure of that? And anyway we’d still be at risk, because we’d be at risk of persecuting other people, which is hardly an improvement on being persecuted oneself.

It’s so basic. Democracy is not the same thing as justice or human rights or fairness or equal treatment or compassion or anything like that. It doesn’t imply them or presuppose them or (necessarily) bring them about. The majority is not always or automatically right, and it’s certainly not always fair or merciful or scrupulous. Sometimes laws are better than the popular will – that’s one reason laws exist.