Author: Ophelia Benson

Wait – what does that mean?

Islamic tradition explicitly prohibits any depiction of Allah and the Prophet.

That doesn’t make any sense. In fact it makes non-sense. How can ‘tradition’ ‘explicitly’ prohibit anything? It can’t: that’s why it’s called tradition to distinguish it from law. Law can, obviously, explicitly prohibit things, but tradition can’t, it can only implicitly prohibit them. Tradition isn’t written down or codified; it’s fuzzy; it’s implicit; it has blurry edges. It’s the very opposite of explicit.

We can probably figure out what happend with that goofy sentence. I think when the Motoon fuss started a lot of media reports claimed that the Koran explicitly prohibited any depiction of A and the P, but then a lot of other people pointed out that actually the Koran doesn’t, that it’s a tradition rather than a Koranic law. So the reporter decided to split the difference – don’t say it’s the Koran, lest people write in and say ‘can’t you get it right?’ – but still say it ‘explicitly prohibits’ because that sounds so much sterner and more binding and holy and thus more of an outrage and provocation and offense for people to do, and there is (it appears) a journalistic impulse to do that – to emphasize the bindingness and the outrage – so as to – to – to distance oneself from those naughty people at Jyllands-Posten, I guess. That’s all interpretation; I don’t know that that’s why that silly sentence is there; but if that’s not why, then why? Would the BBC say for instance ‘Christian tradition explicitly prohibits gay marriage’? I wonder. I seriously wonder. I have to doubt it. (Do search for such a thing if you’re so inspired; do let me know if I’m wrong.) Because the BBC probably doesn’t approve or even sympathize much with fundamentalist Christian urges to push gay people around, but it may sympathize just a little bit with the putative horror of depictions of the Prophet on the part of Muslims. So it phrases the matter just…ever…so…slightly oddly.

I like this one. Oxymoron in action; very droll.

But the lead convener of the Campaign Against Monica Ali’s Film Brick Lane, officially launched yesterday, vowed to continue with the protest irrespective of where the movie is filmed. Abdus Salique threatened to burn Ali’s book at a rally on Sunday which is expected to be attended by hundreds of protesters…[H]e added: “[If] she has the right to freedom of speech, we have the right to burn books. We will do it to show our anger. We don’t like Monica Ali. We are protecting our community’s dignity and respect.”

Heeheeheehee. Yup, that’s what you’re doing all right, protecting ‘your community’s’ dignity and respect by standing around talking idiotic threatening drivel to a Guardian reporter. Yup, that’s dignity and respect-protection all right; you bet. Good move. Everyone’s way impressed with your dignity.

He continued: “It is not just filming [in Brick Lane] which is the problem. We don’t want a film which degrades our community.”

No, because you want to do the degrading yourself. Very enterprising.

Much more refreshing is the letter to the Guardian from PEN members Lisa Appignanesi, Hanif Kureishi, Anthony Lester QC, Salman Rushdie and Gillian Slovo.

Your article (July 18) about Brick Lane residents’ response to the filming of Monica Ali’s novel gave the mistaken impression that there was a united Bangladeshi community in the area threatening protest and keen to stop the production of the film of this supposedly “insulting” novel. Your readers may wish to know that there is no such united and censorious front. There are many differing Asian voices in the area. Few of them are as punitively adamant as the chair of the Brick Lane Traders’ Association, who, according to Asians in Media, leads a small minority of Sylheti traditionalists and has overblown the size of local protest.

It’s what Sen is talking about, in a way – this pretend unity which is a mere pretense. Hearing twenty people squawk and calling that ‘the Bangladeshi community’. There are many differing Asian voices in the area, and everywhere else; people don’t have to and generally don’t want to speak as a bloc. Not every ad hoc group is a ‘community’ much less the ‘community’. It’s more dignified and respect-worthy to realize that.

Harmonic convergence time. I mentioned I’m reading that book of Amartya Sen’s (very slowly, you’ll notice as I give page numbers, but that’s because I’m reading other things too, also because I want to read it slowly – okay it’s because I don’t read well). It’s all, so far anyway, very ‘aha’ kind of reading (which is why I want to read it slowly) – just ‘aha, aha,’ every sentence, with no anecdotal stuff in between to give you a chance to read without going ‘aha’. In other words it’s one of those books that says very eloquently exactly what you already think so you keep sort of twitching like something in a cruel electric experiment. I knew it would be that kind of book, but it is, all the same. I gave an especially violent twitch while reading what he says about ‘faith’ schools in the UK, and resolved to do another N&C quoting that part. And while doing News found this article in the Telegraph.

[Sen] felt that Tony Blair’s government, for which he had voted, had unwittingly made two serious policy blunders – increasingly encouraging a society in which the ethnic minorities and especially Muslims were defined almost exclusively by their religion and endorsing the establishment of faith schools…Although he wanted mainstream British schools to broaden their curriculum to include more on the contribution of, say, Muslim mathematicians to science, he added that faith schools “are a pretty bad thing. Educationally, it’s not good for the child. From the point of view of national unity, it’s dreadful because, even before a child begins to think, it’s being defined by its ‘community’, which is primarily religion.

Well, see, that’s exactly one of the bits I was going to quote in here. Because I think he’s right, right, right, and I think everyone should listen and heed. Page 13:

Despite our diverse diversities, the world is suddenly seen not as a collection of people, but as a federation of religions and civilizations. In Britain a confounded view of what a multiethnic society must do has led to encouraging the development of state-financed Muslim schools, Hindu schools, Sikh schools, etc, to supplement pre-existing state-supported Christian schools, and young children are powerfully placed in the domain of singular affiliations well before they have the ability to reason about different systems of identification that may compete for their attention.

Which is exactly what Richard Dawkins says – very rightly, in my view – about children and religion: they have it forced on them long before they have the ability to reason about the subject, and the subject needs to be reasoned about. That’s what Sen is arguing (to a chorus of ‘aha’s from me): that it is both possible and necessary to reason about what we consider our identity, what we want to make a priority and what we don’t, what matters more than what. That it is crucial to be aware that it is a choice, and that it is a choice that can be reasoned about: our freedom and our ability to reason are both important here, and are both available to us, but only if we are aware of them and do make use of them. ‘Faith’ schools work to entrench the opposite idea: that we don’t get to choose, and that it’s not a matter of reason or choice but one of inheritance.

“We have many different identities because we belong to many different groups,” he said. “We are connected with our profession, occupation, class, gender, political views and language, literature, taste in music, involvement in social issues – and also religion. But just to separate out religion as one singularly important identity that has over-arching importance is a mistake. One of the problems of what is happening in Britain today is that one identity, the religious identity, has been taken to represent almost everything.” He argued: “Of course, this policy immediately has the effect of making some people extremely privileged – those who speak in the name of religion. There may be some moderate people but mostly they are extremists who appeal by saying, ‘Forget everything else, you are a Muslim’…This is a point of view that Islamic terrorists share with western theorists who define human beings only in terms of their religion because both agree that if you are Muslim, then that is your primary identity.”

He’s talking at the Institute of Public Policy Research, the Asia Society, the Nehru Centre and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. I’d go if I were in London.

Now for what I was planning to do this morning before I got all, erm, anxious. I’m reading Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence – as is Sunny – and I wanted just to quote some.

“Given our inescapably plural identities, we have to decide on the relative importance of our different associations and affiliations in any particular context. Central to leading a human life, therefore, are the responsibilities of choice and reasoning. In contrast, violence is promoted by the cultivation of a sense of inevitability about some allegedly unique – often bellligerent – identity that we are supposed to have and which apparently makes extensive demands of us (sometimes of a most disagreeable kind). The imposition of an allegedly unique identity is often a crucial component of the ‘martial art’ of fomenting sectarian confrontation.” p. xii

“With suitable instigation, a fostered sense of identity with one group of people can be made into a powerful weapon to brutalize another…The art of constructing hatred takes the form of invoking the magical power of some allegedly predominant identity that drowns other affiliations, and in a conveniently bellicose form can also overpower any human sympathy or natural kindness that we may normally have.” p. xv

“What we need, above all, is a clear-headed understanding of the importance of the freedom that we can have in determining our priorities. And, related to that understanding, we need an appropriate recognition of the role and efficacy of reasoned public voice – within nations and across the world.” p. xvii

This is absolutely fascinating.

When the University of Colorado moved last month to fire Ward Churchill, there was not much of an organized defense among professors – even among those in the academic left. That may be changing, although some believe it shouldn’t change and risks devaluing what the academic left stands for.

Sound belief. Because if the academic left turns out to stand for left more than for academic, then it does indeed risk devaluing what the academic left stands for. If you’re an academic (as opposed to an advertiser, or a public relations expert, or a movie-maker, or a novelist) you’ve undertaken a commitment not to let your leftism or rightism trump your academic responsibility, which is first of all to get at the truth as best you can. It is certainly not to claim that fraud and plagiarism should be overlooked if they are detected under unfortunate circumstances.

The debate might be summed up in an analogy offered by one of the faculty panels that reviewed Churchill and found that he committed, intentionally, all kinds of research misconduct. Committee members said that they were uncomfortable with the fact that Colorado ignored serious allegations against Churchill for years, and took them seriously only when his politics attracted attention. The panel compared the situation to one in which a motorist is stopped for speeding because a police officer doesn’t like the bumper sticker on her car. If she was speeding, she was speeding — regardless of the officer’s motives, the panel said. A group of professors…have joined forces to say that the officer’s motives do matter, and may matter more than the speeding. And they are organizing a petition drive, drawing support from some big-name academics, against Churchill’s dismissal.

Very few big-name academics, though. At least so far. But there is one big name that got my attention: Andrew Ross. Ross makes a cameo appearance in Why Truth Matters, saying some – hmm – provocative things about the truth-value of science.

Others on the left disagree. Campus Progress, published to provide a liberal take on issues for college students, came out against Churchill last week, releasing an article that said: “Progressive advocates of academic freedom should not rally to Churchill’s side. They should oppose the targeting of professors for their beliefs, even vile ones like Churchill’s. But the charges against Churchill justify his termination because fraud and plagiarism, as much as censorship, threaten academic integrity.”

Just so. And having scholars get up a petition that makes fraud and plagiarism a matter of academic freedom does not do much to protect academic integrity.

“I support his right to academic freedom, but not his right to plagiarize, not his right to create a fraudulent identity, nor his right to do faulty research,” said Oneida Meranto, a professor of political science and director of Native American studies…[S]he is also among a number of Native American scholars who for years have been complaining about the quality of Churchill’s scholarship. But the left, and specifically the white left in academe, didn’t much care about all of these problems until some saw him as an academic freedom case, Meranto said. There are academic freedom issues in his case, she said, and she’s not entirely comfortable with the way it has been handled. But she added that she would “not support Ward Churchill – the man or the myth” and that it was unfair for “academic freedom absolutists” to portray Churchill as a cause around which others should rally.

There you go. She doesn’t support his right to plagiarize, nor his right to do faulty research. Nor should she, nor should the rest of the left.