Author: Ophelia Benson

Well, we’re doomed anyway. There are Pakistan’s nukes, and Iran’s potential nukes, and, Karl tells me, Saudi Arabia’s potential nukes – my head hurts. And that’s not to mention North Korea whose nukes are probably pointed directly at my desk. And never even mind all that because with that Siberian peat bog the size of Germany and France combined melting and releasing billions of tons of methane – warming will be drastically speeded up and there is nothing we can do about it. Floods, droughts, crop failures, famines, migrations of peoples, food wars…(And there’s that pandemic lurking, don’t forget that.)

So maybe it would make sense to just shrug and start eating a lot of ice cream while awaiting the end. Maybe it would. But – but who knows, maybe there will be a Miracle and the human species will turn some sort of corner and start acting as if it has a shred of sense. So maybe it’s worthwhile to keep trying to help direct traffic. Anyway it’s less boring than waiting.

Right, so what’s the first thing I heard when I turned on the radio this morning? (I wonder if I’m always going to wake up at 4 a.m. on Thursdays now. I happened to do that five weeks ago, and got such a shock when I turned on the radio that it probably imprinted a little atomic clock in my brain.) I’ll tell you what it was – a piece on the World Service about Salman Rushdie’s article in the Times about the need for a reform movement in Islam. The religion correspondent Jane Little called it ‘strident’ and then without pausing to draw breath, rushed to say ‘But we have to put it in context’ and then rushed on to explain what she meant by ‘in context’: Rushdie is ‘hardly a respected figure in the Muslim world,’ so Muslims won’t be much impressed by what he has to say, they’ll just say he’s just showing his liberal secular values.

In other words, it was disgusting, contemptible, anti-rational, hostile, slavish garbage. What does she mean ‘strident’? Read the article – what’s ‘strident’ about it? Unless you just start from the default position that religious fundamentalism is a fine thing and any kind of rational questioning of it is bad and ‘strident.’ But what is a BBC journalist doing starting from a default position like that?

And then there was the edge of contempt in her voice and choice of words – ‘Rushdie is hardly a respected figure in the Muslim world’. Meaning – what? Therefore he should shut up about ‘the Muslim world’? Because – ? Because one branch of it wants to kill him? Therefore he has no business voicing criticism of it? It’s hard not to think that’s what she’s saying. But that’s imbecilic – and submissive. Rushdie is more entitled and qualified than most people to criticise Islam, precisely because one branch of it wants to kill him – wants to (and does) shut up people who criticise it. That’s a dead giveaway that there is something badly wrong with it, and that it needs all the criticism it can get, all the more so from people with direct knowledge of its intimidation techniques. Yet Jane Little’s tone and choice of words conveyed the exact opposite. And then note the assumption that the entire ‘Muslim world’ is as obscurantist as the pro-fatwa crowd – which is pretty insulting.

Strident. Let’s hear some stridency.

However, this is the same Sacranie who, in 1989, said that “Death is perhaps too easy” for the author of “The Satanic Verses.” Tony Blair’s decision to knight him and treat him as the acceptable face of “moderate,” “traditional” Islam is either a sign of his government’s penchant for religious appeasement or a demonstration of how limited Blair’s options really are…Two weeks later his organization boycotted a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in London commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem.

So has Jane Little called Sacranie strident, I wonder? If not, why not? Which of the two is actually strident?

The Sacranie case illustrates the weakness of the Blair government’s strategy of relying on traditional, essentially orthodox Muslims to help eradicate Islamist radicalism. Traditional Islam is a broad church that certainly includes millions of tolerant, civilized men and women but also encompasses many whose views on women’s rights are antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expression, who routinely express anti-Semitic views and who, in the case of the Muslim diaspora, are — it has to be said — in many ways at odds with the Christian, Hindu, non-believing or Jewish cultures among which they live…What is needed is a move beyond tradition — nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air…It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.

No no. Naughty. That’s strident. Saying the revelation of their religion is supernaturally above it is just perfectly normal, average, steady-state, but saying it isn’t – that’s strident.

However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in this way. The insistence that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical, scholarly discourse all but impossible.

That’s exactly what Irshad Manji argues, and has been saying on the BBC among other places lately. Is she strident? If she is, why does Radio 4 keep phoning her up and asking her opinion? If she’s not, why is Rushdie?

The traditionalists’ refusal of history plays right into the hands of the literalist Islamofascists, allowing them to imprison Islam in their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages…Will Sir Iqbal Sacranie and his ilk agree that Islam must be modernized? That would make them part of the solution. Otherwise, they’re just the “traditional” part of the problem.

Strident, nothing. Jane Little and the World Service could do with some modernization themselves.

A reader sent me this infuriating item. It’s all too familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.

But now scientists want to step around the mythology and tell a different story, using the DNA of Maori and other indigenous people to work out how prehistoric humans spread around the world from the “true” home of Homo sapiens, Africa. Many Maori do not want to hear that story…As soon as the scheme was announced in April, indigenous groups began objecting, and none more loudly than Maori. We already know where we came from, thanks very much, they said, and what’s in it for indigenous people? What is the point of challenging generations of oral history and spiritual belief?

What is the point? Finding out what really happened as opposed to the story. It’s not written in stone anywhere that a story is invariably or necessarily preferable to a more accurate account.

Indigenous people already have their own answers, says Tongan educator Dr Linita Manu’atu, a senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology.
“Stop dominating us. If they flip over to this side of the world, [they will see] we have our own ways of understanding the world. We can do our research in our own ways, and contribute that knowledge to the world,” Manu’atu says. “For Tongans, we were created in Tonga. We have gods, our own gods, which we created the same as the people of Israel. We have our own stories, but we are being told they’re not good enough.”

Says Tongan educator? She has a funny idea of education. Yeah, I know how I got where I am, too: Daffy Duck bought me at Reasonably Honest Dave’s for five cents and a plug of tobacco. That’s my story and better nobody tell me it’s not good enough, especially not some jumped-up geneticist. See? I’m an educator.

Australian Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell agrees. “We didn’t come from anywhere. We know that our Dreamtime stories tell us we were always here, in Australia. Can this be twisted to say we came from Africa and therefore we have fewer rights to our country than white people?”

No, it can only be twisted to say you came from Africa and therefore you have more rights to your country than white people. That makes just as much sense.

Marae worker and caregiver Mere Kepa, also a researcher at Auckland University, doesn’t buy Genographic’s stated hope of improving global understanding of indigenous concerns. “Just because you know you’re related to each other, is that going to stop the Queensland police belting the shit out of Aborigines?” Kepa asks. “This is scientific imperialism. As an academic I’m not opposed to learning, but I’m tired and exhausted of learning from Western scientists that I’m sad, bad and mad and so are all my whanau and hapu and iwi.”

As an academic Kepa is not opposed to learning?? Well you could have fooled me! That sure looks like opposition to learning to me. Blind, stubborn, stupid, ill-informed, catch-phrasey, trendy, dopy, grab-any-complaint-that-comes-to-mindy, head-in-the-sand opposition to learning.

But they’re not all absurd, I’m happy to say. (Postmodernism is everywhere – it’s like mildew. It just creeps in.

Maori Aucklander Mike Stevens, an anthropologist and iwi consultant who is on the board of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, is happy to volunteer for the project and says many Maori do not accept all oral traditions as literal truth anyway…”But I think it is something that can advance our knowledge. It needn’t destroy our faith.”…More knowledge is always empowering, says Manuka Henare, associate dean of Maori and Pacific Development at Auckland University’s business school…”If you give people the knowledge and understanding, you will find Maori people are as open-minded about these things as any others.”

Good, let’s hope someone gets busy doing that, so that the cries of scientific imperialism can fade away.

Ayaan Hrsi Ali to speak at Toronto Sharia law conference, August 12th

Press conference begins at 6:30pm.

Together with Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hrsi Ali made the 2004 film ‘Submission’ about the oppression of women in Islamic cultures. Dutch Muslims criticized the film for being disgraceful and blasphemous. Van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri on November, 2nd, 2004. Ayaan now lives under police protection in a safe house in the Netherlands. Time Magazine named Ayaan one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005. Ayaan has been a Member of Parliament in the Dutch (Liberal) VVD party in the Tweede Kamer (Lower House) since January 30th 2003.

Irshad Manji and Homa Arjomand will also speak.

Irshad Manji author of the #1-bestseller, ‘The Trouble with Islam’, is based in Toronto and hosts TVOntario’s “Big Ideas.” Oprah Winfrey honored her with the first annual Chutzpah Award. Ms. magazine named her a Feminist for the 21st Century.

Homa Arjomand is the Coordinator of the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada. She started her campaign at Toronto in October 2003 with a handful of supporters, and today it has grown to a coalition of 87 organizations from 14 countries with over a thousand activists. Homa is a Toronto based transitional counselor and was a human rights activist in Iran until she was forced to flee in 1989.

About the Conference:

The Toronto Conference on ‘Sharia Law and the Globalization of Political Islam’ will be held August 12, 2005 at 7:30 pm. in the Earth Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, 1050-5 Bancroft Ave. The ten-minute film ‘Submission’ will be shown and a 30-minute question period will follow the speakers.

Tickets may be ordered by calling 416-737-9500 or by email homawpi@rogers.com. Tickets are $20, seniors and students $12. The conference is produced and sponsored by the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada.