Author: Ophelia Benson

Another tendentious word, while we’re on the subject – another one that we’ve been hearing a lot lately (and hear a lot all the time anyway).

Community.

Yeah, so, what’s wrong with that? Well, it depends. It can be benign enough, if and when everything is going well. Except that condition never seems to apply, does it. And when things are not going well, community can decidedly cut the other way. Community works to exclude as well as include, as many people have pointed out; it fosters dislike or hatred of non-members as well as loyalty to and solidarity with members; and it can isolate. Trevor Phillips on yesterday’s The World Tonight talked about the way the multicultural emphasis on ‘difference’ works to drive people apart rather than bringing them together. I think both words do that. Every time the radio or newspaper refers to ‘the Muslim community’ it drives the nail in a little further – there is such a thing as ‘the Muslim community,’ it is in some way homogenous enough to be labeled a community (how? how can it be?), and for everyone in that putative community, their being Muslim is the most salient thing about them. Which, apart from anything else, is depressing for secularists and atheists (as well as converts to other religions) in that ‘community’ who really don’t want to be or to be called ‘Muslim’ at all, but who feel shoved back into that category by the constant iteration of the label.

The word is meant to be kind and caring and respectful, but it has some highly coercive, limiting overtones, along with a separatist one. Raise an eyebrow when you hear it.

There’s been a lot of discussion of the BBC’s policy on the use of the t-word. But that’s not the only tendentious word around. I was reading this article earlier today and I noticed another one.

Around this time, he was sent to Pakistan to visit relatives. He also went on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, grew a beard and began to wear robes. Despite becoming devoutly religious, he was arrested for shoplifting during 2004.

Can you tell what word I have in mind? I bet you can. I saw it in other articles too – it’s quite popular. ‘Devout.’

Devout. Hmm. That is one word for it, of course, but others come to mind. ‘Devout’ is not a neutral word – it’s a hooray word. It’s one of those words like ‘faith’ and ‘spiritual’ that are meant to convey, ever so subtly and covertly, that being religious is a good and virtuous thing – all by itself, not because of any further transformation in behaviour. Well, is it? No, not necessarily. It seems safe to say, not in this case! So why use words that imply that it is? Granted, I can’t think of any neutral equivalent for the word ‘devout’ – but then why do we need one? It’s a tautology anyway – religiously religious. It functions as an intensifier, but an intensifier with a lot of baggage. Why not just say ‘intensely religious’ or ‘very religious’? No reason, that I can see, other than to show a kind of reflexive ‘respect’ for religion – which is pretty stupid, in this context, frankly. Yeah, he became devoutly religious, and that’s why he blew up fourteen people. Fourteen people, including Gladys Wundowa, who had finished her shift as a cleaner at UCL and was on her way to a college course in Shoreditch – that’s ‘devoutly religious’ for you.