Author: Ophelia Benson

I’m pleased to see that the well-known blog burchismo has nice things to say about both David Stanway’s article about the Three Gorges and Ibn Warraq’s deconstruction of Edward Said (July 31 and August 1). Not that I comment every time someone mentions us, in fact I never do, but it seems worth mentioning Ibn Warraq (and David too of course!). If you haven’t already you should take a look at Ibn Warraq’s remarkable site, the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society. Read this article on ‘honour killings’ for example, or this one, a witty and irritated look at Muslim-American intellectual life, which asks the probing question, ‘what school of Islamic jurisprudence holds that pork is haram (impermissible) not just for humans but for dogs-and not just for dogs, but for fictional ones?’

Ibn Warraq’s article on Edward Said is all the more timely, since Said has just written an article in the Guardian plaintively noting that the Pentagon pays more attention to Bernard Lewis than it does to him. His argument is not as throughly consistent as it might be. In a paragraph near the beginning he says this:

There has been so massive and calculatedly aggressive an attack on contemporary Arab and Muslim societies for their backwardness, lack of democracy, and abrogation of women’s rights that we simply forget that such notions as modernity, enlightenment, and democracy are by no means simple and agreed-upon concepts that one either does or does not find like Easter eggs in the living-room.

And in one near the end he says this:

As Roula Khalaf has argued, the region has slipped into an easy anti-Americanism that shows little understanding of what the US is really like as a society. Because the governments are relatively powerless to affect US policy toward them, they turn their energies to repressing and keeping down their own populations, with results in resentment, anger and helpless imprecations that do nothing to open up societies where secular ideas about human history and development have been overtaken by failure and frustration, as well as by an Islamism built out of rote learning and the obliteration of what are perceived to be other, competitive forms of secular knowledge.

Well never mind trying to figure out which he means, just read Ibn Warraq’s article instead.

Abdication of thought department, not to mention argument by innuendo department. Here is an opinion piece about a supposed conflict between two values, between inclusiveness and humane treatment of animals, between multiculturalism and banning cruel methods of slaughter.

But now a government-funded committee is expected to conclude that traditional Jewish and Islamic methods of slaughter are inhumane. The timing could not be better because, clearly, Britain’s Muslims are nowhere near alienated enough at the moment…This moral conundrum goes right to the heart of what it means to live in a multicultural society.

When you don’t have much of an argument, resort to sarcasm. What’s his point? That findings about which methods of slaughter are humane and which are not should be made on the basis of who will be alienated by them? Does that apply to findings and conclusions in general? If a government-funded committee concludes that foot-binding, or female genital mutilation, or child marriage, or child labour, or child military conscription, or slavery, or judicial torture is inhumane, will they be upbraided by columnists and hand-wringers for alienating British foot-binders or genital mutilators or judicial torturers? Does religion give people a right to torture animals without interference? If so, why? On what grounds? Does living in a multicultural society mean that one is not allowed to make trans-cultural rules or judgments? If so, is that not a recipe for chaos? Why should the wants of alienated Muslims trump the good of killing animals without causing them more suffering than necessary? Why does the columnist not even ask himself this question?

But the issue of halal meat is more blurred partly because, however the creature is slaughtered, we’re still talking about the moment of death, when surely it is the farm animal’s quality of life up to that point that is the bigger factor. We cannot call ourselves a multi-faith society and then only tolerate the aspects of other religions that match our western liberal values…If we are to be genuinely inclusive, we have to be certain before we go dictating our mix-and-match morality to other cultures. When it comes to what people eat, or how they prepare their food, we should let sleeping dogs lie.

That’s a very casual dismissal of the problem. Imagine, some people think animals raised for food should actually have both a decent life and a humane death. Some people also consider themselves secularists, and don’t call themselves ‘a multi-faith society’ at all, especially when they read people who fret about the alienation of religious groups and brush off physical pain and terror. If animals were Muslim too would he worry about them? And there’s the sly label ‘western liberal values’ for the goal of humane slaughter, as if it’s just some effete silly consumerist whim. Oh it’s all rhetoric – ‘genuinely inclusive,’ ‘dictating our mix-and-match morality,’ and then rushing past us ‘how they prepare their food’ as if we were talking about carrots or chocolate. When ‘their food’ consists of sentient, conscious beings, then yes, ‘how they prepare their food’ is the business of other people. And the dogs are not sleeping, that’s the whole point. They’re wide-awake, they can see and feel the knife.

Ibn Warraq of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society writes eloquently about this subject in his book Why I am not a Muslim:

The British legislation concerning slaughter was passed for ethical reasons, in other words, any method of slaughter other than that recommended by these laws was considered immoral. And in giving in to Muslim and Jewish demands for their own methods of butchering we in effect condone behavior that we have previously judged immoral. We sanction immorality because of our respect for the religion of others. Cruelty to animals is all right as long as it is religious cruelty!

What was that we were saying about certainty, and religion, and the Vatican? There just keeps on being more to say. There is for instance this lovely story about a Calgary bishop who announced that the Canadian Prime Minister’s eternal salvation is in jeopardy and that he could burn in hell. Oh well I suppose I could look on the bright side, couldn’t I. He didn’t say ‘The Prime Minister is definitely without question going to burn in hell,’ he said that he could. He said his salvation is in jeopardy, not that it’s already lost. Quite admirably flexible and latitudinarian, really! Or perhaps he is just (as we vulgar Yanks like to put it) covering his ass. Hedging his bets, in case he finds out sometime down the road that in fact Chrétien is not burning in hell. He doesn’t want to look foolish among the other denizens of the afterlife, now does he.

It’s interesting – now I know this is an obvious point, but it’s still interesting – how definite and positive and convinced and unwavering and certain the Catholic Church is that ‘To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral,’ even though they are helpless to come up with any actual reason such a law would be harmful to the common good, when they are so havering and wavering on the grave immorality of their own priests who grope children. They gesture at ‘scripture’ and they say homosexual unions are not remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family, but that just argues in a circle, obviously. People who don’t believe in the Vatican’s deity and consider the bible an interesting but not quite bang up to date book written by humans, are not going to find those convincing reasons, are they. So what else do you have, Vatters? Nothing. Nada. Bupkis. Except, apparently, a strong urge to protect your own followers even when they have in fact actually done some things generally considered harmful to the common good. And yet the Vatican doesn’t hesitate to get up there on its hind legs and order everyone about. Oh it’s enough to make a cat laugh.