Tag: Universal human rights

  • Cameron wraps his head in the flag

    Oh shut up, David Cameron.

    He’s talking nationalist bullshit about “British values” again, which is a really bad idea.

    People in the UK should stop being “bashful” about being British, the prime minister has urged.

    Writing in the Mail on Sunday, David Cameron said the country should be “far more muscular” in promoting its values and institutions.

    He backed the promotion of “British values” in the classroom amid claims conservative Muslim governors had tried to influence some Birmingham schools.

    This should include teaching children about Magna Carta, Mr Cameron said.

    Mr Cameron wrote that in recent years, the UK had sent out a “worrying” message: “That if you don’t want to believe in democracy, that’s fine; that if equality isn’t your bag, don’t worry about it; that if you’re completely intolerant of others, we will still tolerate you.”

    That is a stupid, reckless, destructive thing to say. Democracy is not a “British” value; nor is equality; nor is tolerance. He’s basically talking about human rights, and human rights have to be treated as universal; treating them as part of nationalism makes them provincial at a stroke, and thus undermines the efforts of all human rights workers in other countries. Don’t undermine the efforts of all human rights workers in other countries, David Cameron.

    In the wake of Ofsted’s findings, Mr Cameron said “British values” included: “A belief in freedom, tolerance of others, accepting personal and social responsibility, respecting and upholding the rule of law.”

    These were “as British as the Union Flag, as football, as fish and chips,” he wrote in the newspaper article.

    The Muslim Council of Britain said it had “deep concern at the tone and tenor over the debate on British values”.

    In a motion passed at its AGM, the MCB said it had “no objection to British values” and believed in a “tolerant, more free and more equal society”.

    But it said it wanted a “real debate that does not regard us as conditional Britons…. It is not Islam or Muslims that stand in the way of full participation; It is the active and vociferous campaign to exclude Muslims from the public space.”

    For once I think the MCB has a point, although they’re the wrong people to make it. But yes: by calling them “British” values when they’re universal and universalist values, Cameron does tell Muslims and other exotic people that those values are foreign to them. Bad idea, on many levels.

     

     

  • Always look on the bright side of FGM

    Nicholas Kristof tells off Ayaan Hirsi Ali because of course he knows far more about Islam than she does.

    To those of us who have lived and traveled widely in Africa and Asia, descriptions of Islam often seem true but incomplete.

    Including, apparently, descriptions by people who grew up immersed in Islam, genitally mutilated under Islam, beaten up by their teachers of Islam, issued death threats from adherents of Islam. The descriptions are true – but Kristof wants more. He wants to hear about the pretty calligraphy.

    The repression of women, the persecution complexes, the lack of democracy, the volatility, the anti-Semitism, the difficulties modernizing, the disproportionate role in terrorism — those are all real. But if those were the only faces of Islam, it wouldn’t be one of the fastest-growing religions in the world today. There is also the warm hospitality toward guests, including Christians and Jews; charity for the poor; the aesthetic beauty of Koranic Arabic; the sense of democratic unity as rich and poor pray shoulder to shoulder in the mosque.

    That first list is quite a doozy! Repression of women, no democracy, anti-Semitism, anti-modernism, affinity for terrorism [and he forgot homophobia, hatred of outsiders and “infidels,” madrassas, the death penalty for leaving, and a few more large items] – with all that is it really surprising that Islam gets some criticism? It sounds absurd to admit to all that and then say yes but, especially when the yes buts are themselves dubious. Hospitality to Christians and Jews? What – they get a nice meal before they get driven out of town? And as for the sense of “democratic unity as rich and poor pray shoulder to shoulder” – well it may be democratic unity but it sure as hell isn’t gender unity; women are banished to the back of the bus. Forgive me if I can’t get too sentimental because Kristof gets dewy about rich and poor men praying shoulder to shoulder in the mosque.

    Really – he should know better. He should know better to admit repression of women, no democracy, anti-Semitism, anti-modernism, affinity for terrorism and then go on to say “but it’s not all bad.” Fuck that. With that list, it’s bad enough, and good liberals shouldn’t be cobbling together feeble excuses for it.

  • Many women believe they don’t have the right to have rights

    Deepa Shankaran on the politics of religious fundamentalism:

    In these politics, the key platforms are grounded in “morality”, “the family” and gender roles, and fundamentalist campaigns often call for a return to “traditional” values, speaking to the fear of social upheaval brought about by women’s growing autonomy, sexual liberation and the increasing visibility of LGBTQI people. According to women’s rights activists, a major fundamentalist strategy in every region is the use of discourse that blames social problems on a “decline in morality” or the “disintegration of the family”; and that presents rigid gender roles within the family as “natural.”…As these discourses translate into fundamentalist campaigning on specific laws, policies and practices, they give rise to concrete consequences for women’s human rights.

    Quite. This is essentially the subject matter of Does God Hate Women?

    Fundamentalist movements also exert a profound and long-lasting psychological impact – a reality that often goes unacknowledged. As Lucy Garrido in Uruguay remarks, “the most serious impact is that many women believe and feel that they don’t have the right to have rights, that decisions about themselves, their minds and bodies, are influenced by and can be made by others.”

  • As though

    A more central part of Harris’s argument:

    …it also seems quite rational for us to collectively act as though all human lives were equally valuable. Hence, most of our laws and social institutions generally ignore differences between people.

    Ah but they don’t. One big social institution doesn’t, at least not necessarily: the family. Some parents believe in equality, but some don’t; sometimes it’s a matter of what the male head of household believes, because that determines the rules for everyone else.

    This is why the claim that maximizing well-being for all can be scientifically shown to be moral or good does not (as far as I can see) get off the ground. It’s because some people’s well-being partly depends on the subordination of other people, and people like that do not consider the de-subordination of “their” subordinates a source of well-being for themselves. Over time that can change, but it doesn’t happen overnight. So the question arises, how would you show such people scientifically that they are mistaken? It can’t be done. You may be able to show them evidence that the subordinates will have more well-being, but that won’t trump their sense of the fitness of things. The issue isn’t factual (though facts can help, or hinder; it depends), it’s emotional.

  • No you may not

    So here it is again – Christian groups getting up in public and demanding the right to treat certain people badly.

    In a case that pits nondiscrimination policies against freedom of religion, the Supreme Court is grappling with whether universities and colleges can deny official recognition to Christian student groups that refuse to let non-Christians and gays join…The Christian group said its constitutional freedoms of speech, religion and association were violated when it was denied recognition as a student group by the San Francisco-based school.

    The group has made this argument at several universities around the nation with mixed results…

    Hastings said it turned the Christian Legal Society down because all recognized campus groups, which are eligible for financing and other benefits, may not exclude people due to religious belief, sexual orientation and other reasons.
    The Christian group requires that voting members sign a statement of faith. The group also regards ”unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle” as being inconsistent with the statement of faith.

    Right – so there you have it. The group regards a particular set of people as doing something “immoral” for no stated reason except that that is part of their “statement of faith,” and on those stupid unreasonable narcissistic grounds the group wants to exclude that set of people in a context where groups are simply not allowed to exclude people for stupid unreasonable arbitrary reasons.

    This is bad. This is institutionalized badness. It is bad to exclude people for stupid arbitrary tiny-minded reasons, and religious groups shouldn’t be energetically trying to gain themselves a putative “right” to do that. This is bad, bad stuff. People don’t get to invent random definitions of “immoral” and then use them to exclude people in public settings. Religious groups are energetically trying to do exactly that, and they must be resisted and rebuked.