In the Pope’s recent, controversial speech, he said, inter alia:

A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

I think that’s flying in the face of experience.

We have a global, rationalist, humanist culture that includes science that is not riven by violent misunderstanding. People might disagree about why the dinosaurs died out, or whether string theory is science – and these can be serious disputes about the work of lifetimes – but nobody beheads, and nobody has ever burned, anyone because they disagreed about such issues.

The dialogue of rational, sceptical people transcends all boundaries and unites us all. Through that unification, we explore each other’s cultures with interest and enthusiasm.

This is an interesting point. Has American pressure got anything to do with the Labour Party’s recent change of direction on Islamism?

Here’s one reason to think this might be an issue, from the C.I.A.’s website – a U.S. national Intelligence Council document. Quote:

A New Caliphate provides an example of how a global movement fueled by radical religious identity politics could constitute a challenge to Western norms and values as the foundation of the global system.

Hat tip – Sir Percy.

Islamist totalitarians butchering more than three million people, in the south and now in Darfur… What took him so long?

P.S. – It’s about to get worse.

One prominent supporter of the Rally for Free Expression was the humanist Leo Igwe, from Nigeria. I said at the time that he should stand as a reminder that there are people in the world who are fighting for freedom under far more trying circumstances than our own, in Europe.

A reminder of this comes today, in the news that a Nigerian Christian teacher who had the temerity to discipline a Muslim student first had to flee for his life, and is now under arrest, charged with blasphemy.

Leo and Joshua Lai (the teacher) deserve our admiration and our support. Geography and nationality do not outweigh our bonds of common humanity.

There is a very worrying trend in the U.S.A. where two speakers (Carmen Callil and Tony Judt) have recently had appearances cancelled following pressure from Jewish lobby groups. For convenience, both cases can be read about at this single link.

Arguing for freedom of speech for those with whom you agree is meaningless. Of course none of us want our own opinions supressed. It only carries any weight at all when extended to include those with whom you disagree. That’s why the supporters of the March Rally for Free Expression were the genuine article. Speakers disgreed strongly with each other on almost everything except the importance of being able to disagree in a peaceful environment, where nobody gets sent to prison, threatened or killed for their opinions or utterances ESPECIALLY when they are offensive. It’s not an issue when people’s views are not offensive to someone.

That’s also why the equivocal waffling of organisations like Amnesty International over the Danish Cartoons affair was so degraded. Yes, we must have free speech, they said, but we must use it “responsibly”, which is to say not at all if someone known to be violent might take exception.

Sorry. Free speech is an absolute. And that applies to Carmen Callil, Tony Judt, George Galloway, the American Minutemen, my old friend Ismaeel and David Irving. It applies to Mother Theresa, the Pope and the Mufti of Jerusalem.

It applies to everyone.

In a climate wherein anti-semitic comment has swept through the halls of academia, and anti-Israeli sentiment is the rule at the BBC, Reuters, AFP, The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times and other media organisations, the Anti Defamation League should know well what the problem with the suppression of opinions and news is, and they should be ashamed of their recent conduct.

Dennis MacShane, writing in today’s Telegraph:

At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.

This is not confined to the labour Party, but it is most obvious there, with Ruth Kelly leading the charge. The idea that Jack Straw would have published his thoughts on the veil without reference to his party and then held his breath is not credible.

In their recent letter to Ruth Kelly, the Muslim Council of Britain said:

In recent months there has been a veritable regular drip-feed of ministerial statements stigmatising an entire community. We have seen ministers’ tours and even legislation being proposed on the premise that ‘mosques are a problem’. We have been told to accept that greater numbers of Muslims will be stopped and searched and also to ‘inform’ on our children. This relentless barrage has been disheartening and you will understand our worry about where all this is leading. Some Muslims have even sought the MCB’s advice on whether they should change their names in order to avoid anti-Muslim remarks. This is what happens when a community is singled out by those at the helm of affairs.

The MCB is right about this.

The consequences of giving preferential treatment to extremists like the MCB for a decade, of deferring to the real or imagined sensitivities of a small section of the population, and thereby causing genuine resentment, dislike and even hatred of all Muslims generally within society, then reversing the position and releasing a constant stream of remarks, initiatives and policy changes that feed this cultivated dislike could be horrendous.

Why are Labour doing this? It must be a deliberate policy. I can see no other explanation than that their private polling has revealed a serious threat to their position with the bedrock of their support, the white working class. Having caused the problem, by favouring Muslim extremists to the great personal cost especially of moderate Muslims in the country who have had to endure a surge of religious conservatism, veilings, forced marriage, curtailed female education, lost voting rights for the weakest (especially women) and “honour” violence, they are now reversing the position, also to the potential great cost of moderate Mulsims in this country.

The problems we now face that are associated with supremacist, absolutist, “fundamentalist”, fascistic Islamism are entirely the fault of the governing and media elites in western countries, and in this country mainly of the liberal and Labour left. All religions have conservatives and extremists; the great thing is to avoid giving them undue, or even any, influence in society. From the government’s contacts with the MCB to the BBC’s “Prophet Mohammed” bullshit, this problem has been caused not by the Muslims who are trying to get on with their lives, but by those whose unconscious, automatic racism finds it appropriate to treat all minorities as “communities” with strange and unique properties, lacking the common humanity that should bind us into one great community.

Let’s remember, though, that Michael Howard set the ball rolling for recognition of the MCB – who are now so conspicuously worried that the gravy train is about to resume its journey without them.

This is a mark of the collective failure of the entire British establishment. Members of the awkward squad might soon find themselves moving from attacking radical Islam to defending ordinary Muslims. This sort of reversal happens: Libertarians have found themselves moving from having to defend homosexuals against discrimination to having to defend the right of homophobic bigots to free speech.

The best stance to take is very simple indeed. It’s better to have free speech and have to listen to idiocy from time to time than to have censorship. Religion should be an entirely private matter but the right of people to follow their religion, or lack of it, privately must be defended. Free markets suck and on humanitarian grounds need safety nets but they have the merit of being the only economic system that works. In a democratic system, the only thing a community leader can do is weaken the democratic basis of society. You can’t participate in society if you don’t speak the language. There is no humane alternative to integration but integration is not homogeneity.And so on.

Above all, we share a common humanity that binds us and transcends any and every difference of race, sex, religion, sexuality or opinion.

We need to focus the spotlight where it belongs, on the people who have caused these problems, on the political and media elites and the civil service. We need to shine it on those who supported the “at-least-he’s-our-son-of-a-bitch” tyrants abroad, raised up community leaders at home, turned a blind eye to terrorists planning outrages so long as the outrages were to be committed elsewhere, who distorted media coverage to suit their political prejudices.

We should not let the focus turn to ordinary Muslims. Not even to extremist Muslims, who would never have gained the prominence they have without the sins of the establishment.

And that establishment includes Dennis MacShane.

From the MCB letter quoted in an earlier post:

We know that there are a clique of Islamophobic journalists (including Nick Cohen, Michael Gove, Melanie Phillips, Martin Bright and John Ware), each with a sharp axe to grind, who have desperately and repeatedly tried to malign the MCB and other important Muslim institutions.

That’s a lovely thought: Nick Cohen (Euston Manifesto Decent Left) and Melanie Phillips (Daily Mail Strident Right), Martin Bright (New Statesman Unreconstructed Socialist) and Michael Gove (Libertarian Tendency Tory MP) forging “closer and more lasting friendships” and “sharing a sense of belonging”. Perhaps that’s why their axes are so sharp.

I was involved in three radio debates and phone-ins about the Pope’s recent speech, in which he quoted a Byzantine Emperor to the annoyance of some of the world’s Muslims. This means I actually read the speech in full. It’s interesting that the main challenge he presented to Islam was never confronted or commented on. Early on in his speech, just after the controversial bit, he said:

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

To paraphrase, the Christian view of God is bound up intrinsically with rationality, the Muslim view of God is disconnected from rationality. Is the Christian view correct always?

Or, in other words, are Muslims in error with their view of God? He thinks they are. That’s unsurprising: the Pope is, after all, a Catholic. And this is from his closing remarks:

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

Subtle phrasing doesn’t disguise the import of this – he is inviting Muslims to “this breadth of reason”, to the Christian view of God.

The Pope was suggesting that Muslims should become Christians, abandon their view of a “transcendental” God and embrace the Christian God of “logos” – reason, and the word.

This is much more challenging and controversial than the quote from the ancient Emperor. There can have been no shortage of perceptive Muslim readers of this speech. So what are we to make of their reaction?

To be simplistic about it, does perpetual outrage make you stupid, or is perpetual outrage a device to avoid debate, and bully your opponent? In a more reflective period, there might have been a reaction along the lines of “Don’t try to convert me, meet me as an equal”. That didn’t happen. I think it’s the latter of my two simple alternatives.

The Pope spoke on a Tuesday. The fuss really kicked off on the following Friday, following the weekly prayer/kill-all-the-infidels sermon-fest. The fuss was contrived. It was political in inception and in intention. And the purpose of this political outrage is the intimidation of non-Muslims. There was a debate to be had, but it was ignored.

There was also an alliance on offer, an alliance against the secular world. Also from his speech:

In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.

It’s not surprising that he is emphasising the Christian faith, given his position, but the money quote in that section is:

listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.

He was trying to say that rationality – the whole edifice of technology, science, empiricism, cannot be divorced from religion; that to try to divorce it is “unacceptable”. It is true that he couched this in terms of Christian theology, but the whole point of any theology is to reconcile the absurd with the self-evident, to reconcile obviously incorrect tradition with the observed and experienced world. Muslims can do that too.

If the Muslim world does ever manage to see beyond its habit of taking offense, and posturing, and ally itself with this brand of Catholicism, there will be a profound challenge to secularism.

That’s why even if the outrage was deliberate and political, it wa still stupid and self-defeating. It’s also why secular, humanist, rationalist, enlightened people of the world have to remember that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, and the Pope is an enemy of that reformed, enlightened tradition, even if he is a target for Islamists at the moment.

What’s really strange is that, in the search for temporary, tactical alliances, the Islamists have gone for the fascist left – a traditionally atheistic movement that has fellow-travelled with a lot of causes – gay rights, feminism – that conflict directly and absolutely with their values. Maybe that’s the really stupid decision, to take the convenient, offered alliance rather than one – with the world’s conservative religious movements – that would have had genuine mileage in it.

For that, moderate secularists can be thankful. Religious supremacism has occluded tactical thinking and they have teamed up with a bunch of people who think that nude bicycle rides will affect the political landscape.

Maybe they are stupid after all.

…about losing their government funding.

Talk Veritas has obtained a letter written by Mohammed Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain to Ruth Kelly, and cc’d to all the main party leaders. The whole thing can be read here.

A couple of excerpts:

g) We have noted your decision on funding and engagement with some amazement and deep concern. It appears clear to us that the publicly announced ‘shift’ in your policy regarding funding is arguably unlawful.

The indication that only those organisations that agree with your particular strategy as the best way to fight extremism will receive your favours is another way of saying that only those who support your government can expect to receive public funds. Access to public funds should not and cannot be dependent on such considerations as on who is and who is not attending the Holocaust Memorial Day.

As a responsible representative organisation the MCB has a duty to represent and reflect the views of its constituents fairly and if those views are unpalatable to the government of the day, so be it. The legal framework and traditions of our country do not allow the government to be vindictive or punitive in the use of public funds.

…

We know that there are a clique of Islamophobic journalists (including Nick Cohen, Michael Gove, Melanie Phillips, Martin Bright and John Ware), each with a sharp axe to grind, who have desperately and repeatedly tried to malign the MCB and other important Muslim institutions.

…

h) It is, of course, right that the government seeks to speak to a wide range of Muslim organisations and individuals. It would be wise to distinguish the mainstream, democratically-constituted Muslim bodies from the mavericks.

However, for your department to foster and promote new sectarian Muslim bodies with barely concealed links to US neo-cons is bound to raise justifiable concerns about your department’s true intentions.

…

You cannot expect to succeed by engaging in a merry go round to find Muslims who agree with you. Surely, you can best succeed if you work with and take on board the views of those Muslim organisations that are rooted in the community and who have a track record of delivery.

…

i) Secretary of State, we would not be true to the real feeling within the Muslims of Britain if we did not raise one final and important point.

In recent months there has been a veritable regular drip-feed of ministerial statements stigmatising an entire community. We have seen ministers’ tours and even legislation being proposed on the premise that ‘mosques are a problem’. We have been told to accept that greater numbers of Muslims will be stopped and searched and also to ‘inform’ on our children.

This relentless barrage has been disheartening and you will understand our worry about where all this is leading. Some Muslims have even sought the MCB’s advice on whether they should change their names in order to avoid anti-Muslim remarks. This is what happens when a community is singled out by those at the helm of affairs.

This is a great diversion from the many other real social challenges facing all of us in Britain – of caring for our infirm and elderly, strengthening the family and giving a sense of purpose to the young. Our nation deserves a strategy to move forward – what we have been receiving instead from our leaders are hastily formulated responses masquerading as policy.

…

Finally, in view of your public remarks, please note that we shall be sending a copy of this letter to all mosques and local, regional and national Muslim organisations across the country, including, of course, those affiliated with the Muslim Council of Britain.

Yours sincerely, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari Secretary General

CC: Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP, PC Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, MP Leader of the House of Commons, Rt. Hon. Jack Straw, MP Home Secretary, Rt. Hon. Dr John Reid, MP Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, Rt. Hon. David Cameron, MP Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Dr Menzies Campbell, MP

Stoppers have a limited palette: Vietnam, Stalingrad and one battle in Afghanistan. Every military action undertaken by the US and her allies now has to be compared to one or other of these events rather than, say, Sierra Leone.

There is actually no obvious historical analogy to contemporary Afghanistan. Saying “Hi, we’re your friends, we’re just going to burn your livelihood” would never have worked well at any time, anywhere on earth.

Iraq does have an obvious parallel, but it doesn’t seem to have been made much. A state that is basically a post-war conglomerate of several different ethnic and religious regions, collapsing into appalling violence after the removal of a strongman? The former Yugoslavia springs to mind.

Buy the damn opium from the Pashtun farmers, and expedite the break-up of Iraq into its natural constituents.