A secularist witchhunt

[Being a post begun exactly a month ago. This is a slow-motion blog at present.]

Having given the Torygraph's God correspondent George Pitcher something of a roasting not long ago, it's only fair to commend something of his of which I agree with just about every word: his reaction to the secularist witchhunt against Professor Michael Reiss.

This was my effort in the same direction, submitted unsuccessfully to the Times:-

'Sir,

'It is hard to recall a more shameful recent instance of intellectual scapegoating than the one which has brought about Professor Michael Reiss's resignation from his post at the Royal Society, following his call for biology teachers to be prepared to discuss creationism. A moderate and rational Christian has been branded an apologist for know-nothing fundamentalism by a campaign of misrepresentation which has shown that secularist zealots can be just as intolerant as the religious variety.

'That large numbers of children now arrive at secondary school already committed to a pre-scientific view of the origins of life is a predictable outcome of political decisions taken over several decades. It is manifestly not Professor Reiss's fault. His 'crime' is simply to have pointed out that we have to deal with classroom reality as it is and not as we would like it to be, and to have argued that we will not succeed in changing these children's minds if we refuse to engage with their existing beliefs.

'Those who genuinely disagree on the latter point should calm down now that they have his head on a plate and tell us what constructive alternatives they have to offer.'

From the unbelieving camp approval of the Royal Society's stance was far from unanimous. Norman Geras was commendably unimpressed, as was Brownie of Harry's Place (Brett of the same address please note).


On the other hand, a disgraceful post from Oliver Kamm, now of the Times, reeks of an implacable religiophobia which will let nothing stand in the way of the satisfaction of claiming a believing scalp. Kamm quotes at length from all and sundry (not least from the obiter dicta of O. Kamm) but Professor Reiss is permitted only the eight-word soundbite which, wrenched from its context, could at a stretch be interpreted as evidence that he is soft on Creationism. It's hard to resist the conclusion that Kamm knows very well that if the words were restored to their context the case for sacking Reiss would vanish into thin air. Is this not precisely the kind of economy with the truth for which Kamm has so often savaged the likes of Noam Chomsky?


And no, Kamm has not a word to say about the very concrete pedagogical issues facing biology teachers. Except, implicitly, that they should inform young fundamentalists that their views are worthy of nothing but contempt. That should work a treat.


You, dear reader, will of course wish to see the full context in order to reach an informed judgement: it's here.


Can you spot the one significant difference between my take on the affair and Mr Pitcher's? It doesn't come as a great surprise: despite having several times more words to play with than a mere letter writer, he's managed to avoid even an indirect allusion to the fact that most of the little Creationists in the biology classroom have not got their ideas from a literalist reading of the Book of Genesis. Yes, it's the Religion With No Name again. And when liberal Anglicans like Mr Pitcher engage in this kind of denial it's no wonder if the Oliver Kamms of this world feel confirmed in their religiophobic prejudices.

Missing: Christopher Howse's marbles

A humbling confession: I spent a day or so last week in the grip of a conspiracy theory of my own creation.

How it happened: on Wednesday I read a post on Christopher Howse's Telegraph blog, with the title 'Salman Rushdie taught liberals to hate Islam'. Mr Howse is a man whose writing I have on occasion admired. On this occasion I thought to myself 'this man has taken leave of his senses'. It was that bad.

The following day my browser history told me the address was wrong, and I was struck by a sudden illumination: suppose Islamists had somehow hacked into the paper's site and passed their views off as Howse's? The more I thought about the contents of the post the less plausible it seemed that they could really be the thoughts of a senior Torygraph hack, and the more plausible my conspiracy theory became.

But, finding a day later that the post was still there, I was left with the maginally more prosaic explanation: Christopher Howse of the Telegraph has taken leave of his senses.


If you're after rational thoughts on the same subject, I would encourage you to read George Weigel's appreciation of Pope Benedict in Standpoint magazine. What I have to say in response to Christopher Howse really ought to be obvious to anyone still in possession of their marbles. But evidently it does need saying, not to speak of the therapeutic benefits to myself.

'Muslims are denied the right to take offence when their most holy emblems are deliberately pilloried'

Of course Muslims have the right to be offended by what others say about their faith, as I - like Mr Howse no doubt - am regularly incensed by Christian-baiting in the media. Being offended, however, does not give them or me the right to commit murder. There really cannot be the slightest hint of compromise on this point. Bearing in mind that the threats breathed against Salman Rushdie were not idle, and though he escaped with his life others were not so fortunate.

'Now, Salman Rushdie has declared that he has nothing against true believers until their faith spills over into the public sphere and becomes "my business". That, he must know is a fallacious distinction.'

Islam, like Christianity, has a public dimension and, indeed, that is not in itself bad. But you can't have it both ways. If your religion has public consequences you must expect to be accountable to collective, public standards of morality - standards expressed in laws saying, for example, that you can't kill someone just because you don't like a book he has written or a film he has made.

'So why not, the film-maker [Theo van Gogh] thought, project the holy words of the Koran on to the exposed body of women? Tee-hee, he chortled in his Dutch way.'

One of the less endearing traits of some religious believers is the arrogance which assumes that only believers ever act out of passionate moral conviction. Theo van Gogh's film may have been deliberately provocative, but he surely knew the risk he was taking (as did his collaborator Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is less easily dismissed as a clown), and he took it because he was genuinely outraged by the contempt shown for Dutch liberal values by Moroccan immigrants.

And, as a good liberal, he managed to find a way of taking offence publicly which did not involve killing Muslims. So even if you take the dimmest possible view of his motives, that is not, repeat NOT, an excuse for condoning a do-it-yourself death sentence.

Hirsi Ali has in common with Salman Rushdie a Muslim background, of course. So what Howse is effectively demanding is that Western states should take on the task of policing dissidence within Islam at the behest of its most intolerant and reactionary representatives.

'The secularist haters of Islam pretend that that they have a sacred principle of their own, which is freedom of speech, freedom to publish.


'In Britain this is a very lowly idol, since the most unenlightened fly-by-night businessman can stop the mouth of the press with a libel suit.'

This argument, if you can call it that, falls at every possible fence. Three objections will suffice. First, two wrongs don't make a right. Second. arguments against free speech always have a double standard built in: it is never my speech which should not be free; my declaring that I find Christopher Howse's views offensive will not, I suspect, suffice to silence him. Third, free speech is not just some arbitrarily selected idol. It is a good because it serves the cause of truth, and for Christians truth must be an absolute good.

Christians have sincerely believed that truth was best served by lighting bonfires under heretics and their books. Then, after the passage of untold amounts of suffering, came the Enlightenment, which was not just a reaction against Christianity but also a recognition by Christians that the way of the bonfire had actually been fundamentally un-Christian. Pope Benedict sees this with tremendous clarity. Christopher Howse may, we must hope, catch up with him once he has been reunited with his marbles.

So: Salman Rushdie must be heard - as Muslims must be heard - because his voice, his unique experience, has its part to play in the unending conversation through which we inch towards the truth. Here's the Pope, quoted in the George Weigel article:-

"On the one hand, one must counter a dictatorship of positivist reason that excludes God from the life of the community and from public organizations ... On the other hand, one must welcome the true conquests of the Enlightenment, human rights, and especially the freedom of faith and its practice, and recognise these also as being essential elements for the authenticity of religion. As in the Christian community, where there has been a long search to find the correct position of faith in relation to such beliefs - a search that will certainly never be concluded once and for all - so also the Islamic world with its own tradition faces the immense task of finding the appropriate solutions to these problems. The content of the dialogue between Christians and Muslims will be at this time especially one of meeting each other in this commitment to find the right solutions. We Christians feel ourselves in solidarity with all those who, precisely on the basis of their religious convictions as Muslims, work to oppose violence and for the synergy between faith and reason, between religion and freedom..."

'Since that day there has been a creeping racialist antipathy towards Muslims, by the Left.'

If Howse believes that 'liberals hate Muslims' he should get out more and try reading some liberal papers. You would need to be psychic to divine any such sentiment, since, transcending all Left liberal feuds, there is an absolute taboo against identifying Islam per se as a problem.

Beyond that unifying principle, the Left liberal camp splits into three: the well-meaningly woolly, the rationalists and the romantics.

Little needs saying about the woolly variety. Of course they don't hate Islam. They are in no doubt that if they are nice enough to it, it will turn out to be as nice as they are. That is the assumption on which multiculturalist liberal orthodoxy has beem founded. Hope continues to triumph over experience.

Among the rationalists there may indeed be varying degrees of hostility towards Islam per se, but what gets articulated is hostility to religion in general. Some may indeed loathe Islam as such, but find it imprudent to break the taboo. Others have 'issues' with religion generally - usually with special freference to Christianity - and find Islamist excesses a useful stick to beat it with. The obvious irony here is that nothing confirms the rationalist religiophobe's prejudices more perfectly that seeing Christians like Christopher Howse take it upon themselves to defend the indefensible in the name of 'faith'.

And the romantics? Well, this is the strain of leftist on whom violent radicalism exerts an irresistible fascination. They've been fellow-travellers with Stalin, with Che, with Mao (not with the Dalai Lama, of course), with the Provisional IRA, and what could be more natural than that Hamas and Hezbollah should take their turn? Hatred of Islam? You must be kidding. Even Comrade Seumas, of the Grauniad and the Communist Party of Britain, has got religion now that religion is globally the most popular reason for killing Americans. There's no solidarity with Rushdie or van Gogh on offer from this quarter.

Three dead ends, three reasons why I don't belong on the Left. Woolly liberalism respects only half of our Lord's injunction to be 'wise as serpents and harmless as doves'. If there are wolves at large it's no good pretending they are really sheep. I've got romantic leftism out of my system by the simple expedient of growing up a little. I have considerable sympathy with the rationalists, but their religiophobia is deeply objectionable and leaves them ultimately without a leg to stand on in defending liberal values againt trendy relativism. There is a fixated irrationality about it which is itself the best proof that reason on its own cannot be enough.

If the Left liberals don't get it, who does? The Pope, for sure. Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali does (would that he were a less lonely figure among the purple shirts), and so does Dominic Grieve (an Anglican), who told the Guardian this about multiculturalism:-

"In this vacuum, both the BNP and Hizb ut-Tahrir rise. They are two very similar phenomena experiencing a form of cultural despair about themselves and their identities. And it's terribly easy to latch on to confrontational and aggressive variants of their cultural background as being the only way to reassure themselves that they can survive."

Returning to our starting point, it seems there's another variation on the theme of cultural despair to be included in the equation. One which loathes liberals so much that it would love to see the Sharia boys come and sort them out. It's the kind of conservatism that helped Hitler to power, preferring him to liberal democracy (vide Alfred Hugenberg). It may be somewhat exotic at present, but it'll bear watching.

Rowan the Prophet

Well, you've got to hand it to our Rowan. Back in February he said it 'seems unavoidable' and, sure enough, here it is.

Safeguards for women etc, etc? Errrm, well, you'll doubtless recall how crucial it is in the fight against domestic violence that the decision to prosecute be taken out of the victim's hands. Did you perhaps think the principle was universal? Off to re-education camp with you!

Tonge the conspiracy theorist

So now we have chapter and verse on Baroness Tonge's account of her departure from her trusteeship of Christian Aid. She was indeed a victim of the vast Israel Lobby conspiracy, sacked because the charity was blackmailed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Read it all here.

Comment is more or less superfluous, but I do have a couple of questions. If the Board of Deputies wields such immense power, why has it failed to suppress Christian Aid's Israel-bashing campaign altogether? Why do Jews bother writing those letters to their MPs that the Baroness finds so wearisome if they can just pull a string or two and have them removed from office?

PS I wrote in a previous post that the Baroness's attitudes matter because support for them now reaches deep into the mainstream. To be more precise, the mainstream of the liberal elite - and in its own estimation that's all that counts. If you think I exaggerate, read Stephen Pollard's account of a metropolitan dinner party.

Fighting Holocaust denial with Holocaust denial

Bizarre as it sounds, I fear that's something we're going to see more of. Because I don't believe the significant omission in this flyer from a branch of the SWP results simply from the random blundering of a bunch of ignoramuses. It fits just a little too neatly into recent trends.

While Holocaust denial is too useful a stick for beating the BNP with to be discarded entirely, the comrades would evidently prefer not to go so far in their Holocaust affirmation as to identify the group which contributed the overwhelming majority of its victims. For Jewish victimhood is out of fashion; the comrades have read their Finkelstein - or at least heard his claims at third hand - and know that Jews use their victimhood to manipulate, exploit and oppress. And in any case there are alliances to be forged with those for whom the thought of Jewish victimhood is anathema.

Talking of which, it's clear that we won't be seeing any of the comrades waving 'we are all Georgians' placards. With the bigots in Lebanon and Iran applauding the bullying of that tiny nation by the heirs to the Tsars it wouldn't do for the comrades to find themselves on the opposing side. So they're washing their hands of the whole business and hiding behind a 'clash of imperialisms' neutrality which, like most neutralities, really means tacitly siding with the winners (I can't bring myself to link to Socialist W**ker, so google it if you feel the need).

Infantile leftism is a rite of passage which many will embark on this autumn, just as a very naive Cyrus did when he went along to Freshers Fair and got signed up by a Labour Club which turned out to be a Militant front. But was it ever such a dismal, hopeless business as it is now?

Three funerals and Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill is not a person I'd ever have expected to have a lot in common with, but you never can tell, can you? I've been aware for some time that she is a passionate supporter of Israel. And now, I discovered recently courtesy of Laban, she's come out as an Anglican.

This from her Comment is Free piece rang bells:-

'But when my father died in 1999 and my mother in 2000, I stood in the same church twice in two years and felt the same sense of what I can best describe as joy as I watched the two coffins move away from me. While all around me wept, I was filled with the absolute certainty that they were on their way to a better place. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud, both times.'

This will certainly sound bonkers to many. But - well, my mother died in the faith of Christ a few weeks ago and, whilst I certainly wouldn't say I've felt like laughing (it might indeed be logical but my emotions don't obey logic), I can say that my faith has never felt stronger.

One reason why this might be comes from a passage I've just read in one of C S Lewis's letters, to a woman whose father had just died:-

'And for those who are left, the pain is not the whole thing. I feel very strongly (and I am not alone in this) that some good comes from the dead to the living in the months or weeks after the death. I think I was very much helped by my own father after his death, as if our Lord welcomed the newly dead with the gift of some power to bless those they have left behind; His birthday present. Certainly, they often seem just at that time, to be very near us.'

(from Paul F. Ford (ed.), 'Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis', London: Harper Collins, 2008, p.163)

It may also simply be because of the overwhelming, humbling kindness and gentleness I have experienced from innumerable other people. People who, whether or not they consider themselves believers, instinctively recognize that when you say farewell to one of the lives that gave you life you are treading on holy ground.

Democratic Services

I hope the councillors of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets have got 24 February 2009 prominently pencilled in their diaries. For those not too well up on their church year, it's Shrove Tuesday, popularly known as Pancake Day. In other words, their last chance for a bit of self-indulgence before they begin six weeks of strict Lenten observance.

Believe me, it will happen, and the fact that most of them aren't Christians is neither here nor there. Many/most are not Muslims, but that has not saved them from being instructed to observe Ramadan. Don't knock it. By the time they've worked their way through all the fasts required by all the faiths represented in their diverse community, they should be very holy people indeed.

Stephen Pollard is of course right: what renders satire wholly redundant here is the fact that the unelected jobsworth who has taken it upon himself to tell elected councillors what religion to practise goes under the label 'Head of Democratic Services'.

Good in parts

Some highs and lows from the curate's egg that is Harry's Place. This is the kind of thing I read it for: an erstwhile leftist group from El Salvador provides a textbook instance of the meeting of the political extremes:-

'La Voz editors Salvador Duarte and Marta Consuelo Hernández included lengthy quotes from a notorious and long-discredited anti-Semitic tract, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to buttress their arguments. They proclaimed the legitimacy of Hitler’s National Socialism. They echoed Nazi lies that the Russian Revolution was financed by Jews for Jews and denounced Leon Trotsky, a leader of that revolution and founder of our political current, for his Jewish heritage.'

The kind of thing I can do without is HP's attempts to prove its leftist credentials by smearing for Barack. Naturally Sarah Palin is an irresistible target, and naturally it's Brett who leads the charge against her faith. Her Pentecostalist pastor talks about spiritual warfare, and that makes him 'the flip-side to Islamism' . So that'll be 'flip-side' as in the side that doesn't go around murdering randomly selected civilians but apart from that small detail is just the same. Typical Brett.

Gene manages to do even better, though:-

'It appears that Palin did not officially support Buchanan’s 2000 campaign for president, although as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she did wear a Buchanan button when Buchanan visited the town. She wrote in a letter to the editor of an Anchorage newspaper: “As mayor, I will welcome all the candidates in Wasilla.” (I can’t help wondering if this would have applied to David Duke if he had run for president and visited the town. After all Buchanan’s and Duke’s views on a number of issues– immigration, race, “Jewish power” and Israel– are not a million miles apart.)'

Palin the Osama lookalike meets Palin the David Duke groupie, thanks to the magic of the 'what she's actually done isn't quite awful enough, so let's invent something worse and suggest she could have done it' technique.

OK, there won't be many people on either side playing fair in this campaign. But you could always try setting a precedent, guys...

PS on Palin: this is substantially a fair cop. But then so too is this.

Don't play your didgeridoo, Sue

Is this the Ultimate Liberal Dilemma?

Barbarians at the gates

They don't just want to abolish Israel. They don't just to impose censorship on the academic community. They want a world where you won't even be able to play music unless you sign up to their politics (and - if you have the misfortune to be a Jew from Israel - do public penance for living in the most evil country on the planet).

I don't suppose any of these political onanists, these self-important tossers (angry? You bet.) has ever thought for a moment of disrupting a concert by Chinese musicians. Or Russian musicians. Or North Korean musicians. Or Burmese musicians. Or Serbian musicians. Or Sudanese musicians. Or Iranian musicians. Or Cuban musicians. Or Zimbabwean musicians. But of course, of course, of course nobody must in their wildest dreams imagine that they are in any shape or form, in the slightest of slight degrees, anti-Semitic. Goodness me, no. Nobody is these days, are they?

(via)