The victory of George W Bush in the US presidential
election is a victory for religious fundamentalism in both America and the
Islamic world. The American people were deceived over the war in Iraq but have
now endorsed it, sending a clear message that the "War of Civilisations" will
continue. The election has also shown that most Americans care nothing – no
doubt because their media tell them nothing – about how the United States is
seen by the rest of the world.
The past four years have shown an America disdainful
of the rule of international law, partisan in its dealings in the Middle East
and profoundly self-centred on global issues from trade to global warming. The
greatest achievement of the Bush administration has been to reduce Iraq to
chaos; its legacy, the creation of another terror-ridden Islamic state rushing
headlong towards oppressive, misogynistic Iranian-style
theocracy.
The immense task of re-establishing America’s credibility
both in the Islamic world and among its erstwhile friends in the West is on hold
for at least another four years. But with American politics now firmly under the
control of the Christian Right can we hope for change even in 2008?
Opposing the Islamists
Worldwide,
the confidence of the Islamists has never been higher, and liberal democrats in
the west are in disarray. The received wisdom of multi-culturalism lies in ruins
as the ever-more vociferous demands of un-elected "Islamic Councils" – for women
to be veiled, for the state to fund more Islamic schools, for women in need of
medical treatment to be seen only by women doctors, for boys and girls to be
segregated in school, and for the establishment of Islamic tribunals to impose
Islamic law in civil cases – have killed our fondly-held illusions that
accommodation with the Islamists over social policy would ever be
possible.
But opposition to conservative Islam does exist and,
not surprisingly, women are in the forefront. The Revolutionary Association of
Women of Afghanistan, RAWA, whose founder Meena was murdered in 1997, has
widespread support in the west – although women’s rights were still below the
horizon in the recent presidential election in Afghanistan. Women’s defence
organisations have appeared in Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran, although many of them
are run by exiles in the west (and only time will tell whether they can achieve
any lasting result). But Human Rights organisations focussing strongly on the
women’s rights do now exist in Pakistan and elsewhere, many with women lawyers
prominent among the leadership.
In Europe, women’s opposition to the Islamists has
typically taken more popular – even populist – forms. In Norway we have seen the
delightful spectacle of the comedienne Shabana Rehman bravely holding up the
excesses of the mullahs to ridicule, while in the Netherlands, the Somali-born
member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, now living permanently in hiding,
provoked the anger of conservative Muslims with a halfhour TV program on the
oppression of women that showed verses of the Koran superimposed on naked flesh.
Sadly, on November 2nd, her film maker, Theo van Gogh was gunned down in
Amsterdam.
In Canada, another young Muslim woman, Irshad Manji, who
last year published her best-seller The Trouble with Islam, has continued her
assault on Islamism, attracting the ire of conservative Muslims not only for
daring, as a woman, to speak out, but by publicly proclaiming her
lesbianism.
But women’s rights cannot be won without the support
of the men. And we are at last seeing the emergence of secular Muslim
organisations in which men are playing a prominent part. In India, the respected
Islamic scholar Ali Asghar Engineer of the Centre Centre for the Study of
Society and Secularism, Mumbai, argues strongly for both secularism and women’s
rights through his bi-weekly e-newsletter Secular Perspective.
In Canada, the Muslim Canadian Congress, which is
promoting a secular agenda for Canadian Muslims, has argued strongly against the
introduction of Sharia courts in the Province of Ontario.
In France on October 29th, a colloquium called Islam
contre Islam attracted more than a dozen speakers and an audience of over 300,
demanding that the voices of the silent majority of moderate, secular Muslims
now be heard.
The internet is proving to be a wonderful outlet for
Muslim dissidents. More and more websites are appearing arguing for secularism
in the Islamic world. On p 19 we are republishing the Secular Muslim Manifesto –
which could have been written by a Humanist (but was not). And the website of
ISIS, the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society, www.secularislam.org, hosted by the
Council for Secular Humanism, has become an important forum for debate among
Muslims.
Religion IS politics
Events in
Iraq and the result of the US presidential election have demonstrated yet again
the malign influence of religion on politics. From every continent we hear
stories of organised religion pushing for ever more concessions for their
authoritarian, sectarian policies.
In Russia, Romania and other countries in Eastern
Europe, the Orthodox Church is steadily consolidating its influence over
government, erecting legal barriers to other creeds, and wringing ever greater
financial concessions from the state. And readers of International Humanist News
will need no reminding of the creeping Vaticanisation of the European
Union.
In India the BJP and its saffron allies may have lost
the general election and the state elections in Maharashtra, but their
hate-filled message continues unabated.
In Australia in October the "Liberal" party of John
Howard were re-elected with massive support from the Christian
right.
What will it take to reawaken Humanism from its
contented slumber? For Humanism to have any influence in the world, humanists
must get involved in politics.
Religion is politics. Humanism can no longer stand
aloof from the fray.
Roy Brown
IHEU President
HUMANIST QUIZ: SOLUTION (The quiz was with last months
newsletter)
POKER FACES: WHICH
ONE ARE YOU?
How to work out your score:
Each answer represents one of four types, indicated in the
guide below. Everyone will be a mixture of these, but you are likely to have
scored more in one area than any other. If you are absolutely evenly balanced
you may have done it wrong, or you may need to see a councillor, or priest.
1. a) = 3, b) = 4c) = 2, d) = 1 e) = 4.
2. a) = 1,
b) = 2, c) = 3, d) = 4
3. a) = 1, b) = 2, c) = 3, d) = 4, e) = 1.
4. a) =
1, b) = 2, c) = 4, d) = 3.
5. a) = 4, b) = 3, c) = 1, d) = 3, e) = 2.
6.
a) = 1, b) = 4, c) = 3, d) = 2.
7. a) = 4, b) = 2, c) = 3, d) = 4, e) =
1.
8. a) = 1, b) = 2, c) = 3, d) = 4.
9. a) = 2, b) = 3, c) = 1, d) = 4,
e) = 2.
10. a) = 1, b) = 2, c) = 4, d) = 2, e) = 1, f)= 3.
11. a) = 2, b)
= 1, c) = 3, d) = 4.
12. a) = 1, b) = 2, c) = 3, d) = 4, e) = .
1. HAYMAKER
You are one of life's enjoyers,
determined to get the most you can out of your brief spell on Earth. Probably
what first attracted you to atheism was the prospect of liberation from the Ten
Commandments, few of which are compatible with a life of pleasure. You play hard
and work quite hard, have a strong sense of loyalty and a relaxed but consistent
approach to your philosophy. You can't see the point of abstract principles and
probably wouldn't lay down your life for a concept though you might for a
friend. Something of a champagne humanist, you admire George Bernard Shaw for
his cheerful agnosticism and pursuit of sensual rewards and your Hollywood hero
is Marlon Brando, who was beautiful, irascible and aimed for goodness in his own
tortured way. Sometimes you might he tempted to allow your own pleasures to take
precedence over your ethics. But everyone is striving for that elusive balance
between the good and the happy life. You'd probably open another bottle and say
there's no contest.
2. HAIRSHIRT
Excuse us, could you just put down
that hammer for a minute and listen. You're so busy getting things done you
rarely take any time out just to relax. In fact, you've probably forgotten how
to relax. That's because you're so anxious to prove that it's possible to lead a
good and moral life without religion that you have built a strict and forbidding
creed all of your own. You keep a compost heap, cycle to the bottle bank, invest
in ethical schemes only and the list of countries you won't buy from is longer
than the washing line for your baby's towelling nappies. You admire
uncompromising self-sacrificers like Aung San Suu Kyi and Che Guevara, and would
have liked the chance to be incarcerated for your principles like Diderot or
Nelson Mandela. You would never cheat on your partner, drink and drive, accept
bribes or touch drugs. You never waste money though you give lots to charity.
Living a good life? You're a model to us all. But it wouldn't hurt you to try a
little happiness once in a while. Loosen up.
3. HANDHOLDER
You go out of your way to build
bridges with people of different views and beliefs and have quite a few
religious friends. You believe in the essential goodness of people which means
you're always looking for common ground even if that entails compromises. You
would defend Salman Rushdie's right to criticise Islam but you're sorry he
attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more
outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine. You prefer
the inclusive approach of writers like Zadie Smith or the radical Christian
values of Edward Said. Don't fall into the same trap as super-naive Lib Dem MP
Jenny Tonge who declared it was okay for clerics like Yusuf al-Qaradawi to
justify their monstrous prejudices as a legitimate interpretation of the Koran:
a perfect example of how the will to understand can mean the sacrifice of
fundamental principles. Sometimes, you just have to hold out for what you know
is right even if it hurts someone's feelings.
4. HARDHAT
You are an atheist, a rationalist, a
believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can't stand
mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for
these longings in others. Astrologers, Scientologists and new-age crystal ball
creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They're all
just weak-minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by
science is awesome enough for you, but it's a nature that needs curbing and
taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection. Your heroes are
Einstein, Darwin, Marx and - these days Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and
Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views,
worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole
edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of
human belief systems. Don't worry it's unlikely you'll end up chanting your days
away in some distant mountain cult.
From - NEW HUMANIST SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER
2004
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