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Islamophobia

Briefly, criticising people's genes is wrong. You can't change your genes. You can't help being born white, black, Arab, or whatever.

But criticising people's memes is ok - indeed it is what free speech is all about. You can change your memes. Being born an Arab Muslim doesn't mean you can't adopt western values, be tolerant of gays, Jews and atheists, even abandon Islam altogether.

Criticism of people's religion can be difficult. How does one tell the difference between logical criticism and simple hatred and bigotry? For example, how does one tell the difference between criticism of the supernatural meme of Judaism and simple anti-semitism? The trick, I think, is that criticism should be optimistic and positive. It should be done with respect for the well-being of the people involved, and hope that they change to better memes. Instead of saying: "Followers of meme X are evil and we should fear them" it is far better to say that: "Followers of meme X should abandon it and adopt better memes". It should always be done with an open respect for freedom of religion - namely, the right of the person to ignore your criticism and carry on believing in their memes freely.

Meme X itself cannot demand respect. It should always be legal to say: "Meme X is evil". But then to follow it with: "Believers in meme X should abandon it and adopt better memes" to make it clear you are in the world of logic and debate rather than in the world of extermination.

The optimistic, positive message to Arabs and Muslims is that they should abandon the culture of their ancestors, and adopt something better. I have abandoned the culture of my ancestors, and adopted something better. So have millions of other people, such as the Indian Ibn Warraq and the Iranians Ali Sina and Amir Taheri.

• Anti-racism - Racism is pessimistic and unscientific.

• The Islamic world
  • In defence of cultural imperialism - Abandon the religion and culture of your ancestors, and adopt something better.

• The left's support for Islamism

• "Islamophobia" - the left attempt to stop criticism of conservative religion.

• It is interesting how the extreme left are collaborating with gay-hating, anti-semitic, atheist-hating Islamists in using racial "hatred" or religious "hatred" laws to try to roll back the freedom to criticise religion that took us hundreds of years, and many martyrs, to win. Of course it's baffling why the left likes Islamism so much.

• It is only Islam that the left supports. They don't support Christianity.
  • For some reason, it's only Islam that the left wants to make it illegal to criticise. They don't want to make it illegal to criticise Christianity.
  • Of course, it should be legal to criticise both.

• Freedom of religion - Just as I have the right to criticise your memes, so you have the right to ignore my criticism and carry on believing whatever memes you like.

• The right to criticise and satirise religions is an ancient and hard-won right, that took centuries, and many heretic and atheist martyrs, to achieve.

Criticism of the "Islamophobia" concept

• The Blackmail Of Islamophobia, Pascal Bruckner - How the accusation of "Islamophobia" is used to silence atheists, unbelievers and moderate Muslims.
  • "What is this all about in reality? Removing the religion of the Koran from the test to which the two other existing monotheisms have long been subject: the test of self-examination."
  • Far from being "racist", ".. arguing against a system of thought or belief, rejecting its ideas, convictions which you judge, rightly or wrongly, to be false or dangerous is the very foundation of intellectual life and free thought. ... If Voltaire were alive today, we can bet that certain "anti-racists" would have him thrown in prison."

• Nonie Darwish (born an Egyptian Muslim) on jihadi preachers in the West, and the assertions that those who criticise them are "Islamophobic" racists: "Such preachers are often regarded as a joke and as extreme even by moderate Muslims in Egypt only to find themselves with new respectable status and freedoms they could only dream of under Muslim dictatorships. Such Muslim radical preachers should never have been allowed in America. But believe it or not they have discovered that only in America can they work the system to their advantage to demand this and that and if anyone criticizes them they learn the good old buzz words in America: racist, bigot and Islamophobia - the choice words they learned quickly from some Muslim American organizations who claim to be moderate."

• 'Islamophobia' Idiocy, Amir Taheri (Iranian atheist), July 3, 2007 - "Britain and a few other Western democracies are the only places on earth where Muslims of all persuasions can practice their faith in full freedom. A thick directory of Muslim institutions in Britain lists more than 300 different sects - most of them banned and persecuted in every Muslim country on earth. A Shiite Muslim can't build a mosque in Cairo; his Sunni brother can't have a mosque of his own in Tehran. Editions of the Koran printed in Egypt or Saudi Arabia are seized as contraband in Iran; Egypt and most other Muslim nations in turn ban the import of Korans printed in Iran. The works of a majority of Muslim writers and philosophers are banned in most Muslim countries. In Britain, all mosques are allowed; no Muslim author or philosopher is banned."

• Johann Hari on the left's tolerance of sharia rules for Muslim women in the west: "Multiculturalism was formed with good intentions as a counter-reaction" [to the old racism] "But it has become a mirror-image of this old racism, treating Muslim women - and others - as so different that they do not deserve the same rights as the rest of us."
• Iranian feminist Azar Majedi: "Multiculturalism is racism; cultural relativism is racism; this should be recognized once and for all. By defining different laws for different citizens on the basis of such arbitrary concepts such as culture or religion, we leave the lot of the weakest sections of that so-called "cultural community" to the mercy of the self-imposed leaders of that community."

• I suppose all of these people are "racists" too?

The absurd idea that we should "respect" other religions and cultures

This shows a basic lack of understanding of what a free society is. A free society is one in which you have the right to believe nonsense, and I have the right to call it nonsense. You don't have to "respect" my stupid beliefs. And I don't have to "respect" yours. But we both must agree to leave the other alone to believe what they want in peace. So many so-called "liberals" fail to understand this basic building block of a western liberal society.

• jesusandmo.net cartoon on the idea that we have to "respect" other people's beliefs.

• It's time to get serious, Theodore Dalrymple, The Spectator, 11 February 2006, on the Muhammed cartoons hysteria:
  • "It is abject nonsense to say that we understand and even share to some degree the primitive Muslim outrage expressed ... at the Danish cartoons, in the unctuous Clintonian sense of feeling their pain. Perhaps we understand the outrage in the anthropological sense, as a symptom of injured pride and the thuggishness that injured pride generates. But that is not what Jack Straw ... meant, or rather intended us to think he meant."
  • "We do not, most of us, respect Islam any more than we respect people who speak in tongues. What we respect is the right of Muslims to practise their religion in perfect peace, in so far as it does not conflict with our laws. ... Tolerance is not a matter of respecting what is tolerated - if it were, tolerance would hardly be necessary."
  • "Surely Muslims in this country and elsewhere know perfectly well that we, most of us, do not respect their religion, in the sense of according it high intellectual, moral or artistic status in the modern world ... Some among them find this intolerable"
  • He is appalled at politicians' response to the cartoons hysteria: "Instead, Muslims should be told quite clearly that our citizens have the legal right to criticise, lampoon, ridicule and mock Mohammed to their heart's content, in any way that they wish: that Islam and Muslims have no special claim to protection from the rough and tumble of post-Enlightenment intellectual, political and social life. If they cannot live in a society in which this is the case, they should go somewhere else"

• My fellow atheist Johann Hari's attack on the extreme left-wing pro-Islam site Islamophobia Watch. Apparently we can be atheists about Christianity, but we are not allowed be atheists about Islam.
  • "They defend Sacranie on the grounds that his homophobia is part of his religion. But religions are just another set of ideas formulated by human beings and open to human discussion. Tatchell says, "All people are worthy of respect - but not all ideas are." Just because somebody wrote it in a book a millennia ago and called it a 'religion', doesn't place it beyond discussion. If I write a book calling Sacranie a homophobe and claim it was dictated to me by the Archangel Gabriel, will Pitt defend it as my religious view, and damn everyone who disagrees as 'Johann-phobic'?"
  • "Islamophobia Watch - and the dense chunk of the hard left that adopts a similar approach - is trying to redefine consistent atheism as a form of racism."
  • Johann Hari on Islam, 14 August 2008: "Insulating a religion from criticism – surrounding it with an electric fence called "respect" – keeps it stunted at its most infantile and fundamentalist stage. The smart, questioning and instinctively moral Muslims – the majority – learn to be silent, or are shunned (at best). ... So why do many people who cheer The Life Of Brian and Jerry Springer: The Opera turn into clucking Mary Whitehouses when it comes to Islam? ... It is condescending to treat Muslims like excitable children who cannot cope with the probing, mocking treatment we hand out to Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism."

• Oliver Kamm:
  • Religious tests and public office: "If you're a religious believer, don't ask me for respect; you don't have it. Call me an "Islamophobe" or a "Christianophobe" and I will accept these terms as compliments ... If you seek legal protection for your religious beliefs (as opposed to the freedom to worship any god or none) then I will oppose you and accept no compromise. But leave me and (more important) my fellow citizens alone, and I will remain indifferent to whatever myths of origins and eschatology you espouse."
  • Demanding respect. Q. "So are you saying that it is "inherently unreasonable" for any religious group to ask for respect?" A. "Yes, of course. The most, as well as the least, that any religious group is entitled to is freedom of belief, conscience, speech, worship and association, and that there be no religious test for public office. To ask for respect as well is inherently unreasonable."
  • Oliver Kamm, August 14, 2008: "I strongly reject the notion that belief in the sacred is entitled to protection, whether by voluntary indulgence or legal sanction. The principle of respect for other people's deepest beliefs is not one I hold, and I consider its implications are pernicious."

The Dennis Prager controversy of 2006

• Dennis Prager writes a stupid article: America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on, November 28, 2006 (and followup).
  • This is a bizarre article saying that congressmen should swear on the Bible. What is bizarre is that Prager does not believe in the Bible. At least, not the Christian Bible that congressmen swear on. He is a Jew. He claims that historically, non-believers like Jews and Mormons have gone along with swearing on the Bible, [1] and he thinks this is good, and represents the unity of America.
  • I disagree. I think it is bizarre. What is the problem with allowing any book? Or no book at all? [2] I see no problem at all.
  • [1] In fact, this is not true.
  • [2] In fact, no book is required by law. Nor can it be, under the constitution.

• The problem with Prager's argument is the element of compulsion. Prager's original article says that swearing on the Bible should be forced on all congressmen. "Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress."
• Though in the followup he says he does not want people to be forced by law. See here: "I don't think anything legal should be done about this. ... I'm not arguing legality. I'm arguing what you should do."
• Prager later regrets his article: "'It was a rare example of my passion getting the better of my reason,' said Prager, who regrets any implication that Ellison should not have the legal right to swear on the Koran. Prager said he did not believe a "religious test" should be a requirement to hold office."

• I agree with the right-wingers who attack Prager:
  1. Allahpundit
  2. Eugene Volokh destroys Prager, "whose work I often much like". He notes that Presidents Franklin Pierce and Herbert Hoover (a Quaker) didn't swear at all, but rather affirmed.
  3. Michael Medved: "This year, one newly elected House member .. will choose to take his oath of office on his own sacred scripture, the Koran. Some religious conservatives have made themselves look terrible - mean-spirited and intolerant and theocratic - by objecting to this innocuous gesture"
  4. The ADL: "Dennis Prager's argument ... is intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American. ... Members of Congress, like all Americans, should be free to observe their own religious practices without government interference or coercion.".
  5. Mary Katharine Ham notes that it is like a ceasefire in the blog world. Prager has "unified Americans of the right and left blogospheres in a very rare way."

• I still like Prager on other topics. Since Prager doesn't believe in the Bible, this must I think ultimately be filed as a bizarre, rather than a bigoted Christian, statement.
• The bottom line is that Muslims in the West should be free to practice their religion, dress how they want, build mosques, proselytise, run for office, swear on the Koran, and in general enjoy all the religious freedoms that are found in western secular democracies and not in Islamic countries. Islamic fundamentalism may be a deadly violent threat to the West, but that is no reason to abolish freedom of religion. As I say elsewhere, we shouldn't give up our religious freedom just because some Middle Eastern hellholes deny it.

• Debbie Schlussel is another person who talks sense on Islamism and global politics, but talks nonsense about religion (this is quite common on the right). And she also, like Prager, is, bizarrely, a Jew who buys into Christian supremacism:
  • She says in an attack on atheists on the Paula Zahn show, CNN, January 31, 2007: "Listen, we are a Christian nation. I'm not a Christian. I'm Jewish, but I recognize we're a Christian country and freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from religion."
  • Complete rubbish, of course. The fundamental difference between the West and Islamic countries is that we do have freedom from religion.

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