Someone I know suddenly decided to give up his business and work for someone else. He was fed up with hiring staff who turned out to be unreliable and incompetent, and tired of reps phoning him every ten minutes. He figured he’d be better off just doing what he enjoyed - (hairdressing as it happens) No more responsibility, thanks. I’d rather be told what to do.
That’s an allegory. Parable for the day.
Call me Dawkins, but that’s kind of why people do religion, or more specifically, Islam.
Get your daily guidance from God almighty, and be righteous. While I appreciate the appeal of relying on eternal paternal guidance, it also seems like an abnegation of responsibility.
I regard people who espouse literalist interpretations of holy scriptures with incredulity. Especially when they seem otherwise normal. As Professor Richard Dawkins said to Mehdi Hasan “You believe that Mohammed went to heaven on a winged horse?”
However, this isn’t the time or place for my views on religious mumbo-jumbo. My job here is to opine on the BBC’s approach to these vexed issues. Craig has already blogged yesterday’s The Big Questions - the episode called “Do we need a British Islam” but nevertheless, I’m going to do it some more.
First of all, who is “we”?
As Craig says, all the front row participants were Muslims. Does the “we” in question allude exclusively to “Muslims”? Was the Big Question: Do Muslims need a British Islam? Do British Muslims need any kind of Islam?
It was impossible to derive any kind of satisfaction from this unpleasant programme. Viewers were further away from knowing whether or not British Muslims think they need a British Islam at the end of the programme than at the beginning. At one moment, when Nicky Campbell tried to elicit a straight answer from an Imam, one might have thought we were dangerously close to getting somewhere. But no.
It was just an unstructured row, with no beginning, middle or end. Maybe they’d have forced out a more definitive answer if they’d stuck to the usual format, stuffing three different Big Questions into the allotted hour. Condensing it might have taken them by surprise. Who knows what might have come out in the rush.
On the other hand, it was a big subject, so the one-topic experiment was worth a try.
I think what they were arguing about is this: should someone create a watered-down version of Islam in order to fit in with “Britain”?
Unfortunately this argument fell at the first hurdle because no Muslim agrees about what truly constitutes Islam, let alone which bits need watering down to fit in with British values.
Judging by what we saw on this programme and what we already know, that is insoluble. True Islam is unBritish and true Britishness is clearly unIslamic.
I’m suspicious of people who wear a collar and tie with a jumper so I felt obliged to Google Adam Deen. He has an extensive Youtube / web presence.
I learned that he used to be called Hakkan Cerrah and is married to TBQ regular Myriam Francois Cerrah. No doubt her absence on yesterday’s episode was due to some kind of BBC misogyny.
Incidentally, Myriam’s verdict on misogyny in Islam is that it doesn’t really exist. Any perceived misogyny is just a wrong interpretation of Islam. Phew. That must be a relief to all those Islamic ladies in Britain.
I mean, what if British Muslims believed the teachings of, say, Imam Ghazzali? I realise that ‘Jedi’s” summary of Imam Ghazzali’s teachingsis a tad tongue in cheek, but it seems fairly accurate.
“She should remain in the inner sanctum of her house and tend to her spinning; she should not enter and exit excessively; she should speak infrequently with her neighbours and visit them only when the situation requires it; she should safeguard her husband in his absence and in his presence; she should seek his pleasure in all affairs and refrain from betraying him through herself or his possessions; she should not leave his home without his permission: [...] she should be content with the means that God has provided her husband; she should place his rights before hers and before the rights of his relatives; she should always observe the rules of personal hygiene, and be ready at all times for him to enjoy her whenever he wishes; she should be affectionate toward her children, zealous to protect them, refraining from uttering profane words against them and from talking back to her husband.”
Is it any wonder that Myriam and her feminist Muslim coreligionists, frantically pushing their dream of a feminist, non-misogynist Islam, wish to reinterpret all outmoded codswallop? But too much reinterpreting risks losing the essence of Islam and arouses all sorts of ire from traditionalists. Interpreting the Koran seems to be as elastic as...go on, supply your own knickers simile.
I also learned about the controversies surrounding Deen’s conversion from extremism to Quillium and the hooha over a ‘Happy Muslims’ video - of Muslims dancing to Pharrell Williams’s “Happy”, featuring Deen’s poor dance moves. (his own words). Several Muslims were not happy at all. They thought it was a disgraceful attempt at kowtowing to .... the British.
The Bradford Imam, aptly named Imam Fazal Dad, complained that Adam Deen was getting too much airtime. Very childish and unbecoming for an Imam called Dad. (I think it was him - one does sometimes get ones Imams mixed up)
There is one small question I’d like to mention, and one Big one. The small one first.
Why does the BBC allow audience members to ‘photo bomb’ the speakers? I mean the attention-seeking idiot in the audience who wouldn’t keep still. Gurning, waving, clapping and being generally distracting. The camera could have moved in close to the speaker and edited out this annoying person.
The Big Question that needs answering is one that no TV presenter ever gets round to putting.
Is Islamic antisemitism acceptable in Britain? Why does the antisemitism in Islam get a free pass? The British don’t like it when antisemitism or racism emanates from any other individual or group, be it a non-Muslim individual, a right-wing antisemite or a bunch of Nazi sympathisers. But with the majority of Muslims antisemitism and anti-Zionism are a given.
Mindless opposition to Israel’s existence is rooted in gross antisemitism, and that is the elephant that’s always present in the studio. An enormous elephant that’s allowed to career around, willy nilly, trampling on everything with impunity, utterly and completely confident it can get away with it.
If you missed it, last Tuesday's Newsnightfeatured an interview by Evan Davis with Richard Dawkins.
Here's a transcription of part of it, which is very revealing about the thinking of both the interviewee and his BBC interviewer:
Evan Davis: But you choose to go onto Twitter. It's not a venue for scientific debate. You choose to go on Twitter. Just to take one example: a tweet in which you drew a very invidious comparison between the number of Nobel prizes won by people from Trinity College, Cambridge and the entire Muslim population of the world. Trinity College, Cambridge comes out on top of that comparison. Now, not disputing the factual basis of it, why make such an invidious comparison? Why raise that? Why raise the issue? What's the point of drawing attention to that?
Richard Dawkins: It is a fact that in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages the Islamic World was a beacon of scientific progress and enlightenment, and something has gone wrong. I had dinner with the then chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, a few months ago and learned there the astonishing fact that between 20% and 25% of Nobel prizes have been won by Jews. And I thought that was a stunning fact. It really is, when you think that the total population of Jews in the world is tiny really when compared to any of the other major religions. So I wanted to make this point that Islam has stagnated in the scientific field since the Middle Ages and the best comparison to make would have been with Jews. And then I though, oh no, I can't do that because that will really upset people because of Palestine - and I'm very sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people in Israel. So at the last minute I crossed out 'Jews' and stuck in 'Trinity College, Cambridge'.
Evan Davis: But I can think of much more gentlemanly ways of making the intellectual point that Islam has not been a great scientific...
Richard Dawkins: It's just a fact. Whether or not it upsets people is less important to me than the dramatic nature of the fact, which ought to be looked at. Somebody ought to be saying, 'Why?'
Click bait. Websites that include advertisements use it to help boost their hits and increase revenue. It even exists on blogs that don't advertise.
One of my old blogging chums Not a Sheepis a firm proponent of one its incarnations: the fifth rule of blogging. This is the art of putting up pictures of pretty women in various stages of undress in order to attract visitors to your blog.
Without realising it, it turned out that I was pretty good at employing Rule 5 on my old blog. It may have been closed for five years but, nonetheless, thanks to Rule 5 it's still getting a ridiculously large number of visitors seeking out sexy images of Emily Maitlis and Jo Coburn. [To quote Duffman from The Simpsons, Oh yeah!]
Now, right-wing newspapers and magazines are increasingly employing another incarnation of click bait. It's not got an official name yet, but it needs one. So here it is:
Rule 234: To boost your website's potential and attract thousands of readers and comments, regularly post something nasty about Richard Dawkins.
Posted at 12:15 pm today, it already has [at the time of writing, 20:15 pm] a corking 2,630 comments.
Tim gets things off to a cracking start, with the words:
Richard Dawkins’ insanity has now become an English institution...
Now, obviously, the sainted Richard is very far from insane, but it's a fine, provocative start from two-eggs-short-of-an-omelette Tim - fruitily rude, a little bit nasty, and absolutely guaranteed to keep the comments coming.
Rule 234.
Spongiform Tim (as he's universally known at Torygraph HQ) keeps 'em coming.
As an offence-monger, by the way, I'm deeply offended by Tim Stanley's offensive use of imagery associated with mental illness, which is (a) a very serious issue and (b) should never be used to insult vulnerable scientists. I'm starting a Twitterstorm to demand his immediate sacking.
No, actually, he should apologise, be reported to the police, arrested, convicted, sent to Saudi Arabia (PBUI), and flogged. For starters.
The comments generated by Tim Stanley and the Telegraph are the usual stuff about whether religion is good or bad....and on and on and on and on and on and on it goes. Job done.
If you're not a 'twitter or tweet' person, then here are a flavour of Richard Dawkins's latest whacky tweets (burn him!) - all from the past five days:
My nephew Nick Kettlewell took Andromeda photo. No telescope, just tracked Earth rotation w simple electric motor.
Wankers? Is Boris right to blame sexual frustration & low self-esteem?
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/30/boris-johnson-jihadists-wankers … … Might explain pathological hatred of women?
.@GeorgeBooth52 Oh yes, the poor wee studenty-poos mustn't have their little feelingsy-weelingsies upset, must they? Oh just grow up.
Decent, tolerant, multicultural, PC liberals: are we sleepwalking towards a violent, intolerant, freedom-despising theocracy?
MT “@SecularSpeech: Students Union told us not to display Charlie Hebdo paper at refreshers fair at Manchester ”. What do these priggishly officious offence-junkies think a university is FOR? Manchester Student Union this time.
"Now it seems to be he the turn of liberals and Democrats to veer off into their own ideological fever-swamps": http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/liberals-and-the-illiberal-left/384988/
Can't RT all the myriad specific examples @StopGulfSlavery cites of cruelly treated SLAVES, mostly in Saudi Arabia. Horrible if true. Look.
Be suspicious of those who say "infinitely" when they mean no more than "very".
Richard Dawkins retweeted
Dörte Faatz @Bitch2410 · Jan 28
@RichardDawkins
There are 2 main streams of Islam:
1) HasnothingtodowithIslam &
2) HasnothingtodowithIslamatall
Richard Dawkins retweeted
Robert @robert1z · Jan 28
@RichardDawkins Spot on by Rod Liddle. Excellent piece. @spectator
Oh NO, they're beheading my book ['The Selfish Gene' - and, yes, they really did!] and are going to eat it. Quick, find a flag to rip up and an embassy to burn.
How DARE you believe someone when he tells you clearly & explicitly what he really believes? http://smithandfranklin.com/current-issues/Believe-the-Terrorists-Religion-Violence-and-the-Power-of-Beliefs/9/14/74/html … Facts are Islamophobic
Michelle Obama goes some way to redeem the ignominy of her husband’s crawling to the odious Saudi regime.
Think the problem is limited to tiny extremist minority? Polls quoted by @MichaelShermer may give you pause: http://smithandfranklin.com/current-issues/Believe-the-Terrorists-Religion-Violence-and-the-Power-of-Beliefs/9/14/74/html …
Update /rude interruption.
I might or might not be exercising my right to offend, but this one is even better. It contains strong language for which I take fool respnsiblty lol. Sue XX
BBC Radio 4 Today producer just phoned me to apologise. Apology accepted. Now I'm off to snorkel near New Guinea.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) June 5, 2014
I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.
Radio 4's Today misquoted the 'selfish genius' as saying that fairy tales are harmful to children and falsely implied that he wants to ban Santa Claus. It seems that they had borne him false witness.
Even though he hadn't said that, Today's report led to Chinese Whispers.
I know that for a fact as one Dawkins-hating family member (who shall remain nameless) was absolutely bursting to tell me about it this morning, and the Telegraph's Tim Stanley went off on one based on what he thought Prof. Dawkins said.
[No confession, no retraction, no apology yet from Prof. Stanley though. Get thee to a confession box, Tim!]
Richard Dawkins actually believes that "fairy tales, as well as charming, can be good training in critical thinking."
It is fascinating, though, how such untrue memes [to use a Dawkins-inspired word] get about in the media, parts of which are just gagging, yes gagging, for any old Richard Dawkins story [cos it winds up their readers and generates clicks].
If I may draw an analogy, large parts of the media (and many of them the very same people) were also gagging, yes gagging, for anti-UKIP stories in the run-up to the Euro elections - and, yes, I do mean the Mail and the Telegraph.
Nigel Farage and Richard Dawkins aren't obvious bedfellows but they share this in common: Both are often on the receiving end of some very dodgy reporting.
Just because who don't like someone - and many people regard Prof. Dawkins as a devil and a fool - doesn't mean they deserve to be misquoted and smeared.
Don't forget: Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.
Given my own biases, I'd be delighted to have lots more Douglas Murray and Richard Dawkins on the BBC. Preferably together.
That's not something that's likely to happen.
So in lieu of that, and whilst I'm waiting for the BBC to oblige (and for pigs to fly), there's always Douglas Murray's recent interview with the blessed Richard in the Spectator.
What struck me most, as a lapsed but grateful Anglican, is Richard's take on his own Anglican inheritance. It reflects my own way of thinking.
I’m kind of grateful to the Anglican tradition for its benign tolerance. I sort of suspect that many who profess Anglicanism probably don’t believe any of it at all in any case but vaguely enjoy, as I do… I suppose I’m a cultural Anglican and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it.
[If there weren't any churches] I would feel deprived in the same spirit of the English cricket match that I mentioned, that is close to my heart. Yes, I would feel a loss there. I would feel an aesthetic loss. I would miss church bells, that kind of thing.
I am thoroughly in favour of educating people in this country in the Bible, so you know where phrases like “through a glass darkly” come from.
I don’t think you have to [learn to Koran] actually, because if the justification for it is a literary one — since in this country we are on the whole not studying Arabic literature — it’s enough to know the King James Bible, like you have to know Shakespeare. European history you can’t begin to understand without knowing about the perennial hostility between Catholics and Protestants so I suppose for history we need to. But I don’t buy the feeling that because we have Christian faith schools we therefore have to have Buddhist and Muslim and Hindu faith schools as well.’
Now, come on, all you Richard Dawkins haters out there, doesn't that make you want to agree with Douglas Murray, that "As we say our goodbyes it guiltily occurs to me that Richard Dawkins is a man more sinned against than sinning"?
Everyone loves a piece about Richard Dawkins. Some newspapers love to wind their readers up with regular Richard Dawkins stories. Threads then fill up with massed regiments of anti-Dawkins and pro-Dawkins commenters, insulting all and sundry and generally having a high old time. Everyone's a winner with a Richard Dawkins piece. So, here's a post about Richard Dawkins. (You know you want one!)
Back in 2006, the aforementioned Richard Dawkins (have I mentioned him yet?) published his famous polemical book about religion, The God Delusion. In Chapter 9, he recalled a Q&A session after a lecture he had given in Dublin where he was asked by a member of the audience for his thoughts on the Catholic priestly sex abuse scandal in Ireland:
I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place. It was an off-the-cuff remark made in the heat of the moment, and I was surprised that it earned a round of enthusiastic applause from that Irish audience (composed, admittedly, of Dublin intellectuals and presumably not representative of the country at large).
As you can see, Richard was hardly unaware even as he wrote that chapter that he had engaged in a little spur-of-the-moment hyperbole - the sort of thing that can lead him very easily into being misrepresented, quoted out of context and then being forced to defend himself against those misrepresentations years later.
He continued (in The God Delusion) by quoting a letter he had received from an American woman, brought up as a Catholic - a letter that had rekindled his memories of that Q&A session in the Irish Republic. As a seven-year old girl a schoolfriend of the woman had died in tragic circumstances. Because the girl was a Protestant, she believed (because of her Catholic upbringing) that her little friend had gone to Hell. At the same time she was also abused by her parish priest in a car. Richard Dawkins quotes from the letter she wrote to him:
"Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the
mind of a 7 year old) as ‘yucky’ while the memory of my friend going to
hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of
the priest – but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I
loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares."
What lessons did Richard draw from this?
Admittedly, the sexual fondling she suffered in the priest’s car was
relatively mild compared with, say, the pain and disgust of a sodomized
altar boy. And nowadays the Catholic Church is said not to make so much
of hell as it once did. But the example shows that it is at least
possible for psychological abuse of children to outclass physical....I am persuaded that the phrase ‘child abuse’ is no exaggeration when
used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom
they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven
mortal sins in an eternal hell.
A thought-provoking argument, that can be generalised. Is it, for example, also appropriate to describe as 'child abuse' the inculcation of Palestinian children to hate Israeli children and to believe that killing them is a religiously-sanctioned and morally right thing to do? Is it 'child abuse' to dress them in Hamas terrorist uniforms and give them toy rocket launchers and guns and, thus, encourage them to idolise terrorists? Is it 'child abuse' to put those children in harm's way during a conflict, using them as human shields or propaganda weapons whenever they are accidentally killed or injured? Is it 'child abuse' to tell them that suicide bombing is martyrdom and will ensure them a place in Heaven? Is it 'child abuse' for Islamic scholars, preachers, politicians and media outlets to push these messages into the ears of their children, again and again and again?
The extracts from The God Delusion were been raised by Mehdi Hasan during an interview with Richard Dawkins, held at the Oxford Union and broadcast last night on Al Jazeera. If you can face 45 minutes of Mehdi Hasan, it's well worth a watch. Again, the audience is generally receptive to Richard's defence of those comments on Catholic child abuse.
Now, I have to say that even though I - and presumably you - can see what Richard is getting it, he doesn't exactly help himself with the way he puts things sometimes. Mischievous people can very easily quote you out of context and put the blackest interpretation on what you have said....
Cue...
'Being raised Catholic is worse than child abuse': Latest incendiary claim made by atheist professor Richard Dawkins
By
Daniel MartinPUBLISHED:
00:03, 22 December 2012
|
UPDATED:
04:08, 23 December 2012
Incendiary: Richard Dawkins
Raising your children as Roman Catholics is worse than child abuse, according to militant atheist Richard Dawkins.In
typically incendiary style, Professor Dawkins said the mental torment
inflicted by the religion’s teachings is worse in the long-term than any
sexual abuse carried out by priests.He
said he had been told by a woman that while being abused by a priest
was a ‘yucky’ experience, being told as a child that a Protestant friend
who died would ‘roast in Hell’ was more distressing.Last night politicians and charities condemned the former Oxford professor’s views as attention-seeking and unhelpful.
If anything's "incendiary" here, it's this Daily Mail article. Please put protective gloves and a gas mask on before reading it!
Can you see what the Daily Mail reporter did there? He .. quoted .. Richard .. Dawkins .. out .. of .. context. Hard to believe of a tabloid journalist, I know, but there you are!
Few of those reading Daniel Martin's article would be aware that Richard Dawkins hadn't just made those remarks and that this wasn't exactly news - a point Richard himself makes on his own website:
Following a recent report in the Daily Mail, various twitterers are horrified at what I am alleged to have said about child abuse. It was in The God Delusion published in 2006 and distributed in more than 2 million copies and therefore hardly red hot news.
As well as risking misleading its readers about the context of Richard's remark, the Daily Mail article then misreports Richard's statements, alleging (wrongly) that he says Catholic teaching is worse than "any" sexual abuse carried out by Catholic priests. Even the quotes for the Al Jazeera interview used in the Mail article undermine that bit of dubious reporting.
Reading what Richard Dawkins actually wrote shows that he wasn't (and isn't) making any such blanket statement. As so often, Richard has now been forced to defend himself against (deliberate?) misunderstandings....which he only partly left himself open to:
Incidentally, I was myself sexually abused by a teacher when I was about nine or ten years old. It was a very unpleasant and embarrassing experience, but the mental trauma was soon exorcised by comparing notes with my contemporaries who had suffered it previously at the hands of the same master. Thank goodness, I have never personally experienced what it is like to believe – really and truly and deeply believe – in hell. But I think it can be plausibly argued that such a deeply held belief might cause a child more long-lasting mental trauma than the temporary embarrassment of mild physical abuse.
Anecdotes and plausibility arguments, however, need to be backed up by systematic research, and I would be interested to hear from psychologists whether there is real evidence bearing on the question. My expectation would be that violent, painful, repeated sexual abuse, especially by a family member such as a father or grandfather, probably has a more damaging effect on a child’s mental well-being than sincerely believing in hell. But ‘sexual abuse’ covers a wide spectrum of sins, and I suspect that research would show belief in hell to be more traumatic than the sort of mild feeling-up that I suffered.
The argument here is, of course, a highly controversial one and many of you are going to strongly disagree with what Richard Dawkins is saying. But he is not saying what that Daily Mail article says he is saying and it's surely far better to disagree with what someone actually says than with what some rabble-rousing article (wrongly) alleges he said?
