Every
once in a while, the faithful of one or another denomination collude to
impose on us a spectacle ostensibly meant to be serious, but which
turns out to be farcical. Pretty much all major evangelical gatherings
or religious talk shows meet this description, hosted, as they
inevitably are, by sanctimonious sermonizers who can be merely
antiquated and ridiculous, if in a venomous sort of way (Pat Robertson
comes to mind), or outright fraudsters (recall Jim Bakker), or even just
plain old hypocrites (Ted Haggard). They reliably spout odious piffle,
fleece their credulous flock and get off in most un-Christian ways. But
for rationalists, at least, all this usually amounts to little more than
something to be laughed at and quickly forgotten. Oh, the humorous
ephemera of faith!
In
the United Kingdom, however, a different situation obtains, and it is
no laughing matter. For the past 30 years, church attendance has been
plummeting; one can almost speak of the death throes of Christianity
there. But Islam is decidedly in no need of a requiem. Since 1982, at
least 85 Shariah councils have dispensed their
to an unknown number of the country’s almost 3 million Muslims. Islam
has even begun extending its tentacles into British law enforcement.
has worked tirelessly, says its website, to promote the hiring and
promotion of Muslim officers, “tackle Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate
crime,” and lastly, “assist with countering terrorism.” In theory, the
keeping of law and order should be an objective, unbiased task; exactly
how adding a confessional element will help the cause of justice in the
U.K. remains to be seen.
But there’s more. The NAMP has,
shockingly, urged British votaries of Islam to report crimes not to the
police, but to another U.K. Muslim entity known as the
. The IHRC, headquartered in London, professes “to campaign for justice for
(italics mine) regardless of their racial, confessional or political
background.” At the same time, it also proclaims its “inspiration
derives from the Qur’anic injunctions that command believers to rise up
in defence of the oppressed.” This would somehow seem to exclude, say,
oppressed apostates, for whom the Islamic canon prescribes the death
penalty. And what about Hindus? Don’t they fall into the reviled
category of idolaters whom the Quran (2:190-193) orders Muslims to
combat? Hardly “all peoples,” then, can count on the IHRC to rush to
their aid in times of need.
The
IHRC has, in fact, given me the subject of this week’s essay. The
organization confers an “Islamophobe of the Year award” at a ceremony
that, by my book, might better be called “Oscars for Rationalists.” (One
wonders what the prize is: a pile of bejeweled rocks with which winners
are to stone themselves to death? A gilt whip for them to administer
lashes to their own backs?) If the 2014 event was anything to go by,
these are cringeworthy, pathetically risible affairs of doggerel
commentary and clumsy “tribute” songs performed before an almost
mournful audience.
This year the IHRC saw fit to offend not just
good taste, however, but the very notion of human decency. Just a month
after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, the IHRC gave the aggrieved
survivors of the satirical magazine’s staff their
“Islamophobe of the Year” award for 2015. Four thousand votes were cast to determine the “winner.” Even by the standards of the faith-addled, this was repugnant.
IHRC
Chairman Massoud Shadjareh apparently suffered a bout of aphasia as he
sputtered out a justification for the selection. Try to parse
this:
“If you are saying that satire should be disassociated from Islamphobic
attacks, then surely satire can also be disassociated from the attacks
[on Hebdo].”
Without a hint of irony, but a little more comprehensibly,
if disingenuously, Shadjareh added that “The reality is that this is a
satirical thing and if people think Muslims should be on the receiving
end of satire, then why cannot Muslims give it, too? The point made
against Muslims regularly is that they do not have a sense of honour;
they are portrayed as being dry and angry, but we have a sense of humour
and we can give it back.” Though he called the Paris massacre
“barbaric,” he also
held the magazine accountable
for the lethal violence erupting during the anti-cartoon protest
marches in the Islamic world. The award, said the IHRC, was intended to
be understood as “tongue in cheek.”
There is nothing, it goes
without saying, “satirical” about presenting an award. Anyone can do
that. Nor, obviously, does Western law provide for the death penalty for
Muslims or anyone else mocking popes or pastors, priests or rabbis.
There was, thus, no equivalency to be drawn. Shadjareh’s was little more
than nah-nah-nah “reasoning” that presumably owes much to the smarting
indignities Britain’s Islamic community believes it is unjustly
suffering while dwelling amidst hordes of infidels on the “sceptred
isle.” Shadjareh no doubt knows full well that, if anything, non-Muslims
attribute an
excess of a “honour” to Muslims. We are only too
aware of the honor killings that often take place in Muslim communities
in Europe and beyond. No generalizations need be made about a Muslim
sense of humor, but that the IHRC chose Charlie Hebdo for its award does
demonstrate an utter failure to understand the function of satire in
the West: to desacralize hallowed ideologies of control (which both
Islam and Christianity are) and institutions of power, along with their
representatives.
France in particular has a glorious tradition of
searing religious and political satire that predates even the French
Revolution; Charlie Hebdo is that tradition’s heir. The IHRC would have
done well to research this, but even if it had, it could not have
reconciled Charlie Hebdo’s satire with Islam’s lethal prohibition on
insulting the Prophet. In other words, religion and freedom cannot
coexist, unless religion is stripped of power, as in a secular society.
This France is, if Britain, with its monarch both head of state and
Supreme Governor of the Church of England, is not.
In other Salon essays (see
here,
for example), I’ve denounced the semantic mud pie to which the noun
“Islamophobia” amounts. The vogue term, with its echoes of mental
illness and shame, should really be placed in quotation marks whenever
used, or, far better, discarded as deleterious to rational discourse. In
free societies, those who object to canonical Islam – to its
universalist claims, to its
explicit injunctions to commit violence against unbelievers, to its
inherent misogyny
– must have every right to air their opinions without fear of reprisal
in the public square. (I am not suggesting by any means that all Muslims
are prone to violence, but the extremists are determining the
conversation.) Such opinions may, yes, cause offense to some Muslims
(and to quite a few progressives beholden not to honest debate, but to
PC speech codes), but so be it. Our right to discuss one of the most
critical issues of our time has to trump the tender sensibilities of one
or another group. There can be no compromise here, especially under
threat of violence.
Nonetheless, the term Islamophobia is
accepted, no doubt on account of the misguided postmodernists and
post-structuralists who generally lead the media’s debate about
religion. By holding that texts don’t mean what they mean, but are to be
interpreted as mirrors for gender, race, age and power biases, plus, of
course, our own needs of the moment, we lose the ability to comprehend
them. The vast majority of Muslims in the rest of the world, however,
remain untainted by postmodernism and
accept the Quran as the word of God, and believe that it should be taken literally. ISIS
assassins citing the Quran’s verses 8:12 or 47:4 as they behead their
hostages are acting with scriptural sanction. Quoting Derrida or
Foucault to an Islamist guerrilla wielding a sword above your head would
be as ineffective as it would be presumptuous. Who are we to tell an
ISIS executioner following commands inscribed in the Quran that he is
“distorting” his religion? On what canonical grounds? If people are
explicitly stating their motives, best to take them at their word.
Otherwise, we risk becoming their apologists – and losing our heads,
literally.
Ironically, the use of the noun “Islamophobia” jibes perfectly with the Islamic tradition of dividing the world into
Dar al-Harb (the abode of war, where Muslims are to battle infidels) and
Dar al-Islam
(the abode of Islam, where all is well). “Islamophobia” conflates
(impermanent) faith with (permanent) race, making criticism of one
prejudice against both. Those who hold that a believer’s faith is as
immutable as his or her race fail to see that the believers of today can
become, with a bit of well-crafted free speech, the atheists of
tomorrow. This is why free speech is and will always be the enemy of
Islam – and all “revealed” religion.
But back to the IHRC and its
Islamophobia award. I’m not contesting the IHRC’s prerogative to avail
itself of its right to free speech and insult Charlie Hebdo staff
members. On the contrary, I’m happy the IHRC expressed itself freely and
chose the magazine for the award. In doing so, it handily hoisted
itself by its own petard. It exposed itself as heartless to the
grief-stricken, heedless to the suffering and all-out mean-spirited.
This
is, in fact, just how free speech is meant to work. (Those wishing to
learn more about this might consult John Stuart Mill’s essay “
On Liberty.”)
The IHRC, in bequeathing Charlie Hebdo its award, besmirched its own
reputation and further ennobled, and possibly even helped enrich, the
talented cartoonists, who have already been blessed by the hundreds of
thousands of new subscriptions resulting from the publicity and
widespread sympathy the terrorist attack against them evoked.
It
should come as no surprise that the IHRC counts as one of its chief
supporters the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams – he who
thought installing Shariah councils in the Land of Shakespeare a
smashing
idea. Such an alliance tells us not only that much is not right in the
U.K., but that all “men of the cloth” are, yes, cut from the same cloth.
Bonded by irrationality and, at least in the West, threatened by rising
atheism, the faithful of one confession aid and abet the faithful of
another, to the detriment of the common good. They jointly threaten to
lead us back into darkness, or at the very least into what the French
call
communautarisme (ethnic or religious separatism), which
will jeopardize, in the long run, constitutional guarantees of equal
rights for all citizens, regardless of their faith or lack of one.
Rest
assured, IHRC members, in granting Charlie Hebdo your award, you have
proven the inestimable value of free speech – by shaming yourselves.
Charb, publishing director of Charlie Hebdo, Paris, Sept. 19, 2012. (Credit: AP/Michel Euler)
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