On February 12, the British government denied Geert Wilders entry into Britain. Wilders is the Dutch parliamentarian who is being criminally prosecuted in Amsterdam because he made and propagated an anti-Koran film which depicts acts of violence by Muslims and because he compared the Koran with Mein Kampf. The British authorities said that “people who carry extremist, hate and violent messages are not welcome in our community.” It should be noted that Wilders was not running from Dutch law. He had been invited by some members of the British Parliament to present his views.Pat Condell is a brilliant British on-line satirist who has commented on the Wilders case in the past. Check him out by clicking on Pat Condell's
In his comments, Condell really lets the Dutch have it. But now, it seems that the British authorities have joined the Dutch in their idiocy and cowardice.
As to where I stand, let me make the following points:
1) The Dutch authorities - and now the Brits - are very wrong. I wont re-iterate the reasons why. Pat Condell discusses them far more eloquently than I ever could.
2) Let’s be emphatically clear that the issue has nothing to do with Arabs (or with Iranians, Pakistanis, Indonesians and all the other people whose majority religion is Islam).
3) The problem lies with fundamentalist religion and religious intolerance, including radical Islam.
4) Condell and others may be fervent atheists. I am not. I am indifferent to religion. I am not as animated against religion as Condell and others. In fact, I am against the harassment of religious people. I find it lame when Macy’s forbids its employees to wish people “Merry Christmas,” when municipalities forbid crèches in public areas, when there is a crusade to delete “In God we Trust” from our money, etc.
I find militant atheism and mandated atheism (as in the former USSR) a mirror image of theocracy. Soulless, scientific materialism doesn’t have all the answers, either. After all, the crisis of modernity is upon us, right now, isn’t it?
Let’s not toss out the spiritual and the transcendental altogether. The question should not be: Religion, yes or no? But: What sort of spirituality? We have much to learn from Buddhism, Zen and other Eastern traditions.
5) But this huge topic is not what today’s post is about. Today, I just want to stress the evils of religious bigotry. Today, militant Islam is the prime example of this, and yet the European authorities are punishing Geert Wilders, who is no more than the messenger.
6) Religious bigotry is evil wherever it occurs, and it also occurs in Christian countries. But currently, US fundamentalists do not stone women to death because they had a cup of tea with a man they are not married to. They do not send 16-year old suicide bombers (often girls, lately) to kill innocent men, women and babies. They only vote to ban such things as homosexual marriage. That’s a bit of a difference.
7) The media have told us about Sharia law, the Madrassas, and the Mullahs. I don’t know with how much negative bias these terms are used in the West. Perhaps some of the religious schooling undergone by young Muslims is okay. But there is no doubt that some of this “religion-based” education inspires the atrocities and the mayhem, including anti-Western terrorism, and that it fuels enormous hatred of Western culture. The greatest obscenity is that the “religious leaders” are often old men, while those they send to blow themselves up are often children. But I suppose that’s always been the way of war - old men sending children to die.
8) So now Geert Wilders becomes a cause célèbre, due to the stupidity and cowardice of (some) Europeans.
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6 comments:
I agree with your piece except for the following (Ha, we finally disagree about something):
You are confusing spirituality with religion. Spirituality is the search for inner peace and truth. I am anti-religious and pro-spiritual. Spirituality has not caused the Inquisition, religion has. Spirituality has not caused witch-hunting, religion has. Spirituality does not create suicide bombers, religion does. Spirituality has not caused priests to molest children, religion has.
The crisis of modernity has a lot to do with religion. In fact in might be the cause of it. Ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, caused by religion. Islamic fundamentalism, caused by religion. The extreme right in this country, based on religion. Religion was a very useful tool in the past, to organize societies that otherwise would have been chaotic and unstratified. The modern world has far more intelligent tools to organize societies, i.e. democracy, scientific knowledge, the rule of law based on rational thought rather than superstition.. No, I don't think religion gives us anything positive. Spirituality on the other hand is what people need more of. So, in my view, those two words should never be casually interchanged. It causes a lot of misunderstanding, gives fuel to the religious right and silences the hundreds of millions of people who are not religious. Did you know that almost 50% of the Western world's population is non-religious? I believe that outspoken atheists like Pat Condell are the voice of those hundred of millions of people.
Touché, in some respects, Madeleine. I tend to simplify and twist words sometimes, to suit my ends. Let me “confuse” some more:
1) I don’t feel intense hostility to Christianity - or to some of the other major world religions (E.g Judaism). Only to their orthodox and extreme factions, and only when they try to take over politics. A majority of American Christians are good, harmless people, and some denominations are in fact part of the solution, not the problem, for example the pacifist Quakers, the progressive Episcopalians, the Unitarians, etc. Even Catholicism can be progressive. The Inquisition was some time ago. Right-wing fundamentalists are becoming louder as their influence wanes.
2) By modernity, I mean materialistic “science” , which says that only physical reality is real.
Its consequences include the devastation of the environment and modern drug-peddling medicine. The idea that all solutions to physical problems lie in additional purely physical technologies. I am, clumsily, paraphrasing people like Ken Wilber and Teilhard de Chardin.
3) I don’t think that pure atheism and secularism are the answer, any more than superstition and astrology are is.
4) It seems to me that you and I are arguing about organized religion, and the mixing of religion and politics. There is a familiar continuum: (a) cult - (b) sect - (c) denomination - (d) church. In other words, religious movements tend to grow and develop into powerful organized churches. Power corrupts. When Christianity ruled the world, it was evil. But today, the Western world is - as you yourself say - largely secular, so Christianity is not much of a threat, in my view, and in some ways it is a useful counterbalance to excessive materialism. After all, it does preach love, a message which I don’t hear coming from Wall Street, or from Universities...
The problem with Islam is that it (some of it? much of it?) is still in an earlier phase, i.e. mixing religion and politics, which is bad. The Europeans do this the least. Some factions in America try to do it, but our Constitution protects us fairly well against it.
5) As I said, a huge issue. I am not sure you and I can make much headway on this...
American Christians are good... mm..Well, are they good because they are Christian, or are they good in spite of it? Maybe being Christian has nothing to do with being good, just like having black hair doesn't mean you are good. You can have black hair and be bad too. Why do we always assume that religious people are more moral than others? I am not a religious person but I consider myself very moral.
My other point is that people of no faith in America have very little say in matters of importance. Religion is everywhere: in politics, in education, in community organizations. I believe that the more civilized a society is, the less it needs religion to function well. (The Swedes would love to read this blog since 50% of its population is non religious as opposed to America's 4%!)
As far as Islam is concerned, the 'clash of civilization', don't you think it is really about religion, not civilization? As you point out Islam does not make the distinction between politics and religion. Do we have the luxury of waiting until they 'grow up' and come to their senses?
I will stay away from modernism and postmodernism because I am totally ignorant in that area. But why oppose science to religion? Science does not deny the value of faith. It merely tries to contribute to our understanding of the universe. (which is awesome enough wihout the added religious point of view).
You are right, there is no end to this debate. But as Robert Crumb said in one of his hilarious comic strips: 'The proof is in the pudding, buster'. Show me examples of how religion is benefiting society and I will gladly change my view.
Madeleine,
I agree with you that spirituality is more beneficial than organized religion in general. On a large scale, organized religion seems to do more harm than good. So many wars were fought in the name of religion! Just look at Israel/Palestine. The difference between the two seems to be the corruption of power. As religion is institutionalized, leaders emerge and they begin to alter the rhetoric to justify their agendas. Religion often seems inflexible; it doesn't update itself to address current needs. For example, the Pope preaches against birth control and abortion, while population explosion is the single biggest threat to the longterm survival of humans on the planet.
I agree with Tom Kando's statement (3): "The problem lies with fundamentalist religion and religious intolerance, including radical Islam." Let's include radical Christianity too. How much damage was done by Bush's "Christian Crusade" into Iraq? Karl Rove's key strategy to help Bush win elections was to distribute his propaganda through the evangelical churches, stirring up anti-abortion and anti-homosexual sentiments. Rove paired "Christian" values with "nation-building" and "spreading democracy and freedom" throughout the Arab world. The Christian Conservative Right encouraged anti-Arab sentiment (i.e., referring to Arabs as "towel heads") in order to justify our violence in Iraq. We rounded up thousands of Arabs and locked them up for many years, without trail, in our secret prisons, Gauntanamo, and Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan, where many remain to this day if they survived at all. Some were tortured to death; many others are broken for life. "Shock and Awe" destroyed Bagdad violently, killing mostly civilians. All hell broke loose as our military botched the occupation, leaving huge piles of our weapons unsecured. From reputable sources, over 1.2 million Iraqi men, women and children -- mostly civilians -- have died since 2003 as a result of mismanagement of Bush's occupation including the hiring of private firms like Blackwater and KBR, Donald Rumsfeld's extreme negligence, and Halliburton's corporate corruption. What an enormous waste of human lives and billions of dollars from American taxpayers! So who were the winners? The corporations involved, who made obscene profits. So if we're going to talk about religious extremism, we can't just mention Islamic extremism. We have to include Christian extremism. We need to include the hijacking of the Christian religion by the Republican Right Wing. After all, didn't Christ preach non-violence, tolerance, and "Love thine enemies?" On 9/11, Saudi terrorists killed about 3,000 Americans. Since March, 2003, we killed far more Iraqis who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. The Bush administration should be held accountable for war crimes. It turns out they had planned to invade Iraq before 9/11, for oil.
At the risk of offending some Catholic readers of this blog, I would also include the Pope as a religious extremist. He has been preaching the evils of birth control and abortion, while the population explosion on the planet is the single biggest threat to the survival of the human species. Furthermore, the Catholic Church as a global institution, often uses shame and guilt as a way to control sexuality and increase its membership. Yet it is guilty of much sexual abuse behind the scenes. How hypocritical is that?
Interesting article. As a Dutch person, I can say a thing or two about this. :)
First of all, Geert Wilders is an idiot. He gets his votes from people who like to blame stuff on immigrants, and his "plan" includes only a description of problems in the Netherlands, but he never mentions a possible solution. In the meanwhile he is stirring up tensions...
That does not mean the UK was right, it is nonsense to deny anybody access to their country because their opinion might be too risky. In fact, it means the UK is bending over for the threat of terrorists, exactly what they wanted. And it did him good on top of that, from a 10 seat parliamentary party (out of 150) he is now up to well over 20 in the polls.
Which brings me to the point of religion. A passionate subject of mine. I agree that the problem of religion is the fundamentalist religion. Praying before dinner, singing at christmas, does not hurt a soul. Voting "yes on 8" hurt a lot of people, who on their part, were not hurting a soul by marrying each other.
The point however is that "moderate religion" makes way for fundamentalist religion. If there was no such thing as a country with 95% of "modest believers" the bombers would not have had the moral base, necessary to justify their actions. "Imagine no religion" and their would be no "Belfast troubles", no 9/11, no Israeli/Palestine conflict, no train bombings in Madrid, no Tube bombings in London, no dead Theo van Gogh, no murdered abortion doctors...
Imagine no religion.
Niek
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