Where are the militant secularists? (or where are the heirs to Pim Fortuyn)
 

Hello all, long time no see and all that. Riddle me this.

For those not already in the know, Pim was a gay, anti-immigration, liberal (supported euthanasia, gay marriage & a liberal drug policy) politician assassinated on the eve of the Dutch election in 2002.

His argument was, effectively that if Muslim immigrants felt that he should be stoned for his behaviour (as a homosexual) that there was no place for them in his country. Effectively he was arguing that if they we not willing to conform to Dutch cultural values they should not be allowed into the Netherlands. He saw Islam as a threat to the Dutch way of life and, to quote, that "I want to live together with the Muslim people, but a tango needs two". He saw freedom of speech as more important than freedom from discrimination.

I'm finding it pretty hard stuff to argue with really. The intellectual hemlock that is cultural relativism seems to have made the so-called left unable to defend its own values. It is too wrapped in seeing who can be more open minded to realise that there is a real and growing threat that we will lose and are losing the freedoms and values that our forefathers fought and died for. The lack of serious criticism of the Muslim council's assertion here that what is needed to curb terrorism is Islamic social law only serves to underline this.

My question is this, where are the militantly secular? Where are the died-hard freedom of speech advocates? Why is the immigration debate so simplistic and monochrome? When the label racist is used to silence debate the same way 'communist' was in 50s America is there not space for the political argument that to truly foster tolerance, we must actively and aggressively fight intolerance? How on earth is tolerating intolerance in the name of multiculturalism & diversity going to create a cohesive society? Why is no-one asking why the Church & the Mosque can attack homosexuality but plays & performances attacking religions are shut down by protest & threats? What's going on here? What's the way forward?

"1) You may say, "You are a fool to believe [X], we'll have to straighten you out." 2) You may say, "[X] is not true, but [Y] is and [Y] is close enough to [X] that you'll eventually get used to it. Trust me, everything will be alright." 3) You speak of [X] meaning [X], while I speak of [X] meaning [Y] hoping that my way of speaking will eventually win the day in this play of language games, so that you, or your descendents, will eventually come to mean [Y] when you or they say [X]" - Owen Flanagan

In other words, you can only have it all if you change what it all means.

I follow your dots, and I follow my dots but I'm not quite seeing the dot inbetween.

You've stated the whole question very well.

The clash of civilizations is seen differently through everyone's different lenses. One libertarian friend of mine was entirely unconcerned about international terror, against invading Afghanistan, but was fiercely annoyed during the Danish cartoon controversy.

well this hasn't quite sparked the debate I was hoping for, did I fart or something?

Jag, i was sent some newspaper pics of a muslim demonstration that was probably in England--the demonstrators had placards that said things like: Europe is the Cancer, Islam is the Answer; Europe, your 9/11 is on the way!; Behead those who Insult Islam, Get ready for the REAL holocaust, etc. Did you see these? If you did, did it pique your interest in the need for militant secularists?

I think there's been a largish influx of liberals^h^h^h^h^h^ progressives in your absence...and many of them are busy stroking each other elsewhere in the fora.

There's also been a lot more volume, which dilutes people's attention.

Brianna - formed part of the influence in this long percolating line of thought.
Watching the entire left british media do a double take and shit themselves when those were published was amusing.

Maggie - what are your thoughts then? Where do you see this in the political spectrum? And is the lack of response a kind of collective denial or some kind refusal to get involved on a moral high ground basis?

You could probably put Penn Jillette in the militantly secular camp. Maybe Bill Maher, too. But their 'militancy' is pretty much restricted to having big mouths on small shows. It would be nice to see some politicians willing to make secular arguments, but suggesting that religions don't come with any more moral authority than any other association of humans is political suicide, as everyone considers it an attack on their own religion.

That was quite amusing. What I found particularly funny was the way, days before there was this huge fuss about how the Moslems just didn't understand "Western respect for freedom of speech" (referring to the cartoons which were published showing Mohammed with a missle for a turban) then having an apoplectic fit when the Moslems painted banners:P

So does no-one actually disagree? This is almost surreal.

The main problem, as I see it, is that people like Pim end up attracting the dangerous far-right. It's one thing to say that fundamentalist Moslems are anti-gay; it's quite another to say all moslems are bigots and should be barred from your country.

When I was working in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). One of my students was a gay guy from Iran. He had`faced horrendous persecution for this. He also had a large group of friends who knew of his sexual orientation and didn't care. Moslem communities, like any other community, do not usually stand up to gross generalisations. There are plenty of religious moslems who, whilst they personally believe homosexuality to be a sin, would not advocate violent oppression of those who are of that persuasion. There are also those who would. There are plenty of non-religious working class white men who would happily kick the shit out of a man if they found out he was gay (as did the London pub bomber). There are plenty who don't really care either way. The danger with the current climate is that we charactererise all moslems as sharing this intolerance. That's where it leads to racism. That's why it shouldn't have any place in a debate on immigration. It should however have a place in a debate on tolerance.

As to advocacy of freedom of speech. I believe in freedom of speech, right up to the point it endangers someone else's freedom of speech/action.

I was appalled when the theatre that was running that Sikh play recently ended up stopping its run, because of the protests and death threats. Disgusting. That was a victory for the reactionary and anti-questioning values of a particular group of people.

The answer in my opinion is to attack the view without attacking the whole demographic. It is right to attack anti-gay propoganda, it is not right to attack all moslems because of it. It is not right to attack someone for being moslem. It is right to make a determined stand and say, that a church or mosque has no right to advocate violence against someone because of their sexual orientation.

The question then becomes.....Does the church or the mosque have the freedom of speech to tell their followers that homosexuality is a sin?

*smiles* as a member of the Secularist Society I find this a particularly interesting debate.

I agree it's a platform that attracts far-right elements but the argument is not a far-right one at all and that alone is not a reason for it not to be pursued. Pim himself made that much clear.

If we have widespread cultural acceptance of homosexuality, enshrined in law, why can't we say fundamentalist muslims are bigots and should be barred from this country? Possibly more to the point, why don't we say that? If that level of nuance is too much for today's political climate we truly are screwed.

I had a rather viscous debate with a friend about anti-white racism inside the black community in London recently which ended in an impasse and the more I think about it, all these issues come back to the same question: How on earth is tolerating intolerance in the name of multiculturalism & diversity going to create a cohesive society? and if we accept that it is not, why do these double standards exist?

Because it makes you look really un-cool. The left is very concerned that they look "cool"-they are not so concerned with the rights of ordinary people not to be terrorized by their neighbors. The placards those sweeties in the English news pix were holding up called for murder--beheadings I believe it was. The left is ok with that. Just don't call them un-hip. On the other hand, a cartoon, NOT calling for murder but giving mohammed bomb-shaped head gear...well, THAT is just uncalled for and insensitive and the monsters who printed that cartoon? well, they deserve what they get.

See how that works?

Multiculturalism = all cultures are completely equal, and the only differences are that they speak a different language and eat different foods and some of those foods are very tasty.

In other words, a necessary, purposeful, pseudo-educated prevention of actual understanding of the true differences in different cultures.

A well-put statement of the problem, Jaguar. The hard part is finding a, or the, solution.

On our side of the pond, we invoke what we call Severeid's Law, after the late television editorialist: "The chief cause of problems is solutions."

How on earth is tolerating intolerance in the name of multiculturalism & diversity going to create a cohesive society?

To me this is the crux of the question. If you decide you're not going to tolerate intolerance, then you're in effect being intolerant yourself. This of course leads to the point that when you become what you dislike, you're no better than the thing you dislike.

Everyone on the planet is intolerant. If they were not, there would be no conflict. People fighting for 'democracy' are intolerant because they believe the way one nation lives is better than another. They choose not to tolerate a lifestyle they disagree with.

Intolerance makes the world go round. It fuels the global economy. It drives human rights activists. It gives the religious right something to work on and gives the liberals something to work out.

If you've got the power, you can be as intolerant as you like.

Alithana - that is the point of cultural relativism but the way I see it, it's closer to nihilism. If you cannot say that any culture is better or worse than any other, there can, by definition, be no progress. You cannot say that female genital mutilation is bad, that child labour is bad, that stoning gays to death is bad because it's another culture you do not belong to. Thus my saying it's intellectual poison. I don't see 'progress' as a linear thing but I do believe there is better and worse which leads me to by next point:

The answer, from what I can see ties in to questions of the role of the nation state and culture in the 21st century - is some kind of explicit declaration of values, a kind of bill of rights of some sort, a baseline.

This way I think you deal with Aliantha's problem you may say as you wish, but if you cross this line, I'm going to give you both barrels, this is where we stand and we will not move or, in practice This country stands for human rights, equality in race, gender, sexual orientation etc, free speech and a few more, if you disagree with these things, you're welcome to kindly fuck off.

Of course that doesn't sit too comfortably with free speech. Problem, dat.

Over the last few days a debate has erupted here about the incredible number of Eastern European immigrants that have come via EU freedom of movement, never know, might spark something larger.

Some differences are deserving of tolerance, being matters of faith and opinion. Other differences are not. Often those differences have to do with an unwillingness to recognize proper boundaries and domains...a desire to impose by force (of government, or of arms) one's values on others.

Militant Islam is an example of this. So are the more extreme forms of fundamentalist Christianity. So is the form of socialist collectivism currently styling itself "progressive". All three of these examples are desirous of using political and legal power to impose their values on others, claiming that the proper purpose of law is to enforce one brand of morality (their own), rather than being a mutual agreed formal system to make it posible for differing value systems to operate with minimum interference and conflict in the same social space. Usually the justification for this is both circular and memetic: "My value system says imposing it on others this is the right and moral thing to do".

You posed about the hardest question possible. My values are an amalgalm of culture, religion, and philosophy chosen consciously and unconsciously over a life-time with shifting barriers about what is acceptable behavior. If we don't allow people this flexibility as a society we are no longer Western. If we allow people to exercise primitive tribal values we are no longer Western. Law should be where the line is drawn but too much law leads to an unfree anti-Western society because an over-lawyered society is essentially lawless.

It isn't solvable with immigration controls that choose only the educated, as those are the very people whose values shifted back to the tribal after living among us. If we halt all immigration we die as a society. We're better off in the US since Mexican culture is not as far from the norm as Arab culture is from Europes norm. Europes troubles are much more intense, I'm watching them as a Romanized German watched Rome fall. The question is how far will they fall and will some cultural force pick up the pieces?

Don't leave the neo-con movement out of this.

How can we apply the end of my nose rule to folks who treat "their" women as chattel?

I would go with that. That said, what someone believes in their own hearts and in the privacy of their homes is up to them. How they act upon it within our society is a different matter. I do not believe it is right to barr entry to an applicant merely because they are moslem. I do believe it acceptable to insist that certain practices not be translated to life in the UK.

There are ways of doing things which can be deemed purely 'cultural'. There are also ways of doing things which can be argued as being against the internationally accepted code of Human Rights. Wearing the Hijab versus Female infanticide.

Attempts to impose western style values on to another culture can have the counterproductive effect of pushing the very people we want to help into even greater acceptance of the treatment we see as vile (such as female genital mutilation.) Making sure we're willing to help those who want to fight these things from below is probably more effective. (Alice Walker wrote a stunning book about this issue. Can't recall the title, but I'll dig it out. It follows the fate of one of the minor characters from Color Purple, as she reclaims her tribal heritage by voluntarily undergoing mutilation.)

In our own country however, we have an absolute right and duty to draw the lines where we see fit. As I said, this is an argument about tolerance not ethnicity or faith. I am tolerant of people of all faiths up to the point they espouse intolerance and at that point I am happy to have a row with them. I am not going to assume their intolerance just because they subscribe to a particular faith. Be they Islamic, Catholic, Jewish, Sikh or whatever.

We used to assume a level of tolerance of the Sikh faith which has been blown out of the water by th attitude of some hardliners to recent theatre productions. We also assume a level of intolerance of Moslems. But Moslems come in all shapes and sizes. We are equally likely to be surprised by them.

We shouldn't be afraid to advocate secular values in a secular country. Nor should we be afraid to argue vehemently against intolerance where it rears its head. I do think we need to be careful and not allow ourselves to turn a fight against intolerance into an anti-Moslem crusade.

Sure thing...I write one up over the weekend and the World can start following it on Monday. Oh, you want input? OK, show of hands, who wants input? Back to square one.
But I'm just as wise as Solomon, why can't I write the rules? Oh that's right, he had an army, it's good to be the King.
Why bother making policy/rules/suggestions, you can't enforce?

We have a Bill of Rights, Constitution and a Legal Code. If Abdul or Maood, or Ming, want to emigrate, then they'll have to alter their Cultural Heritage to conform to our laws.
You want Sharia Law?... go home.
You object to queers?...don't marry one and it won't concern you.
You want us to change to accommodate you?...not here, dude.
You want to mutilate your women?...get the fuck out.

We need a slogan to rally our militant secularists..... how about, "Cultural Diversity - that's what the french do"


I'm inundated with "Embrace Cultural Diversity", every damn day. It's replaced, ISO-9001, ethics, 5-S, even Employee Involvement as the corporate holy grail.

The fastest way to get fired, neck and neck with surfing porn sites, is to tell an Indian you think feeding cows and letting people starve isn't right. Or tell an Asian you think whaling is wrong. Don't even think about the Koran or you'll be history.

I see two choices;

A ~ World War until we are all green mutants. UT said we need "actual understanding of the true differences in different cultures", but without accepting them and their practices, we only know why we're fighting.

B ~ Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchabunagungamaugg (lake Webster) in Massachusetts. Local lore holds it's Indian for, "You fish on your side, I'll fish on my side, nobody fish in the middle." Yes, that dirty word....Isolationism. When you have two or more cultures that are diametrically opposed in philosophy, you might come to a meeting of the minds eventually. But when the diametrically opposed forces are Dogma, forget it. The only way to not have friction is prevent rubbing. :fuse: