An Unpopular Position: Ban the Burqa

I believe, contrary to what seems to be the customary liberal consensus, that such things as the veiling of women should be forbidden, not only because it expunges women from public space, but because it is inevitably coercive for some (if not most) women – and it is, I think, meant to be coercive. Even those women who don the burqa as an expression of religious piety, I suspect, mean it to be coercive to other women in the same community.

In this post I want to use as an example something that happened recently at the University of Leicester. A sold-out talk by Hamza Tzortzis* on the existence of god was strictly segregated: brothers (male) and sisters (female) directed to one side or the other:
According to an article in the Guardian:

A message on the group’s [the university's Islamic Society] website says: “In all our events, [the society] operate a strict policy of segregated seating between males and females.”

Nothing could be clearer than that.

What, you might ask, has this to do with banning the burqa? Simple, really. For a few paragraphs down from this notice are these words:

Rupert Sutton, from the campus watchdog Student Rights, has claimed there is “consistent use of segregation by student Islamic societies across the country”.

He wrote: “While this may be portrayed as voluntary by those who enforce it, the pressure put on female students to conform and obey these rules that encourage subjugation should not be underestimated.” [my emphasis]

My point is simply this. If, as Sutton says, “the pressure put on female students to conform and obey these rules that encourage subjugation should not be underestimated,” that is, if this is so on a university campus – and that is not hard to believe – try to imagine the weight of “the pressure … to conform”, viz., coercion, involved in the very close-knit ethnic communities that are growing up in some Western cities. In the discussion on the last post, Rahman, a Muslim who has expressed very forcefully his commendably liberal ideal of Islam, continues to say – and he has support from non-Muslims in the discussion – that it is contrary to liberal principles to impose restrictions on the dress people choose to wear. In other words, I acknowledge, that I am the odd man out in this discussion, but I still think, and so I will say, that banning the erasure of women from public space is necessary in societies that would be free, and that, in contexts where the full body covering is customarily used, the question of genuine choice no longer arises.

I emphasise the word ‘choose’ and ‘choice’, because I think it is undoubtedly true that many women in the communities concerned would and do not choose to be restricted by “Islamic” dress, which Maryam Namazie calls “mobile prisons” or “body bags,” and they would not so choose if they were free from religious and social compulsion. At the same time, as I have said before, the existence of this kind of erasure of women is not only threatening to those women, it is threatening to the women in the liberal cultures of France or Britain, Canada or the United States, who live in close proximity to communities in which this erasure is customary. It is threatening because, with the erasure of women by concealing forms of dress, the resulting social context is almost stultifyingly masculine, as a woman who has lived in close proximity to such a community has told me. In such a context, women are effectively being forced to wear dress that obliterates their social existence, or they are being forced to exclude themselves from public space, because they find it overtly masculine and threatening.

In a Telegraph article from 2009, the Muslim Council of Britain is reported to have condemned President Sarkozy of France for his remarks about the burqa:

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said Mr Sarkozy’s claim that the head-to-toe garments worn by Islamic women signify subservience were “patronising and offensive”.

Its criticism comes after Mr Sarkozy used a policy speech on Monday to declare the burqa was “not welcome” in France.

In a move which threatens to reignite the debate over religious clothing in the country, Mr Sarkozy said: “The burqa is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience.

“We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity.”

Place in a liberal democracy. Religion is a private matter, and should be confined to private space. Effectively to erase the public existence of women by religious or cultural forms of public sexual or gender apartheid is not only illiberal, it is arguably an incitement to precisely the kinds of anti-Muslim prejudice that are rightly deprecated by all reasonable people. It must be remembered that Islamic violence is so widespread in the world today, despite some readings of Islam as opposed to violence – as Juan Cole argues in an extremely one-sided interpretation of the role of violence in Islam (“Top Ten Ways Islamic Law forbids Terrorism“) – that it is hard for many people to separate the unassimilated Muslims in Western societies from those who perpetrate such violence, especially when members of those communities are being attracted to such violent forms of Islam. This may seem to be, as Rahman says, blaming the victim; and perhaps in some sense it is, but it is also to doubly victimise those women who are the object of such acts. They are victimised by being obliterated by their clothing, and then, a second time, by those who find such public declarations of religious affiliation culturally inapposite for free and democratic societies, and who emotionally express their resentment.

Remember that in Nazi Germany, and in much of medieval Europe, Jews (and sometimes Muslims, particularly in Spain) were distinguished by being compelled to wear distinctive forms of dress, and by being confined to certain quarters of cities and towns (areas subsequently known as ghettoes). (The word ‘ghetto’ comes originally from an Italian or Venetian term used for slag or waste, thus expressing the value placed on those confined to the Jewish quarter.) In general, distinctive dress was introduced to make distinctions that would not otherwise have been obvious, so that social divisions would not only be clearly marked, but also so that prejudices could be rightly aimed. Anti-Semitism is harder to express and maintain if the line dividing Christians from Jews is not clear. Thus the distinctive hats compulsorily worn by Jews in the Middle Ages, or the yellow Star of David required by decree in Nazi Germany, Poland, and elsewhere. The same was true in Muslim societies, where Christians and Jews were distinguishable from Muslims, and were prohibited from bearing arms, riding horses, or overtaking Muslims in the street. Distinctions were deliberately illiberal and forced, to make distinctions between true believers and infidels plain. We may deprecate it as much as we like, but those who choose to distinguish themselves in this way, in a world in which women who are so attired elsewhere in the world are held in subjection, have acid thrown in their faces if they dare to go to school or speak to men who are not family members, effectively identify themselves with cultural values which are justly seen as incompatible with liberal democratic ideals of equality and freedom. And would we be entirely wrong is suggesting that that is what they are doing (or being made to do)?

As Maryam Namazie says:

Oh and before the post-modernist left and defenders of multi-culturalism and religion over women’s lives and rights start crying outrage and totalitarianism and the right to choose or what have you let me just say this: far from being liberating, the burqa is a strait-jacket for women; a mobile prison. And no more a real choice than the chastity belt or foot-binding (where women’s feet broken to keep them from wandering away from their male ‘guardians’) …

I don’t know why others do not see the sense of this, and while I know I will win no prizes for saying so, I think we should ban the burqa. To listen to Maryam Namazie on the burqa and other Islamist customs, watch this:

Because he debates well-known people like Lawrence Kraus, Simon Blackburn, and so on. Maryam Namazie calls him an Islamist, and so, it seems, he is, given some of the things written on his blog, where he touts the “miracle” of the Qur’an, and other myths of Islam. For a taster of this, consider the following:

The inability to produce anything like the Qur’an, due to its unique literary form, is the essence of the Qur’anic miracle. The argument posed by Muslim theologians and philosophers is that if, with the finite set of Arabic linguistic tools at humanity’s disposal, there is no effective challenge, then providing a naturalistic explanation for the Qur’an’s uniqueness is incoherent and doesn’t explain its inimitability. This is because a human author is only able to produce the known literary forms in the Arabic language. The development of an entirely new literary form is beyond the scope of the natural capacity of any human author, hence a Divine entity, Allah, is the only sufficient comprehensive explanation. The evidence for this is that for over a millennia, the speech and writings of the Arabs have always fallen within the known forms and expressions of the Arabic language. However, the Qur’an breaks this natural pattern due to its uniqueness.

This is traditional Islamic apologetics, I know, but it is surprising that anyone should expect nonsense such as this to be taken seriously: “The development of an entirely new literary form is beyond the scope of the natural capacity of any human author.” That is a bit like saying of the first epic, the first tragic drama, or the first comedy, that each is “beyond the scope of the natural capacity of any human author.” This is plainly ridiculous.

The New Atheism and the Problem of Islam

A lot of people are simply not paying attention. It is, of course, true that the so-called “new atheists” are opposed to religion, and what makes their opposition in some sense “new” is the frank openness of their opposition. Some opponents call it strident and shrill. Academic criticism of religion is one thing, and the new atheism is something completely different, even though, to a large extent, it is anchored in proponents who are either academics or are at least not strangers to academic discussion and the intellectual rigours of academic debate. Yet lately they are accused of leaving that rigour behind, and, in the words of one of the latest commentators:

The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason.

The words are those of Nathan Lean, one of the latest to join the ranks of those criticising what they perceive as the extremism of the new atheism. I take the words from another new critic of the new atheism, Jerome Taylor, whose article, “Atheists Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris face Islamophobia backlash.” And Taylor seems to be fully in accord with other critics, ending his article with another quote from Lean, who claims that the new atheism “sprinkles intellectual atheism on top of the standard neocon, right-wing worldview of Muslims.”

One of the problems with the “new criticism” is that their criticism seems to be as incendiary and ill-founded as, according to them, the new atheist critique of Islam. Indeed, none of them seem to be above misrepresenting the objects of their criticism. For instance, in this latest sally forth from their fastnesses in Britain’s premier newspapers and magazines, Jerome Taylor says, without any qualification, that Sam Harris,

Wearing a palpable disdain for Islam on his sleeve he has also written in favour of torture, pre-emptive nuclear strikes and the profiling not just of Muslims but “anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be a Muslim.”

While I think that Harris would have been better off had he left his remarks on torture or pre-emptive nuclear strikes unsaid, it is only fair to point out that those who make this kind of blanket statement are seriously misrepresenting what he does say under these headings. Indeed, while the criticism of Islam in fairly general terms seems to me to be justified, given the written evidence of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, there is no excuse for someone like Jerome Taylor to ignore the contexts and the qualifications in terms of which Harris has spoken of torture or pre-emptive nuclear attack. Nor is it obvious that Harris is “using [his] particularly anti-Islamic brand of rational non-belief to justify American foreign policies over the last decade,” as Nathan Lean suggests in his Salon article, “Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens: New Atheists flirt with Islamophobia,” which Taylor quotes with approbation.

One of the problems here, I believe, is that the new atheists have devoted themselves largely to the criticism of Christianity, and their remarks on Islam have tended to be prompted mainly by events, rather than by systematic study and critique of Islam itself. They have done so, for the most part, because they do not feel qualified to criticise Islam in depth. Indeed, as Richard Dawkins recently revealed, some of them have not even read the Qur’an. Of course, that would not settle matters, for the Qur’an itself is not given an historical context. As an apparently timeless revelation, understanding of the Qur’an is impossible without the interpretive gloss provided by extra-Qur’anic sources, such as the Sira (or biography of Muhammad) and the Sunnah, which comprises the whole complex of Qur’an, Sira and Hadith (the remembered sayings of the prophet of Islam). And even then, the Islamic doctrine of abrogation, in which earlier revelations are suppressed in favour of new revelations, is nowhere clearly explained. So, reading the Qur’an is not, in itself, sufficient to ground a comprehensive criticism of Islam. Yet Islam itself, since it makes such large and implacable claims, is in serious need of criticism. Indeed, since its eruption onto the Western stage and into the Western consciousness, on 11 September 2001, and the continued threat of violence from Muslims in response to any perceived insult to its prophet, or criticism of the finality of the revelation supposedly vouchsafed to him, such criticism is an immediate and urgent necessity.


However, there are some things that we can know about Islam simply from the way that Muslims have behaved and are behaving. Of course, when I say this, it may seem as though I am secretly including, within that general statement, all Muslims, and if that is what I am doing, then it may seem as though I am, within the meaning that the word has now attracted, an Islamophobe. (I am pleased to say that, as I write the word, Microsoft Windows 8 does not recognise ’Islamophobe’ as a word in English, and it recognises the word ‘Islamophobia’ only because I added it to the dictionary.) But what is an “Islamophobe”? Is it someone who criticises Islam, or to be an Islamophobe must I harangue or make offensive remarks to known (or supposed) Muslims in the street? A homophobe, for example, is known by his views of homosexuality, views which he cannot keep under wraps upon meeting someone who is (or appears to be) homosexual. He is likely to oppose changing laws that restrict or forbid homosexual activity, or to regret that they have been changed, and he will undoubtedly strenuously oppose giving public legal recognition to the relationships of homosexuals, whether by registering civil unions, or providing laws which allow homosexual persons to “marry” (a word which, in this context, a homophobe would claim to be not only misused, but to be, in the words of the Vatican document, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons, such as ”would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage”). But how is an Islamophobe to be recognised? Is it enough that one supposes that, given the actions and words of many Muslims, Islam poses an immediate danger to Western societies, and constitutes a threat to democratic polities wherever found?

If that is all that is required, then I am an Islamophobe – a term which would then include many other moderate and reasonable people – and the reasons for being so are simple. For at the heart of Islam lies the life and words (or at least the life and words as Islam has received them) of the apostle of Islam, Muhammad. He is, for Muslims, as Jesus is for Christians, someone who led an ideal life, and thus is a model for what constitutes the good life for Muslims. However, that supposedly good life is characterised by an endorsement of violence which is unique amongst the known founders of world religions. It is of course true that there is ample evidence in the Jewish Tanach for horrendous religious violence, amounting, in some cases, to genocide. Interestingly, though, there is scant historical evidence for the events described – in what Christians have self-intrestedly call the Old Testament – in terms of the consecration to destruction of whole peoples, nor do either Christians or Jews, for the most part, at least, think that such actions are justified by their religious beliefs. However, some of the key elements of Muhammad’s life are acts of horrendous violence, and war itself, according to the Qur’an, is central to the proof of religious fidelity. As David Nirenberg points out in his book Anti-Judaism,

Battle comes “in order that God might test what is in your breasts and prove what is in your hearts” (Q[ur'an] 3:154). By revealing the different behavior of those who strive in the way of God, and those who, like the Jews, fear to fight because they are “greediest of mankind for life” (Q 2: 96), war makes visible the hidden inner doubt harbored by the hypocrite. [148]

Muhammad himself was a warlord, and engaged in the most brutal acts, such as, according to one tradition, personally beheading all the men of one Jewish tribe, who were brought to him in batches, and then dividing their possessions, including women and children, amongst the faithful, as booty, taking a fifth of the booty for himself, of which portion one was, variously, either wife or daughter of one of the men he beheaded, whom he took to wife, consummating his “marriage” to her on the very day that her menfolk were slaughtered.

This ideal of the zealous warrior is deeply embedded in the piety of Islam, and the number of those prepared to risk their lives in defence of the honour of their prophet and in furtherance of the supremacy of Islam, is not insignificant. Those who point this out are now being called Islamophobic. But Harris’s point that right-wing nut cases and fascists seem to be the only voices of moral clarity about the threat that Islam poses to democracy and freedom is taken as an expression of the very things that he deplores. His whole purpose in saying that right-wing fanatics and fascists are the only ones who perceive the threat that political Islam poses to Western institutions and freedoms, as he says in his “Response to Controversy,”

was to express my concern that the political correctness of the Left has made it taboo to even notice the menace of political Islam, leaving only right-wing fanatics to do the job. Such fanatics are, as I thought I made clear, the wrong people to do this, being nearly as bad as jihadists themselves. I was not praising fascists: I was arguing that liberal confusion and cowardice was empowering them.

But jihadists do not, Harris believes (and I agree), express views inconsistent with the fundamentals of Islam. Indeed, jihadists and other radical Islamists, always justify their crimes against humanity, as Harris says, ”by reference to their most sacred concern: Islam.” And there is no obvious inconsistency involved in their doing so, for Islam has, from the very beginning, sanctified religious violence. If pointing this out is Islamophobic, then I am Islamophobic, and so are Harris and many others, including Dawkins; and Hitchens, were he still alive, would have to be counted amongst us.

If the claim that jihadists and radical Islamists are not acting contrary to the fundamental principles of Islam is false, then some explanation is required of the widespread violence that characterises the Muslim world. Most radical Islamists kill other Muslims, though, from the claims of security services in Britain, the United States, Canada, and other democratic nations, many plans of jihadist violence in the West have been foiled. This does not mean that Muslims are never a persecuted minority, as the oppression of Burma’s Muslim population testifies, but the widespread violence of Muslims, and the continued threats of violence by Muslims against any who dare to insult their prophet, is often supported by Muslim scholars, whose fatwas (learned opinions of Muslim scholars), beginning with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, often license the killing of those who insult the prophet or criticise Islam. That does not mean that all Muslims scholars support such declarations, for Islam is not an institution with a centralised authority, like the Roman Catholic Church. In Islam authority is dispersed, but there seems to be no reason to hold that fatwas endorsing the murder of individuals – a practice whose origin can be found in Muhammad’s own practice – can be held to be inconsistent with Islam’s founding principles.

Such beliefs matter, and the criticism of such beliefs is an imperative. It has to be made clear that some things taken for granted in liberal democracies are not negotiable; but it also has to be made clear that the evidence that Islam is compatible with these non-negotiable things is by no means evident, even if we grant that the majority of Muslims resident in those democracies are peace-loving people who simply want to get on with their lives. Glenn Greenwald (another new critic of the new atheism), in a Guardian op-ed, asks “whether rational atheism is being used as a cover for Islamophobia and US militarism.”

Yet it is hard to argue Harris’s point that the beliefs of Islam are unique in demanding many forms of religious violence and oppression. Sometimes, as Harris himself acknowledges, he has “made the job of distorting [his] views easier than it needed to be,” and even that “a careful reader was kind enough to take the author’s feet out of [his] mouth” on a number of issues. But at the heart of Harris’s critique of Islam is his belief that it is not an accident that so many Muslims believe that jihad and martyrdom are the highest callings in human life, while many Tibetans believe that compassion and self-transcendence are.

In other words, as Harris says, “beliefs matter,” and the beliefs of Islam are not only compatible with violence, but may rightly be seen as encouraging violence on behalf of religion. Harris may be wrong, as Hitchens apparently believed, about the moral clarity of right-wing fanatics and fascists, but his central point, bluntly stated, is that the beliefs of Islam directly warrant violent acts of murder and oppression, and that this fact is an impediment to the emergence of a global civil society.

He also points out that his criticism of Islam includes the fact that Muslims do far more harm to Muslims than to others. I quote Harris on this subject in detail:

Finally, as I regularly emphasize when discussing Islam, no one is suffering under its doctrine more than Muslims themselves: Muslim jihadists primarily kill other Muslims. And the laws against apostasy, blasphemy, idolatry, and other forms of peaceful expression diminish the freedoms of Muslims far more than those of non-Muslims living in the West. Liberals like Greenwald, who are so eager to swing the flail of Islamophobia, display a sickening insensitivity to the plight of women, homosexuals, and freethinkers throughout the Muslim world. At this moment, millions of women and girls have been abandoned to illiteracy, compulsory marriage, and lives of slavery and abuse under the guise of “multiculturalism” and “religious sensitivity.” And the most liberal Muslim minds are forced into hiding. The best way to address this problem is by no means obvious. But lying about its cause, and defaming those who speak honestly in defense of a global civil society, seems a very unlikely path to a solution.

The problem is, of course, that the criticism of religion, and especially, today, the criticism of Islam, is likely to appear uncharitable and sometimes even xenophobic. But that criticism is what the new atheism is committed to. Not only Islam, but all religions, fall under its censure. That Islam attracts particularly emphatic dismissal is scarcely surprising, considering the role that Muslim violence plays in the world today. It is not simply, as Greenwald asserts, that “some Muslims commit atrocities in the name of their religion (like some people of every religion do),” for (1) terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslims are not uncommon today, and (2) the sacred texts and traditions of Islam apparently sanction such acts.

This is not to deny what Greenwald calls the Western “splurge of violence” in parts of the Muslim world, though it is hard to justify Greenwald’s claim that

… the western world has been engaged in a decade-long splurge of violence, aggression and human rights abuses against Muslims, justified by a sustained demonization campaign.

Indeed, most of those who have prosecuted the so-called “war on terror” have been very careful to make it clear that the war is not a war on Islam. In his speech immediately following the 9/11 terror attacks, President Bush did not mention Islam once. In his speech to Congress declaring war on terror, he speaks of Al Qaeda as ”a fringe form of Muslim extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics everywhere.” Sam Harris was, however, as Greenwald is happy to point out, not so careful, and, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which sparked Harris’s book The End of Faith, did consider Islam to be the enemy. But for Harris, as his Letter to a Christian Nation makes patently clear, Christianity too is an enemy and in need of severe censure. The only religion for which Harris evinces any sympathy is Vajrayana Buddhism.

In view of Osama bin Laden’s justification for Al Qaeda’s actions on 9/11, and Islam’s stated beliefs, it is hard to fault this logic, but the official American response has been quite different. As Daniel Pipes has pointed out, American officials are reluctant to identify Islamist violence, committed by Islamist Americans in the United States, as Islamist. As he says in the linked article:

Politicians and others avoid mention of Islam, Islamism, Muslims, Islamists, mujahideen, or jihadists. Instead, they blame evildoers, militants, radical extremists, terrorists, and al-Qaeda.

This does not look like “sustained demonization.” This is not to say that other Americans, and others in the West, have not responding by vilifying Muslims. Nor is it to say that the war in Iraq was justified, nor that the human rights of many Muslims have not been violated. Greenwald himself at one point gave the President “the benefit of the doubt” over the war with Iraq, changing his mind, and concluding

… reluctantly, that the administration had veered far off course from defending the country against the threats of Muslim extremism.

In his criticism of Harris, Greenwald appears to have concluded that Muslim extremism is not a threat, and that Muslims, like the votaries of other religions, sometimes commit atrocities. This is surely a misrepresentation of the facts, and Greenwald must know it.

Islam is peculiar in being founded, at least in terms of its own self-understanding, in warfare, just as it was spread by means of imperial conquest. The expression of Islam’s imperialist ideology is a familiar feature of contemporary Islam. According to one writer on the website Islam Watch (which claims to be run “a group of Muslim apostates, who have left Islam out of our own conviction when we discovered that Islam is not a religion at all”):

Islam’s ultimate goal is to conquer the whole world for its God – Allah, by destroy [sic] all other religions and murder all non-Muslims who refuse to convert to Islam.

It seems hard to deny that this is the stated aim of Islam, though its effective power to bring this conquest about may reasonably be held to be in considerable doubt. However, we should not fool ourselves. There are clear signs in Muslim doctrine and history to support the claim that world domination is “Islam’s ultimate goal.” Islam made two major incursions into continental Europe, occupying Spain and the Balkans in the process, but getting no farther, so Islam’s clear intent to subordinate the peoples of the earth to the rule of its god should not be in question; and such ideologies, whatever their power, are dangerous, and should be recognised as such. Sustained criticism is absolutely necessary. However, since the destruction of Islam itself may be as quixotic as Islam’s ultimate goal, in addition to the criticism of Islam, critical understanding of the history of Islam and of the formation of its sacred texts, as well as the development of a more liberal understanding of its beliefs, should be strongly encouraged. Tom Holland’s critical history of Islam’s beginnings is an important place to start. Also necessary is for Muslim scholars and theologians to recognise the importance of a sustained philological and historical critique of the formation of the Qur’an, and other traditions, including the biography of Muhammad (the Sira), for his existence as the sole prophetic voice of early Islam must be severely questioned. These studies will not be easy for the collective of Muslim scholars to undertake, but nothing less is necessary if Islam is not to be a continuing threat to the future of the quickly emerging global civilisation.

Ignorance is the Mother of all Religions

I am reminded of a story one of my professors in college told. The story was about the power of the imagination exhibited by a little girl at play. She and her parents were on their vacation and one night at a hotel and the little girl was craving something to do. Her father retrieved three matches from the book in the ashtray near the bed and told her to use her imagination. The little girl played with them for a little while reenacting the story of Hansel and Gretal. It was not long before the little girl screamed and started crying. When her father asked what was wrong she held up one of the matches and said the witch had frightened her and she didn't want to play with that match anymore.

It is remarkable what one's imagination can do, especially in children or those with limited capacity. I have seen how capacity can be limited by lack of education or simple ignorance even in myself. Take the human body for an example. For a long time people believed, and some still do, that the simplest act of human machination or operation is a miracle. It is ignorance of physiology that creates the miracle. The same goes for natural phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and lighting and sometimes they are still thought to be caused by a deity when we can explain these things through plate tectonics and the gravitational effects of the sun and moon on the earth's crust, patterns of oceanic currents of warm and cold water, and electro-static dishcharge caused by the friction of clouds. Take a plastic fork and rub it on your hair and let a slow thin stream of water come out of the faucet and hold the fork near the stream. The path of the water will bend towards the fork. Is that magic? Am I god for being able to move water without any visible explanation? Not too long ago I would have been.

It is well known that the Ancient Greeks revered their heroes and legends. In Greece we found something interesting. Elephant bones that were re-buried in the form of giant men. An elephant skeleton reformed in the shape of a man would give the impression of a giant with one eye socket where the elephants trunk would be. Could this be a Cyclops? In China, bones have been found of dinosaurs, could these be the Chinese dragon? In every good lie there is a hint of truth and sometimes the unexplained and mysterious are explained through myth. Paleontologists find dinosaurs, this does not mean that people a thousand years ago did not as well. It is not new science that we have today, it is just not as crowded with religious ignorance as it used to be. Consider the elephant/Cyclops when you read the Genesis account for the Nephalim, or Leviathan. Imagine what the imagination can do with fossils exposed by the elements of no living creature that is seen today and when found by ignorant shepherds and tribesman 5000 years ago! Now imagine the stories that could be spun through the centuries from these accounts to explain what, and sometimes why, they are there.

From the time we are children we have always asked questions. Why is the sky blue? Where did we come from? Religions have always attempted to answer these questions and usually through ignorance until they are faced with irrefutable proof. The world is flat, the Sun revolves around the Earth, and the Earth is the center of the Universe were all once believed to be universal truths in religion that were infallible. People were imprisoned for thinking otherwise. Every time science shoots a hole into ignorant religious beliefs the religious either deny it outright, make up excuses and in the case of apologists today they adapt the science to explain the religion. Infallibility is consistency with truth and only religion claims infallibility.

NEVER SURRENDER: THE LONELY WAR OF HIROO ONODA

His home was a dense area of rainforest and he lived on the wild coconuts that grew in abundance.

Hiroo Onoda: never surrender

His principal enemy was the army of mosquitoes that arrived with each new shower of rain. But for Hiroo Onoda there was another enemy - one that remained elusive.

Unaware that the Second World War had ended 29 years earlier, he was still fighting a lonely guerrilla war in the jungles of Lubang Island in the Philippines. His story is one of courage, farce and loyalty gone mad.

Lubang Island: news travelled slowly

Hiroo Onoda was born to be a soldier. He had enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army at the age of 20, receiving training in intelligence and guerrilla warfare. In December, 1944, he and a small group of elite soldiers were sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines.

Their mission was to destroy the island’s little airstrip and port facilities. They were prohibited, under any circumstances, from surrendering, or committing suicide.

US landing at Leyte: beginning of the end for Japanese
occupation of Philippines

‘You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand…’ read Onoda’s military order. ‘So long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you [to] give up your life voluntarily.’

Onoda was unable to destroy Lubang’s landing facilities, enabling US and Philippine forces to capture the island in February, 1945. Most of the Japanese soldiers were either imprisoned or killed. But Onoda and three others fled to the hills, from where they vowed to continue the fight.

Japanese soldiers in the Philippines

Lubang Island was small: 16 miles long and just six miles wide. Yet it was covered in dense forest and the four Japanese soldiers found it easy to remain in hiding. They spend their time conducting guerrilla activities, killing at least 30 Filipinos in one attack and clashing with the police on several other occasions.

In October, 1945, the men stumbled across a leaflet that read: ‘The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains.’ Onoda did not believe it: he was convinced it was Allied propaganda.

A couple of months later, the men found a second leaflet that had been dropped from the air. It was a surrender order issued by General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Commander of the Fourteenth Army.

Once again, Onoda and his men did not believe it to be genuine and vowed to continue Japanese resistance.

General Tomoyuki:
'You can surrender now.' 

Four long years passed and still the little band were living in he forest. But by now, one of the four - Yuichi Aktsu - had had enough. He abandoned his comrades, surrendered to the Filipino army and returned to Japan. He informed the army that three of his comrades still believed the war to be ongoing.

Another two years passed before family photographs and letters were finally dropped into the forest on Lubang Island. Onoda found the parcels but was convinced it was all part of an elaborate trick. He and his two companions remained determined to continue fighting until the bitter end.

They had little equipment and almost no provisions: they survived by eating coconuts and bananas and occasionally killing a cow. Their living conditions were abominable: there was the tropical heat, constant rain and infestations of rats. All the while they slept in makeshift huts made from branches.

Years rolled into decades and the men began to feel the effects of age. One of Onoda’s comrades was killed by local Filipinos in 1954: another lived for a further 18 years before being shot in October, 1972. He and Onoda had been engaged in a guerrilla raid on Lubang’s food supplies when they got caught in a shoot-out.

Onoda was now alone: the last Japanese soldier still fighting the Second World War, a conflict that had ended 27 years earlier.

By now his struggle had become a lonely one, yet he refused to lay down his arms. He was still conducting guerrilla raids in the spring of 1974, when a traveling Japanese student, Noria Suzuki, made contact with him.

Suzuki broke the news that the war had ended a long time previously.

Suzuki meets Onoda

Onoda refused to believe it. He told Suzuki he would never surrender until he received specific orders to that effect from his superior officer.

Only now did the Japanese government get involved in trying to bring Onoda’s war to an end. They managed to locate his previous commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, who was thankfully still alive.

The major was flown to Lubang Island in order to tell Onoda in person to lay down his weapons.

He was finally successful on 9 March, 1974. ‘Japan,’ he said to Onoda, ‘had lost the war and all combat activity was to cease immediately.’

If it's 1974, the war must be over. Onoda lays down
his weapons

Onoda was officially relived from military duties and told to hand over his rifle, ammunition and hand grenades. He was both stunned and horrified.

‘We really lost the war!’ were his first words. ‘How could they [the Japanese army] have been so sloppy?

When he returned to Japan, he was feted as a national hero. But Onoda disliked the attention and found Japan a mere shadow of the noble imperial country he had served for so many years.

Hiroo Onoda is alive to this day. Now 90 years of age, he remains grateful to Major Taniguchi for tracking him down in the Philippines.

The King who would be slapped

In Ancient Mesopotamia, the new year was rung in at a festival known as Akitu, which means “barley” in Sumerian. The festival was made up of two distinct festivals, each held at the beginning of the two half-years on the Sumerian calendar—one to celebrate sowing barley, and the other to celebrate cutting it.

Following the first new moon after the vernal equinox in late March, the Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia would honor the rebirth of the natural world with a multi-day festival called Akitu. This early New Year’s celebration dates back to around 2000 B.C., and is believed to have been deeply intertwined with religion and mythology. During the Akitu, statues of the gods were paraded through the city streets, and rites were enacted to symbolize their victory over the forces of chaos. Through these rituals the Babylonians believed the world was symbolically cleansed and recreated by the gods in preparation for the new year and the return of spring.

One fascinating aspect of the Akitu involved a kind of ritual humiliation endured by the Babylonian king. This peculiar tradition saw the king brought before a statue of the god Marduk, stripped of his royal regalia and forced to swear that he had led the city with honor. A high priest would then slap the monarch and drag him by his ears in the hope of making him cry. If royal tears were shed, it was seen as a sign that Marduk was satisfied and had symbolically extended the king’s rule. Some historians have since argued that these political elements suggest the Akitu was used by the monarchy as a tool for reaffirming the king’s divine power over his people.

The festival started on the 21^st of Adar, running until the 1^st of Nisannu. The two most important places during the festival were the Temple of the supreme god Marduk (the Esagila), and the “House of the New Year” in the north of the city of Babylon. The primary gods of the festival were Marduk (of course) and Marduk’s son, Nabu.

The first three days of the festival weren’t filled with a whole lot of excitement—mostly prayers, pleading for the safety of the city and people, and confessing. On the fourth day, seemingly reassured by three days of sad prayers, folks got a little uppity, and the party began! The high priest would recite the Enuma Elish—the Babylonian creation epic—in preparation for the following day, sort of like many people’s modern traditions of watching White Christmas on Christmas Eve, or watching the ball drop in New York’s Times Square before midnight on New Year’s Eve.

On the fifth day, the King of Babylon was required to “submit” to Marduk—essentially, the King would enter the Esagila, be stripped of all his objects of power, and then got slapped across the face by the high priest.  And while slapping kings isn’t generally recommended for folks who plan on staying, well, alive, in this case the high priest was acting as a vessel of the god Marduk, forcing the King to remain humble and reflect on his blessings. In fact, the slap had to be hard enough to draw tears, and the more tears? The better!

While we don’t understand all the rituals that went on afterward, historians know that the sixth day and following saw a parade of sorts, perhaps several. The gods arrived in boats and traveled to the temples—that is, gold statuettes of the gods were carried and paraded around as the King made his rounds—and battles were recited and acted out with these statues. At the end of the seventh day, the procession was supposed to end up at the House of the New Year, amidst plenty of rousing songs and dances from the populace (no “Aud Lang Syne” at this party!).

Days eight through ten get a little shady in terms of historical knowledge of what happened, but perhaps that should be expected—when you’ve been celebrating for seven days beforehand, there’s bound to be a little forgetfulness at the bottom of one’s tankard of ale, if you catch my meaning.

We do know that on the eleventh day (or twelfth, depending on the source), the gods—ie. statues—boarded their boats to sail away for another year. And presumably everyone else went home and took a long nap.

Married With Children

Married With Children (1987-1997) in many ways resembles a similar sitcom framework to All in the Family. The show works very hard to use comedy to expose the shocking reality of poverty and dispel television’s myth of happy families, but in the process it reproduces very normalized scripts of femininity and masculinity. Brunson and Caughie argue that the image of femininity that is depicted by Married With Children represents a male view of women’s experience.  This is likely largely due to the writers of the show recognizing that Married With Children had managed to capture the attention of male television viewers, something that became less and less common as the sitcom evolved. 

This clip sets up the characters as they will remain for the rest of the series. Peggy is a lazy housewife. Al is a hardworking shoe salesman. Bud is the smart one, and Kelly is a tramp.

The show was created as one of the early shows for the emerging FOX network. FOX was invented in an attempt to capture the MTV generation and wasn’t afraid to push, even cross the boundaries of acceptable morality.  FOX was also extremely interested in capturing the demographic of young, black television viewers, and Married With Children was successful in doing this. This is interesting, as Clarence Lusane notes, considering the characters were essentially characterizations of “white trash.” In direct contrast to The Cosby Show, which was the most popular show on television at the time of Married With Children’s inception, which depicted an upper class life, void of any real drama, or problems, Married With Children exposed the harsh realities of poverty and working class life. The bubbly, upward-mobility of the Huxtables is subverted by the dysfunction and self-destruction evident in the Bundy household. In fact, the original title of the show was “Not the Cosbys.” Lusane also suggests that the verbal sparring that is the staple of interaction in Married with Children was modeled after many of the black comedies that executive producer Michael Moye worked on in the 1970s, but that in the culture of television and network hierarchies, it would have been impossible to produce a show featuring black characters with the same class-consciousness that the Bundy family evoked. 

The main character of the show, Al Bundy, is depicted as the hard-working, hard-done-by working class man, and something of an anti-hero. He began working in a shoe store as a part time summer job in high school, but after an injury meant he could no longer play football he became stuck in the shoe-salesman job as his full-time career. Al is frequently nostalgic about his football-glory days, and constantly reflects on how his life might have been different if he had not been “trapped” into marrying Peggy straight out of high school. This is a particularly important articulation of the historical and social context of the 1980s when an economic downturn meant that unskilled labour jobs were at a minimum and the market depended on a workforce that could afford to buy consumer goods, such as the shoes that Al works so hard to sell. 

The interplay between the Bundy family and their next-door neighbour, Marcy and her husband(s) is especially interesting because of the way Marcy is constructed as a feminist. She is portrayed as dominant over her first husband Steve, and her quasi-feminist statements are frequently discounted and undermined by Al and Peggy. Marcy and Steve frequently lord their wealth and job security over the Bundys, and blame the difference between the two families on their  lack of work ethic. However, in later episodes, Marcy re-marries to a younger man, Jefferson, who is content to live off of Marcy’s income. Jefferson and Al become quick friends, and form an all-men’s group called “NOMAAM” (National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Manhood Masterhood) to protest against feminism. Marcy loses what little credibility she had as a feminist, and with it any potential she has to present resistance to normative gender roles.

[1] Brunsdon, Chartlotte and John Caughie, eds. 1997. Feminist Television: A Reader. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Inc.

[2] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[3] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[4] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[5] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[6] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

[7] Lusane, Clarence. 1999. “Assessing the Disconnect between Black & White Television Audiences: The Race, Class and Gender Politics of Married… With Children.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27(1):12-20.

Perceiving Reality

What is reality?

The best question to start one’s quest for truth.

No one sees reality as it really is because we all see the world through layers of cognitive biases & assumptions. So we see the world as we are, instead of as it is.

A good place to start being more circumspect about our beliefs is to question how we make our beliefs in the first place.

I always advise people now not to believe everything they think or feel. And to question the reasons for those beliefs.

Most of us, as humans, base our beliefs on emotion driven thinking. Rather than on strong evidence & objectivity.

As a result human beings are extremely gullible to unjustified beliefs.

Psychologists can tell you that most people make their beliefs first then look for evidence to confirm those beliefs. This leaves us vulnerable to subconscious cognitive biases like confirmation bias or observer bias.

As humans we can be very irrational about our beliefs and hold onto them despite disconfirming evidence to the contrary.

I strongly recommend studying how we, as human beings, actually form our belief systems.

Accepting that there is an actual reality out there is the first premise.

Then realising & understanding the limitations of our perception of reality is the next step.

Understanding how our minds perceive reality starts us on our journey into discovering what reality is & how to avoid the mistake of believing everything we think & feel is a true reflection of actual reality.

I believe that the best way to perceive reality is with a combination of:

1. Personal experience
2. Rational thought & reasoning
3. Empirical evidence.

The more of these three methods we use to understand reality, the more reliable our perception of it.

Our perception of reality is quite subjective.

It’s scary when one realises how unreliable our understanding of the natural world really is.

But rather, question everything!

You can have different emotions about knowledge. Certain information can make us feel happy or sad. But the information or knowledge exists independent of our feelings about it. The information actually doesn’t care what emotion it evokes. It just exists.

It’s a well studied & understood psychological phenomenon common to all humanity & used by most religions & even some businesses.

When looking at the evidence for cognitive biases, assumptions, phobias & prejudices being used as evidence for truth it’s frightening.

After 30 years of following my faith tradition & truly putting it to the test on many occasions I ‘knew’ I knew God was more real to me than life itself.

I had so many experiences which ‘proved’ to me of it’s veracity.

I too put my absolute trust in ‘spiritual knowledge’.

Till I realised I had been grossly in error. I came to realise the power of the mind in tricking us into believing in fallacy, as if it were reality.

Our minds are amazingly powerful & incredibly malleable which makes us vulnerable to severe errors in judgement.

As humans we are all susceptible to incredulity & even serious gullibility.

The more we understand the workings of the mind, the more we understand ourselves.

I recommend a wonderful book called ‘The Believing Brain’ by Michael Shermer, which looks at the evidence for how our minds work & how human beliefs are formed.

There really is no such thing as ‘spiritual knowledge’. It’s just explained very simply by how our minds work.

All beliefs are either justified by evidence or unjustified.

Declaring belief or faith in something is honest.

Hoping for something is honest.

Expressing a feeling about something is being open, and human, and authentic.

No-one can be absolutely certain of anything because none of us experiences reality in every possible way imaginable. As all of us merely perceives some aspects of reality, so none of us can know absolutely!

We can assess reality and judge the certainty based on levels of probability. So we assign degrees of certainty over information based on our assessment using the three methods I mentioned above:

1.Personal experiences,
2.Reasoning/rational thinking, and
3.Scientific evidence & observation.

Our assessment of the level of certainty is dependent on how much information we have about a subject, our preconceived ideas, and on automatic subconscious assumptions, biases, phobias and prejudices. These are often inculcated into our minds by the culture in which we grew up and live.

But asserting to have certain ‘knowledge’, when it is merely faith, hope and belief is, I believe, a form of self-delusion and shows a lack of thorough care in defining that level of certainty.

It is, of course, a common finding amongst all people and religions of the world and in every human being to some degree.

All of us, as humans, dislike uncertainty. Our subconscious minds abhor insecurity.

So, even if we are not certain, our subconscious minds will persuade us that we are certain after all.

A very useful way to avoid becoming trapped by unscrupulous people or organisations is to question even our own thoughts and emotions, instead of interpreting warm peaceful feelings as confirmations of the Spirit.

Being honest to oneself is the first step to having integrity and being authentic.

That is my goal.

Though I realize that our perception of reality is imperfect, I don’t hold to the concept of universal relativity.

There are many things in the natural world which the scientific method has discovered are universal certainties. Just like with mathematics and certain sections of science like physics & chemistry which are absolutes.

But I think it is seriously misleading for anyone to consider ‘spiritual knowledge’ in the same way.

One is justified by empirical evidence, the other by feelings.

Most religions use similar strategies to convince their adherents that they can rely on their feelings as confirmation of truth, & that feelings about God & their particular faith are somehow uniquely more reliable then any other emotions they may experience.

This complete & absolute trust in spiritual knowledge as being supreme is what scares me now about religion.

For it is this absolute knowledge in what God wants them to do which leads some to give up their lives in suicide bombings.

On the other hand there are many wonderful people in the world who are constantly striving to find answers through scientific enquiry. A good scientist is never satisfied that they have all the answers. They humbly try to disprove their research to increase the degree of certainty.

I have since come to realise that what I considered knowledge was merely belief and faith. Fervent and sincere as it was at the time. I thought I knew. I fervently & sincerely believed I possessed unassailable and certain knowledge.

I was, in effect, lying to myself. It was merely belief, hope and faith.

Always question your cognitive assumptions.

Humans are naturally gullible. Just look at the billions of other religious adherents around the world. I admit I was one of them.

We all like a good story! Especially if it makes us feel good.

“Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing;
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use; are founded on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth.”