In defence of cliterodectomophobia: the left, secularism and religion
Posted on Tuesday 27 April, 2010
Filed Under Religion
OVER 90% of women in some African countries have undergone female genital mutilation, with religion the primary justification advanced by the perpetrators. Do you object to this? What are you, some sort of cliterodectomophobe or something? Beware, comrade. You are on the slippery slope to ritual child sacrificeophobia, that reductio ad absurdum of the arrogant eurocentric liberalism you clearly espouse.
We live in a climate in which the religious are increasingly strident in their insistence that they should be allowed to do anything and everything, including actions prohibited to others, solely because their interpretation of their faith enjoins it. It is time for the rest of us to take a stand, and tell them as gently as necessary that this is not so.
There was a time when the left, at least in its majority, would have come to the defence of rationalism and secularism. Not any more; Britain’s most widely-read socialist blog has just reprinted without criticism a polemic written by an Opus Dei supporter in defence of Pope Benedict XVI’s role in the Catholicism’s growing child abuse scandal. When it comes to religion, someone is very obviously losing the plot; please God, let it be Andy Newman rather than me.
Secularism has been part of the left’s DNA since the time that the word ‘left’ first took on a political connotation in eighteenth century France. Often this has entailed out-and-out atheism. The Bolsheviks, for instance, formed The League of the Militant Godless in 1925, and the clue is very much in the name.
Perhaps it was this outfit that blogger Liam MacUaid – a man with strong affinities to the Leninist tradition – subconsciously had in mind when he recently berated prominent liberals (as well as yours truly) for our apparent ‘militant godlessness’. Sorry mate, but I don’t know where to start here.
The irony is that I nowhere advocate godlessness of even the tamest stripe, and unconditionally support freedom of religion as being among the most basic of all human rights. I use the designation ‘secularism’ strictly in the dictionary sense of ‘the attitude that religion should have no place in civil affairs’. This position is entirely consistent with theism in most manifestations, and one which many believers embrace in recognition both that faith is a private matter, and that a multifaith society cannot work if one doctrine enjoys a legally privileged position.
OK, my opening paragraph was deliberately provocative. I can already anticipate the objections that prominent Islamic clerics and leaders of the Coptic church in Egypt have ruled that cliterodectomy finds no sanction in either the Qu’ran or the Bible.
But that misses the point. Given the fragmentary nature of Islam and Christianity, no single authority is entitled to rule on what is and what is not admissible. There is no biblical basis for the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for instance. But it is not the place of anybody outside Catholicism to decide what Catholics should properly believe on this score. Religion is whatever floats your numinosity.
Given the inherently subjective nature of religious belief, if a practitioner says that a practice is religiously motivated, than religiously motivated that practice undeniably is. Whether any given baby girl is about to be christened down the local branch of the CoE or undergo the total removal of her external genitalia is beside the point.
Accordingly, it would be ridiculous to claim that nurses who wish to wear crucifixes at work are not religiously motivated because the wearing of crucifixes at work is not commonly regarded as a core requirement of Christianity.
It is entirely reasonable that the medical authorities make a determination on whether necklaces of any type constitute a health and safety hazard in hospital wards, and enforce prohibition if appropriate. That I leave to them. Outside of work, individuals should be allowed to dress as they please.
And more than that. From a pedagogical point of view, it is patently undesirable that teaching assistants be clad in full face covering when in charge of young children. The niqab should be out of the question in these circumstances, again with precisely the same stipulations when people are off duty. Appeal to religious motivation is not some variety of divinely-backed all-purpose Get Out of Jail Free card, despite the attempts of some to play it as such.
And more than that still. I have for decades prevaricated on the question of faith schools. While I have never thought they were a good idea, my underlying leftwing libertarianism has made me open to argument that parental choice should be factored into the equation. Moreover, sheer pragmatism suggests that abolition is not politically do-able.
But on further reflection, I fear that the way in which they have served to cement Protestant-Catholic sectarianism in the North of Ireland, Scotland and even some English cities will be much multiplied as Islamic and evangelical schools become more common. There is a ratchet effect at work. If that were not enough, it is increasingly obvious that they act as conduits for the miseducation of children in backward and anti-scientific notions.
The left in any case opposes educational apartheid based on class; it should equally oppose educational apartheid based on religion. The only consistent secular position is that faith schools should be scrapped along with Eton and Harrow, and that all education should be both in the public sector and resolutely non-religious. There. Said it.
And finally, we urgently need to get over the argument from ‘X-o-phobia’, which is rapidly descending into meaninglessness. Since the notion of Islamophobia first entered common parlance, this stupid word game has been taken over by the right to institute something called Christianopobia. This, in a country where bishops get reserved places in the legislature.
Now the even uglier neologism Catholophobia is in the process of being erected as an absolute defence against the critique of this particular variant of Christianity. Can Scientologophobia be all that far away? For that matter, can I patent the term ‘secularismophobia’, and instantly find Andy and Liam guilty on this count?
Those that guard the right to proselytise implicitly grant consent to both counter-proselysis and secular critique. It was Karl Marx himself who insisted that ‘the criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo’. It should be stressed does not entail advocacy of gratuitously offensive attacks on religious congregations, which serve no purpose. That much is plain good manners.
But it does mean relentless and sustained ideological assault on the religious representatives of the ruling class, from the Pope through to Pat Robertson and onwards to the repulsive theocracy in power in Tehran. On that, we should be irreconcilable. If the left cannot shortly rediscover such a very basic truth, it could soon be finished altogether.
<<Go back
Comments
267 Responses to “In defence of cliterodectomophobia: the left, secularism and religion”
Leave a Reply
-
- Paul Mason: Rare Earth
- Comment Is Free: An honours system for those who fight to make Britain a better place
- Democracy crushed; elected President arrested; World wrings its hands
- Democracy crushed; elected President arrested; World wrings its hands
- NUT and PCS call for new pension strike on 28 March
-
-
Meta
-
“If you have, then higher education is definitely debased since my day.”
You should write for the Daily Mail Sue, no really you should!
But keep those ‘arguments’ coming, I am in awe of old fashioned education and the level of argument to which it has raised you.
“Yes religious people believe it comes from God. Idealists think it is somehow fixed in human nature. Marxists reject it and apply historical materialism.”
That’s not what I meant. I meant there are debates among cognitive scientists and others about whether, for instance, the idea of the supernatural comes from the way the brain functions (ie, an illusion created by basic cognitive patterns), or from a more general ‘need to explain’, or whatever.
“Well socialism came out of struggle, one lot of humans against another lot of humans, so not shared humanity but humanity in conflict. I am a socialist not because I think it has been handed down from god but because I think the world would function better if we had it, I can think this because I believe people are a product of their environment and not pre programmed.”
There is too much to unentangle in this mess for a Tuesday afternoon. But, briefly: *humanity* in conflict, though, not rats or chimps or ants. Of course it hasn’t been ‘handed down from God’ – do you think I’m arguing that ‘human universals’ are divine? Of course not: they’re the product of evolution. And for that reason, some things certainly *are* pre-programmed. We are pre-programmed (for short: it’s not my favourite phrase but it will serve) to communicate, though language, in social groups; we behave very differently, regardless of cultural specificity, even than very close relatives like chimps. It seems we are pre-programmed to like music, dancing, story-telling, and many other things.
Of course there are still *societies*, modes of production and what have you, which are different from each other. Of course socialism presupposes one such society – one with industry and wage-workers and so on. But the working class is the ‘universal class’ (um, Marx’s phrase) in part because its conditions allow, for the first time in history, the liberation of *humanity as such*.
But in order to have such liberation, you need a concept of humanity as such.
I’ll return to other bits later, but whilst reading the new comments I noticed this peculiar statement:
” A major reason the Soviet Union collapsed was the ideological battle between East and West and the people in the East chose the values of the West. “
Now far be it for me to tell Marxists anything about the Soviet Union, surely this analysis lacks a certain, er, material content?
I wouldn’t dream of telling Marxists about productive forces, economic theory or control of the means of production but it seems to me that the collapse of the Soviet Union had more to do with the inability of the CP and its ruling elite to actually manage and control the economy, and in turn provide resources and a reasonable standard of living for the population of the USSR.
I am sure there’s probably a lot more to it and we could argue about it all day, but in my view, the collapse of the Soviet Union had more to do with economics than some suppose ideological battle going on in people’s heads, still no doubt people will correct my ignorance on this topic with their own.
I really must protest. It was ‘Johnno’ who came up with the quote about the Soveit Union and he is emphatically NOT a Marxist. In fact, the entire thread has been arguing against his faniciful view of reality and politics.
One last belated contribution to the thread that wouldn’t die.
The recently late and very much lamented (at least by some of us) Fred Halliday did a great piece in 2006 attacking Ratzinger and all his works:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/benedict_4156.jsp
Particularly love his Garibaldi/Mussolini-esque call for a great secularist March on Rome:
The only solution to the pernicious and devious antics of Benedict XVI, his acolytes and allies, is to do even more than to challenge the claim of clergy and their leaders to take up political and social positions – it is to place in question the very legitimacy of the Vatican itself. The time has long past when this carbuncle had any right to be treated as a state and given the protection, for its diplomatic, ideological and money-laundering activities that it still enjoys. It would indeed be an excellent goal for reformers of global governance, and for proponents of global civil society, to set the eradication of the Vatican as one of their goals for their years to come.
If this cannot be done by international agreement between states, then other means of attaining this most desirable goal may be considered. The time may come when a mass mobilisation of secular and anti-clerical forces, drawn from across the world, is brought to Rome and simply occupies this anachronistic and pernicious entity; and in doing so abolishes the political and diplomatic authority of popes and cardinals, and turns the Vatican, its wealth and buildings, over to an international, secular, distributive society. It might be a change from demonstrating against the World Trade Organisation, and would target an organisation that has done far more harm on the global stage.
[end quote]
I can’t find a single word to disagree with there – its only by stripping away every last vestige of secular power and influence that remain to them that the Catholic and other churches can be saved from themselves.
modernity – I’m actually tempted to say that you’re right and leave it at that, but it should be noted that Marx talked [I can't recall his exact words, I think it's all in The German Ideology] of the superstructure as the realm in which ideological battles are fought, the way in which this is done may be determined by the economic base, but that doesn’t mean that it entirely determines the way people think about things.That their aspirations were not met may have turned a lot of people in the Soviet Empire to look to the West for inspiration, and it may have been a clumsy formulation JOHNNO used, but there was an ideological battle alongside the material one.
Modernity,
On the collapse of the Soviet Union, yes there were economic pressures that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. I said ideology was a major reason because I was conceding that values do converge and the Soviet Union was an example of 2 very different set of economic conditions (-the ‘East’ and the ‘West’) where the same idea -’capitalism’ was embraced. The cold war was an ideological battle and it was a battle won by the ‘West’. Think of the portrayal of East Germany as Grey, funless and West Germany as colourful and fun. The greater development in the ‘West’ certainly contributed to the demise of Communism in the ‘East’. Ideology definitely had a considerable role. And the reality definitely turned out to be very different.
I was speaking very generally about a philosophical point, i.e. though I reject universalism I understand that values, ideas can and do converge so a mass of people come to think along the same lines. Though as Marx himself said the idea of saying to people ‘Here is the Truth: kneel before it” runs contrary to Marxist thinking.
P.S. SueR – When a racist, degenerate like you tells me I am wrong that actually gives me great confidence I am on the right lines.
Just saying like!
To be honest I’m a little bit weary of people who apparently pretend to have some understanding of Marxism, but can’t grasp how the material realities of our material existence and economics tend to have much more bearing on how a State fails then some nebulous desire to the Western or hold Western “values”, whatever they might be in this context.
Put more simply, if you can’t grasp basic historical facts, their interactions, the empirical evidence, etc then you won’t be any bleeding use on philosophy, let alone Marxism.
An empirical fact to bear in mind, according to Gorbachev’s biography the USSR state spent some 40% of its budget on defence and related matters.
Compare that with Western economies where it has varied, I believe (and please do correct me) anywhere between 3-14% of Government spending.
Which means if you don’t have money to spend on social programmes and infrastructure because it’s been wasted on defence then your economy will not be very efficient and will not be able to provide the material resources necessary for its continuation.
Which might in turn explain the failure of the USSR, with its roots in economics, not in some supposed battle of ideology (which is essentially a bourgeois way of looking at things).
Which begs questions about both the Permanent Arms Economy (a concept that probably still has some Marxist defenders) and the basic premises of Keynesianism (which has considerably more).
Capitalist economies can spend enormous percentages of GDP on defence without collapsing – Nazi Germany (which until WW2 began remained far more capitalist than ‘socialist’) for instance devoted considerably more of its GDP to arms than Stalinist Russia.
This is because if you pay workers to produce pocket battleships and artillery shells they will spend their wages to buy consumer goods and thus maintain healthy levels of demand.
In ‘socialist’ economies its evidently much more of a zero sum game – central planners have to decide whether a finite quantity of resources goes to armaments or to making the stuff people actually want.
Capitalism being built around a growth mechanic will happily rape the environment, find whole new populations to make cheap plastic crap for us etc to allow both demands to be met.
Once socialists give up on the world revolution they are stuck in a situation where every resource allocation decision either endangers the safety of the state or deprives its population of the goods that they eventually came to believe capitalism freely showers on everyone.
The alternative is of course true social-imperialism on the Nazi model where an ever-growing empire is plundered to square the circle – but the hapless Soviets were the only empire in history whose supposedly subject provinces enjoyed significantly better standards of living than the population back home….
I believe the point I was making was that any State cannot ***continually*** spend large amounts of government expenditure on defence and armaments, because it detracts from other areas.
In the short to medium term it may be possible to spend more as a stimulant for the economy, etc etc
but ultimately it becomes an issue of guns before butter, which is not tenable in the ***long-term***.
Again, devoting a sizible percentage State expenditure for a comparatively short period of time may stimulate the economy, but if it is done for too long it becomes a drag on economic efficiency, social spending etc etc and would then lead to a decline in the economy.
Which is the point about the USSR….
Capitalism does let you have both guns and butter because it is endlessly creative and dynamic and will magically find new markets, new financial instruments etc to fund both – but it is true only up to a certain point.
The Nazis are a test case because they clearly did produce so many guns so quickly that the only way they could supply the German population with butter was by organised state plunder on an almost inconceivable scale.
Barring such monstrous exceptions the most dynamic capitalist economies historically seem to be those that spend more rather than less on guns.
The long economic dominance of Britain began at precisely the point when it set itself the task of building and maintaining the world’s largest navy – not when its Parliament was willing to bring about a civil war rather than pay a penny more in tax to build ships.
Before Britain’s rise the Dutch Republic was the most dynamic economy in the world only for so long as it was engaged in a century-long life or death struggle against first Spain and then France – as soon as its security was assured and its armies and fleets disbanded it declined precipitately.
Even America with its long resistance to military spending owed its greatest spurts of economic growth to those wars it did engage in.
And the other undeniable lesson of modern history is that capitalists are better at technological innovation and so literally get more bangs for their bucks.
For those of us old enough to remember the Cold War, analysts generally believed that the Soviet and NATO war machines were roughly equal in fighting power – however given the enormous and ever-growing gulf between the two blocs in electronics and communications technology, the Soviets had to build more and more outdated tanks and planes and rockets to match the West’s qualitative superiority.
As I said in a largely closed economy where every decision was a zero-sum one that led them to disaster.
An open economy built upon limitless greed and the endless innovation it fuels will always win such contests as long as there are still new markets for it to conquer plunder.
Its only when everything has been used up and there are no new worlds to conquer that the system will finally collapse under its own contradictions – and I am not sure living long enough to see that finally happen is altogether a good idea.
Anyway this beats thinking about the election….
“The Nazis are a test case because they clearly did produce so many guns so quickly”
NO, they are not.
For three reasons at least, 1) the German economy were starting from a low point with high unemployment 2) the period of arms production was not prolonged, probably in the order of 5+ years 3) it was not sustainable in a peacetime economy, etc
Compare that to the Soviet Union where the expenditure went on for decades and decades and decades and where the economy was primarily at peacetime, and a drain on resources.
So it is chalk and cheese to compare the two, or at least not very subtle.
But the point concerning the closed economy is a good one, and what we need to factor in on top of that is the inefficiencies, politics and interplay between the central planners, which resulted in environmental disasters, poor judgements, fiddled figures and shortages etc.
All of that (and a lot more) hardly helped to sustain the USSR.
I think we should be careful to say that the Soviet economy was outperformed by the West but that they were lead to disaster is a bit strong. In fact the post Soviet era saw far worse economic misery.
North Korea still manages to hold on despite some pretty grim economic data and huge military spending. Probably PART of the reason for this is due to the fact that the leadership can control information in North Korea better than the Soviet leadership could. After all the USSR and its satellites was one huge place. So ideology does matter – after all the US and USSR invested huge amounts of resources in the ideological battle. And they may be many things but they ain’t stupid.
Yes I probably should have said ‘too’ quickly.
And my poorly explained point is that they illustrate the point at which this imbalance between guns and butter (and BTW that very term originates with Hermann Goering) does indeed become unsustainable with any sort of market economy – for broadly the reasons you point out.
Where we differ is that as a Keynesian I’d argue that demand management through high government spending is broadly a good thing – and that historically this has been more likely to be on guns than getting men to literally dig holes in the ground and fill them in again.
But this simply does not apply to state-socialism where resource allocation is always a zero-sum game.
And I couldn’t agree more that the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union was a vast human catastrophe and that even the continuation of Brezhnevism would probably have caused less human suffering.
“But this simply does not apply to state-socialism where resource allocation is always a zero-sum game.”
I really don’t get this, I don’t get the closed economy point either to be honest. Resoource allocation is resource allocation. Capitalism’s resource allocation is not only blind but speculative. It wastes vast resources. Keynesianism has failed time and time again, it always loses out to the logic of capitalism.
A planned system will always involve an iterative process and there will be room for market mechanisms but with todays technology a socialist system is perfectly feasible.
Therefore the message should still be socialism or barbarism.
Is there a gap in the market for a Social-Barbaric Party?
Who would be a good leader?
Amy Winehouse?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bringing-the-vatican-to-j_b_571088.html?ref=fb&src=sp