Turns out that the Sadui author­it­ies aren’t above per­se­cut­ing young men for behav­ing like young men any more than they are above oppress­ing women for being women.

Of course, there is still a dif­fer­ence; I doubt these men are going to be pub­licly beaten for their actions.

I’ll bet Dr Wil­li­ams is taken aback at the response his com­ments has gen­er­ated, and I have to say, I think a lot of people are over­re­act­ing. Obvi­ously, I make no secret of the fact that I dis­agree with him and I’ll argue my point, but heck­ling the poor man out­side his Church? Call­ing for his resig­na­tion? Not even remotely called for, and noth­ing more than an attempt to limit his right to hold an opin­ion and express his views.

At this stage it’s prob­ably worth point­ing out that there are — at least — two sep­ar­ate groups who’re being crit­ical of his pos­i­tion, and it’s not the sec­u­lar­ists and the lib­er­als who’re call­ing for his resig­na­tion. Those voices are raised from within his own Church, and they’re not object­ing on gen­eral grounds to reli­gious accom­mod­a­tion in the law, they’re object­ing very spe­cific­ally to accom­mod­a­tion of reli­gions that aren’t theirs. Need­less to say, I dis­agree with those people at least strongly as I do Dr Williams.

In fact, on a re-​​reading his lec­ture, I real­ise just how badly mis­rep­res­en­ted by the media Dr Wil­li­ams was. I’m not say­ing I agree with him; far from it, but I don’t think he was call­ing for whole­sale modi­fic­a­tion of Brit­ish law, either. He makes some subtle points, and his words are, at times, ambigu­ous (one might say disin­genu­ous,) but there is cer­tainly a way to inter­pret what he said as noth­ing more con­tro­ver­sial than “just because the law gives someone a right, doesn’t mean we should neces­sar­ily force them to exer­cise that right at all times.” That much is obvi­ously true.

So, surely true enough is fair enough? Well, yes, but the assump­tion that someone might not want to exer­cise their rights is a dan­ger­ous one to estab­lish leg­ally, and an even more dan­ger­ous one to nation­ally con­sol­id­ate through the estab­lish­ment of local courts around the coun­try, which (will inev­it­ably) pre­sume the com­pli­city of the entire local pop­u­la­tion. Wil­li­ams talks about these supplementary-​​jurisdictions as being purely vol­un­tary, but offers no sug­ges­tions as to how to ensure duress of any kind does not play a role. Mat­thew Par­ris puts it excel­lently, in his piece in The Times:

Faiths cap­ture people. I do not mean this dis­par­agingly. So of course do pat­ri­ot­isms, ideo­lo­gies, fam­il­ies. But a reli­gion, prop­erly under­stood, makes pro­found claims on an indi­vidual and com­munity, quite unlike the demands of a golf club. It involves the use of pub­lic places and pub­lic ser­vices, the sub­or­din­a­tion of the individual’s will; and may demand that he sub­or­din­ate his spouse’s and children’s wills too. Hence our unease about duress, and the com­plete­ness of “consent”.

Dr Wil­li­ams, in a wel­ter of words, makes no ser­i­ous attempt to resolve this. Those who read his speech prop­erly will see that his entire argu­ment turns upon the free­dom of the group mem­ber to “opt out” of the “sup­ple­ment­ary jur­is­dic­tion” and choose Brit­ish law instead. But repress­ive faith groups make it cul­tur­ally dif­fi­cult — some­times well-​​nigh impossible — for a mem­ber to opt out. This gives them the very togeth­er­ness and focus that Dr Wil­li­ams wants to foster.

A reli­gion is more than a col­lec­tion of rules and habits: it is a com­plete moral and philo­soph­ical sys­tem with deep claims upon the inner and outer life of the adher­ent, from cradle, through school­ing, and bey­ond. The rules it lays down — the private laws — are of a more com­mand­ing kind than the rules of Scrabble or the High Peak Hunt because they are mor­ally joined-​​up: joined with a loy­alty bey­ond the State; joined within an over­arch­ing faith and its explan­a­tions of the Universe.

How can we expect someone who’d been raised, edu­cated and gov­erned accord­ing to cer­tain cul­tural and reli­gious pre­scrip­tions to real­ise, when it mat­ters, that they are able to “opt-​​out” of all that? Every­one they know believes and acts a cer­tain way; they have been raised to do the same. They might not even know there is a wider law guar­an­tee­ing them greater liberty. Paris, char­it­ably, talks about reli­gions as provid­ing “togeth­er­ness” and “focus,” and I dare-​​say he’s right, but the other side of that coin is obed­i­ence, con­form­ity and acqui­es­cence; not traits that I believe will lead to people look­ing out­side the sys­tem for redress.

Put simply, reli­gion and gov­ernance are a bad mix at any level. Reli­gions are, by their very nature, strongly ideo­lo­gical, and strongly ideo­lo­gical gov­ern­ments, reli­gious or oth­er­wise, fall all too eas­ily — some might say, inev­it­ably — into oppres­sion of dis­sent­ing views.

Addi­tion­ally, and as I’ve said before, there are real risks with intro­du­cing even small-​​scale sup­ple­mental jur­is­dic­tions in the con­text of the cur­rent Brit­ish pop­u­la­tion. By grant­ing legal status to aspects of cul­tural codes, we run the risk of grant­ing a ven­eer of legit­im­acy to the entirety of those codes, includ­ing ele­ments that the major­ity find abhor­rent, and by grant­ing already insu­lar com­munit­ies even greater autonomy, we don’t increase social cohe­sion on a wide scale, so much as splinter into a series of small, inde­pend­ent com­munit­ies with little in the way of com­mon­al­ity to bind them into a cohes­ive whole.

Apo­lo­gies for the lack of updates recently; I’ve been busy enjoy­ing a ver­it­able cor­nu­copia of symp­toms for the past couple of weeks, and haven’t really been up to writ­ing about much, even though there’s been plenty going on:

• The Texas Edu­ca­tion Agency has fired Chris Comer, a staff mem­ber of nine years, for send­ing an email announ­cing a talk by a Bar­bara For­rest, a prom­in­ent critic of ID. The inter­net has been buzz­ing, and For­rest her­self has writ­ten on how this proves her point that ID, rather than being a sci­entific pos­i­tion, is an attempt to force the reli­gious right’s agenda into the classroom (and the pub­lic con­scious­ness) through power-​​politics and out­right bul­ly­ing. Just remem­ber kids; it’s the Dar­win­ists who have a shady global con­spir­acy to sup­press the oppos­i­tion and get people fired just for sup­port­ing ID.

• The Brit­ish gov­ern­ment has given up all pre­tense at seek­ing con­sensus and is for­cing through legis­la­tion that will increase the time “sus­pec­ted ter­ror­ists” can be held without charge. If you’re a UK cit­izen, you can register your dis­pleas­ure by sign­ing this peti­tion. Please take the time; this is a hugely import­ant issue that bears dir­ectly on our most import­ant human rights.

• Some poor teacher was arres­ted, tried, jailed and then depor­ted for call­ing a Teddy Bear Muhammad. Local people took excep­tion to the fact that she wasn’t executed and took to the streets in protest. Gov­ern­ments the world over seem not to notice that whenever a group of people go bat­shit insane and start demand­ing inno­cent people are beheaded for some utterly trivial slight to their cul­ture, those people always seem to be Muslim. The Brit­ish pub­lic seems not to notice that the laws Gillian Gib­bons were arres­ted under bear a strik­ing resemb­lance to the laws our gov­ern­ment put in place a few years back with the express pur­pose of arrest­ing Muslims for mak­ing utterly trivial slights against our cul­ture.

That’s prob­ably enough for tonight. I should be back to a more reas­on­able posting-​​schedule now, so if I think of any­thing else I missed, I’ll sneak it into a future post.

The recent ordeal (which I’ve blogged about here and here,) of a young woman who was sen­tenced to state-​​sponsored bru­tal­ity after being gang-​​raped is just one example of the shock­ing bar­bar­ity of the Saudi regime. It is unac­cept­able that the UK counts any nation with such a poor human-​​rights record as an ally, so please take a couple of minutes to sign this peti­tion urging our gov­ern­ment to sever friendly ties with Saudi Ara­bia until such a time as they join us in the 21^st Century.

The actual text you’ll be put­ting your name to is:

The gov­ern­ment have rolled out the Red car­pet to the Saudi Royal Fam­ily yet the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia is an auto­cratic regime with an appalling human rights record. Exe­cu­tions, flog­ging and ampu­ta­tions are imposed and car­ried out with dis­reg­ard for the most basic inter­na­tional fair trial stand­ards. ‘Offences’ include being gay or being a woman unac­com­pan­ied by a man or driv­ing a car. Yet with utter hypo­crisy the UK gov­ern­ment con­demns sim­ilar regimes such as Burma and has very min­imal ties with coun­tries like Libya. The UK has turned a blind eye to this for its own selfish eco­nomic interests to the extent that we will break inter­na­tional law on cor­rup­tion to avoid upset­ting the Saudi Royal Fam­ily. As a con­sequence of this rela­tion­ship we are per­ceived as sup­port­ers and back­ers of this repress­ive regime. We have seen the con­sequences of these injustices on the secur­ity of our coun­try. It is now the oppor­tun­ity to restore Britain’s dig­nity and end this stain on our country’s reputation.

Last year I blogged about a Saudi woman who’d been gang raped, and then charged by the author­it­ies for being in the same car as a male friend who was not her hus­band (before the rape.) Ini­tially, she was sen­tenced to 90 lashes (yes, cor­poral pun­ish­ment.) She appealed that sen­tence (as well as the leni­ent sen­tences handed down on the rape gang.) Well, the appeal court has increased all the sen­tences. Not only have the rap­ists had their sen­tenced increased (as they should,) but so has their victim.

200 lashes and two years in prison for meet­ing a male friend. It’s back­wards, it’s bar­baric, and it’s a viol­a­tion of her human rights. And our gov­ern­ment tacitly sup­ports it because the big­oted des­pots in charge are our allies and sup­ply us with oil.

Taslima Nas­reen, a Banglade­shi author is to be tried in India because a group of Muslims attacked her and called for her exe­cu­tion. What was her crime? Writ­ing books that out the sys­tem­atic hor­rors inflic­ted on Women, and people of other reli­gions under Sharia law. Appar­ently that “offen­ded” Muslims, which is pun­ish­able by up to three years in jail.

This is mad­ness; how can it be illegal to tell the frickin truth? And in case you’re think­ing she might just be spread­ing scur­ril­ous lies, remem­ber that their response to being “offen­ded” was to phys­ic­ally attack her and call for her exe­cu­tion (with a cash reward to any­one who pulls it off, for cry­ing out loud!)

And before you write this off as being just one of those things that hap­pens in other coun­tries, remem­ber that here in the UK, we have very sim­ilar laws against “incite­ment to reli­gious hatred.” Remem­ber the TV foot­age after the Dan­ish car­toon fiasco, of the police mov­ing on counter pro­test­ers at a Muslim rally where the actual pro­test­ers were car­ry­ing plac­ards call­ing for vari­ous people to be beheaded, for fear of “inflam­ing the situ­ation?” We have — I hope — a long way to go before people do jail time in the UK for cri­ti­cising the extrem­ists, but these people get more lee­way and more respect than they did a dec­ade ago, and that makes me think that we’re drift­ing in the wrong dir­ec­tion. One of the com­menters at Richard​Dawkins​.net said it best:

And we athe­ists have to put up with being called fun­da­ment­al­ists for cri­ti­cising such divinely inspired hatred.

Word­press, the pop­u­lar blog­ging site, has been blocked by the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, fol­low­ing alleg­a­tions of defam­a­tion by one Adnan Oktar, who is a well-​​known Islam­ist cre­ation­ist, who’s recently been in the blog spot­light (blog­light?) for a mass-​​mailing cam­paign of tens of thou­sands of cop­ies of his latest book, The Atlas of Cre­ation to uni­ver­sit­ies, schools and research insti­tutes through­out the west­ern world.

While he was just another cre­ation­ist crank mail­ing out books and try­ing to con­vert people, I wasn’t that inter­ested; it’s not that dif­fer­ent from The Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute or their UK equi­val­ent, Truth in Sci­ence. But this latest devel­op­ment gave me cause to look into him a bit more thor­oughly, and it’s much worse than I thought. This is someone with enough sway in his home coun­try to get an entire site banned based on a couple of art­icles, who’s so cer­tain of his deluded ideas that he’s pre­pared to orches­trate a cam­paign of mis­in­form­a­tion, har­ass­ment and threats against any­one with oppos­ing views. From Wikipedia:

In early 1998, Adnan Oktar and the BAV launched a cam­paign against Dar­win­ism. Thou­sands of free cop­ies of Adnan Oktar’s book, The Evol­u­tion Deceit, and the book­lets based on this book were dis­trib­uted within Turkey.

BAV [Found­a­tion for Sci­entific Research — Oktar’s mouth­piece organ­isa­tion] also spear­headed an effort to attack Turk­ish aca­dem­ics who taught evol­u­tion­ary the­ory. A num­ber of aca­dem­ics were har­assed, threatened and slandered in fli­ers that labelled them “com­mun­ists, sep­ar­at­ists and Maoists” for teach­ing evolution.[19][20] In 1999, six of the pro­fess­ors won a civil court case against BAV for defam­a­tion and were awar­ded $6,000 each.

The court decided that “a severe and unjust attack was per­pet­rated on the plaintiffs’ per­sonal rights, by list­ing the names of the sci­ent­ists defend­ing the the­ory of evol­u­tion and describ­ing them as com­mun­ists and sep­ar­at­ists on the fly­ers dis­trib­uted by the found­a­tion.” [20] Pro­fessor Ümit Sayın summed up the effect of BAV’s cam­paign when, in 2005, he said: In 1998, I was able to motiv­ate six mem­bers of the Turk­ish Academy of Sci­ences to speak out against the cre­ation­ist move­ment. Today, it’s impossible to motiv­ate any­one. They’re afraid they’ll be attacked by the rad­ical Islam­ists and the BAV.

In just seven years he’s gone from being pre­ven­ted from per­se­cut­ing people, to being able to shut down web­sites that host pages crit­ical of him, he’s mailed out thou­sands of cop­ies of a book of lies, and in his own coun­try people are too afraid of him to speak out in favour of evol­u­tion; how is it that hardly any­one in the west has heard of this man?

For the second time in a month, an openly gay man has been set upon and viol­ently beaten by an enraged mob in West­ern Jamaica. Part of the attack was videoed if you can bare to watch it. It might not be entirely worth it though, since (luck­ily?) you can’t really see what’s going on.

As if the attack itself wasn’t dis­turb­ing enough — some of the per­pet­rat­ors waited out­side the hos­pital where he was treated, so they could have another go when he got out. These people aren’t just thug­gish back­wards bar­bar­i­ans; they’re sick.

Link via Dis­patches from the Cul­ture Wars. Make sure you take a look at Ed’s cov­er­age, for the quote from the “pub­lic defender” who basic­ally says “if you act gay, you should expect to be beaten.”