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 21st 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 RichardDawkins.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.”